Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story (11 page)

Nancy gets angry and depressed and knows, though she will not admit it, that she will never really be anything more than Jason’s PR rep.

7

Jason discovers his interest in Duplication Girl goes beyond the sex, and they spend the summer of 2000 dating. Nancy knows, but doesn’t report on it. When July arrives and Jason tells her she can go public with their relationship, Nancy declines. She says it’s because she’s going on vacation, and that she’ll give the story to Kira Erdrich.

Jason is having sex with her when she makes the call to Kira ten minutes later.

8

Excerpt from
More Than a Copy: The Autobiography of Duplication Girl’s Third Self

Published, 2009, Atomic Anxiety Press

The summer of 2001 was the best time I ever had. Duplication Girl moved out of the Revolutionaries’ Fort and down to Las Vegas to be with Jason. Eagle ’62 discovered that DG had brought back several cases full of Ikanium powder that she and Jason had bought from space pirates after Calling Bird’s wedding.

(I can’t believe he gave her a tiger for a wedding present!)

DG and Jason were going at it all the time and in all kinds of ways (the only rule Jason seemed to have was “no spitting,” which is like Julie Roberts’ character in
Pretty Woman
having a “no kissing” policy — you’re a fucking prostitute, you kiss if I say you kiss!), and yeah, us duplicates were aware of it. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that when we were inside of DG, we experienced what the main body was experiencing as a kind of dream, and then when we were let out, it was like waking up.

People always want to know if I’m mad at Jason for what eventually happened to DG, but the truth is I owe him my life. He pushed DG like no one ever had, and sure, he was doing it because he was a horn dog, but if it wasn’t for him, I don’t think any of the duplicates would have ever come to their own distinct consciousness. Before DG started dating Jason, I didn’t see myself as, well, myself. I was just an extension of DG. If she wanted me to do the laundry, I did the laundry. If she wanted me to lick Jason’s balls, I licked Jason’s balls.

But the more Jason pushed her to make more and more versions of herself, the more we began to realize we were not just DG but our own individuals. We always came out in the same order, too, though I suspect if DG had reacted to 9/11 differently, we would eventually have come out based on what DG wanted. The 7th Self, for instance, loved to do chores because she was so anal about things. The 8th Self was anal-focused in a different kind of way. Ha. Love you, girl.

I was more analytical, which is why I still work with what’s left of the superhero community.

9

“I want to do something different tonight,” Jason says, kissing Duplication Girl’s forehead as he enters the kitchen they share. He’s just exited the shower and is in a towel, while she is wearing a pink Bubblegunner t-shirt and shorts.

“Ugh, not tonight,” she says, pushing him away. “I’m sore and strung out. We’re doing too much coke.”

“You’re doing too much coke, maybe,” Jason says, slapping her ass lightly. “My body still metabolizes it —”

“Double ugh,” she says, opening the refrigerator. “I’m glad you have your little speech prepared to feed Nancy in case you ever get caught doing the powder, but — oh, fuck. Are we out of milk? God shit piss, Jason. I told you to buy milk when you went to the store!”

“When I go to the store, I will,” he says, nudging her out of the way to pull out the box of leftover pizza.

“I’m not going to wait four days for milk!”

“Anyway,” he says, ignoring her doldrums as he slaps the pizza box down on the island counter and flipped the cover open, “I wasn’t talking about that.” He grabs a slice of cold, limp sausage pizza and takes a large bit. As he chews, he says, “I want to know your name.”

10

“My name is Duplication Girl,” she says.

“That’s your codename,” he says, taking another bite of cold pizza. He’s now at the part of the pizza that isn’t so limp.

“No,” she insists, “it isn’t. You know this. The scientists at EGG built me in a lab and they never called me anything but ‘Duplication Girl’ or ‘the Experiment.’ That’s it.”

“So … your real name is The Experiment.”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“Ha, you love it, Miss Experiment,” he says, and then pulls a vial of Ikanium powder out of his pocket and shows it to her.

“Damn,” she says, feeling an urge rise up hard and fast, “I thought we were out.”

