Sapphire's Place - Mystery Hall's - " The Horror of It All "

This story is set in Bek. D. Corbin’s Masks and Marvels Universe. This story uses Bek’s copy written material and is NOT to be distributed to anyone without Bek’s permission. Anyone editing this story please remember that!

I got tired of waiting for Chapter twenty of Masks and Marvels. Think of this as Chapter 19A. It is meant to fit into the story line without disrupting anything that Bek is writing.

The time frame is that this substory takes place in the three weeks between Lady Lightning meeting Jessie Sileski and Jessie’s first soccer game.

Note from Bek D. Corbin " If Sapphire likes 'Horror of it All', I have no problem of it being posted, but as 'non-canon', sort of a form of 'Fan-Fiction'

The Horror of It All

A Lady Lightning Story

by Mystery Hall

When you get a simple assignment, that everybody hates treat it as an opportunity to kncok’em dead. Jessie Sileski smiled. Before meeting Lady Lightning a Show and Tell would of been a little kid’s assignment. Of course Mrs. Kazmierczak, her teacher, called it “Making an Effective Presentation” that required planning, notes, visual aids, and public speaking skills. All the kids thought if Mrs. K could sit at her desk and not have to prepare a lecture they’d be getting a lot more assignments like this. Jessie smiled, “Maybe I’m getting psychic. Nahh. That one’s a no brainer.” What to do? What to present? Her electrical project on powering things by induction had turned out to be a dead-end. If the appliance was shielded with a metal case the induced currents wound up in the metal case which was grounded in all the good designs. In any of the designs without metal cases the low voltage circuit would turn on first. Good thing she had been experimenting with old 286 motherboards that she had gotten for free. The five volt circuitry would turn on first. The problem was that the disk drives ran at twelve volts and the video monitors at much higher voltages. The motherboard was working just fine but when she cranked the power up the voltage would start climbing. The integrated circuits worked fine up to seven and half volts. After that they started to get hot. By the time she got close to the twelve volts the disk drives needed the voltage regulators would have overloaded and the board would be slagged. It’s a good thing she didn’t crank the power up to a high enough level to power the monitor. All the ICs would have fried. Math was actually good for something. She hadn’t even had to try that experiment to know how it would end.

Her research was largely a matter of reading.

Now that she knew that there were other people like her. The ARRL Amateur Radio’s handbook had been a revelation. The story about induced radiation cancers in state troopers exposed to long term radiation from radar guns had been a revelation of another kind.

(Author’s note: Good Science Fiction contains good facts. That’s a real book and a real story.)

Jessie was really glad now that she hadn’t told Lady Lightning that her invention had been an experiment to induce super powers in herself. After visiting the Classic TV Video collection at the library she was really, really glad that she wasn’t going to be Dyna Girl.

This still left her research on the power. A presentation on gaining superpowers is what she really wanted to do. But since nobody knew how to get the power that would leave a really big hole in her show & tell. She decided to think about it at soccer practice.

*** AEGIS Headquarters ***

I walked into the roundtable room at AEGIS headquarters to find the gang all there. The Round Table room is a little large for quiet conversation but we can at least all face each other. As an affiliate I didn’t get my chair with a lightning bolt but I was comfy with one of the chairs from the lounge. We were all in costume, I mean uniform except for masks and helmets. It was kind of nice to be accepted by everybody, that we all trusted each other enough to go face to face. I wondered though what would I do if I happened to run into any of these friends on the street.

Iron John was giving a summary of this week’s old business. “A new record for sending out Cease and Desist letters. That’s fourteen this month.”

Ms. Hex sighed, “ Anything particularly nasty?”

“Nope. Nothing the lawyers can’t handle. The good news is that they raised the filing fees for civil law suits from seventy five dollars to two hundred dollars. Anybody has a right to sue but it seems that even the shysters are getting tired of the really frivolous law suits. The penny ante stuff seems to be going away. The other good news is the judges are dismissing a lot of the frivolous law suits for lack of evidence. If the brief doesn’t have any evidence the cases are being dismissed before trial, and the burden of proof is all on the plaintiff.”

Ms. Hex smiled, “That’s a relief. Any other old business?”

“Nope that’s about it. Any new business?”

I smiled and chipped in, “I’ve got something. Everybody remember when Brenda and I went up against the Retreads? “ There were a couple of smiles around the room. We had both gotten some good press from that episode even if Eli did get hurt. But then none of my fellow crime fighters new about Eli being my little brother.

