Hero's Manual: Chapter 1
Sep. 13th, 2006 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sickle_storiesA/N: I began this when I should have been studying for my Psychology of Deafness midterm. I was tired of sitting at my desk and bored because the material was simple enough to be boring, but not so simple as to require zero studying. I’d recently skimmed through a number of self-insertions (not Mary Sues, but blatant “this is me interacting with the characters in my own home”). There was one with the X-Men and from that I got the image of Toad barging into my room. Quickly, however, the concept remained but the character became Hero, in no way Toad-like. His name stays. I managed to squeeze in an explanation later, but I was too lazy for give him a new one.
Chapter 1: Enter main characters (in assorted capes, coats and aprons)
Our poor and cruelly over-worked heroine sat at her desk, bent over her papers (a posture she would, no doubt, tisk at when old, infirm, and hobbling about with one hand on a cane, the other at her paining back). A dull and un-inspiring song was on repeat, the singer gasping for breath and begging for a glass of water.
“Would you just press stop, please?” No response from the bent head. “This is torture! Torture!” wailed the singer from deep within the bowels of the stereo player.
The CD reached the end of the song, rewound, and started again.
“Oh god, the torture...” mumbled the singer, then burst again into a hoarse rendition of her song, cursing the song’s author and begging any god in current existence to cause a short in electricity.
Our heroine, Gwen, never noticed the singer’s begging, not because she was engrossed in her work, but because she was currently moaning into her hands something along the lines of, “Oh, my eyes, my eyes...” She slumped deeper into the hard chair with a sigh (“Ow, my bum,”), picked up her pen and—
Her apartment door burst open.
“Wait! It is I!”
The figure in the chair numbly shifted towards the door and lifted bleary eyes. “Shut the door,” she muttered, apparently uninterested in the intruder.
The man, who introduced himself into this story as “I” but due to the complications this would cause in a narrated tale, will be “Hero”. That is, until he actually gets around to introducing himself. Hero looked crestfallen for a moment then obediently shut the door quietly. He shuffled closer to Gwen and stood beside her, uncertain that he could muster up the enthusiasm required to save the day, and damsel, when said damsel seemed a step away from study-exhaustion and coma-induced boredom.
Eventually he managed to whisper, “I’m here to save you.”
“Huh?” said the lowered head.
“Save me! Stop this madness!” screeched the poor singer.
“From...well, from whatever your doing.”
“What are you doing here?”
Wow, is she ever dazed, thought Hero. “Me. Here with the saving. Hello?”
“Press the stop button! For the love of silence!” Hero glanced at the stereo with a puzzled look.
“Oh.” Gwen stood up, various joints popping in protest, effectivley muffling the sound of the singer’s renewed begging (“I want to go home! I miss my case!”). “’kay.”
Hero looked desperate. What did he do now? He sneaked a look at his “Hero’s Manual”, trying to find the chapter entitled “Damsels”, then skimming ahead, past “Impressive Entrances” (seeing the highlighted “Declarative Statements” and cursing himself for picking the worst one) and onto “Sweeping”. There were a lot of adjectives, suggesting that damsels always were distressed in wind-swept and hot places, and that the sight of a hero was the same to them as running up a steep incline. There was a lot of “heaving” and “gasping”. Nowhere was there anything about “bleary-eyed” or “listless”. Hero didn’t think he felt quite comfortable with heaving Gwen over his shoulder if she didn’t at least twinkle her eyes, or say “gosh”, or something equally befitting of a rescued damsel.
“That’s a strange romance novel.”
Hero slapped the book closed. “Not a novel,” he blushed.
“Well?” Now that she’d been interrupted with the promise of something not involving molecules running around in metaphoric soups, she was impatient for events to develop so her brain would regain some semblance of form. She could swear most of it had oozed out her ears, looking for entertainment in dusty corners whilst running away from the dull information that had been shoved in with it. Turned out her brain wasn’t keen on sharing the premises with any sort of data.
Hero wrapped an arm about her and kneeled down, his other hand grappling about her knees. After a number of unsuccessful attempts and quite a bit of muttered curses, Gwen pushed him off.
“What are you trying, and failing, to do?”
“Sweep,” answered Hero, looking resolutely at the floor.
“Sweep?”
“Says so. In the Manual. Hero’s got to sweep with the heroine.”
“Sweep with the heroine?” Gwen looked him over. “Don’t you mean ‘slee—’”
Hero quickly interrupted her. “Says sweep.” He brandished his copy, flipping through the pages again. “Only here it says,” he continued, squinting as he read, “that I should sweep you without your feet.”
