Red Fox Action Log 44 Cont:

  Sniffer Sleuth nearly fell from his swing bench trying to get to the photo. Gunnar stood so suddenly his chair toppled over. My heart raced.

  We hadn’t seen any evidence of Captain Iron in over a decade. How old was Nora? Twenty? This had to have been taken less than five years ago.

  “My seventeenth Birthday,” she said. “Nobody showed up, so my mom called in a favor, and Uncle John — not my real Uncle, just a friend of the family — he showed to cheer me up. He flew me around the city, across the Bay.”

  I cursed. Gunnar and Rick parroted me. Nora smiled like she expected this reaction.

  “Where is he now?” Rick asked.

  “That can’t be him,” Gunnar said.

  “That’s him,” I assured him.

  I just knew it. This wasn’t a photo manipulation. This wasn’t a lookalike. It was him. The lines in his face were deeper than in the pictures of his fight with Shadowmaster. He looked old. He looked happy.

  “It’s the last time I saw him,” Nora said. “But he was around when I was a kid. It’s one of the reasons why I always try to hold onto my visions when sometimes the headaches get too much. It’d be easier to let them go, to not struggle too hard. Then I remember my Uncle John, flying a sad, lonely girl across the bay…”

  “This is amazing,” I said, blood thundering in my ears.

  The idea that he was really out there — that we could finally find him — as soon as I thought it, I couldn’t let it go. It was intoxicating.

  “It’s why I think he could be the World, yeah.”

  Her words snapped me out of my momentary daze.

  “What do you mean, ‘could be?’”

  “I haven’t actually seen him in my visions,” Nora said. “That’s why I turn to the cards. It gives me something to focus on when the pain is too much. I saw the rocket. I saw the Minotaur."

  “The minotaur?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you read the notebook?”

  “I mean, some of it didn’t make sense.”

  Nora sighed and sat on a chair, leaning a check on her hand.

  “You got to read the notebook, bro.”

  “I mean,” I said, scratching my stump under my pinned sweatshirt, “you’re here. Why don’t you just tell us?”

  “Because this doesn’t make any sense to me either!” Nora said, hands flying up in exasperation, then leaning back with a frustrated sigh.

  “Wait,” Gunnar said. “Minotaur? That sounds familiar. Wasn’t there something about some kind of axe?”

  “Yeah,” I said, flipping to the prophecy at the back of the book. “It says here ‘the axe cannot return to the earth.’”

  “Unlike Sleuth,” Gunnar said, “I actually paid attention in English class. Isn’t the Minotaur stuck in a maze? A Labyrinth? And it got that name from a double sided axe head?”

  “Not necessarily,” I countered. “But the double headed axe is a common Minoan symbol.”

  “Yeah,” Sleuth said, “you lost me.”

  “You guys may be onto something,” Nora said, covering her eyes. “But I gotta go lay down.”

  We knew, at this point, not to bother her when this happened. I thought back to all the old Golden Age of Heroes comics, and adventures, and one stood out to me.

  “What about Iron’s Folly?” I asked.

  It wasn’t Captain Iron’s last adventure, but it was the one that started his fall from grace. The international community began to question whether we could really rely on his judgement, whether he made the right call. They were idiots. It was Captain Iron! The man that had saved us from unimaginable destruction 100 times over!

  “Yeah!” Gunnar exclaimed. “The Mystery of the Ancient Maze! The comics make it some kind of shadow monster, but the original reports don’t actually say what it was.”

  “Think that’s our Minotaur?”

  “It can’t be a simple monster,” Sniffer Sleuth stated. “Captain Iron wouldn't have had trouble with that. And whatever was there was considered valuable enough to fight over in the first place. And scary enough to risk all the property damage he caused when he lifted the island out of the ocean.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Gem Girl bubbled it at the end of the adventure, and then Captain Iron threw the whole thing into Low Earth Orbit. You can still see it with a telescope.”

  “Low Earth Orbit?” Gunnar clarified.

  “The rocket!” Sleuth Exclaimed.

