Story a Day: the Life of a Superhero's Girlfriend
This one came as a direct result of my "Damsels in Distress" video, which got me thinking about...well, damsels in distress. And how superhero girlfriends particularly get targeted for that.
I can't say I like the ending; if I ever decide to revise and maybe properly publish this, it'll definitely get a rewrite. Maybe flesh out the rest of the world and team. And change the villains; can't say I really like them, either. Or any part that isn't Lois herself.
Anyway, enjoy this trainwreck of a story! :)
--
Even before Lois got kidnapped, she was having a bad day.
Slamming the car door shut behind her, she dialed her boyfriend, drumming her fingers against the door as it rang. Her pencil skirt and blazer tightened around her like ropes, suffocating.
Finally, he picked up. “Hello?”
“I’m going to murder everyone who works in media,” Lois snarled.
There was a looong pause on the other end of the line. Her driver, Pete, glanced at her through the rearview mirror. He raised an eyebrow. She made a face at him. He snorted and turned on the radio, keeping the volume low enough not to disturb her.
“Yeah, we saw the interview,” Vincent said, drawing her attention to the cell phone in her hand. “I’m sorry, babe. But you should know that if you commit any murders, Mariah won’t help you hide the bodies.”
“That’s a lie!” a woman called from the distance.
Lois smirked. She could always count on the pyrokinetic to help with illegalities.
Her amusement faded when she processed what her boyfriend had just said. “Wait, you said we. Who else is there?”
“Well, you know the whole team’s been rooting for you, so when I told them about your interview…”
She groaned, leaning back against the hot leather car seat. Pete drove through the New York City streets, having to take a detour because the supervillain fight three days ago still hadn’t been fixed, and construction made the traffic even more hellish.
Why did villains always choose New York? Wasn’t it Miami’s turn to get invaded by aliens? Or attract a kaiju squid monster? Or host a mad scientist’s evil robot experiment? This last fight had involved magical shapeshifters from an alternate reality of all things, trying to assimilate and take over the East Coast. Or at least Manhattan. They still hadn’t rounded all of them up.
“If it makes you feel better, Astrid almost threw her axe at the television,” Vincent said.
“And Phaser’s already tweeting something that I’m sure has no swears in it.” His voice faded a little at the end as he turned away from the phone to glare at his teammate.
“Fuck off!” a man distantly yelled. “Go back to being a good boyfriend while I burn the internet!”
Lois sniffed, picturing the thousand-year-old warrior woman waving her favorite weapon in her defense while their teenage superhero started an internet war. “That does make me feel better.”
“At least you’re getting publicity for the book?” Vincent tried.
“Yeah,” she sighed. She may have been playing up her anger at the situation, because this interview—trash though it was—would help. It wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with how the news worked. Perks of being a billionaire’s daughter—well, one of them—was that Lois had grown up in the spotlight. From her first steps to her college days to her decision to join the Marines, cameras had followed her like bees to honey. When her father had died and passed everything to her, she’d made international headlines by donating the entire estate to Vincent’s superhero team—the Iron Line—and 90% of the money to various charities, then went back on tour. (She kept a few million for herself. She wasn’t that selfless.)
After that, she’d managed to avoid the news for a solid four years. Then she was discharged from the military and got coerced into going to a gala hosted by the Line, and met group’s leader Vincent, a.k.a. Megabullet, the team’s super strong, super fast flyer.
“My superpower is being super basic,” he’d joked, smiling through a face full of freckles.
“And super cute,” Lois had replied.
Back into the limelight she went, this time as the girlfriend of an international superhero.
She didn’t mind, most of the time. She and Vincent had been steady for three years now, and he was absolutely worth dodging packs of reporters and having wild rumors about them smeared over the front page of gossip magazines. Half of her friendships with the superhero team had been started by collecting and laughing at those very articles, then gleefully watching as Mariah burned them between her fingers. Sometimes they could even time a “scandal” to use as a smokescreen, keeping attention away from Astrid’s fumbling of modern American culture or Mariah’s less-than-strictly-legal approach to handling a supervillain. It almost made her feel like a part of the team itself.
