Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story (8 page)

In the ‘40s, the stakes were too high for violence to be the cool part of the gig.

The ‘70s made violence an unglamorous pursuit, the ‘80s turned it cynical and data-driven, and the ‘90s were just lost, with heroes increasingly seeing it all as a business. By the time Y2K took over the world’s computer systems, the new generation of heroes were mostly like Jason - in it for themselves, seeing the punching and kicking as paths to soda endorsements and invites to the Grammies.

Jason does not apologize for this. He’s still saving kids and old ladies and, yeah, the whole fucking world.

Why shouldn’t that come with a few side benefits? How’s an 18-year old kid playing superhero supposed to pay his medical bills if it’s all about doing it as a comp?

It’s not just inside the community that this is the case, either, he thinks, as he steps onto the Fort’s teleport platform. Striped Star is joining him and the call has gone out to other heroes that there’s mass panic over a bunch of illusions in Vegas, but Jason has asked her to leave Fake Out/Becca to him and not to tell Rapscallion. Star says yes, but she says it in a way that indicates the Navigator will be watching him closely to make sure he doesn’t end up costing Colbie her life, and that she won’t call Francis but Navigator damn sure will.

The public doesn’t care about the punching and kicking anymore, either. It’s about the celebrity more than the deed. It’s about how much damage was done to property more than whether you stopped the villain or not. Saving a million lives means nothing to the public, anymore, either, if two old ladies get taken out in the crossfire.

As his molecules are taken apart for the transport to Earth, Jason is already thinking about how this is going to play in the media. Colbie matters, of course. She matters to him and she matters to the public, but if Becca kills her, the media will turn this whole thing into a story about What Kid Rapscallion Did Wrong and not Villain Kills Kid.

That’s the business.

All 876 known Heavens help him if the press finds out he’s been fucking the villain.

33

“I want to know why,” Kid Rapscallion says.

He stands on the roof of the Grand Vegas, ten feet from Colbie, who is shivering in a white-shirt and jeans, lashed directly to the roof of the building. Becca, dressed in her white uniform with silver stars stands near Colbie’s outstretched arms with a smile on her face. She has no weapon in her hands and Jason cannot see how she’s managed to pull off the illusion around them. Even though he knows it’s all fake, Jason has to train his body not to react to the swooping dinosaurs and machine gun-wielding apes.

“Why does there have to be a reason?” Fake Out asks with a smile. “There is no reason. The acts themselves are the reason. This is what we do, Jason. It’s all a play that the universe has spun before and will again. It needs heroes and villains to fight with one another. I’ve been in this life from the start of mine. My parents were criminals, of a sort. Henchmen for various groups, and when CPS took me away from them, they gave me to my uncle because he was on the other side of the fence.

“Except, of course, he wasn’t, was he? Did you like meeting him? This was all his idea, you know. Not to focus on you, of course, but to latch onto whatever do-gooder replaced Five of Clubs and make them look foolish. That’s what Uncle Vincent did to the superhero community, and that’s what I’ve done to you, Jason Kitmore. I’ve made you look foolish.”

She reaches into the top of her glove and holds up a small computer tablet. A video is playing. It’s a compilation of Kid Rapscallion snorting cocaine intercut with Kid and Becca fucking intercut with Kid Rapscallion fucking the air as Becca stands to the side, whispering to him a picture that Jason believes is actually happening.

Jason shakes and sighs and feels stupid and angry and if he wasn’t smart enough to know the Fort had a camera trained on him he would walk across this roof and snap Becca’s neck.

But he is smart enough to know this, so he asks, “What do you want?”

“I want you to stop me,” she says. “It’s all a game, baby. Stop me and you’ll get this tape. But if I make it to morning, that recording goes to every media outlet I have an email address for.”

“This is stupid!”

“This is the life,” Fake Out shrugs. “Heroes have been punching villains since 1939, Jason, and not one bit of it has made a damn difference. So we play because the universe demands we play. Come get me, sport.”

Kid Rapscallion rushes forward, diving at Fake Out’s center and just as he did with Rapscallion the day before, he passes straight through the body and crashes.

“Fuck!” he yelled as he slams into a large air shaft.

Behind him, Fake Out laughs.