  I cursed. White Rabbit and Lady Lovely had built a huge rocket. But why? What was in there? And if it was so scary that Captain Iron had felt he had to throw it into orbit…

  “That’s it,” I said. “She wants to get whatever is in that ruin up there. And it’s so catastrophic, that whatever it is stops precogs from seeing past it. Even Nora doesn’t know either. God is she evil. She could doom the whole damn world to satisfy her curiosity and ego.”

  “Let’s take a break,” Sleuth said. “We need food if we’re gonna crack this.”

  The rest of the day we went over and over what we knew, and what to do next, but weren’t able to make any further tangible progress. We knew we needed to get the Alliance together. We knew that White Rabbit wanted to find a way into low orbit to get into this maze. We knew we had to stop her.

  We had a thousand dangling threads that just didn’t add up. Where was Bronze Boy? Did he have a copy of the armor on display or was the display a fake? If we went there, would he show up? How did Bronze Boy even work?

  Eventually Gunnar and Sleuth went out with the van to grab some food. I didn’t mind because I was a little frazzled, and could use the time alone. I went into the kitchen to make myself a peanut butter sandwich, just about all I could manage right now with one arm, when I saw Nora at the stove.

  “Hey!” she said. “I think I can have this done in a bit. Why don’t you put a record on or something?”

  “You’re cooking?” I asked like an idiot.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Yes, I am,” she glanced back at me with a smile. “Thought it would be nice to eat together. You are leaving tomorrow.”

  “Right.”

  I walked to the record player on the counter separating the dining room from the kitchen. A stack of records sat next to it. I took the top one and twisted it around in my hand a bit, trying to figure out how the hell I was gonna get it out without tossing the case on the floor.

  I put the record back, saw that there was already a record set in the player, and opted to just use that. I turned the dial, and it gave a satisfying click as it started up. I set the needle at the edge and waited.

  A soft tenor, and brassy backing section drifted out of the speakers. A little more romantic than I was expecting, but maybe better than silence.

  “Oh shoot,” Nora said, turning down the heat and walking over. “I forgot. I can put another record on.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said, finally noticing that she’d dressed up a bit. She wore an elegant silk spaghetti strap shirt tucked into white jeans, and a wide belt. She dressed it up a bit with some leather grecian sandals. Her shirt shimmered a deep purple, and left quite a bit of her neck and shoulders out.

  She looked nice. She didn’t normally look this kind of nice.

  “Well, I need to get back to cooking,” she said, noticing that I’d noticed her, but not seeming to mind.

  I quickly dashed into the bathroom.

  Learning how to live my life with only one arm was more difficult than it seemed from the outside. I could change my clothes by myself, but I didn’t like doing it, and would sleep in them often.

  Clearly I didn’t have time to completely change, and didn’t have time for a shower. So my only recourse was to awkwardly tear my shirt over my head, spritz some aerosol deodorant into the air, and run through it. I then dove into the back room and grabbed one shirt after the other until I found one that didn’t smell. I contorted myself into that, then splashed water on my face, and ran my fingers through my hair.

  That would have to do.

  I walked nonchalantly back into the kitchen, just as she was straining the pasta.

  “I’m almost done,” she said, over the sound of the record. “Don’t worry about setting the table or anything. It’s just me, and you.”

  I wasn’t about to let her tell me what to do. I grabbed the two plates, and set them across from each other at the table. She’d thought to remove the leaf. Huh.

  I looked back at her, and noticed her hair was different, like the curls seemed bigger. But her hair worked differently from mine, so I couldn’t really place why or what she’d done.

  Crap. This was a date. Or date adjacent.

  This is fine. I liked her.

  I placed the silverware. She came in with wine glasses, in one hand, and a candle with the other.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I don't like to drink alone. You leaving tomorrow gives us a reason to drink it.”

  I didn’t drink anymore. No, wait. I could drink. I could handle one glass.

  “Thanks,” I said, jumping up to light the candle.

  When I was done, she sat down with the pasta. It was bucatini carbonara. My favorite. Damn. Who told her? Right. Precog.

  Nothing fancy on it either. Just some dusting of grated parmesan and chunks of bacon — coddled egg on top. It was simple, but the kind of thing you can easily mess up.

  I twirled a piece, and ate it before I could think otherwise.

  “Oh my god, this is good,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, smiling wide, then dug in herself.

  We didn’t talk about anything important.