“Well,” I continued “I think the reason they were so effective is that they had a coach running tactical ops against us. A radio link to each of their fighters and the coach had a laptop with profiles on us and our strengths and weaknesses. I read my file and it seems I’ve been telegraphing my moves, pausing, picking my target, focusing on my target and then charging.” It’s obviously not good when your enemy knows what’s coming next.

“Anyway I was thinking about some team practice.” The silence was deafening. Everybody sat back and was obviously lost in deep thought.

Justicar gave me a big smile and gave me my straight line. “Just what did you have in mind Maxine? It’s not exactly like we can cut loose against each other, and even though we have a Danger Room the Xmen interactive holograms are still science fiction.”

Iron John chipped in next. “Where could we all practice together anyway? It’s not like we can really do full combat practice. Our combined powers would demolish almost any place that I can think of.”

I gave everybody my best smile and explained, “ We just need something that lets us move and work together. The idea here is cooperation. Teamwork. It’s not really about blasting the roadrunner to smithereens.” Even Power Woman smiled at that one. I swear being a super hero has got to be more about comic books and cartoons than any of us are ready to admit.

It was time to bring up my ideas about soccer. “ All we need is something fun that we can all enjoy. Something that’s fast, requires cooperation, teamwork, communication even if it’s just hand signals or shouting. I want something that lets us work together. Let’s us just see what each other can do and how fast each other can move. Soccer has all those things and more.”

I was right about Titan wanting to play shirts and skins.

Once we agreed that Battalion could be a team captain and run tactics and strategies for his side everybody was willing to give the idea a try. Twist teleported out to buy a soccer ball.

Even Bernice got into the act. She set up the Danger Room with spray painted goals on each of the far walls with electric eyes hooked up to buzzers that would sound for a full second whenever a goal was scored. <Memo to Self: What are the chances that Bernice would like to go out with Eli? They both speak Geek and Eli does have a thing for redheads. Bernice doesn’t wear a ring. Is she involved with anyone?>

The first game if indoor soccer was a blast. I tell you if the pros can ever field teams with flying players it will add a whole new dimension to the sport.

(Pun intended.)

Good thing the shower rooms at Aegis are small and give a hero privacy. I think Bernice must have had something to do with the design. Four individual shower rooms with shower stalls and lots of hot water. I was in the second shift and had a nice steamy shower. It must be some sort of on demand water heater. We all changed into our spare uniforms.

After the game we were all back in the lounge rehydrating with some cool drinks.

Tigress gave me a big smile, “That was great Maxine. We’ve got to make this a regular thing like poker night. Even Amy had a good time.” I looked over at Ms. Hex and saw a happy smile. As a telepath she didn’t play poker with the rest of us. As she looked back at me. I think she knew what was coming next with Justicar. Ted had been after me for two weeks for another date, but our schedules hadn’t synched and it was beginning to look like I was giving him a brush off. I really needed to talk to him alone, and I needed to tell him something. But I couldn’t tell him the truth about my sex, and my conscience wouldn’t let me lie or make a lame excuse to him. Justicar was still one of my personal heroes. I had decided to tell him a piece of the truth.

For an AEGIS business meeting followed by a soccer game it was getting late and everybody said their goodnights and headed out. I was beginning to wonder if all the others had picked up on the idea of being able to signal each other and were trying to leave me alone with Ted.

Justicar gave me a big smile after everybody else had left, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

“Maxine, How is your schedule? Would you like to come to my apartment for a spaghetti dinner this week?”

Damn what is it with guys and spaghetti. That was my special dish! It was the only dish I really knew how to cook other than running a grill.

“Ted, I have something to tell you.” We walked over to the couch and sat down. Ted was smiling and while not exactly looking eager I would have to say it was pretty obvious that he was happy.

“Ted, I really like you.” Justicar just looked down at me with a big grin and at six foot two that was more than six inches bigger than me. Damn, when am I going to get tall. I’m still less than five foot eight and even with the heels on my boots next to someone like Justicar I really do feel small.

I continued “You really do deserve a lot more than the Let’s Just Be Friends Speech.” Ted’s face fell like I’d dropped a ton of bricks on his favorite puppy. He immediately tried to smile back and said “I understand, I”

I immediately interrupted him. “No, Ted. You don’t understand. That’s why I want to tell you the truth.” I could see by his confused expression that he didn’t know what was coming next. Ted must have had some really bad luck with women if the idea of a woman telling him the truth could have him so bewildered.

