Red Fox Action Log 47 cont:

  “I should just fly off,” Gem Blade said, “no need to make a gosh darn deal out of this.”

  “You lied to us,” I said.

  “I did,” she replied, unbuttoning the top buttons of the blouse of her dress and feeding her glasses into the translucent blue gem revealed there with a crisp crackle of energy. “But it was necessary.”

  I pointedly did not look at the creamy pale skin of her neck.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Now, how did you find out?” she asked instead.

  “The pudding cups,” Sniffer Sleuth pipped up. “Also the glasses are barely a disguise.”

  “The blasted pudding cups!” she said to herself, pumping a fist in frustration. “I just can’t help myself. Then why didn’t you catch it?” she asked me.

  “I trust fellow members of the Heroic Community.”

  “Fair enough,” she shrugged.

  I didn’t tell her the real reason, which was that I was a little put off my game by her startling beauty, but she could probably guess. You didn’t look like that, and not know your effect on people.

  “Why lie?” I asked again. “You could have solved that whole problem all by yourself.”

  She paused, buttoning her blouse as she thought.

  “Headed to Garden City for the Bronze Boy exhibit. I saw your van, then you two scrabbling through the brush on the way over,” she said. “I got curious. ‘Now Cynthia, what are two heroes doing all the way out here?’ I asked myself. Couple weeks ago you were in this horrible Supervillain attack, and yet here you are, trying to save people.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the deception,” I prodded.

  She smiled ruefully.

  “What would they say were I to wield my sword, jump in, and handle the whole thing by myself? Would the headline be ‘Sniffer Sleuth and Red Fox rescue hostages with help of unidentified hero’ or would it be ‘Gem Blade and two heroes clash with robots?’ One is a story about me. The other includes the humanity of the hostages, and two up and coming heroes.”

  “But the hostages would be safer had you used your true power,” I countered.

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “But this job doesn’t have much training outside the kind you find on a mission. I was there to bail you out. But you didn’t need me. That invisibility power is very strong.”

  “We need you,” I said.

  She held her hand up.

  “You’ll have to give me the pitch later,” she said. “Truthfully, I’m not headed to Garden City just for sightseeing. I’ve got important stuff going on.”

  I just stared into her eyes. I could tell she was trying to give me a stern look, but I couldn't help but get lost in them instead.

  “Pardon my friend,” Sleuth said. “He seems a bit starstruck. How about we meet again in Garden City? Perhaps over a cup of coffee? You could be in the position to foil an Archvillian attack.”

  “You have a phone number?” she asked.

  I rattled mine off, quickly. Sleuth quirked an eyebrow.

  “Actually, I don’t have my phone,” she admitted. I pulled some explosive tape from my belt, rested it against my buckle, and scribbled on it with a pen.

  “Thanks,” she said, sticking it up her sleeve.

  She gently rose up into the air, hovering above our heads, then shot off at an astonishing speed. She barely disturbed the dust at our feet. How thoughtful.

  “You could manage to control your excitement,” Sleuth said.

  “Oh come on, it’s Gem Girl!”

  “Gem Blade,” Sleuth corrected.

  “Not to me,” I said. “I had her poster on my wall as a kid.”

  “Cute. But your norepinephrine spiked like crazy. Wouldn’t happen if you just focused on the task at hand.”

  “I assume that it is some kinda hormone. Like yours didn’t?”

  “Nothing causes me to spike,” he said, glancing around at the desert. “Not women, certainly. Not that I don’t appreciate beauty, I just find the thought of being intimate with anyone repulsive. No offense.”

  “Why would I take offense?”

  “People often take my feelings on sex and romance personally.”

  I thought for a moment. Plenty of folks had low sex drives, or repulsion to physical touch. I imagine that adding to that, the ability to actually smell all the stuff happening during intimate moments made it worse. Now, I wasn’t attracted to Sleuth, but I understand the idea that someone could be, and experience disappointment that he was off the table.

  “I can see that,” I said. “Come on, Gunnar is probably worried sick.”

  Once I made it to the van, we quickly stripped from our supersuits, and into civilian clothes. Sleuth handled the talking. We made it past the cops with little incident.

  I excitedly filled Gunnar in on our adventure. It could have gone very poorly, so the fact that it didn’t, and that we had actually met Gem Girl, left me feeling giddy.

  Several hours of driving later, and I felt my phone buzz.

  I decided to play it cool, and left it at that.