Then there were days like today. Where she was trying to promote herself—or rather, her book: a history of women in the American military spanning back to colonial times—and not the team. It had taken her years to research, raiding libraries, interviewing dozens of experts and still-living descendants of, frankly, some of the most badass women in Western history. And Lois was best friends with an immortal Viking.
The book had released last week, which meant Lois’s schedule was packed with signings, appearances, and interviews. Most of which she thoroughly enjoyed. Until this morning.
“So, Miss Benson,” the interview said, after introducing her to the cameras. “You’re looking gorgeous. I can’t believe you served almost a decade in the military.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “The secret is not getting shot.”
A forced laugh. “Well, I for one am surprised that I have to address you as Miss Benson and not Mrs. Megabullet. When is that going to change, do you think?”
Lois shrugged. “Vincent and I both see marriage as just a piece of paper. It might happen, might not. In fact, many of the women I write about in my book never got married, though that was usually because—”
“Whoa, you don’t think you two will ever tie the knot? I mean, it’s Megabullet. Are you looking for someone better?” he asked with a smile, a joke. He reminded Lois of a shark, with his bald head, sharp teeth, and gray suit.
She narrowed her eyes. “Of course not. But my relationship with Vincent isn’t what we’re here to discuss today.”
“I know, I know. But nobody’s really asked you about this since your interview with the Times almost a year ago now, when you got kidnapped. Held for ransom against Megabullet—and the whole team. A superhero relationship…how does that work?”
She found herself settling into old habits, maintaining a calm, stony exterior as she sat in the wooden stool, tapping her nail against the glass table. Meanwhile, she envisioned all the ways she could tear this little man apart, verbally and physically. Fantasies like this had filled her head when her drill sergeant had gone at her.
Except she wasn’t a kid anymore. Wasn’t in basic training. Wasn’t risking anything but her reputation by saying something.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
He blinked. “What?”
“When we set up this interview, we agreed that we would talk about my book, highlighting the amazing contributions women have given to this country through the military. Often while being overlooked and overshadowed by their male counterparts. And yet here you are, fishing for gossip on my love life. Or rather, my boyfriend’s love life. Did I miss an email?”
“Uh…”
She stood and looked directly at the camera. “The book is called Warrior Women. You can get it in stores now. It does not mention my boyfriend at all except in the acknowledgements. Sorry to disappoint.”
She tossed her mic on the table and walked away.
“I just…” Lois looked out the car window, the skyscrapers crawling by as they inched along the street. “This is the first time I’m getting attention for something I did alone. Not my dad, not his money. Not my boyfriend. Me. And he didn’t even care.”
Vincent was silent for a moment. She knew he was biting his lower lip as he tried to think of something to say, eventually settling on: “Here I was thinking you got angry because he mentioned the kidnapping.”
“Those terrorists had kids! What was I supposed to do?”
Vincent snickered, something he could only do because no one had gotten hurt—except for the terrorists. Lois had done her best to keep the kids calm and safe, waiting for the team to follow the tracker hidden in her bracelet, and then led them in an evacuation as soon as Phaser had given her an opening. The only casualty on their side had been Lois’s knuckles when she punched out one of the men guarding them. And her wallet after the fact, since she insisted on (privately) paying for all the kids’ therapies.
The media had still titled the incident “Megabullet Saves his Damsel in Distress” and “Rescue Romance in New York!” Vincent had been all over her, like the world’s buffest mother hen, until she’d snapped at him, told him she was fine, and pointed out that, as a billionaire’s kid, that hadn’t even been her first time being kidnapped. Why did he think she’d been so interested in going in the military and learning to fight?
That had done nothing to quell Vincent’s worries, insisting that she have security with her at all times, plus a driver to transport her. At least she got Pete out of it, and got to play Candy Crush during her commute.
He finally calmed down after a while, long after the rest of the team had started teasing her for being the “New York Damsel.”
“A dozen attempts, and only three have ever been successful. You ever see that on the news? Noooo,” she grumbled, glaring out the window.
She frowned, not recognizing the street. “Pete, I think you took a wrong turn.”
“Oh, shoot. Sorry, Miss Benson.”
Her frowned deepened. She’d gotten Pete to stop calling her that and start calling her Lois their first week. He only resorted to “Miss Benson” when he was scared or pissed at her.
