While We're Waiting

At this point, I don't even know if the book will be published or what I can do about it.  I'm going to have to start using this blog for other stuff besides author news again.

Right now, a couple of friends of mine expressed interest in peeks into Penny's parents' lives, and called Brian a 'precious cinnamon bun.'  So, I wrote his superhero origin story for them.  It is very short.  I'll put it here, rough and unedited!

The Nearly Mad Science building shivered as the metal bench gouged a hole in the off-white stone exterior. A couple of freshly reinstalled bolts came loose, causing the sign over the entrance to lean at an angle.

A young man stuck his head out of the second floor window. “Criminy. Please tell me you're not here to steal the latest shipment. We've barely gotten time to study them. The protein agglutination alone will be useful in a hundred sciences once we map the amino acids.”

Without ever taking her eyes off her opponent, a cream and yellow amazon in glaring pink and purple midriff sweater and shorts shouted, “Criminal plans aborted. This dimwit needs a lesson for insulting me.”

“Me insulting you?! I have an IQ of one hundred sixty seven, you musclebound sugary slattern, and I've had enough of your constantly calling me stupid!” screamed a man in sinister red and black robes with a long beard, a metal-banded staff topped by an unusually large mouse skull painted in yellow and black stripes, and a leatherbound book that floated by his side in its own purple aura.

The man in the window adjusted his glasses. “The young lady's name is Delicious, but I don't know yours, sir? I assume you are also a supervillain?”

Drawing himself up to his full height, fluffy-bearded chin raised in pride, and even floating a couple of inches off the ground, the man in robes pointed an accusing staff at Delicious. “Get used to the name Ethelbert the Eldritch, academic peon. My fame swells every day. And that is not a young anything. She's over fifty years old!”

Smirking, the yellow woman tilted her hips to one side, cupped her hands under her chest, and lifted. “These laugh at your bunk. What student in this college can match Delicious?” They didn't raise, for the same reason she didn't look even half her real age. A candy shell harder than steel does not sag.

The man in the window held his fist to his mouth and coughed, blushing slightly. “Yes. Well.”

“She's a crone! A shriveled, ignorant hag!” screeched Ethelbert. In response, Delicious pulled a tree out of the ground with one hand, lunged forward, and swung it at him. His book swerved between them, and with a deep purple flash he vanished and reappeared on the other side of the cobbled university path.

The tree hit the wall of the building instead, scraping off branches and gouging the surface.

“Please take this somewhere else. Please?” asked the man in the window.

Delicious growled, twirling the tree over her head. Its eighteen inch trunk cut the air with an audible hum. “Here is his offense. Here he came without invite. Here he gave insult.”

“I showed up without invitation?! You sat on that roof eating popcorn and casting aspersions on my intellect during my whole fight with Fantabulosa! I would have won if you weren't so distracting!” Furious, the bearded wizard pointed his staff. A painfully bright flash of yellow flew from the skull at the end, striking Delicious's tree. She twitched sharply, and the tree itself burst into flame.

Twisting the lenses on his glasses, the man in the window leaned out more, revealing his striped tie and white lab coat. “Automatic teleportation and an energy beam. Superb technology. I can see the collateral damage is about to get out of hand. One moment.”

Disappearing into the building, he appeared as promised a second later with a large, cylindrical plastic cooler. Tilting it over, he poured out a glob of white liquid that splashed all over the flaming tree, and Delicious standing below him.

Caught by surprise, the supervillainess scowled up at him as only someone with hair made of candy spikes can. “You have done it now. Your school was irrelevant. Now I level it.”

With that she took a step forward, pulling the tree trunk back, and stumbled, falling onto her back. The thud of her heavy body hitting the dirt resounded around the campus, causing spectating students to retreat a little farther.

The man in the window took the opportunity to pour another cooler of white goo over her.

Sputtering, the supervillainess responded by pulled the tree back and threw it at him.

Tried to throw it at him. Instead of leaving her hand, the top end ripped off, stuck to a column in front of the building's entrance. The rest swung around and smacked into her leg. She shook it, and the trunk snapped in two, one half stuck in her grip and the other to her leg.