“We’re not.”

“Then why have we been doing coke all week?”

“Shut up and snort it,” he orders playfully.

DG wants to get mad because, while playful, she doesn’t like it when he gives her orders, but the allure of where the Irkanium powder will take her once she puts it in her nose overrides any sense of self-respect she can muster in this moment.

11

Kira Erdrich doesn’t know why Nancy is giving her the news of Kid Rapscallion and Duplication Girl dating. The former classmates have not had anything to do with one another since Nancy left for her TV job, leading Kira to wonder if Nancy is going soft?

“Shouldn’t you give this to someone at the station?” Kira asks her over the phone. It sounds like Nancy is watching porn, which doesn’t particularly surprise Kira since she has thought Nancy was a Grade-A Slut since the first day she met the blonde.

“I hate all of them,” Nancy says. “You take it.”

Kira decides Nancy is drubbing her superiority in her face, but takes the information and writes the story and takes another step on the ladder.

12

Nancy tells everyone she is going on vacation and prints out the itinerary for a cruise to South America, but instead of collecting her mother at the airport and driving to Los Angeles to board the
Queen Adventure
, she checks herself into the Grand Vegas under an assumed name.

She is in her room by 3:30 and crying by 3:31. Nancy can no longer deny that she’s in love with Jason and that she wants to be more to him than just her media mouthpiece. It hurts her that he’s dating Duplication Girl, and that he tells her about some of the things they do together. She does not hate this because she is a prude, but because she knows “Deege” is giving him something she cannot. Whatever Nancy does
to
Jason, whatever she does
for
Jason, whatever she allows Jason to do to her, it will never compare to what Duplication Girl can do.

13

Hours go by without any attempt to engage the day. Nancy realizes a truth that she thinks is profound: if you want to cry, you should stop, but if you need to cry, you should not.

She keeps the window closed, the phone disconnected, and the TV off. As the dark descends, Nancy thinks she has fallen in love with a good hero and a terrible person. For all of Jason’s faults, Kid Rapscallion is out there, every single night, saving people.

The truth about Las Vegas is that it doesn’t attract lots of super villains. Plenty of low level costumes, of course, but this city is so dependent on tourism that the big villains stay away.

No one, the thinking goes, will want to travel to a city for vacation if Big Evil or VeroniCannon is in charge. Take over, say, Milwaukee, and you’ve got an entire urban system living under your rule, but if you take over Vegas you’re left with lots of empty casinos. The thing that makes it special only happens if people feel safe coming here, so the A-list villains who want more out of their activities than money and destruction think elsewhere.

Jason has even joked that villains come here on vacation just to have a vacation.

That doesn’t mean it’s a safe city, of course, and Kid Rapscallion has stopped all sorts of bad guys and girls: Domina Tricks, Hyena Girl, Boom Fist, Jack Russell Terrorize, Cat Wild, Rainbow Delight, Mallard Mayhem (not to be confused with any of the Duck Squadron), War Mongrel, Bitterheart, Chemical Chef … and on and on.

It’s exhausting trying to keep all of them straight.

“How do you do it?” Nancy asked Jason one night after he spent an hour punching and kicking the Iguna Twins around out in the desert.

Jason shrugged. “You just do. It’s the job. Rapscallion always stressed that.”

Rapscallion.

Jason refuses to tell Nancy anything significant about the hero that raised and trained him. All she knows is that he started training Jason when he was young (maybe 14 or 15) and that they had some sort of falling out. He refuses to tell Nancy Rapscallion’s name, though she realizes she could probably figure it out if she wanted to. Lots of people in the media know/“know” the identities of heroes but there is an unwritten rule not to out that information unless necessary.

“It’s like being gay,” the station’s entertainment report had said to her one night. “I could list so many Hollywood actors who pretend to be straight that you'd fall asleep before I stopped.”

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“If we say anything, we get burned by everyone else.”

Nancy thinks of Carol, and realizes most sections of the news operate under the same set of rules and behaviors. Politics, business, entertainment, sports … they all have their version of the secret identity story.