Vincent said something about failed kidnapping attempts not being as interesting as successful ones, but it barely registered. Lois took stock of the car—a roomy Lexus with black leather seats—and more importantly, the radio. Which played some Nicki Minaj song.
Pete hated that type of music. Lois wasn’t a huge fan of it herself, but…
“Hey, turn it up, would you?” she asked. “I like this song.”
“Sure thing.” Pete raised the volume, letting the pop rap music fill the car.
Lois carefully toed off her high heels and removed the blazer, keeping the phone pressed against her ear. She was glad she’d gone with her roomier red blouse instead of the tighter tank top; it’d give her more room to maneuver. “Get my mind off of this bullshit, hon. How’s the hunt for those shapeshifters? They tore up my favorite route.”
He sighed. “Honestly, it’s not good. The ones we caught aren’t talking, and we don’t know how many are still in the wind. Doc’s pissed because he wants to know how they hopped realities like that, and I’m pissed because I just want them gone from our reality.”
She hummed, covertly feeling along the bottom of her seat. “That sucks. Sounds like a real sticky gumdrop of a situation.”
Vincent sucked in a breath.
He hadn’t been the only one to beef up security after last year’s kidnapping. Lois herself had taken stock of what went wrong and come up with ways to prevent the next one. One of them being various code words that she shared with the rest of the team.
“Are you sure?” he said lowly, switching to what Phaser called his Business Voice.
“Yeah,” she said casually. “Oh, and we’re probably going to be late. Pete’staking us on a detour, aren’t you?”
“I just missed one turn!” he defended.
“More like three.”
“My GPS is broken,” he grumbled.
“Mm-hm.” There. She found the piece of hard metal hidden beneath her seat cushion.
“Doc, put up Lois’s tracker,” Vincent ordered.
The team’s engineer/inventor/occasional medic/mad scientist, Doctor Cranson, said, “What?”
“Code Gumdrop. Now.”
Phaser swore in the background. Lois waited patiently, watching the scenery turn. They were still downtown, the sunlight bouncing off of the glass windows as people hurried to and from work, walked their dogs, cursed out cab drivers.
Lots of places for her to run and hide.
Lots of possible casualties, too.
“We got you,” Vincent said. “Keep your bracelet on, and try to get away from that shifter. I’m coming to get you.”
“Take your time.” She lowered her phone and pulled the gun from under her seat, pressing the barrel against “Pete’s” neck. “Pull over.”
He went rigid, eyes wide. “…Miss Benson?”
“He doesn’t call me that. And he hates Nicki Minaj. And he hasn’t used a GPS in months.” She cocked the gun. “Pull. Over.”
The shapeshifter smirked. “We’re here anyway.”
The car doors opened, and suddenly two people grabbed at Lois from opposite ends. She fired behind, at the one pulling her hair. Blue blood sprayed through the air as he dropped. Someone on the street screamed. Good, local law enforcement might show up in time to be useful.
The other man climbed in the car with her and went for the gun. She kicked him in the chest, out of the vehicle. Before she could fire, fake-Pete’s arm stretched to twice the size of a normal person’s and pinned the pistol to the seat.
She bit his arm. Fake-Pete yowled and let her go.
She’d lost track of her phone, but she could hear Vincent’s tinny voice calling, “Lois? Babe, what’s happening?”
“It’s an ambush!” she warned.
The man she kicked was back. He grabbed her wrist and pushed the gun of the way right as she fired, the bullet going through the window rather than his skull. She winced, hoping it didn’t hit a civilian, and tried to pull free. But he was right on top of her, not giving her enough room to maneuver her limbs.
He leaned close to her face. “Stay still, and maybe you get out of this alive.”
She smashed her forehead into his nose.
Indigo gushed down his face. She wiggled free and fell out of the car, into the hot granite of the city street.
She scrambled to her feet as fake-Pete stumbled out of the car after her. He was opposite, though, the vehicle between them. She shot him down, needing to hit him twice when he first bullet clipped his shoulder.
“Get her!” the shifter with the broken nose called from the car. Lois turned in time to see three other people run out of the nearest skyscraper, right at her.