I decided to break this to him in a way he cold really understand. Sharing and keeping secrets. That was almost the Super Hero Motto. Well maybe that and Fighting Evil While Looking Good.

“Ted, Remember how before our first date you told me that your civvies were a fat suit because of how the power had changed your body?” Ted, nodded down at me. Damn he’s tall and good looking.

“Well Ted, promise me that you’ll keep what I’m about to tell you an absolute secret. This is just between you and me.” I could see he was intrigued. His smile was back. Nothing like keeping a secret to know that someone really likes you. He was starting to hope, that this wasn’t a variation on the Let’s Just Be Friends Speech.

The “I Promise.” he gave me had a lot of emotion behind it.

“The power is still changing my body.” Ted was obviously still bewildered.

“Maxine, you look great. I’ve told you that before and I hope you don’t think that I’m so shallow that I just like you for your great looks.”

I was beginning to wonder why no real female had ever cornered him before, tied his hands behind him and marched him off with a shotgun at his back, to be her own. Ted had said that with a straight face like it was obvious and not a great compliment. This guy must of had some really really bad luck with women.

“Ted it’s like this. I’m not ready to get more intimate.” I tried to smile and I think I sort of succeeded because he was smiling back and trying to be supportive. “ I’m really hoping that when the power is done with me I’ll have a healthy body in every way, but for now we need to take things a little slower.”

His answer was “Okay, that’s fine, but what does this have to do with me making you a spaghetti dinner?”

I swear Ted is such an innocent. It was obvious that he had a romantic candle light dinner, planned with a bottle of wine, and some intimacy.

“Ted, let me ask you something. Where you planning a candle light dinner with romantic music playing? Let me guess, the menu is tossed salad, red wine, spaghetti in meat sauce, french bread, and ice cream for desert.”

Ted looked miffed. “No it’s Chianti to drink, garlic bread not just french bread and spumoni not regular ice cream for desert.”

I giggled, and Ted looked sheepish. “ But I was right about the candlelight and the romantic music?”

“Well I’ve got this really great stereo....” we both laughed and everything was all right again. I may just take Ted up on that offer, if we can ever get our schedules to synchronize and agree on an evening that we both have off.

*** Cruising in the NewsLemon ****

It was a beautiful sunny day and Reyes, Eli and I were all in the NewsLemon trying to find something on the police scanners that deserved Lady Lightning’s attention. When Reyes sighed, “All we’ve got is that assignment on widening Elm Street this afternoon. The horror of it is that it looks like it’s going to be a slow news day.” Eli and I chimed in unison “THE HORROR OF IT ALL!”

Reyes reaction was a moment of stunned silence followed by “What was that about?”

Eli explained, “You said “The Horror” and when you say “The Horror” everybody is supposed to chant “The Horror of it all!” it was a game the three of us played when we were kids.”

“The three of you?”

“It was our brother Hugh’s game. He invented it. He even had a cassette tape of special spooky music to play while each of us made up stories, Night on Bald Mountain, The Sorcerers Apprentice, The Flying Dutchman Overture and more.”

“ Let me get this right. You, geeks, even as kids, made up horror stories to tell and scare each other and you included a soundtrack?”

My turn to explain the rules to Reyes. “Nope, one of the rules is that you couldn’t just make up a story or else the others could issue a challenge. Just like in Scrabble. Then you had to prove that the story could be true.”

Reyes was looking intrigued. “You mean you had horrible, traumatic things happen to you during you childhood to provide enough material to make this a regular game?”

I swear Reyes has been a journalist for too long. She’s beginning to think there’s a dark side to everything. “No, It’s nothing like that. We weren’t usually dealing with childhood trauma. Though I really enjoyed the stories we told of the neighborhood bullies, dying in horrific pain filled tragic freak accidents. The rule is you only had to show that the story could be true, or that it could happen the way you said. It made for great story telling. Sort of like recounting urban myths. The other kind of story you could tell was something perfectly ordinary that happened, and tell it in a really dramatic suspenseful horrific style.”

Reyes smiled and pulled out her CD wallet and flipped through her disks and selected one and inserted it into the dashboard CD player. The opening strains of Night on Bald Mountain filled the NewsLemon, and Reyes said “Go ahead, Maxham, you start.”

“Okay, this one is for Eli.” I dropped the pitch of my voice and tried to speak in a dramatic Ron Serling style, “Reyes you’ve met our mother. Our house has never been a democracy. There is no way that Ma would ever let three boys outvote her. Rule one is Mother is always right. Rule two is Mother can always find you some work that needs to be done. Rule three is when Mother is wrong see rule number one.

