Daughter, Lover, Superheroine Ch. 09

"But give me your word, Cindy... if it should happen that Battleborn must face Conqueress again..." She stepped back, and held out her right arm. "Promise me you will fight me with everything you have. Everything! All your strength... your endurance... your skill... your will to win... all of it! Hold nothing back!"

Her eyes blazed with a warrior's fury. From within her, Cindy felt her own fire rising up to match it. She reached for Vicky's arm, and they gripped each other's forearms tightly.

"I won't back down from you. I'll fight to win!" she told Vicky fiercely. Vicky's eyes lit up with delight.

Then they both leaned forward and kissed hungrily, full on the lips, their tongues wrapping around each other. They kissed with the fierce love of two women, alike in strength and conviction, connected by a special sisterly bond.

When they broke apart, there was a long saliva bridge between their mouths, and they both chuckled slightly to see it.

Then Vicky turned to Barbara and melted into her embrace. Their bodies pressed tightly together, Vicky's costume against Barbara's skin, without a sliver of space in between, as if Vicky wanted to meld into Barbara right there and then. Very tenderly, Barbara engulfed Vicky's lips with her mouth, and Vicky's eyes glazed over with bliss. She trembled from head to toe.

It filled Cindy with a wonderful warmth. Vicky was probably the only woman she could ever contemplate sharing her mother with. In that moment of immense generosity she found herself wishing that Vicky could make love with Barbara too, and experience what she, Cindy, could blessedly receive every single day.

Perhaps, someday...?

Then there was nothing to do but watch as Cindy Victoria Nelson, Conqueress, Top Dog of Praetoria's Powers Division, stepped through the portal and back to her world.

***

"Dang, girl. Those are some heavy-ass hits you're landing today," Michelle remarked, during a brief lull in their sparring bout. The sweat glistened on her rich dark skin. With that complexion, it was hard to tell if any bruising had been caused, but Cindy's blows had drawn a few grunts from the larger woman's lips, so maybe, for once, Cindy was actually giving her teacher a run for her money.

Cindy grinned - this was as hard as she had ever been able to push Back Alley Fury. She was making progress!

It wasn't merely that she had become more proficient at the various fighting techniques she'd been taught. It was, according to Michelle, her fighting spirit.

"You know that saying, it ain't the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog?" Michelle told her. "Girl, the size of the fight in you must've grown ten times, since your Praetorian sister left."

She'd told Michelle all that she knew, of course - she didn't hide these things from her mentor. She'd been unable to hide the wistful regret, too, when she described how Vicky had left.

Michelle, having cottoned on quickly to how things were among the trio, had refrained from any "told you so" comments, though she would've been within her rights to make them. Instead, she'd offered some quiet sympathy, which Cindy was grateful for.

But there was one burning question that she could not help but ask, after their training for the day had concluded.

They were in a secluded part of the woods just on the outskirts of Founder's Falls, and there was a cliff overlooking that section of Paragon City - gated communities, sprawling estates, opulent mansions, marble statues, ornate fountains, and all the rest of it. They sat now, on the edge of that cliff, not too far from the waterfalls that gave the place its name.

"Michelle... what's going on out there? Why was Vicky so sure that our world was going to invade hers? And this whole deal about another dimension, another world... with another me, and another Mom... and the Freedom Phalanx still gone... what does all this mean?"

The veteran superheroine was silent for some long moments. Finally, she sighed.

"My cousin might want to chew me out for this, if he ever gets back, but I guess you deserve to know, especially since you've met one of them now. The Praetorians, I mean.

"I still don't know that much, but I do know this: the disappearance of the Freedom Phalanx is connected to Praetoria. That's why we're regarding all known Praetorians as potential threats, like you saw. I'm not in the loop about where the Phalanx is right now, though." She clenched her fists. "It's my own damned cousin, and they still won't tell me where he is. But I'll tell you all I know, Cindy.

"Their world is kinda like ours. Not too different, you know, except for one or two crucial things in history that changed just about everything else. I ain't much for the fancy science, but basically, there's like, a whole lotta universes out there. There's so many that as Tina Mac - I mean Dr. Tina Mcintyre - puts it, it's much more accurate to say there's a multiverse."

Cindy's eyes widened. "So... you mean... in each universe, there's... a copy of me and Mom, and of you, and everyone else?"

"Well, um... not exactly. I mean, if you just think about it... lots of things can happen, and some people in one universe never even get born in another, right? And in the Praetorian universe, your copy turns out to be a... well, someone sorta important to the regime... but in another universe, your copy could turn out to be, well, no offence, kid, straight up dead or never born. Same goes for me or anyone else.

"I see... it's mind-boggling," Cindy remarked, furrowing her brow.

"Sure is. But back to Vicky and your question - our worlds seem to be closely linked. See, in that world, the Praetorian world... there were just a few key differences that caused some things to go wonky compared to ours, and as usual Statesman is right in the middle of it.

"You know much about Statesman's history? I mean, apart from what's public knowledge.