“What?”
“Off with your feet. Says so.” He shrugged. “It’s my first time being a hero.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d been refused entrance into Hero Academy and had only gotten the mail-order copy of “Hero’s Manual” by getting a twelve-year-old boy with thick-glasses (and a wicked scar on his forehead) to order one for him. The Academy had refused to send the “Hero’s Companion” though, on account of the boy’s age. Hero wondered what could have possibly been in that book.
“Ah.” Gwen managed a smile. “I think that’s supposed to be, ‘sweep her off her feet’.” At Hero’s blank look, she translated. “Means you’re to carry me off with you and, oh, charm me with your...er, charms.”
“Carry you?”
“Yep.”
“Why? Can’t you walk?”
“No. I mean, yes, I can walk, thank you very much. It’s just a hero thing.”
“So there’s nothing wrong with your feet? They won’t be falling off?”
“Nope. Sorry,” she added with a shrug.
Hero stood silent, staring at the ground, his manual forgotten in his hands, chewing forlornly on the ragged ends of his cape. Gwen stood beside him, leaning on her desk, staring idly at nothing with her left eye. The reason being she was rubbing her right eye like a sleepy child. In the silence a dull, repeated thumping could be heard: the singer appeared to have changed her tactic.
“Get [thump] me [thump] out!” she hissed between verses as she kicked and pounded at the stereo. Gwen shook her head: that singer had no concept of rhythm at all.
“Well?” asked Gwen, after another rendition of Gloomy [thump] Sunday.
“Well what?” asked poor Hero, completely at a loss.
“You. Rescue?” At Hero’s blank look, Gwen snatched the Manual from his hands and flipped through the index. Hero seemed shocked to realize that there was an easier and faster way to using the manual than painfully skimming through every single page. Flipping back to a pristine page (as opposed to the latter chapters, which were crumpled and brown with what might have been tea), she began to read: “ ‘Rescue’: Having located the damsel in distress, eliminate enemy.” She looked up. “Have you done that?”
“Well, uh...” Hero shuffled. “I think I located you, alright. What was that other bit?”
“Eliminate the enemy.”
“Can’t pronounce the present has succeeded in endevouring to complete that portion of the enterprise.”
“Hero? Are you just using big words to hide the fact you have no idea what I’ve said?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did you kill the bad guy?”
Hero looked up, his face pale with shock. (Well, he was shocked, and pale, but concordance does not indicate causality.) “Kill?”
“Whatever. Let’s skip that. I’m sure I’m not being guarded over by some evil...evil thingy.” She lowered her breath. “Except for a vindictive Lord God in league with the Devil, just for fun.” Hero tried to lift one eyebrow. (He failed, but it’s the effort that counts. Unless it’s a life or death situation, in which case the effort better result in success.) “Next bit,” she flipped ahead, “says that we must make a ‘grand escape’. Forget about the sweeping.”
“By ‘escape’ it means...what exactly?”
“Have you even read the important bits in this book?” At Hero’s creeping blush, she added, “Never mind. Look, let me just get my coat and we’ll leave, okay?”
Gwen stumbled across her room, shuffling through various piles of clothes and crumpled papers, until she reached her closet. After rummaging inside it for a few minutes (during which Hero fiddled with his thumbs, tried to read what Gwen had been working on and promptly stopped before a migraine developed, and idly flipped through the Manual in search of the few pictures in had), Gwen finally emerged with a coat dangling on a coat hanger. There were a few more moments of struggle: it had been quite warm in the closet, and the coat had no intention of coming out and leaving his friends. It would not go into the cold quietly! Finally, however, Gwen beat the coat into submission and wrestled it over her.
“All set,” she said, pocketing her keys. Hero held the door open for her and hovered protectively over her as she bent to lock the door. He had finally found a definition (in the Glossary, no less!) of “protecting”. Muffled through the door came the voice of the singer, who’d been abandoned to her fate of endless repetition. Thankfully her words were indistinct, or some very serious censuring would have to be done.
“Halt there, I say!”
Gwen found herself abruptly against the door, pinned there by the quivering back of Hero. She managed to turn around so that she was no longer kissing the door. Hey, baby, need some real support?” it creaked. Both she and her coat shuddered. Ignoring the door, she looked over Hero’s shoulder. This wasn’t too hard, seeing as he wasn’t what a less-pleasant person would call “tall”.
“What do you want?” said Hero, wondering if he’d come across the other’s line in “Declarative Sentences”, and whether it sounded any better than his own statement. (It did, but not by much.)