When the three of us were young we learned to stand united against the lone dominating powerful female. Now Eli as the lone man of the house your outnumbered. The Horror!”

“THE HORROR OF IT ALL” we all chimed.

Eli went “Argh! That’s right, Reyes. It’s only a matter of time until they gang up on me and pass the leave the toilet seat down all the time rule.”

All right, Max this one’s for you. The power is still changing your body. In less than a year you’ve gone to a size B bra. That’s a growth rate of over two inches a year. You mentioned that Tigress went to her present form changing from a chubby kid at age thirteen to her sleek beautiful shape at age eighteen. Extrapolating from the limited data this means that over the next four years as the power continues to change your body Lady Lightning will be a Brick needing a size H bra. The horror!”

“THE HORROR OF IT ALL” We all laughed.

It was almost time for us to head to Elm Street for our afternoon story. We had some interviews setup with the residents. We drove on while listening to the CD player when the police scanner came alive with a 211, that’s an armed robbery, at the Bank located at ___th Street and B___Street. I changed from my fat suit to my Lady Lightning uniform as fast as I could.

Eli drove through the first alley he could find and I did a low speed version of my flying dismount and went for height as Eli headed the NewsLemon for the bank. Eli would be driving as fast as he safely could without getting a speeding ticket or causing an accident but he was limited to the streets. I plotted a straight line and put on speed towards the bank.

In the NewsLemon the Police Scanner came alive again and reported; “False Alarm on the 211. A child got into the teller area and found the alarm switch under the counter. This is not a hostage situation. Bank Manager with the correct security cancellation code and police unit on scene have both confirmed.”

“Tech Support to Lady Lightning, It’s a false alarm. Repeat police confirm that it’s a false alarm. Look for a rendezvous point for pickup.”

It didn’t look good from my altitude. Everywhere I flew and looked down was either too small for the NewsLemon or had people. The nice weather had people everywhere. I radioed the NewsLemon. “Negative on a safe Rendezvous. Head for our afternoon assignment maybe we’ll have better luck in another neighborhood.”

*** Elm Street ****

“This is Ilene Reyes , Eyewitness news coming to you from Elm Street. The city planning commission has submitted plans to widen this broad tree lined street as a solution to the city’s overwhelming traffic problem. Each ironically named rush hour, the time when traffic moves the slowest is requiring more roads to be built. Elm street is lined with the large trees that give it its name and with sidewalks down both sides, this is the only street in the area that can be widened without demolishing buildings. An expense that the city planners claim would be beyond the budget of widening any of the other streets in the area.

The local residents are not happy about losing their beautiful trees in exchange for more traffic noise, and have asked the planning board to look for other solutions, including the possibility of only cutting down the trees on just one side of the street. The next planning board meeting is likely to be very vocal as this local issue is debated.”

I was still flying around looking for a discrete place to rendezvous with the NewsLemon when Eli contacted me by our radio link.

“Tech Support to Lady Lightning.” it was good to see that everybody was finally understanding the concept of on air security. “We have a kitten stuck up a tree at our location.”

Well they can’t all be big dramatic rescues. Being a hero is about helping people. How would you feel if it was your pet?

I flew on to Elm Street and easily spotted the NewsLemon. I swear a big bright yellow van with an antenna that can broadcast to the station is very easy to spot. Sure enough Eli had the mobile cam going and Reyes was talking to a little blond haired girl in a blue dress and pigtails. It was too cute to believe. I mean the blond little girl in pigtails I could believe, but not the blue dress. Kids these days almost always wear blue jeans, shorts or pants. As I descended from almost directly above them I could see the bright white cat in the tree stuck out on the limb. I maneuvered close and used brute force to pull the little thing off the limb. The little monster promptly sank all of its claws into my gloves.

I descended to a wide eyed little girl of about eight years old, maybe a third grader. I’m guessing all I really knew is that she was smaller than my friend Jessie.

It took a couple of seconds for me to pull the little cat off of my gloves and pass kitty to the little girl who had recovered enough to give me a big on air thank you for rescuing Mr. Fluffy. Reyes was ready with a question for me, and asked “Lady Lightning isn’t it a little extreme for you to pull a kitten off your uniform?”

“Hey, my opponent may of been small this time but I had my power gauntlets to protect me from his ferocious weaponry.” That got smiles and chuckles from the crowd Reyes had been interviewing. She’s really pretty good at the Man in the Street stuff.