She didn’t shoot. How many were actually shapeshifters, and how many were concerned citizens? They looked just like regular people; they wore jeans for Christ’s sake.
She ran.
The hot gravel bit her bare feet at every step, and she switched to the smoother sidewalk as soon as she could. People saw her gun and immediately scurried out of the way, the only way to get New Yorkers to clear a path.
As she turned around the block, she saw the three shifters—at this point they had to be shifters, or at least working for them—hot on her tail.
The magazine originally held nine bullets. She’d already used four.
But the further she ran from the fight, the more crowded the streets became. If she missed, she could hit a civilian. If she attacked one shifter, the other two could start hurting others.
Anytime you want to join the fun, Vincent, she thought, running into a narrow alley. It was dark, abandoned, and she stepped on something suspiciously squishy.
Limited chance of casualties.
She slowed to a fast walk, taking the opportunity to bend down and fix the tight pencil skirt that had ridden up her hips during the sprint. One long rip, and she now had free, comfortable movement. She got as deep into the alley as she could before the three shifters followed her in.
She shot one down. He crumpled, a pool of blue spreading from under him.
Four bullets left.
When she turned her gun on the second, his skin rippled, becoming pale, almost bone-like.
She fired. The bullet stuck on the skin, cracking it. He stumbled, but stayed up.
“An exoskeleton?” she gasped. “Seriously?”
“Put down the gun and come quietly,” the third and final shifter said. A young woman with blue hair, looking like someone you’d find in a Starbucks writing a college paper.
“So you can…what? Ransom me? Threaten to kill me unless my superhero boyfriend gives in to your demands?”
“This isn’t going to work, boss,” Exo-guy said, his voice as gruff as sandpaper.
“We can still make this work,” Blue Hair snapped. “Get in there.”
Exo-guy stepped forward.
Lois had two bullets left. That was more than enough.
She pressed the gun to her own forehead.
Both shifters froze. Lois gritted her teeth; the barrel was hot, not quite burning but certainly uncomfortable against her skin. She focused on that rather than the utter insanity of what she was doing.
Any. Time. Now.
“Come now, Miss Benson,” Blue Hair crooned. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, I think I do,” Lois replied. “Either of you move and your bargaining chip blows her brains out.”
Exo-guy looked to his boss, nervous. “We don’t have enough to work with.”
“I’m aware,” Blue Hair said, her eyes never leaving Lois. “Miss Benson, think about it. What do you think your death will do to your boyfriend?”
“He’ll cry at my funeral and then move on. Hopefully to someone harder to kidnap,” Lois replied.
“Miss Benson…” She took a step forward.
Lois cocked the gun. “Back off.”
Blue Hair reluctantly stepped back.
“We need a new target,” Exo-guy argued.
“Shut up. I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” Lois asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You don’t have any bullets left,” Blue Hair said with sudden confidence. “You’re bluffing.”
Lois turned the gun on her and fired. Only Exo-guy’s quick thinking—darting in front of his boss to absorb the bullet—saved her.
She returned the gun to its original position against her head. (Ow. Hot barrel.) “I don’t bluff.”
Exo-guy pried the two bullets out of his natural armor, letting them fall to the ground with a clink clink. “Seriously. Let’s just kill her and find a new target. A janitor, even. Or maybe the doctor.”
“The doctor’s too well-protected,” Blue Hair said, still studying Lois.
All the pieces clicked into place. She almost laughed. “It’s not a ransom,” she said. “You’re trying to replace me. Like what you did with Pete!”
Blue Hair shrugged, not ashamed of being called out. “Lots of interested parties among the multiverse want inside information about your boyfriend and his team.”
“Then why not just kill—you need me alive for information,” she realized mid-sentence. “All the little details and inside jokes.”
She wished she still had her phone with her, so the team could overhear this little conversation. But it was back in the car, with two dead shifters and hopefully a lot of police by now.
“Come with us and we’ll spare you,” Blue Hair said. “You’re wasted on that team. They see you as nothing more than Megabullet’s girlfriend. A liability. But you’ve beaten four of my people during an ambush. That’s incredible.”
“Fuck off,” Lois sneered. “I like my life and don’t need anyone taking it over.”