  The rest of the trip went by with little of import happening. We listened to music. I rambled about Gem Girl. We made some stops.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Then, we reached Garden City, the gateway to the West. Its towers reached tall, a reminder of the wealth it got as the first major trading stop from the Indian Nations and their near monopoly on medicine. There was a time when disease would have wiped them out, now we come to them for their patents and their medical technology.

  Downtown stretched up into a golden sky, sun glinting off of towers that glared harsh enough to blind. Sniffer Sleuth slipped on his aviators.

  We had a Fox Foundation safe house, and soon we piled into our separate beds. When I slept, I dreamed of giant pudding cups, and swimming in them. Hell of a lot better than the usual dreams of fire and burning flesh.

  In the morning, I had a new box from the Foundation. Opening it revealed a fully robotic prosthetic in gleaming white plastic. I left it there, then made some eggs.

  Sleuth asked for over easy. Gunnar scrambled. I hardly tasted mine. I took them burned and slathered in hot sauce.

  We didn’t have much time, so I chose to spend it mixing some injectable syringes, a couple strength boosters, a hearing and balance attuner, that kind of thing. Sniffer Sleuth hung around while I did, testing his chemical knowledge. He was right about three quarters of the time.

  Red Fox Action Log 48:

  The Museum opened at 11am. We got there with half an hour to spare, in civilian clothes and cradling our coffees. Gunnar stayed back. I sipped my coffee like it was the last drop of liquid I’d get before an execution, even though it tasted awful. My usual tea just wasn’t going to cut it.

  My body had yet to really get back to its full fighting shape. Besides the obvious, I just didn’t have time to sleep.

  I considered dipping into invisible, and scoping the place out. But we already had a plan to get us where we needed to be. Sleuth had been working on it all week.

  It involved putting my belt and grappling hook in a box, then knocking on the door.

  The janitor let us in.

  “We’ve been expecting you. Excited to get a look at the armor?” she asked, her small stature and blue coveralls making her look a bit like a child playing dress-up.

  She was probably in her thirties, judging by her laugh lines. She had a trim figure, dark skin, with tattoos creeping up her neck. They looked vaguely arcane, the top of a pentagram here, a bit of linear A script there. I filed that away.

  “We are!” I said, trying to sound chipper.

  “Both of you?” she asked. “You’re not trying to case the joint to steal it, yeah?”

  “Course not,” I said, maybe too quickly.

  “Ha! Above my paygrade either way!” she said with a hearty laugh. “Follow me! They only have the gauntlet out.” Her voice had a bit of a northern UK accent.

  I waved to Sleuth, and downed my coffee, tossing the cup as I went.

  “Hey,” she said in a whisper as she led me down the hall, “is that Street Level Hero Sniffer Sleuth?”

  “How would I know?” I answered without missing a beat. “That’s just Rick.”

  “He’s your friend right?”

  “I don’t ask him what he gets up to after dark.”

  “Tuché.”

  I checked in with my Fox Instincts but didn’t get any danger off of her. She was acting strange though.

  We passed the lobby, and the front desk. A tall thin man talked to a mousy woman, who I assumed was the receptionist. Sleuth peeled off to greet them.

  It didn't take long to get to the exhibits. The museum seemed smaller than I expected, but I didn’t make it to the gauntlet. The cape, suspended on a mat black mannequin, behind a huge wall of glass, took up all of my attention.

  Captain Iron’s cape. I’d worn my fair share of costume capes, and seen street performers in it, but something about seeing the real thing arrested you.

  The cape was small. Captain Iron had been a giant in my mind, but it was just a six foot long piece of red cloth. The fabric seemed felty and soft. There was some damage to the hem. The icon, the blue riveted C on the yellow shield, peeled a bit at the edges.

  Just a red cape.

  I felt my pulse quicken.

  Just like with Gem Girl. She was all I could think about, but then this damn cape got me too. I didn’t want to be too beholden to nostalgia, but how could I do any different? I’d done this, I’d changed my life forever — lost an arm — because of them.

  “First time?” the janitor asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, whispering in reverence.

  “They’ve run tests on it. It’s just a cape. It’s cotton, and starch. By all accounts it shouldn’t have held up so well to all that flying, the fire, the debris. But look at it? Looks almost brand new.”

  I just nodded.