34

“I want to kill that bitch!” Colbie yells as Jason slaps a small metal disc into her hand. “I want to fuc-”

She disappears.

“Thanks,” Jason thinks and an image of the Psychic Navigator nodding enters his mind.

35

It does not take long to find Fake Out because Kid Rapscallion is rolling with the full power of the Fort behind him. Psychic Navigator quickly finds Becca inside the Grand Vegas’ security room, and he heads into the building to confront her. When he does, she is sitting behind the secretary’s desk and smiling in her new uniform.

“You’re messed up,” he accuses.

“No more than you,” she says, frowning as she rises to her feet and holds out her arms. “You can arrest me now.”

“You’re just going to give up?”

She nods, and Jason sees there is a difference between the illusion of her on the roof and the actual her that stands before him. “We could go through all of the fighting,” she says, defeat fully evident in her voice, “but we know how this works. Eventually you’ll catch me. Or worse, you’ll get one of the Revolutionaries to do it. The bigger a fool I make of you, the more interested the other heroes will become in stopping me, and I really am not ready to do that.”

“You did this for what, then?” he asks. “Just to make me look dumb?”

Fake Out pulls off her mask, revealing Becca underneath. She looks tired and ready for this to be over. “I am not going to say,” she says, “that I started out evil but then really fell in love with you, or anything. I liked what I did. All of it. I’m probably even more fucked up than you, but then, why wouldn’t I be, right? Who were my role models? Birthed by henchmen and raised by the man pulling the biggest scam the hero community had ever seen. Truth is, I don’t know what else to do.”

“Are you asking for sympathy?” Jason asks. “Seriously?”

“No,” she admits. “I’m asking you to arrest me. I did what Uncle Vincent asked me to do, just as I always did. Do you know who Wolfskinder is?”

“Of course,” Jason says, unsure of where this is going. “The Wolf Children.
Baron Black
’s kids.”

“Great grandkids now,” she says, moving across the plush carpet, still with her hands out. “There’s three of them that run ROMULUS. Uncle Vincent did a deal with them a few years back, and one of them, Gregori, wanted me included as part of the deal.” Becca hangs her head and Jason isn’t sure if she’s playing him or revealing herself to him; it’s unsettling because whether this is another lie or the actual truth, it’s a side of Becca he can’t read. “There’s all this talk about old heroes like Rapscallion running around with young male sidekicks, right? It’s all a big joke, like priests and their altar boys, but if that’s what the rumors are about the good guys, what do you think the bad guys are doing?”

“Are you telling me Gregori raped you?” he asks, feeling his confusion give way to anger.

“So literal,” she laughs a bit maniacally. “All you heroes, so fucking literal. Is it rape when I’m given to someone as an object? My uncle told me to let him do whatever he wanted, so I did. He’s hot. Maybe I wanted it. Maybe I would have done it, anyway. It’s the life, Jason.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“Now you’re being all noble?” she asks. “You? Where was that nobility when you had me tied to the bed?”

“That was … that was … Jesus.”

“Uncle Vincent wanted his replacement taken down,” Becca shrugs, putting her head on Jason’s chest. “He thinks the city will ask him to come back, I think. I don’t know. I don’t want sympathy. I liked the game we were playing. I liked all of it,” she says, her hand going to his crotch. “One last time?” she suggests.

“No,” he says, and they’re both glad for a brief moment of doing the right thing.

36

“Are you coming back upstairs?” Striped Star asks as Kid Rapscallion hands Fake Out over to her on the roof of the Grand Vegas.

“I am not,” he says.

“Kid —”

“Save it, Star,” he says. “I don’t want you to turn this into a life lesson or a teachable moment.”

Striped Star has been doing this too long to take gruff from someone like Kid Rapscallion and isn’t deterred by his words. “Your actions here have shamed the community,” she says. “You might not care what the press does with this, but heroes everywhere will face repercussions because of this. You don’t want a lecture? Then stop doing things that lead to them. Did you even wonder why Duplication Girl wasn’t down here trying to calm the public? Navigator says her mind is having difficulty re-integrating itself and she’s —”

“Get stuffed,” Kid Rapscallion says to one of the most respected heroes in history as he holds up the tablet playing Becca’s compilation. “I’ll take care of this. I only need one thing from you.”