“I want... What do I want?” After a brief flip through his own little book, the other man continued. “Ah, yes. I want the girl.”
“Why?”
In response, the man held up the book so Hero could read the cover. It read The Villain’s Manual.
“You’re a villain?” asked Hero, evidently still trudging through the available evidence.
“Yes!”
“Where’s your cape?”
“And why are you wearing an apron?” asked Gwen, her voice slightly muffled by Hero’s shoulder. She managed a jab at his side.
“That is my cape,” hissed the villain.
Another jab, followed by a hissed, “Move already,” and Gwen could breathe easy again. She shuddered as she recovered from the close contact of the lecherous door. (The coat that had so bravely fought to remain in the closet, however, now bravely fought to stay near the door using his only available weapon: static.) “So, Mr. Villain—”
“Please, call me Vicky.” At Gwen’s shocked look, he added stolidly, “My name’s Victorious. But my victims call me Vicky. Search me why. Will that be a problem?”
“Maybe. Does that mean that I’m your victim? If I call you Vicky, that is?”
Vicky’s face screwed up as he considered, gave up, and looked in his manual (he, at least, knew where to find the glossary). “Yes,” he finally answered, “you, The Damsel”, would be my Victim. And you, The Hero, would be...ah, here it is: vanquished.”
But Hero was also looking in his manual, and countered, “It says here that you are the one that’s to be vanquished.”
“No, can’t be. Here, listen: ‘Having defeated The Enemy, you may now proceed to posses The Damsel.”
Gwen’s listless mind perked up from the dusty corner it had crumpled into. Posses? There’ll be possessing? As in demonic, or property? Or more...romantically-inclined possessing? Whether this was a good thing or not was too much of an effort for her mind to determine at the moment, so it scrawled illegibly on a post-it and slumped back into the corner. Let herding instinct take over for a bit: follow the man. Whichever one survives this.
“That’s what my manual says,” said Hero, nodding as he read.
“No, you idiot. I get the girl. I vanquish you,” growled “Vicky” Victorious, Villain, with venom at his would-be vanquished Enemy, whilst at the same time vying to win the fair Victi—er, Damsel’s heart.
Somewhere in the universe, the letter V danced for joy. She had never been so used in her life, and she liked it!
“Let me see that,” said Hero, trying to take a step towards Victorious. He was only trying to because Gwen had a vicious vice-like grip (Yay! Do it again! squealed V) on his arm.
“You are not that stupid,” she said by way of explanation, when Hero’s puzzled look indicated that one was needed.
“Of course not. I can read, you know. I’m quite sure of what I’m doing.”
“Look, you, he’s the villain. You do not go about sharing manuals and setting up tea-dates.”
Hero shared a look with Villain. Some sort of agreement seemed to pass between the two character types. Suddenly, both reached into their respective pockets (in the case of Vicky, his apron pocket). Gwen cursed and backed up against the door again, despite her better judgment. (Her coat, thinking it had won yet another victory, began to get cocky and tried flirting with the door, which wasn’t interested.) Simultaneous, both enemies flipped open their agendas.
“I’m all booked this week. I’m getting Quasi to carpet the hall,” said Vicky. (The narrator would like to refuse addressing herself to the villain by said name, on account of not being his victim, but rather prefers regaining the sensation in her left arm.)
“How’s next Tuesday, then?” mused Hero.
“What kind of idiots are you?” moaned Gwen, baffled by the level of stupidity presented to her.
“Heroic ones,” said Hero without turning. Vicky slit his eyes but refrained from correcting him.
“Tuesday it is then. My place? It’ll be real nice with the carpeting.”
“Alright. But I’m bringing crumpets,” insisted Hero politely. Vicky shrugged. Crumpets, schmumpets. What he’d really always wanted was muppets with his tea. (The narrator would like to point out that there’s a curious story behind that comment, but will wait until the villain is out of earshot, for her own sake.)
“Right,” said Vicky, snapping his agenda shut. “You’ll be bringing the girl, then?”
“What?” shouted Gwen.
Hero slowly turned to her, waving his manual vaguely towards Vicky. “Some of us,” he said, a bit coldly, “have read this manual.” His brow furrowed. “Most of it, anyway.” He blushed then trudged bravely on. “Some of us are actually qualified for this line of work, and know what we’re doing.”
Vicky, who had been emphatically nodding along, interrupted. “What the boy is trying to get at, Damsel, is that in a week on Tuesday, the three of us will have tea.”