  “They theorize,” she continued, “that something about him kept it safe. Just being near him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I may be a janitor, but I work here too. I didn’t test it,” she said, pointing to the thin man at the front, “he did. But stick around enough, and he’ll tell you all sorts of things.”

  Part of me wanted to go back, and talk to the curator, but I needed to see the gauntlet before the rest of the museum opened. The janitor walked off somewhere else.

  I had the sinking suspicion that I’d just met someone’s Mild Mannered Secret Identity, but whether that was for a hero, villain, or secret shopper, I couldn’t tell. This was going to keep happening as we continued to search for Superheroes, but it felt strange to me after yesterday.

  We moved on from the cape. But not very far. The very next exhibit was a set of old instant pictures, Coloroids people called them, of the Gem Brigade.

  The first picture was of the team on a roof, in civilian clothes, but for Brigadier Gem Diamond who wore her supersuit.

  Diamond was clearly of Japanese descent, with long free flowing hair, and a pensive expression, sitting on the ledge of the roof and staring off at the Tokyo skyline. Gem Citrine, a dark skinned woman with glasses, wore a school uniform, skirt-waist rolled up scandalously, and sat on a large AC unit, thoughtfully scribbling in a notebook. Gem Emerald, a short pale and dark-haired girl, wore a matching set of sweats and grinned at the camera, pulling her sleeve back to show off her, for a teenage girl, impressive bicep. Gem Ruby was captured mid-toss of her long blonde hair, and shot eyes at Gem Emerald. Lastly, Gem Sapphire, later known as Gem Girl, sat on the ledge next to Diamond, with her hand on her shoulder, and her eyes close to tears.

  This was clearly only a half staged shot. I wondered who took it?

  The other photos showed them eating lunch, or interacting with a fan. All from the same time period. The last photo in the set depicted a woman I couldn’t identify at all. Not woman — another teenage girl. Another Japanese girl, short haired, one arm around Gem Diamond, other hand holding the camera. She had to be maybe only a couple years older than the rest.

  Helpfully, the plaque under the photo read, ‘Gem Diamond with unidentified girl.’

  The thin man appeared behind me.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Some speculate,” he said, “that this is Gem Amethyst, the sixth Gem. We found these pictures at an estate sale of a woman in Japan.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, nobody especially noteworthy, I should think,” he said, his accent colored by a bland British Received Pronunciation.

  “Hmm. What do they think happened to the sixth gem? Why isn’t she common knowledge?”

  “Why indeed? Is this the belt?”

  “It is,” I said, handing him the box.

  “I am ecstatic to get a look at this,” he said, eyes wide.

  I know this was all bait to allow us access to Bronze Boy, but I really didn’t like giving my belt to someone else. I put it out of my mind.

  “Can we see the gauntlet before we talk about the belt?” I asked.

  “Of course. Come along. If you want a look at it before it gets too busy, we should keep it moving. And I must say,” he continued, gesturing to Sleuth who followed us. “It is an honor to meet a working hero. Spending all our time with artifacts, it’s not often that we get to see folks in the community in their prime.”

  As we walked I noticed the costume for Clowno the Clowning Hero. I had always thought he was kinda creepy, but apparently a hundred years ago, he was the most famous hero of his time.

  I suppressed a shudder.

  “Who are you anyway?” I asked as I followed him.

  He just smiled, and pointed to his lanyard that read ‘Sir Cuthbert Graham Brown GBE.’

  “You’re a knight?” I asked further.

  “For all the good it does me here,” he said with a chuckle.

  Then he ducked into his office, and I was alone with the Gauntlet.

  A spotlight set the thing shining, sending a glare off it as bright as the buildings outside. Getting a look at it up close just made me even more confused than before.

  The metal parts of the gauntlet, the plate covering the wrist and back of hand, were clearly ancient, pitted and worn, but shined like brand new bronze. The fingers seemed to be composed mostly of creamy maroon leather. Looking inside from the wrist, I could see the wires, far less sophisticated than I’d expect of a science hero.

  I leaned in closer. The leather on the inside had been embellished with script. Bits of Linear A and Linear B script, but some English too — Spells.

  Bronze Boy wasn’t a science hero at all, he was magic.

  “What do you think?” Cuthbert asked, exiting his office.

  Dear reader: I need your help! My goal for this project is to make it to Rising Stars Main! A tall order for what seems to be an off meta book. If you made it this far, and you're having fun, please rate it! I think the rule of thumb is 30 ratings before you start showing up in lists. But this is all just guess work for us.