“What?”

“Hit me.”

37

There is a knock at Nancy Cathall’s apartment window. She thinks, perhaps, she has imagined it. It’s nearly noon and she has been up and all night chasing down the story of the dinosaur-riding apes that turned out to be an illusion of some new villain named Fake Out. She has filed six different stories with
The Daily Rebel
, determined to show up Kira Endrich who has not let up on her since Lazlo was arrested in the middle of class. She knows Kira is still out there, still chasing the Kid Rapscallion story, still looking for Vegas’ hero to get his side of the story, but Nancy has come to realize that Kira simply wants this story more than she does, and so she had gone home to go to bed and sleep the rest of the day away.

The knocking persists, however, so she opens her curtains and finds a badly injured Kid Rapscallion standing on her fire escape. Eyes wide open and adrenaline ripping through her body, Nancy opens the window and catches him as he falls into her small apartment.

“What …?”

Kid Rapscallion leans on her and lets him lead her to a chair at her kitchen table.

Nancy stands next to him, her mouth finding itself unable to give voice to the right question, so all she mutters is, “What happened?”

Kid looks up at her, peels off his domino mask, and asks, “Are you ready to be famous?”

38

THE DAILY REBEL

KID RAP SAVES CITY!!!

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE

MAN WHO SAVED LAS VEGAS

Nancy Cathall

At 10:18 last night, the first dinosaur was spotted on our city’s famous strip. Within moments, panic gripped locals and tourists alike as the dinosaurs and their gorilla riders began terrorizing the city.

Except it was all an illusion.

Only one man understood that it was all fake, and that man was Kid Rapscallion, Las Vegas’ new protector.

It has been a sometimes rocky two months for the Kid, but after his victory over Fake Out, a new villain of unknown identity or origin, locals have been quick to heap praise on the young hero.

“He’s the best,” Carson Cuellers, owner of the Grand Vegas, said. “The best. He can stay in the nicest suite in my hotel anytime he wants. He saved this city billions, so it’s the least the Grand Vegas can do to honor him!”

When this reporter caught up to Kid Rapscallion at Mercy Me Hospital, where he was visiting kids who had been injured in the panic of Fake Out’s illusion, he was hesitant to talk, but agreed to a short interview in order to help the public understand what happened.

“The first thing that needs to be made clear,” Kid Rapscallion said, “is that Fake Out is in custody at the Stockade, where she will be held until trial.”

On the identity of Fake Out and why she had placed the city under a mass illusion, Kid Rapscallion was forthright in his answer. “The Revolutionaries know who she is,” he explained, “but they are holding her identity until trial, as is standard procedure. As for the reasons why she did what she did, after apprehending her in the Grand Vegas’ security room, she revealed to me that she did this as an attempt to earn a performers’ contract with one of the local casinos. I do not consider her a threat, and the Revolutionaries agree with this assessment.”

When I pressed Kid Rapscallion on further details, he insisted that he had other hospitals to visit, but that he would provide me with further details later this week. Stay tuned to the Daily Rebel for future details about Kid’s first major victory since arriving from San Francisco.”

2015

1

I can’t sleep.

Being back in Vegas, seeing Nancy, and thinking of everything that went down here during my three years as the city’s hero has unsettled me more than I thought it would. I hate being back. I told myself I could go back whenever I wanted to, but I’m as good at convincing myself I wasn't worried about coming back as I was at believing I wasn’t an addict.

I try to turn in early because time always passes faster when you’re old cold, but after an hour of tossing and turning and it still only being 10:47, I figure I might as well get up and go do something.

I decide to work out, which I know is a terrible idea, but maybe if I huff and puff for 30 minutes I’ll tire myself out enough to pass out in lieu of falling asleep. What I really want to do is snort a big bag of coke and drift away to oblivion, but without my superpowers, cocaine affects my physiology just like everyone else. The reason I did so much coke when I was Kid Rapscallion was because it helped me forget all the stuff that was going on in my life. It evened out the steroid serum I was taking, but I’d have to do ten to fifteen times the amount of cocaine a normal person would to get the same response, so it was much less addictive.

