Tales of the Starbuck Avenger!!! (67)
Saint Raphael's cathedral may in fact have lain before us, but if we were counting on being able to confirm this fact with our eyes, we were sorely disappointed. As soon as we hit East Main, the dark of the night glommed around us in a sort of sticky black fog. I slowed the scooter to a crawl.
"I've seen this," I said to my little hero team, staring hard into the inky, soupy air, trying to get even a basic fix on the big wood-and-sandstone church that I knew from memory had to be nearby. "This is Garuda's smokescreen shit. Whenever he really gets to it, he summons this cloud that makes it frikkin' hard to see anything."
"This is g-- good," remarked Mebby. "This could block our j-- jeff from exercising he' super powers. Essentially you said he needs to see the holy place to teleport away."
I nodded. "The cross on the top specifically, I think. Which is gonna be invisible from street level in this. He'll have to either find a new church or get a better vantage on the steeple." And yes, I used the word "vantage", thank you.
"There are basically a number of high buildings nearby," Mebby suggested. "P-- parking ramp a block down for one instance. Might be able to get above tha cloud."
"Silly young girls!" said the Mighty Hercules, a.k.a. stupid ultra-cat, inspecting his claws. "The quickest way to get to the top of the temple would be to climb it!"
"He's got jumpy powers," I said, hopping off the scooter and pulling my javelin out of where I had wedged it for the ride, trying all the while to get my bearings in the zero-visibility cloud. "I'm not sure how well that translates into climby powers. The most climbing I've seen him do is to the top of a cabinet, which I could do in a pinch. What I could not do in a pinch is scale an entire pretty-tall church." Seconds later, I tripped over an obscured curbstone and ended up almost face-planting the asphalt. "Goddamn it, Garuda," I yelled, "could you have maybe not gassed up the entire city block or something?"
I frowned, then. "And where the fuck is Garuda, anyway?"
"D-- don't know," said Mebby. "I am basically wondering if that clanging noise will inform us."
"The whowhat now?"
"L-- listen."
I did like Mebby asked, and was rewarded. From the general direction of where the church should be, I could just barely make out the noise of a metallic impact, regular and harsh.
"Oh geez," I said, snatching up the cat, causing him to let out a very non-Herculean mew of annoyance. "We're following that noise, guys. I think I know what it is."
* * *
I was right.
The noise led us into the heart of the fog cloud, the hard concrete steps outside the front entrance of St. Raf's. As we got closer and closer to the core, the sight-blocking vapor began to glow, first faint, then muddy, then, powerful orange.
We reached the base of the steps. Silhouetted against the hellish glowing fog above us were two figures that I recognized immediately. The tall, upright one was Absolvatron, the robot confessor who had started this whole train a-rollin', and he held in his replicant hands the limp, wholly subdued, helmet-clad form of Garuda, Mightiest Hero in all Wisconsin. Absolvatron knew one basic trick, a theme and variations on picking up your guy using hideous machine strength and beating his head repeatedly against a door; it was unsubtle, but effective. And Garuda had finally fallen afoul of it.
"Christ," I muttered, hoping retroactively that Absolvatron didn't hear me cussing. "Garuda, you ass. I told you how to beat this guy." Then I cupped my hand to my mouth. "ABSOLVATRON!" I yelled.
The Absolvatron's gaze flew up from the task at hand and fixed on me. His eyes were totally rolled back at this point, and the blazing fire of his inner reactor was clearly visible, hence the orange glow. He dropped Garuda with a heavy ragdoll thump and strode menacingly down the steps at me.
Mebby stepped forward protectively. The cat clutched at my leg. "It's okay, guys," I said, pushing them gently aside. "I got this one." I smiled broadly at the approaching abomination. "Hey, hey, hey," I said. "It's the Big A. How it hangs, Padre?"
"OH JUST FINISHING UP SOME CHURCH BUSINESS" (said the Absolvatron.) "I MAY HAVE TO ABANDON MY ATTEMPTS TO HEAR CONFESSION FOR THE MOMENT BUT I AM OTHERWISE FINE HOW ARE YOU"
"Oh, doin' just great, Padre," I said. "I didn't even steal that scooter over there tonight!"
"IT IS GOOD YOU DID NOT FOR AS IT IS WRITTEN THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
"Exodus! Chapter, Twenty!" chirped Absolvatron's automatic Bible chapter locator thing. Verse! Fifteen!"
