10: Charlie Delta
Last time in Quarks of the Heart, the Malevolent Med-Student had just blasted Meg Atomic with the Pharma Death Beam mark three! What happens now? Read on to find out!
"911, what is your emergency?”
“Yeah, this is Liz Flask, codename Aqua Splasher, calling in a Charlie Delta repeat Charlie Delta, she’s unconscious and the guy got away please you have to come now!”
“Aqua Splasher, codename noted, location pinned, services are on the way, can you identify the Charlie Delta and the attacker?”
Yeah she’s…she’s my best friend, Meg Atomic, gravity powers and she’s a super-genius, but she’s not moving, and she was with the Malevolent Med-Student and I’m sure he did it I didn’t see but he was with her before and they went outside and then I saw a flash and I should’ve stopped them and-”
“Okay, Ms. Flask, I need you to slow down for me, okay? You said the Malevolent Med-Student was the attacker? Is he still there?”
No, no, he’s gone, I don’t know where, and, look, I don’t even know if she’s still breathing I can’t do the water-healing like some of them do okay you have to come now!”
As Candystriper careened down the highway in her Side-Effect Car, she could just hear the wails of police sirens going the other way. She also thought she could pick out an ambulance in there, but she wasn’t entirely sure. “Wonder where they’re going?” she mused. If it was a civilian, Edison City Memorial: a cape would go to St. Cupertino. They had specialized equipment able to deal with the unique circumstances that the heroes (and occasionally villains) sometimes presented with. For example, if Captain Micrometer walked in and said he had a headache, maybe it was a headache, and maybe it was his archnemesis the Shrinkinator sneaking in through his nasal canal. You couldn’t depend on civvie places for these things.
Meg opened her eyes in a blur. Lights flashed. People in uniforms were doing things around her. They were all in a vehicle and it was moving. She didn’t exactly remember how she’d gotten here, except it all felt wrong. Everywhere hurt.
“Ma’am?” a tall man in a bright uniform and a mask said. “Ma’am can you hear me? If you can hear me, squeeze my hand, okay?”
She did. The entire ambulance lurched violently. “Right, right, powers,” the man muttered to himself. “Okay, sorry about that. Ma’am, can you try talking to me?”
“Where…” she just managed to rasp.
“Okay, you’re in an ambulance, we’re headed to Cupertino. You were hit by something; we’re still trying to figure out what exactly. Is there anyone you need us to contact for you?”
At that moment there was only one person on Earth Meg Atomic wanted to see.
After her daughter had left, her supervillain boyfriend tailing along behind her, Super Soccer Mom hadn’t spoken for a long while. Captain Happily Married had naturally suggested tailing the little twerps until they came to their senses.
“No,” she’d said at last. “Either she’ll do that on her own or she won’t. Besides, since I doubt she’s going to take patrol, we’d better get out there and handle it. Keep an eye on her, though, Seymour.”
The cybernetic soccer ball had dutifully tracked Meg Atomic through the city. Seymour was also programmed to sound the alarm immediately any time there was a code Charlie Delta and project the location. On that same map blipped a dot representing Meg Atomic. Super Soccer Mom asked Seymour to patch her through to the Captain, her voice not yet urgent. She didn’t know.
“Hey, Justin, we have a code Charlie Delta, I was going to swing by to help, but it looks like Meg Atomic’s already there. You may want to call her and ask her to check in, see who it is, set up a perimeter maybe. After our last conversation, I’m not sure she wants to talk to me.”
Her eyes widened. The two blips Seymour was projecting looked awfully close. They were practically right on top of each other, in fact. “Actually, hold on…”
She tried to will it not to be true. But as more information came in, she pulled out her rappelling lines and began racing towards that part of the city, going as fast as she’d ever run before, her worst nightmares flying before her eyes. Charlie Delta. Cape Down.
I may have to develop some sort of code stuff like that for my universe. Probably, though, they'd use something like Steely Dan songs, so the equivalent term could be "Charlie Freak".