Disbelieving, she asked, “Glue? You employ glue? No glue is as strong as me. Hear Delicious scoff.” As predicted, she easily pulled the tree free of one hand with the other, leaving a chunk of torn free wood that she scraped off against her chest. It crumbled, but instead of coming loose tore her shirt apart. Not that it mattered, since the layer of white goop underneath concealed at least as much.

He didn't answer, so she climbed to her feet, to the sound of sod ripping up and sticking to her back. The two halves of trunk touched each other again, ripped into more pieces, and at the momentary jerk she keeled forward onto the path.

Peeling up bricks, one stuck to her face, Delicious rolled over and sat up. She gave the man in the window an amused look. “Inconvenient. Stopping me with a trifle. What is your name, boy?”

“Brian Akk. I'm sorry, but I just don't want the college broken. Can we call a truce, and I'll set you free? You can continue your fight somewhere else. Please, Miss Delicious?”

The candy shelled supervillainess laughed, long and enthusiastic, before settling back into a mere grin. “You delight me so. Delicious shall grant-”

And with that, Ethelbert the Eldritch blasted her with his staff again. And again. And again. Neither the glue nor her impervious surface even turned black, but each shot sent her body twisting and jumping with the shock. Reflexively, she threw a brick at him, but it would not leave her glue covered hand.

Brian gasped. “What are you doing? I thought there was some kind of sportsmanship rule! Misty talks about it all the time!”

“Not for this, Brian-” Delicious managed, before another yellow bolt cut her words off in a strangled yelp.

“That's right! I have the advantage, and I will make this impudent hussy pay for the way she keeps calling me stupid!” shouted Ethelbert.

From the window, Brian pleaded, “Before you do, at least let me examine your technology. It's not like she's going anywhere, and I am in awe. What you're wielding right there puts anything in our collection to shame.”

“Do you think me a fool? I'm not going to surrender my staff.”

Brian shook his head hurriedly. “Oh, no. I just want to take some readings. Those devices are amazing. Beyond amazing. Did you make them yourself?”

Nonplussed, the robed villain stroked his beard. “I certainly did. Are they really that great? And they're not devices, I enchanted them.”

“I don't believe in magic, but you just might convince me!” Brian called back, ducking inside. Seconds later, he burst out the front door, arms full of equipment. Passing by the wheezing Delicious, he trotted in a hurry over to Ethelbert, and dumped it all on the ground. Still bemused, the villain watched until Brian held up a tube made of loosely connected white bands, connected by wires to a chunky but hand portable computer.

“Just fire one of your energy blasts through this? I might be able to base my thesis paper on you,” said Brian Akk, positioning the tube so Ethelbert could point through it.

“Oh. I thought you were a professor,” said Ethelbert, lifting his staff to point down the tube.

“Not yet, but I might be one a lot sooner, thanks to you,” said the brown-haired, bespectacled young man in the lab coat.

“Let your feeble science wonder at the power of my lightning staff, then!” declared the smirking villain. A yellow blast shot through the tube, across campus, and left a smear of black on the far end of the Nearly Mad Science building.

Blinking away the flash, Brian peered at the readout on his computer. “Lightning doesn't look or act like that, but... criminy, you're right. It is lightning. That's fascinating.”

Now Ethelbert really smirked, drawing himself up smugly again. “You scientists think you know everything. True magic defies you.”

Shaking his head, Brian kept peering at the screen, poking buttons with his thumb. “I promise, we only wish we knew everything. An ionized tube to keep the lightning from wandering. What a system. I can't even guess how the staff projects it, or where it gets the electricity. I hate to say, but that may always be beyond my grasp. May I do one more test, sir? If you don't mind?”

“One more, if you're quick. I am watching you, and that oversized hussy you're on good terms with.” Turning, Ethelbert pointed his staff at the groaning Delicious, who groggily experimented with crumbling the bricks stuck to her hands.

Placing the scanning tube on the ground, Brian cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted, “Misty! A gas canister, please? Helium would be best, if you can find it.”

A woman's rich voice echoed out of the second store window. “Like there's anything in your lab I don't know how to get my hands on.”

“Misty, please,” Brian repeated, sounding a bit strained.

A small metal bottle sailed out of the window, arcing perfectly down into Brian's waiting hand. Adjusting the nozzle until it started to hiss, he suggested, “I can do this while you shock Delicious. A few seconds and I'll be out of your way.”