“And the Confrontation, of course, “ added Hero, sneaking another look at his manual.
“Well, I’ll be off,” said Vicky with a flourish of his apron. “No rest for the evil mastermind, eh? Must be plotting away now.”
Hero nodded, one professional to another.
Gwen, coat and door stopped fighting against each other and stood in silent shock.
Our poor and cruelly over-worked heroine sat at her desk, bent over her papers (a posture she would, no doubt, tisk at when old, infirm, and hobbling about with one hand on a cane, the other at her paining back). A dull and un-inspiring song was on repeat, the singer gasping for breath and begging for a glass of water.
“Would you just press stop, please?” No response from the bent head. “This is torture! Torture!” wailed the singer from deep within the bowels of the stereo player.
The CD reached the end of the song, rewound, and started again.
“Oh god, the torture...” mumbled the singer, then burst again into a hoarse rendition of her song, cursing the song’s author and begging any god in current existence to cause a short in electricity.
Our heroine, Gwen, never noticed the singer’s begging, not because she was engrossed in her work, but because she was currently moaning into her hands something along the lines of, “Oh, my eyes, my eyes...” She slumped deeper into the hard chair with a sigh (“Ow, my bum,”), picked up her pen and—
Her apartment door burst open.
“Wait! It is I!”
The figure in the chair numbly shifted towards the door and lifted bleary eyes. “Shut the door,” she muttered, apparently uninterested in the intruder.
The man, who introduced himself into this story as “I” but due to the complications this would cause in a narrated tale, will be “Hero”. That is, until he actually gets around to introducing himself. Hero looked crestfallen for a moment then obediently shut the door quietly. He shuffled closer to Gwen and stood beside her, uncertain that he could muster up the enthusiasm required to save the day, and damsel, when said damsel seemed a step away from study-exhaustion and coma-induced boredom.
Eventually he managed to whisper, “I’m here to save you.”
“Huh?” said the lowered head.
“Save me! Stop this madness!” screeched the poor singer.
“From...well, from whatever your doing.”
“What are you doing here?”
Wow, is she ever dazed, thought Hero. “Me. Here with the saving. Hello?”
“Press the stop button! For the love of silence!” Hero glanced at the stereo with a puzzled look.
“Oh.” Gwen stood up, various joints popping in protest, effectivley muffling the sound of the singer’s renewed begging (“I want to go home! I miss my case!”). “’kay.”
Hero looked desperate. What did he do now? He sneaked a look at his “Hero’s Manual”, trying to find the chapter entitled “Damsels”, then skimming ahead, past “Impressive Entrances” (seeing the highlighted “Declarative Statements” and cursing himself for picking the worst one) and onto “Sweeping”. There were a lot of adjectives, suggesting that damsels always were distressed in wind-swept and hot places, and that the sight of a hero was the same to them as running up a steep incline. There was a lot of “heaving” and “gasping”. Nowhere was there anything about “bleary-eyed” or “listless”. Hero didn’t think he felt quite comfortable with heaving Gwen over his shoulder if she didn’t at least twinkle her eyes, or say “gosh”, or something equally befitting of a rescued damsel.
“That’s a strange romance novel.”
Hero slapped the book closed. “Not a novel,” he blushed.
“Well?” Now that she’d been interrupted with the promise of something not involving molecules running around in metaphoric soups, she was impatient for events to develop so her brain would regain some semblance of form. She could swear most of it had oozed out her ears, looking for entertainment in dusty corners whilst running away from the dull information that had been shoved in with it. Turned out her brain wasn’t keen on sharing the premises with any sort of data.
Hero wrapped an arm about her and kneeled down, his other hand grappling about her knees. After a number of unsuccessful attempts and quite a bit of muttered curses, Gwen pushed him off.
“What are you trying, and failing, to do?”
“Sweep,” answered Hero, looking resolutely at the floor.
“Sweep?”
“Says so. In the Manual. Hero’s got to sweep with the heroine.”
“Sweep with the heroine?” Gwen looked him over. “Don’t you mean ‘slee—’”
Hero quickly interrupted her. “Says sweep.” He brandished his copy, flipping through the pages again. “Only here it says,” he continued, squinting as he read, “that I should sweep you without your feet.”
“What?”
“Off with your feet. Says so.” He shrugged. “It’s my first time being a hero.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d been refused entrance into Hero Academy and had only gotten the mail-order copy of “Hero’s Manual” by getting a twelve-year-old boy with thick-glasses (and a wicked scar on his forehead) to order one for him. The Academy had refused to send the “Hero’s Companion” though, on account of the boy’s age. Hero wondered what could have possibly been in that book.