From the bed, her eyes linger over to the remote on the desk next to the TV and she contemplates turning on the news to see who Kid Rapscallion beat up tonight, or whether Kira’s story was picked up by any of the local news agencies. Her boss has already left a message on her voicemail about it, but Nancy ignores it.

She’s on her way to Brazil, after all, and cell reception is notoriously bad at sea.

There’s shouting down the hall, the sounds of a good time being had by drunk vacationers and Nancy contemplates going downstairs to do some gambling. Or to people watch. Or to eat a meal. No one comes to the Grand Vegas just to sit in their room in the dark.

So she decides that’s what she’ll do.

14

Nancy Cathall awakens at 7:07 Pacific Coast Time, takes ten minutes to rub the sleep out of her eyes, goes to the bathroom, finds the remote, slumps back on the bed, and turns on the TV.

“—gain, our top story, the South Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed. Repeat, the South Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed after a commercial airliner crashed into the building at 9:03 Eastern Standard Time. The North Tower continues to burn. We go live, now, to Carol Porg for the view from the ground.”

9/11

1

TRANSCRIPT FROM
TARNISHED LEGACY: THE SECRET LIVES OF CAPES

Season 1, Episode 5 (S01E05): “Kid Rapscallion”

JASON KITMORE / KR

(old interview from 2005 book-signing appearance)

I’ve said it. I’ve said it and I’ll stand by it. I know people don’t like to hear it, but I’ll say it again. 9/11 was not the fault of the superhero community. Heroes are responsible for villains. Cops for street thugs. And international terrorists are the purview of the intelligence community: the NSA and the CIA.

NANCY CATHALL

(shakes head, speak quietly)

I wish Jason would just shut up about 9/11. I’m not saying he’s wrong, necessarily, but it’s not something people will ever want to hear.

JASON KITMORE / KR

(old interview from 2005 book-signing appearance)

Of course it’s a tragedy. Of course it is. And if a hero knew about it, he should do everything in his power to stop it. But we didn’t hear about it and no one at CIA or NSA or FBI or DOD ever said anything to a cape about it, as far as I know.

FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA

The superheroes failed America on 9/11. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to treason, in my book. That’s what I think, and that’s what the families of 2,977 casualties of those terrorists think, too. People look up to them and they failed us. They can talk all they want about the lack of communication between agencies, but there were so-called superheroes who sit on the moon and watch the whole planet. Why didn’t they see anything? There are so-called superheroes with the power to sit in Los Angeles and read the mind of a street kid in Morocco. Why didn’t any of them see anything?

JASON KITMORE / KR

(old interview from 2005 book-signing appearance)

Is that what people really want? For the Revolutionaries to spend their time reading everyone’s email? To have Psychic Navigator read the mind of everyone on the planet to see if they’re thinking bad thoughts? That’s the worst kind of police state.

FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA

My father served in World War 2. In those days, the heroes of the world protected the world from its evils. Yes, the Holocaust still happened, and yes, millions of Jews were killed, but there weren’t any heroes in those days who could do what someone like Psychic Navigator or Radio Mind can do now. The point is that heroes like Eagle ’42, Striped Star, Tricolour, Private Ghost, Sibearia, Vitesse, and the women of Midnight Tank fought side by side with the Allied soldiers. Hell, the Axis had their own superheroes who fought side by side with them. A villain like
Baron Black
… as evil and despicable as he was … had a sense of honor that most of today’s heroes couldn’t match. Think on that. ROMULUS has become a non-factor in the world, but it was only two to three decades ago that they were the biggest terrorist organization in the world. From World War 2 straight through the Cold War, ROMULUS was our number one terrorist threat and they had class. Or, well, maybe class is the wrong word, but a purpose that was something more than mass panic and killing as many innocents as possible. I’d rather work against
Baron Black
than with most of today’s alleged heroes because heroes like Kid Rapscallion — a confirmed drug addict, I will remind you — are only in it for themselves.