"I AM SAD TO SAY THAT EVEN IF YOU HAD STOLEN THAT SCOOTER AND REQUIRED CONFESSION FOR YOUR SINS I WOULD BE UNABLE TO PROVIDE IT" (Absolvatron continued.) "THE DOORS OF YOUR LOCAL CATHEDRAL ARE QUITE DIFFICULT TO OPEN NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I STRIKE THEM WITH THE SKULL OF THE UNCONSCIOIUS AND ANGRY HEATHEN OVER THERE" Absolvatron nodded at the fallen Garuda, who stirred a little in the depth of his probable concussion.
"Yeah, cool," I said, glancing nervously at Garuda. "You didn't kill him, right?"
"GOOD HEAVENS CHILD WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF THAT"
"Right, sorry I asked," I said, picking up the stupid cat. "Okay, tell you what, we are all just in a huge hurry today, but I've got some good news. This cat is currently the Mighty Hercules for at least a few more minutes yet, and I bet he could take care of that door for you. I should also add that despite him being ancient Greek and all he totally does not worship Apollo or Jupiter or anything so you don't have to smash him into a little kitty-shaped demigod grease spot. Isn't that correct, Mighty Hecules?"
"You ask me to deny the gods?" began the Mighty Hercules, but then I grabbed him by the kitty paralysis spot on his scruff, and he shut up.
"The Mighty Hercules agrees with me," I finished, smiling widely at Fr. Absolvatron and waggling the kitty in his face.
"IF HE IS ABLE TO OPEN THESE DOORS I WOULD BE MOST GRATEFUL"
"You hear that, Mighty Hercules?" I said, practically chucking the cat at the closed church door. "Open that for the Padre."
The cat sniffed haughtily but did as I asked, sizing up the door while stroking his chin with his claws. My cargo thus unloaded, I went to find Mebby who seemed to have slipped away during my little conversation. I eventually found her crouched outside a little barred-over window well leading into the church at basement level.
"H-- here," she said, pointing at the gap between the bars, a gap way too narrow for any of us but probably the perfect size for a functionally fluid shapeshifting alien entity. "Tha b-- bars reek of our bad boy. Dude must of rubbed hell of up against them on hi' supafly ingress."
"He's inside, then," I said. "Maybe still mucking around the basement, maybe the first floor. I've been in enough churches to know that the way up to the steeple is never really obvious, but it's only a matter of time before he finds it." I yelled back toward the entrance. "HEY, MIGHTY HERCULES! HOW'S THE DOOR COMIN'?"
I was rewarded with the noise of a splintering crash, exactly the noise that might be made by a tiny little tabby cat punching clean through a reinforced wooden church door. "All right, Mebs," I said. "That's our cue." I practically scooped the little dwarf girl up and hightailed it back to the entry, where we rejoined Absolvatron and the Channel Cat.
"Right, then," I said, peering into the shadowy church. "Let's do some justice."
"THAT SOUNDS LOVELY" (said Absolvatron). "MEANWHILE I WILL PREPARE TO RECEIVE CONFESSION FROM THE ANGRY HEATHEN OVER THERE JUST AS SOON AS HE COMES AROUND"
"Yeah, about that," I said, my eyes not leaving the darkened interior of St. Raf's, just in case there was another whizzy elastic knife attack on its way. "Hey, I forgot to mention. We're here in the first place because we're meeting this dude inside, but he's the kind of dude who steals crap all the time and I totally don't think he's ever properly confessed any of it. I know you came here to do your Catholic mojo on Garuda, but maybe you want to let him sleep off his probable massive head injury for a while and come with us? I'm sure our friend would appreciate it."
Whatever it was that Absolvatron had instead of a brain whirred around for a li'l bit.
"I NEVER SHY AWAY FROM THE PROSPECT OF SAVING A SOUL"
"Fuc-- ariggin' fantastic," I said, minding my language. And just like that, we now outnumbered our boy four-to-one, and that shit felt great. This is why heroes always have their Justice Leagues and their Avengers and X-Mens and everything, I decided. No matter what our temperament is, we tend to band up. Because -- at that moment -- it didn't matter what I thought of my fellow super-people. It didn't matter that Absolvatron was a crazy-as-fuck robot who had nearly killed me a day or two ago. It didn't matter that the annoying little sporadically-capable Channel Cat was just about the least predictable and least trustworthy thing you could even imagine to have guarding your back. And, oddly enough, it didn't even matter that I really liked and trusted Mebby. The feeling I was having at that moment, gathering my breath at the broken doors of the church, went beyond fear, beyond annoyance, beyond trust. It was a simple, white-hot love for all of my hero bro's that came straight from the numbers, and these were the words it said:
I've got four people on my side. Beat that, you interplanetary bastard.