“Ah.” Gwen managed a smile. “I think that’s supposed to be, ‘sweep her off her feet’.” At Hero’s blank look, she translated. “Means you’re to carry me off with you and, oh, charm me with your...er, charms.”
“Carry you?”
“Yep.”
“Why? Can’t you walk?”
“No. I mean, yes, I can walk, thank you very much. It’s just a hero thing.”
“So there’s nothing wrong with your feet? They won’t be falling off?”
“Nope. Sorry,” she added with a shrug.
Hero stood silent, staring at the ground, his manual forgotten in his hands, chewing forlornly on the ragged ends of his cape. Gwen stood beside him, leaning on her desk, staring idly at nothing with her left eye. The reason being she was rubbing her right eye like a sleepy child. In the silence a dull, repeated thumping could be heard: the singer appeared to have changed her tactic.
“Get [thump] me [thump] out!” she hissed between verses as she kicked and pounded at the stereo. Gwen shook her head: that singer had no concept of rhythm at all.
“Well?” asked Gwen, after another rendition of Gloomy [thump] Sunday.
“Well what?” asked poor Hero, completely at a loss.
“You. Rescue?” At Hero’s blank look, Gwen snatched the Manual from his hands and flipped through the index. Hero seemed shocked to realize that there was an easier and faster way to using the manual than painfully skimming through every single page. Flipping back to a pristine page (as opposed to the latter chapters, which were crumpled and brown with what might have been tea), she began to read: “ ‘Rescue’: Having located the damsel in distress, eliminate enemy.” She looked up. “Have you done that?”
“Well, uh...” Hero shuffled. “I think I located you, alright. What was that other bit?”
“Eliminate the enemy.”
“Can’t pronounce the present has succeeded in endevouring to complete that portion of the enterprise.”
“Hero? Are you just using big words to hide the fact you have no idea what I’ve said?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did you kill the bad guy?”
Hero looked up, his face pale with shock. (Well, he was shocked, and pale, but concordance does not indicate causality.) “Kill?”
“Whatever. Let’s skip that. I’m sure I’m not being guarded over by some evil...evil thingy.” She lowered her breath. “Except for a vindictive Lord God in league with the Devil, just for fun.” Hero tried to lift one eyebrow. (He failed, but it’s the effort that counts. Unless it’s a life or death situation, in which case the effort better result in success.) “Next bit,” she flipped ahead, “says that we must make a ‘grand escape’. Forget about the sweeping.”
“By ‘escape’ it means...what exactly?”
“Have you even read the important bits in this book?” At Hero’s creeping blush, she added, “Never mind. Look, let me just get my coat and we’ll leave, okay?”
Gwen stumbled across her room, shuffling through various piles of clothes and crumpled papers, until she reached her closet. After rummaging inside it for a few minutes (during which Hero fiddled with his thumbs, tried to read what Gwen had been working on and promptly stopped before a migraine developed, and idly flipped through the Manual in search of the few pictures in had), Gwen finally emerged with a coat dangling on a coat hanger. There were a few more moments of struggle: it had been quite warm in the closet, and the coat had no intention of coming out and leaving his friends. It would not go into the cold quietly! Finally, however, Gwen beat the coat into submission and wrestled it over her.
“All set,” she said, pocketing her keys. Hero held the door open for her and hovered protectively over her as she bent to lock the door. He had finally found a definition (in the Glossary, no less!) of “protecting”. Muffled through the door came the voice of the singer, who’d been abandoned to her fate of endless repetition. Thankfully her words were indistinct, or some very serious censuring would have to be done.
“Halt there, I say!”
Gwen found herself abruptly against the door, pinned there by the quivering back of Hero. She managed to turn around so that she was no longer kissing the door. Hey, baby, need some real support?” it creaked. Both she and her coat shuddered. Ignoring the door, she looked over Hero’s shoulder. This wasn’t too hard, seeing as he wasn’t what a less-pleasant person would call “tall”.
“What do you want?” said Hero, wondering if he’d come across the other’s line in “Declarative Sentences”, and whether it sounded any better than his own statement. (It did, but not by much.)
“I want... What do I want?” After a brief flip through his own little book, the other man continued. “Ah, yes. I want the girl.”
“Why?”
In response, the man held up the book so Hero could read the cover. It read The Villain’s Manual.
“You’re a villain?” asked Hero, evidently still trudging through the available evidence.