“Feeble minded mechanists,” Ethelbert muttered, aiming past Brian's helium can, and released a blast of yellow light. This time, yellow turned immediately to blue, and with a screech, the bearded evildoer collapsed.

“That does tend to happen when you can't aim electricity that strong,” commented Brian to the unconscious man. Crouching down, he used his sleeve to pat the smoking embers cold in the man's beard, then checked Ethelbert's neck. “Pulse still steady. Thank goodness. He'll need burn treatment.” Raising his voice, he shouted, “Misty! Call an ambulance, please?”

“Already done, Brian. I know you. In the biblical sense,” said the young woman with the smooth voice, stepping into the Nearly Mad Science building's doorway. Like Delicious, she wore a bare midriff sweater and shorts. Hers hugged curves as dramatic as the villainess's like paint, but with a full compliment of sway and bounce with every step in her high heels. Every inch of fabric gleamed white, not quite blending into her milky skin and luxuriously wavy platinum blonde hair, whose pale color right down to the scalp screamed that she had super powers of her own.

“Misty, please,” said Brian, his cheeks red and his voice rasping.

On the path, the glue-covered villainess turned her grin from her unconscious opponent to the students. “Joyous Delicious, who will honor our bargain if you unstick her.”

Bending down, Brian scooped up the skull-topped staff, and hurried past Delicious into the building. “Remarkably, as sticky as that substance is, it's soluble in water. Can you believe that? We'll have you free in no time. Misty, do you have any change on you?”

“You could search my pockets again,” said his friend, following him inside.

“Are you always like this when there are supervillains around?” the young man asked plaintively.

Her voice echoed out, amused, emphatic, and a little exasperated. “Yes. And give me that. Honestly, Brian, you just saved the school thousands of dollars. Maybe tens of thousands. They won't resent one vending machine.”

Yellow flashed through the door, accompanied by pops, clanks, and a series of thunks. A few seconds later, Brian and Misty walked out the door and down the steps with their arms loaded down with bottles of water.

Delicious extended her arms, turning them over to watch as the glue and everything attached to it melted off when the students poured water over her. “Magnificent brain. This fight was my great pleasure. You have a future.”

“I'm a grad student, Miss Delicious, not a hero,” Brian assured her.

Delicious stood up. Her statuesque, lean muscled, seven foot tall body loomed over him. Her torn clothing remained on the ground with the slowly clumping white goo, and water ran in thin streams down bare curves now less than a foot from Brian's face.

The villainess's arm slipped around his waist, pulling him up off the ground against her. He let out a squeak, eyes wide behind his already magnifying spectacles. “We... ah... our truce?”

Smiling wickedly, her yellow face lowered to his, its wet surface smelling of lemons and cream. “Oh, do not worry. Delicious will not hurt you. My place. This weekend.”

Strident, Misty planted a hand on her hip, and shook an index finger up at the villainess. “What do you think you're doing?”

“Taking him back home. He will thank me afterwards. Big brains are sexy,” she answered, licking her lips.

“Please tell me she's kidding,” begged Brain.

“No, I meant can you at least wait until I get my camera?” complained Misty.

“Please tell me you're kidding,” begged Brian.

Delicious laughed, and touched her nose to the young man's. “Do I seem too stiff? Do not worry-”

And with that, he slipped a little device that was all handle out of his pocket, and jabbed it against Delicious's bare hip. Her hard surface rang like a giant bell, vibrating until she let go of her captive and collapsed onto the path again.

Dusting off his wet coat, he sighed. “Thank goodness we still have that amplified tuning fork. Not much except sonic attacks were going to work against that impervious shell.”

Eyes fluttering, still smiling, Delicious mumbled in a drowsy hush, “Brainy.”

Misty laughed, and handed Brian the skull staff. “Your prize, Brainy.”

“I swear you were going to let her carry me off,” he groused. Holding up the staff, he smiled again, eyes roaming over it in hungry anticipation. “Let me put this in the magnetic pod, and then we can bring my equipment back up.”

Hooking her arm into his, Misty leaned her head on his shoulder, pulling him towards the Nearly Mad Science building's front door. Twirling a pair of brown leather and shiny brass goggles with her other hand, the blonde gave him a wicked grin. “Priorities, Brainy Akk. First, you're going to need a pair of these.”