Our hero team ducked inside. I took point.
"I've seen this," I said to my little hero team, staring hard into the inky, soupy air, trying to get even a basic fix on the big wood-and-sandstone church that I knew from memory had to be nearby. "This is Garuda's smokescreen shit. Whenever he really gets to it, he summons this cloud that makes it frikkin' hard to see anything."
"This is g-- good," remarked Mebby. "This could block our j-- jeff from exercising he' super powers. Essentially you said he needs to see the holy place to teleport away."
I nodded. "The cross on the top specifically, I think. Which is gonna be invisible from street level in this. He'll have to either find a new church or get a better vantage on the steeple." And yes, I used the word "vantage", thank you.
"There are basically a number of high buildings nearby," Mebby suggested. "P-- parking ramp a block down for one instance. Might be able to get above tha cloud."
"Silly young girls!" said the Mighty Hercules, a.k.a. stupid ultra-cat, inspecting his claws. "The quickest way to get to the top of the temple would be to climb it!"
"He's got jumpy powers," I said, hopping off the scooter and pulling my javelin out of where I had wedged it for the ride, trying all the while to get my bearings in the zero-visibility cloud. "I'm not sure how well that translates into climby powers. The most climbing I've seen him do is to the top of a cabinet, which I could do in a pinch. What I could not do in a pinch is scale an entire pretty-tall church." Seconds later, I tripped over an obscured curbstone and ended up almost face-planting the asphalt. "Goddamn it, Garuda," I yelled, "could you have maybe not gassed up the entire city block or something?"
I frowned, then. "And where the fuck is Garuda, anyway?"
"D-- don't know," said Mebby. "I am basically wondering if that clanging noise will inform us."
"The whowhat now?"
"L-- listen."
I did like Mebby asked, and was rewarded. From the general direction of where the church should be, I could just barely make out the noise of a metallic impact, regular and harsh.
"Oh geez," I said, snatching up the cat, causing him to let out a very non-Herculean mew of annoyance. "We're following that noise, guys. I think I know what it is."
* * *
I was right.
The noise led us into the heart of the fog cloud, the hard concrete steps outside the front entrance of St. Raf's. As we got closer and closer to the core, the sight-blocking vapor began to glow, first faint, then muddy, then, powerful orange.
We reached the base of the steps. Silhouetted against the hellish glowing fog above us were two figures that I recognized immediately. The tall, upright one was Absolvatron, the robot confessor who had started this whole train a-rollin', and he held in his replicant hands the limp, wholly subdued, helmet-clad form of Garuda, Mightiest Hero in all Wisconsin. Absolvatron knew one basic trick, a theme and variations on picking up your guy using hideous machine strength and beating his head repeatedly against a door; it was unsubtle, but effective. And Garuda had finally fallen afoul of it.
"Christ," I muttered, hoping retroactively that Absolvatron didn't hear me cussing. "Garuda, you ass. I told you how to beat this guy." Then I cupped my hand to my mouth. "ABSOLVATRON!" I yelled.
The Absolvatron's gaze flew up from the task at hand and fixed on me. His eyes were totally rolled back at this point, and the blazing fire of his inner reactor was clearly visible, hence the orange glow. He dropped Garuda with a heavy ragdoll thump and strode menacingly down the steps at me.
Mebby stepped forward protectively. The cat clutched at my leg. "It's okay, guys," I said, pushing them gently aside. "I got this one." I smiled broadly at the approaching abomination. "Hey, hey, hey," I said. "It's the Big A. How it hangs, Padre?"
"OH JUST FINISHING UP SOME CHURCH BUSINESS" (said the Absolvatron.) "I MAY HAVE TO ABANDON MY ATTEMPTS TO HEAR CONFESSION FOR THE MOMENT BUT I AM OTHERWISE FINE HOW ARE YOU"
"Oh, doin' just great, Padre," I said. "I didn't even steal that scooter over there tonight!"
"IT IS GOOD YOU DID NOT FOR AS IT IS WRITTEN THOU SHALT NOT STEAL"
"Exodus! Chapter, Twenty!" chirped Absolvatron's automatic Bible chapter locator thing. Verse! Fifteen!"