“Yes!”
“Where’s your cape?”
“And why are you wearing an apron?” asked Gwen, her voice slightly muffled by Hero’s shoulder. She managed a jab at his side.
“That is my cape,” hissed the villain.
Another jab, followed by a hissed, “Move already,” and Gwen could breathe easy again. She shuddered as she recovered from the close contact of the lecherous door. (The coat that had so bravely fought to remain in the closet, however, now bravely fought to stay near the door using his only available weapon: static.) “So, Mr. Villain—”
“Please, call me Vicky.” At Gwen’s shocked look, he added stolidly, “My name’s Victorious. But my victims call me Vicky. Search me why. Will that be a problem?”
“Maybe. Does that mean that I’m your victim? If I call you Vicky, that is?”
Vicky’s face screwed up as he considered, gave up, and looked in his manual (he, at least, knew where to find the glossary). “Yes,” he finally answered, “you, The Damsel”, would be my Victim. And you, The Hero, would be...ah, here it is: vanquished.”
But Hero was also looking in his manual, and countered, “It says here that you are the one that’s to be vanquished.”
“No, can’t be. Here, listen: ‘Having defeated The Enemy, you may now proceed to posses The Damsel.”
Gwen’s listless mind perked up from the dusty corner it had crumpled into. Posses? There’ll be possessing? As in demonic, or property? Or more...romantically-inclined possessing? Whether this was a good thing or not was too much of an effort for her mind to determine at the moment, so it scrawled illegibly on a post-it and slumped back into the corner. Let herding instinct take over for a bit: follow the man. Whichever one survives this.
“That’s what my manual says,” said Hero, nodding as he read.
“No, you idiot. I get the girl. I vanquish you,” growled “Vicky” Victorious, Villain, with venom at his would-be vanquished Enemy, whilst at the same time vying to win the fair Victi—er, Damsel’s heart.
Somewhere in the universe, the letter V danced for joy. She had never been so used in her life, and she liked it!
“Let me see that,” said Hero, trying to take a step towards Victorious. He was only trying to because Gwen had a vicious vice-like grip (Yay! Do it again! squealed V) on his arm.
“You are not that stupid,” she said by way of explanation, when Hero’s puzzled look indicated that one was needed.
“Of course not. I can read, you know. I’m quite sure of what I’m doing.”
“Look, you, he’s the villain. You do not go about sharing manuals and setting up tea-dates.”
Hero shared a look with Villain. Some sort of agreement seemed to pass between the two character types. Suddenly, both reached into their respective pockets (in the case of Vicky, his apron pocket). Gwen cursed and backed up against the door again, despite her better judgment. (Her coat, thinking it had won yet another victory, began to get cocky and tried flirting with the door, which wasn’t interested.) Simultaneous, both enemies flipped open their agendas.
“I’m all booked this week. I’m getting Quasi to carpet the hall,” said Vicky. (The narrator would like to refuse addressing herself to the villain by said name, on account of not being his victim, but rather prefers regaining the sensation in her left arm.)
“How’s next Tuesday, then?” mused Hero.
“What kind of idiots are you?” moaned Gwen, baffled by the level of stupidity presented to her.
“Heroic ones,” said Hero without turning. Vicky slit his eyes but refrained from correcting him.
“Tuesday it is then. My place? It’ll be real nice with the carpeting.”
“Alright. But I’m bringing crumpets,” insisted Hero politely. Vicky shrugged. Crumpets, schmumpets. What he’d really always wanted was muppets with his tea. (The narrator would like to point out that there’s a curious story behind that comment, but will wait until the villain is out of earshot, for her own sake.)
“Right,” said Vicky, snapping his agenda shut. “You’ll be bringing the girl, then?”
“What?” shouted Gwen.
Hero slowly turned to her, waving his manual vaguely towards Vicky. “Some of us,” he said, a bit coldly, “have read this manual.” His brow furrowed. “Most of it, anyway.” He blushed then trudged bravely on. “Some of us are actually qualified for this line of work, and know what we’re doing.”
Vicky, who had been emphatically nodding along, interrupted. “What the boy is trying to get at, Damsel, is that in a week on Tuesday, the three of us will have tea.”
“And the Confrontation, of course, “ added Hero, sneaking another look at his manual.
“Well, I’ll be off,” said Vicky with a flourish of his apron. “No rest for the evil mastermind, eh? Must be plotting away now.”
Hero nodded, one professional to another.
Gwen, coat and door stopped fighting against each other and stood in silent shock.