Blue Hair’s face hardened. “If you did, you wouldn’t be holding a gun to your head.”
Lois smirked. “Did you research your targets?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know about the kidnapping attempt last year and how well that went.”
“We are not humans. We’re superior to you in every way.”
She rolled her eyes. Typical supervillains. “Ignoring that for a moment, you really think Vincent and I didn’t talk about what to do in case this very thing happened again? I told Vincent—told the entire team—in no uncertain terms that if I ever get kidnapped by supervillains with no chance of escape, he is to ignore their demands entirely and consider me already dead. They are to give no money, weapons, or anything that you people could use to hurt others. Ever. It is my last will and testament.”
Blue Hair and Exo-guy shared a look. “You’re lying.”
“Call Vincent and ask. Astrid almost cried during that meeting.” It hadn’t been pleasant—talking about one’s premature death never was—but it had to be done. Vincent had even stooped so far as to suggest breaking up to avoid it.
“It’s not worth it,” he argued, eyes wet. “I can’t…if you die because someone’s targeting me—”
“Then I die,” Lois said bluntly. “You think getting shot is a new experience for me?”
“That’s not the point!”
“So you don’t deserve to have a relationship because you’re a superhero?” she demanded. She motioned to the rest of the team, all of them sitting at the conference table looking very uncomfortable. “They don’t deserve to have normal friends and relationships because they’re superheroes?”
“That’s not what…”
“I’m well aware of the risks, Vincent, and I accept them. Because you’re worth it. All of you are worth it,” she said to the room at large. “All I’m asking is that you respect my wishes in case those risks become reality. I will not be used as a knife to your throat. And I refuse to let civilians die for my sake.”
“Honestly, the only reason I haven’t pulled this trigger already,” Lois said, “is because there’s a tracker in my bracelet, and Vincent’s already on his way.”
Just as the shifters’ faces turned to surprise and horror, something boomedoverhead—breaking the sound barrier—and smashed into Exo-guy.
Literally smashed him. Like a bug. Indigo bits sprayed all over the alley, Blue Hair, and Lois.
Vincent stood in the center of the mess, on top of Exo-guy’s mushy remains. The blue gore coated his red and silver bulletproof uniform, as if he’d been dipped in the stuff. No cape, of course. His normally kind, freckled face was murderous as he turned to Blue Hair.
In a blink, Blue Hair gained forty pounds of muscle and two extra arms. She swung two right fists at Vincent. He grabbed them both and used the momentum to swing her around.
Straight into the path of Lois’s last bullet.
The shapeshifter’s body dropped in a heap.
“They’ve got a building downtown,” Lois said, tossing her empty gun. “They planned to interrogate me there; I’ll bet that’s their base of operations.”
Vincent took her by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
She wiped some blue muck from her silk blouse. “This was my favorite shirt. You’re getting me a new one.”
“You’re a millionaire.”
“And it was an expensive shirt.”
He grinned and gave her one quick kiss before scooping her up in his arms. Lois had a vivid flashback to their first date where he flew with her like this so she could see the city from above.
“Show me this building,” he said, carrying her into the sky. “We’ll go shopping after.”
#
“So, Miss Benson,” an interviewer said three days later, leaning over the news room’s wooden table. “I know your book came out last week, and we’ll talk about that in a minute.”
Lois bit back a groan, prepared to rip the microphone off of her brand new blouse and walk away again.
Honestly, she wasn’t surprised. Her thirteenth kidnapping attempt and the team finding the shapeshifters’ New York base had overshadowed everything else. Her literary agent hadn’t even wanted her to do more interviews, encouraging her to rest and relax. But Lois wanted people to see that she wasn’t bowed or scared from this latest brush with death.
“I wanted to first ask a question that’s been on everyone’s mind lately,” the interviewer continued. “You were attacked by half a dozen magical shapeshifters the other day—something I never thought I’d say ever—yet you managed to fight all of them off before Megabullet showed up. The rest of the team have gone on record to say that they would have acted far too late if it weren’t for your quick thinking. How, exactly, did you stay alive?”
Lois blinked, surprised at the question.
She smiled. “I’m every supervillain’s worst damsel in distress. That’s my secret superpower.”