  I mostly rambled about the old Western I’d watched yesterday. I almost never got a chance to watch TV, so I jumped at the opportunity to catch up on some movies. I knew the old Western tropes were a little reductive. Those guys didn’t go out there to protect people, they did it to project colonialism, and the Indian Nations kicked their ass for it.

  But there is something about the lone trails, and gunslinging duels, that had an appeal to me.

  Anyway, I won’t subject you to my rambling too.

  Soon we were done with our pasta, and I carried the dishes to the sink while she opened the wine.

  I sat, took a sip. Fruity, but not too tart. It was good. I felt the warmth of the alcohol seep into my chest.

  “What’s all this for?” I asked.

  “This is good wine, right? My mom picked it out. I was going to just get whiskey, because I know you like that, but —”

  “Nora,” I said, cutting her off, and placing my hand on the tips of her fingers. “What’s all this about?”

  “I don’t know. Whiskey would have been bad right? I’ve never had it before.”

  “Wine is great. Is this about the almost kiss?”

  “It’s not not about that night. I just —”

  She stood, and turned the record player off. She grabbed her wine glass, and leaned against the counter.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m scared about what could happen to the world, and I’m scared about what could happen to my family, and I know you can do something good out there, but I’m scared that once you get out there, you won’t come back.”

  “Oh,” I said, setting my glass down and standing. “I’m going to be okay. I’m sneaky. If things get bad, I can always run.”

  “No you can’t,” she said. “You’re a hero.”

  I leaned against the counter next to her. Her hip was inches from mine, but I didn’t think about that much.

  “You weren’t just talking about the danger. You’re worried I’m going to forget about you.”

  “You have my notebook! What do you need me for?”

  I looked at her face, trying to divine what was going on behind her eyes. She was scared, but there was something else. Hope? What did she hope for?

  Then I got it.

  “I’m so dumb,” I said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t really being subtle,” she said.

  “I don’t always get when people are into me,” I said.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she said. “How could you forget that?”

  “I thank you, kindly. I find you quite attractive.”

  “Oh really?” she said with faux surprise, twisting her body to accentuate her curves, and stretching her neck to bare her clavicle. She knew her lines. “I make do with what I got.”

  The silence stretched on. I didn’t know what to do. My only real experience with this kind of thing was that one rebound after college. And that was a drunken hookup. I hadn’t, well, I hadn’t cared about it.

  I cared about this.

  I didn’t know how to be romantic with another woman that wasn’t, you know, her. But I liked Nora. I liked her a lot.

  She set her glass on the counter, walked over to me, and took my hand.

  “You want to go outside?” she asked. “We could watch the sunset. You want to just talk?”

  I didn’t want to talk. But now that she had my hand, I was keenly aware that my body was very different than it was when I’d last tried to kiss someone.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Last time I kissed someone, I had both hands.”

  She dropped my hand, then wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “I have two hands,” she said. “We’ll make it work.”

  “Can I kiss you?” I asked.

  “I’d like that.”

  Transcript of Phone Call to Fox Foundation 10/12/89:

  Rep: You know ending your report like that was rude, yeah?

  Fox: I don’t know what you’re talking about, K

  Rep: My entire life revolves around superhero bullshit, and you finally got something actually interesting going on…

  Fox: A hero doesn’t kiss and tell

  Rep: Honey, you told me about the kiss. You literally did just that

  Fox: Huh. Maybe I did.

  Fox Foundation AP stats compiled from the HRA 3.

  Look, kid, you know I'm a straight shooter. I earned my nickname, like most, because of the ironic fact that I lack the warm and fuzzy qualities of my namesake. So, I’ll just say that we went back and forth with the HRA for some time, arguing for the increased special skill capability your new powers presented, and managed to keep your status as a Journeyman hero despite, well, your terrible injury.

  I also have estimated stats for Whitehot. Let’s focus on the positive. Your score went up! -- K

  Red Fox Updated (CAP Score 37)

  Strength: 9

  Movement: 3

  Durability: 1

  Energy Projection: 1

  Mental Acuity: 2

  Special Skills: 21

  Whitehot (CAP score 230)

  Strength: 3

  Movement: 36

  Durability: 34

  Energy Projection: 71

  Mental Acuity: 79

  Special Skills: 7