Or so I always told myself.

2

When I hit the gym there’s a kid sitting on a bench over by the dumbbells, playing with his PlayStation Vita and oblivious to the rest of the world. I get a sudden urge to call Melody, but that risks getting the courts involved, and I damn sure don’t need a new arrest of my record.

I stay on the other side of the gym from the kid and his too-loud machine and start doing a series of leg presses, starting with the lowest weight and advancing to bigger weights after a set of ten presses. I’m soon out of breath and ready to quit, when the door opens and a voice I did not want to hear enters.

“I’ll be buggered by a bettlejack,” a loud, friendly voice calls out. “How ya doing, Jason?”

I finish the last press and swing my legs off the side of the bench. A tall, thin, black man with short, green hair reaches out a hand and I take it, even though I know it’s going to hurt. “If it isn’t my favorite Black Martian,” I smile back, wincing at the power of his grip. “How’s it hanging, Ro’meo?”

“Good, good,” he smiles. “Nancy said you were in town.”

“Were you able to follow what she was saying with all the expletives she laid in?”

“Nah, she didn’t swear,” he says. “Cory was there.”

“Cory?” I ask, momentarily confused. “Oh, right. Her son. Well, your son, too, right.”

“Right,” he says and the smile diminishes just enough for me to see it.

“Pity about the green hair,” I say. “Well, I mean, it looks good on you, but … yeah, pity about the kid’s helmet, yeah? A kinetic helmet, Nancy called it? Must be hard for the kid.”

Ro’meo’s eyes go wide and he starts to laugh. “Oh, Jesus, she really told you all that? I thought she was kidding. Good God, Jason, you really do get under her skin, don’t you?” He looks across the room to where the kid is still blissfully playing a video game. “Cory, come here, son, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

3

He’s just a normal kid. Sure, he’s got some Martian DNA in him, but Nancy apparently made Ro’meo use some kind of genetic suppression birth control that prevents most non-similar DNA from being passed on to kids.

Think about the scientific genius that went into that bit of science.

But we can’t cure hunger or poverty.

Superheroes, yeah?

4

“I’m a probability analyst,” Ro’meo explains. I’m back at Diner 1950 for the second time tonight, though MARILYN is nowhere in sight. The whole place — including the staff — looks like it was pulled out of the 1950s and plopped down on the first basement floor of the Grand Vegas because someone decided tourists wanted to come to Las Vegas to eat at a restaurant from sixty years ago. Our waitress is dressed as Jumpsuit Elvis because Las Vegas, but she’s cute (if a little chubby), looks a bit like Duplication Girl, and spends most of her time at our table looking at me instead of Ro’meo or even Cory. I spend most of my time trying not to make eye contact. I would comment on all of this, except that Ro’meo is paying for the meal and I don’t want to upset him.

“I don’t know what that means,” I say, seeing no point in pretending otherwise. Cory sits next to his dad, looking very much like any other kid on the planet with a black dad and a white mom. He’s been forced to put his GameBoy away, but that was only a problem until the french fries and mint chocolate shake came.

“Back in my old life I was employed by my government to assess the probability of Earth-based threats,” Ro’meo explains. “Whenever we’d get a blip from Earth about the return of a villain or the emergence of a new hero, I’d assess whether that blip was a threat we needed to be concerned with or not.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask. “What was your assessment of me?”

Ro’meo shrugs. “Don’t know. You weren’t analyzed by my office. I worked in Conflict Analysis, mostly.”

“That doesn’t even sound like a real job.”

Ro’meo smiles. I’d only ever met him a few times, as his relationship with Nance was starting back when mine was ending, but I find he's a likable guy. He’s certainly got all the traits I lack: dependability, boringness, and a firm grasp of who he is and what he wants. I suppose Nancy deserves someone like him over me, and I don’t say that out of pity. I have no interest in settling down and having kids. Jula and I gave it a go, of course, but I could never get past the original fact that Nancy and I were using each other: her to get ahead in her career and me to make sure my side of the story was always told to the public.

It wasn’t until that damn Kira Erdrich figured everything out that our lives went to hell.