"I AM SAD TO SAY THAT EVEN IF YOU HAD STOLEN THAT SCOOTER AND REQUIRED CONFESSION FOR YOUR SINS I WOULD BE UNABLE TO PROVIDE IT" (Absolvatron continued.) "THE DOORS OF YOUR LOCAL CATHEDRAL ARE QUITE DIFFICULT TO OPEN NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I STRIKE THEM WITH THE SKULL OF THE UNCONSCIOIUS AND ANGRY HEATHEN OVER THERE" Absolvatron nodded at the fallen Garuda, who stirred a little in the depth of his probable concussion.
"Yeah, cool," I said, glancing nervously at Garuda. "You didn't kill him, right?"
"GOOD HEAVENS CHILD WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF THAT"
"Right, sorry I asked," I said, picking up the stupid cat. "Okay, tell you what, we are all just in a huge hurry today, but I've got some good news. This cat is currently the Mighty Hercules for at least a few more minutes yet, and I bet he could take care of that door for you. I should also add that despite him being ancient Greek and all he totally does not worship Apollo or Jupiter or anything so you don't have to smash him into a little kitty-shaped demigod grease spot. Isn't that correct, Mighty Hecules?"
"You ask me to deny the gods?" began the Mighty Hercules, but then I grabbed him by the kitty paralysis spot on his scruff, and he shut up.
"The Mighty Hercules agrees with me," I finished, smiling widely at Fr. Absolvatron and waggling the kitty in his face.
"IF HE IS ABLE TO OPEN THESE DOORS I WOULD BE MOST GRATEFUL"
"You hear that, Mighty Hercules?" I said, practically chucking the cat at the closed church door. "Open that for the Padre."
The cat sniffed haughtily but did as I asked, sizing up the door while stroking his chin with his claws. My cargo thus unloaded, I went to find Mebby who seemed to have slipped away during my little conversation. I eventually found her crouched outside a little barred-over window well leading into the church at basement level.
"H-- here," she said, pointing at the gap between the bars, a gap way too narrow for any of us but probably the perfect size for a functionally fluid shapeshifting alien entity. "Tha b-- bars reek of our bad boy. Dude must of rubbed hell of up against them on hi' supafly ingress."
"He's inside, then," I said. "Maybe still mucking around the basement, maybe the first floor. I've been in enough churches to know that the way up to the steeple is never really obvious, but it's only a matter of time before he finds it." I yelled back toward the entrance. "HEY, MIGHTY HERCULES! HOW'S THE DOOR COMIN'?"
I was rewarded with the noise of a splintering crash, exactly the noise that might be made by a tiny little tabby cat punching clean through a reinforced wooden church door. "All right, Mebs," I said. "That's our cue." I practically scooped the little dwarf girl up and hightailed it back to the entry, where we rejoined Absolvatron and the Channel Cat.
"Right, then," I said, peering into the shadowy church. "Let's do some justice."
"THAT SOUNDS LOVELY" (said Absolvatron). "MEANWHILE I WILL PREPARE TO RECEIVE CONFESSION FROM THE ANGRY HEATHEN OVER THERE JUST AS SOON AS HE COMES AROUND"
"Yeah, about that," I said, my eyes not leaving the darkened interior of St. Raf's, just in case there was another whizzy elastic knife attack on its way. "Hey, I forgot to mention. We're here in the first place because we're meeting this dude inside, but he's the kind of dude who steals crap all the time and I totally don't think he's ever properly confessed any of it. I know you came here to do your Catholic mojo on Garuda, but maybe you want to let him sleep off his probable massive head injury for a while and come with us? I'm sure our friend would appreciate it."
Whatever it was that Absolvatron had instead of a brain whirred around for a li'l bit.
"I NEVER SHY AWAY FROM THE PROSPECT OF SAVING A SOUL"
"Fuc-- ariggin' fantastic," I said, minding my language. And just like that, we now outnumbered our boy four-to-one, and that shit felt great. This is why heroes always have their Justice Leagues and their Avengers and X-Mens and everything, I decided. No matter what our temperament is, we tend to band up. Because -- at that moment -- it didn't matter what I thought of my fellow super-people. It didn't matter that Absolvatron was a crazy-as-fuck robot who had nearly killed me a day or two ago. It didn't matter that the annoying little sporadically-capable Channel Cat was just about the least predictable and least trustworthy thing you could even imagine to have guarding your back. And, oddly enough, it didn't even matter that I really liked and trusted Mebby. The feeling I was having at that moment, gathering my breath at the broken doors of the church, went beyond fear, beyond annoyance, beyond trust. It was a simple, white-hot love for all of my hero bro's that came straight from the numbers, and these were the words it said:
I've got four people on my side. Beat that, you interplanetary bastard.
Our hero team ducked inside. I took point.