“Lady Lightning, what’s your opinion on the Elm Street project?”

“I hope they can find a good solution that will satisfy at least some of the people, maybe they can increase traffic flow by making some of the streets through these neighborhoods one way streets.”

Reyes didn’t have any more questions so I signed a few autographs for the crowd and flew off and started looking for a pickup point where I hoped nobody would be able to see Lady Lightning climbing into a news van.

It took Eli several miles of detour and a while to find a deserted stretch of road then, we finally headed back to the station so Reyes could edit her interviews.

It was such a slow news day that the station led with Reyes story on the Elm Street expansion.

The next day Reyes keyed up the CD and Jupiter by Holst started playing.

“Okay” Reyes said it’s my turn. “The news director called me into his office and closed the door behind me. He said he had something important to ask me. Schroeder asked me “How did you get that Lady Lightning story when it wasn’t any kind of emergency that could of been picked up on your police scanner? I had to tell him I had a confidential source. The horror.”

“THE HORROR OF IT ALL.”

This was serious. I gave Reyes a long look and thought about it. “How much trouble are we in? I’d hate for any more people to know about my secret I.D.”

Reyes smiled, “Actually, we are not in any trouble at all. It’s been a long standing tradition in journalism not to reveal sources. If anything this may work to our advantage. A confidential source is as sacred as anything can be in journalism. Not even a judge will violate the first amendment and order a journalist to reveal a source without a really good reason. The only time that I know of it happening was when a judge ordered a reporter to reveal a source was because it was material evidence in a murder trial.”

Eli provided Reyes with the obvious question. “What happened then?”

“The reporter declined to answer on first amendment grounds. The prosecutor insisted on an answer. The judge ordered the reporter to answer, and the reporter declined. The result was that the reporter went to jail cited with contempt of court and withholding evidence, and stayed there refusing to reveal the source.”

Eli was skeptical. “I guess a judge can do that. How long did the reporter hold out?”

Reyes smiled, “Fortunately the source came forward on his own and testified to the judge in chambers and the reporter was released. The point though is everybody in the news business knows and understands that confidential sources are to be protected at almost any cost.

The way this works to our advantage is that if the news department at the station has information of a crime it goes to the police like always. However if it’s information that needs to be given to Lady Lightning or AEGIS the news director will give it to me to pass along.”

Trust Reyes to land us in trouble and get us out at the same time.

*** Public School 139 ***

Jessie just wished that she could of used audio video to jazz up her presentation. There was a lot on MetaHumans on the internet but all the really good video were small jpeg files and wouldn’t show up well in a class presentation. She did have her poster of Lady Lightning and her charts and graphs she had made to do her presentation on “The Power”. Some of the other students hadn’t really thought of this as an opportunity, but just as another homework assignment. As a result some of them had been real yawners. I mean sure hobbies are fun but what can you share with the class if you’re into dance? Poor Mellisa Horowitz had tried hard but talking about modern dance just doesn’t go over at all well with boys.

“So in conclusion we see that the incidence of “The Power” occurring among villains and heroes corresponds with the last United States Census data. It really looks to be equal opportunity in occurrence and random in location being distributed across the entire population. Just as many males as females, and the percentage of minorities matches the population statistics within what could be considered normal statistical deviations based on the data available.”

“Even though nobody knows how people get or develop their powers we can see that it isn’t confined to any area, there are no known common factors, the distribution is not linked to any other events, and mathematical analysis makes the occurrence of the power look to be a random distribution.” So much for covering the negative aspects of all her research. Now to add in a few quotes. “As Seymour Craig said “The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.” Clearly more research is needed to learn more about why some people develop superpowers and others don’t. What looks random to us may actually may just be due to some factor that just appears random but is unknown to present science.”

“When Thomas Edison was asked about his failure to develop a filament for his electric light bulb he said, “I now know thousands of things that will not work.” The important thing I’ve found here is an implication that the potential to develop the power might be a latent condition in the human race meaning that anybody could develop the power.”

“Thank you, that concludes my report.” Jessie took her charts and poster back to her seat amidst polite applause. That was a more favorable response than a lot of her classmates had gotten. She was sure she was going to get a good grade on her Show & Tell and smiled as she took her seat. Negatives weren’t that bad after all. Nothing in all her reading, internet searching and research had shown that she wouldn’t someday be a super hero.

END

since 05/19/03