Ro’meo finishes chewing a large bit of burger. “Let’s say the 20-Sided Dice —”

“Ugh,” I say, pushing an image of Melody out of my head, “remember when they tried to go by the name Ico … Inky … what the hell was it?”

“Icosahedron,” Ro’meo smiles. “So, let’s say 20-Sided Dice gets in a fight with Lee O. Pard in Reno. It was my job to determine the probability of that fight spilling into Martian territory, either directly or as an eventual consequence.”

“20SD and Pard?” I laugh. “Not very likely, I bet.”

“You’d bet wrong, then,” Ro’meo explains. “10 was a Purple Martian.”

I blink. “Get out. Really? Huh. I never knew. They liked to keep themselves all cloaked up in black.”

Ro’meo bites down on a crinkly cut fry, looks at Cory with a sideways glance, and asks, “So when you and 16 …”

“Well,” I half-smile, “that was an exception, wasn’t it?”

Ro’meo finishes off his fry and we eat in silence for a few minutes. I can see he’s building up to something, but the presence of his kid is forcing him to ask it in a delicate manner. I guess at what he’s getting at, so I just come out and say it when I’ve finished off my third burger of the night.

“I’m only in town for a couple of days,” I say. “In and out,” I add, then think, given my relationship with Ro’meo’s wife that this was not the best choice of words. “I’m just stopping here on the way to LA. I’m doing an interview for a new reality show.”

“
Legacy
,” Ro’meo nods. “Nancy’s already given them an interview.” He smiles. “Or three.”

I can’t stop my eyes from bulging out. “Seriously? For, uh, for the show about me?”

Ro’meo nods. I can see the impression of his tongue running around the inside of his mouth, collecting any stray bits of meat, bread, and potato. He keeps his eyes on me as he speaks to his son. “Hey, Cory, what would you say is the probability that we’re gonna see Mr. Kitmore after tonight?”

“Zero, dad,” Cory says, sipping on his milkshake. “Absolute zero.”

5

“Are you sure?” Ro’meo asks. “It’s late and Cory needs to get home, but it’s not a school night. You’re welcome to —”

“No, no, you guys go ahead,” I say, waving the thought aside. Like I’m going to … what? Hang out with the guy Nancy left me for (not that I didn’t deserve it) and the kid she had with him (not that I want a kid)? I’ll pass.

“I’m just going to sit here a bit,” I say, holding up my nearly empty milkshake glass. “I want to finish this off. Thanks for dinner. Tell Nancy the green hair bit sold it.”

6

“I hear you used to be Kid Rapscallion,” Female Jumpsuit Elvis says.

“I was,” I say, smiling. Halfway through the meal I decided I wanted to have sex with her because I haven’t had sex with anyone but my right hand in months.

“My mom had the biggest crush on you when I was a baby,” she says, picks up Ro’meo’s money, and leaves.

Well.

That hurt a bit.

7

I’m in a sour mood as I leave Diner 1950. I blame half of it on Fat Jumpsuit Elvis and her mom and the other half on all the carbs that have been pumped into my stomach tonight.

“Hey!” Jumpsuit Elvis calls. I turn back in time for her to kiss my cheek and slip a piece of paper in my pocket.

“Mommy will be so jealous,” she whispers, hugs me, and takes a selfie with the two of us.

The slip of paper says, “Your suite. 1 am.”

I hate to admit that my ego is buoyed by this. I walk through the casino floor, listening to all the bells and whistles, trying not to let any of the tobacco smoke touch my lungs (because I’ll snort coke off a Kripstan Gurgleback but I won’t do tobacco) and just generally being miserable.

I have no idea where my life went wrong because it went wrong in so many different places and at so many different times.

So where can I point the figure and say, Change that moment and everything turns out okay.

Divorcing Jula?

Marrying Jula?

Publishing
Sex, Drugs, and Capes
?

Going to work for CNO?

Breaking into Flack’s lab?

Rapscallion’s trial?

Or do I have to go all the way back to the start of my journey and say the only moment worth changing is the moment it all started. I used to envy kids like Cory, who grew up in the life. Ro’meo and Nancy might not be an active superhero and cape reporter, but Cory’s life isn’t going to be normal. I always felt a step behind heroes like that.

Maybe that’s why I fell for Belle.

Or maybe it was her legs.