JASON KITMORE / KR

(clip from RED Network, 2004)

Certainly, no one said anything to me. And why would they, yeah? I lived on the other side of the country! Even if — and I’m not saying this is true, mind you, I’m just using a hypothetical here — even if you’re stupid enough to think a cape should have stopped 9/11, which hero are you talking about? The heroes in the cities where the planes crashed? How were they supposed to know about who got on those planes? So let’s blame the heroes in the cities where the planes launched from, yeah? Well, how the hell were they supposed to know about what happened to those planes when they left their city?

FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA

Where were the heroes on 9/11? Where were they? All we get are excuses, not answers.

KIRA ERDRICH
, AMERICAN NEWS CHANNEL

I can tell you where Kid Rapscallion was — knee deep in a cocaine-fueled orgy with Duplication Girl in his personal suite at the top of the Grand Vegas. That’s how his day started, and we all know how it ended.

JASON KITMORE / KR

(clip from RED Network, 2004)

Where were the heroes? On 9/11, the Revolutionaries were halfway to Mars, stopping a Loshow K invasion. Except for Striped Star, of course, who was busy stopping Lord Pluto from bringing Hell to Earth. By herself. Senator’s Sun tried to help at the Pentagon but was ordered away and then went and had a heart attack. Yeah, and instead of telling any of them, “Thank you,” our chicken(bleep) Congress went and passed the Vigilante Act.

(off-screen interviewer asks, “And where were you? Is is true, as Kira Erdrich alleges, that you were engaged—?”

(Bleep) Kira (bleeping) Erdrich. She wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for me. Was I doing cocaine and having sex with Deege on 9/11? None of your damn business. But I’ll say this — I was a 19-year old kid, then. What 19 year kid wouldn’t want to be snorting coke and having sex with Duplication Girl, if they could? Kira likes to make a big deal about my drug use, but as I have explained — as doctors have explained — snorting five lines of cocaine was no different for me than the average person having a Bud Light after work. Kira, and everyone else in the damn moral police, like to act like I was doing something wrong. Well, just because Kira can’t do coke and be fine doesn’t mean I can’t, you know? It’s not like she can scale the Space Needle, either, and I did that without breaking a sweat.

2

Duplication Girl watches herself from across the room. Besides herself, there are 19 versions of her spread around the room. Jason had come home late last night, worked up and anxious over the continued reports that Mr. Monster was in town and looking for revenge over Kid Rapscallion defeating him back in June, in Los Angeles.

That was the fight that made Kid Rapscallion something more than a sidekick, both to himself and to the public. She knows the truth of that fight, that Kid Rapscallion was the last of five heroes to do battle with Mr. Monster that day, but she also knows that Jason was spectacular. She had never met him before then, their paths just never seeming to cross for one reason or another, but after he and Monster spent seven hours battling all over Los Angeles, with the final blows struck in the Colosseum, it was her who decided to teleport him up to the Fort to rest and recover.

And do coke.

And have sex.

If any of the senior members of the Revolutionaries had been around that day, none of the drugs or the sex would have happened, but she was all alone in the Fort doing monitor duty and feeling rebellious. The Revos had been nice enough to take her in after rescuing her from the EGG creeps who built her in tubes and vats and chemicals, but that had been a year ago and they still didn’t let her out much.

From a distance, Kid Rapscallion was perfect: dashing in his red, black, and white suit, handsome out of it, young but already a veteran of the superhero life … she’d had a crush on him for months, using the Fort’s computer to research him and stay on top of his activities. She knew, for instance, that he had briefly dated Belle Flower, and that they had broken up because she didn’t engage in premarital sex.

Or even premarital making out.

Belle was one of those new heroes the older heroes loved because she was so damn perfect, and so Duplication Girl modified herself to be what Belle wasn’t. It was all the kinds of things a teenager does when she’s in love with an incomplete picture of a person, but then, that’s what a crush is, isn’t it?

Love based on a partial image of truth, filled in with large portions of fantasy.

She was felling rebellious and she could tell Kid Rapscallion was feeling rebellious and so when the opportunity presented itself, she brought him aboard the Fort, ran him through the Revos’ super healing computers, and while he was half-drugged and recuperation, asked him, “What do you want?”

“I want to snort coke off your tits,” he’d said before passing out.

When he awoke, she was waiting for him with white powder on her breasts.

3

The fun of that first week has long since passed.

Duplication Girl reminds herself, as Jason calls for a 20th duplicate while buried in the 17th, that their first encounter was in June and now it’s in September. In three months, she’s gone from being in love with someone she didn’t really know to out of love with someone she knows all too well.

She rubs her nose, absently snorting any loose grain of cocaine powder that she might have missed. She knows she is an addict and knows she needs help, because her physiology, while unique in the world, does not metabolize cocaine like Jason’s does. She wants to leave, but where will she go? The words she said when leaving the Fort were harsh and not easily forgotten or forgiven, and she has no money of her own to spend so leaving Jason isn't an option, either.

EGG would take her back, of course, but just because she’s become something of a drug addict doesn’t mean—

“Another one!”

“I … I can’t,” she says, and her nose begins to bleed.

4

Jason wants breakfast but he wants to get away from Duplication Girl (all of them), so he calls room service, orders enough scrambled eggs and sausage for four people, and tells them to deliver his food to an empty room.

“Which room?”

“I’ll wait until you find me one,” he snaps, rubbing his eyes.

“Room 752, sir.”

“On my way,” he says. “Send someone with a keycard to let me in. Don’t make me wait in the fucking hallway.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hangs up the desk phone and turns around to look at the mess. One of the duplicates has put on a robe and is busy rubbing her eyes. He notices several of the duplicates are rubbing their eyes this morning and he can’t remember what he and/or they possibly could have done to make his eyes itchy.

“I want breakfast, too,” she says.

“Me, too,” another one grumbles.

“Then order some,” he snaps, heading to his closet to grab shorts, a Striped Star t-shirt (because he knows it will annoy Deege), and his domino mask to use as ID, then leaves the mass of duplicated, strung out flesh behind him.

5

When she wakes up, Jason is gone. The bedroom is a mess of bodies, fluids, and powders. She counts the duplicates and there are only seven in the room.

“Where are the others?” she asks.

“What do you care?” one of the duplicates says. She thinks it’s number 4, but she can’t be certain. She feels hungover and strung out and taxed beyond her limits.

DG is angry. “Where are the others?” she repeats.

“There’s more of us inside of you,” another one says. “Let us out.”

“What? No. Fuck off and get back inside me.”

The duplicates look at each other.

One of them says, “Get the others.”

Another adds, “We are never going back inside you.”

6

After breakfast, Jason falls asleep without turning on the television.

As far as he’s concerned, it’s a normal morning.

The biggest concern in his mind when he passes out is whether he should dump Duplication Girl or not.

7

Nancy Cathall doesn’t answer her phone. She checks to see who’s calling every time it rings, but it’s always work and not Jason, so she lets it go to voicemail. She listens to the voicemails, and realizes she’ll have to come up with some kind of excuse to not write about what it’s like being on a cruise ship when 9/11 hits. Jason will help her create a cover story, she thinks. Maybe they can say that Integration brainwashed her or something.

Just before 10:30, the North Tower (Tower One) collapses.

This is horrific on a level Nancy cannot imagine, and she can see and hear the panic and confusion in the eyes and voices of all the reporters. She understands, at some deep level, that she is not a reporter because she does not want to leave this room and find stories to tell to help the public understand what is transpiring.

All Nancy wants to do is lay here in bed and absorb.

There is a knock at the door and after discerning through the peephole that it is a member of hotel security, she opens it just as far as the chain will allow. “Yes?” she asks a handsome man in his early 20s.

“Have you seen the news, ma’am?” he asks. “We’re checking to make sure everyone has heard the news.” He coughs nervously. “About New York, ma’am.”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s horrible. I’ve seen it. I … you’re going room to room?”