"Alright, quick recap. In World War One, Marcus Cole got a dose of that sick mustard gas stuff in Europe, and he went on this hunt for something called the Well of the Furies, to save his life.

"Kind of a drastic thing for a guy to do, you know. Regular guy gets cancer or something like that, he tries to live a better life and stay as healthy as he can. Cole, on the other hand, tries to find a mythical fountain of life thing that might not even exist. Makes you wonder, what kind of person Marcus Cole was to begin with. Must've thought very highly of himself, is all I'm saying.

"Anyway, he finds it, drinks from it, and so does his brother-in-law spider-lover Stefan Richter. That guy is now Lord Recluse, head honcho of Arachnos.

"That's this world, ours. In that world... Marcus Cole kills him. Not sure why, I'm hazy on that bit of the story, but he does it, and that world never sees any spider goons running around with energy weapons.

"Both worlds more or less stay in parallel for a bit after that, until their Marcus Cole becomes sickened by the wars his country keeps throwing him into, and pretends to get killed by a nuclear strike, launched by President Douglas MacArthur against Korea - yep, that was a thing. Then he just lies low for a really long time, until one day, he sees in the news that President MacArthur is planning to nuke an American city.

"So he comes out of hiding, goes to give the President a piece of his mind, and finds out that while he was going walkabout somewhere in the Australian outback, the entire world had become threatened by this gigantic single-cell amoeba thing, commanding monsters called the Devouring Earth... or as we know it, Hamidon.

"Girl, I couldn't even begin to explain to you what the hell the Hamidon is. We got one of our own, did you know that? Ours is nothing like theirs, though. Much smaller, for one thing. Hamidon was actually the name of some scientist who got himself mutated. In Praetoria, however, Hamidon somehow became incredibly powerful, and created the Devouring Earth monsters that overran almost every country in the world. President MacArthur - damn, doesn't get any easier every time I say that - was ordering nukes left and right, but the nukes weren't doing a damn thing but making the Devouring Earth stronger.

"That's one thing people from their world and ours got in common, at least. Even when doing something makes the problem worse, and they know it, they go right ahead and do it anyway. Some things don't change anytime, anywhere.

"Anyway, Marcus Cole rallies all the survivors, and fights the Hamidon. He gets it put about that he defeated the Hamidon and the Devouring Earth does retreat, for a while, so he looks like a goddamn lord and savior to everyone still alive. The whole world demands he leads them, and he 'reluctantly' agrees. They all move into the last major city on their world, Praetoria City, and he rules as their Emperor.

"Now, here's the kicker: that Marcus Cole is a stone-cold liar.

"He couldn't defeat the Hamidon. Scary, isn't it? He's every bit as powerful as our guy - some say even more, because when he killed Richter, he also took the Incarnate powers Richter had, so maybe he's got double. I don't know if double infinity is bigger than one infinity, but I ain't no mathematician, so don't ask me no questions about that.

"Even with all that power, he just flat out couldn't do it. The whole of his regime is built on a lie, and that lie is coming back to bite him in the ass.

"That's about all I know. I don't know a lot of specifics, but one thing I do know is that he's got his eye on our world, and there're some people out there who want to get a jump on him. A little pre-emptive strike action, you know what I mean.

"But that's where I think Vicky stops making sense. The people she's talking about, the ones thinking about the pre-emptive invasion strike force... they're way, way above our Security Clearance level. We're talking Vanguard stuff. They deal with the kooky alien interdimensional threats.

"For people like you and your mom, and me as well... that's way over our heads. We don't go looking for that kinda trouble. Not our beat, you dig? We patrol our local neighborhoods. Sure, I've seen some things in my day, but I know my limits. I'm at home in the streets, and that's where my people are. I have no idea why Vicky would think she'd see you both again, on the other side."

Cindy was silent, taking all this in. At last, she spoke. "There's so much about the world I don't know," she said, her voice soft with awe. "Just to think... there's entire worlds out there I didn't know about."

"Girl, listen. We gotta keep our focus, you know what I'm saying? Eyes on target, one step at a time. We took up our mission, to clean up the streets, and look after the little people. That's what you and your mom are about. The little stuff's every bit as important as the big stuff."

That was true enough. Cindy was a child of the Rikti War - she and her generation had grown up seeing first-hand how big things like war tended to sweep away the little things, like people. She had always adored her mother for serving and protecting their community, and she herself had always aspired to do the same.

Well, now she could... but street crime was, frankly, easy to deal with. Too easy, and at the same time, too hard.

She looked down at her hands, broodingly. She could punch holes in walls, lift huge trucks, stop bullets with her abs, intimidate petty thugs into submission just by flexing her muscles... but she was starting to see that there were root causes to crime, larger factors that shaped entire communities by changing the environments in which people lived. Those were her true enemies, but they were like... shadowy figures she couldn't quite make out, let alone properly punch.

That was what she had to be focusing on, if she was ever to fulfill her promises - to clean up Perez Park, to make the Crey Corporation answer for its crimes. Michelle was right - Praetoria was another world, another dimension, not hers. Whatever scenario Vicky was envisioning was probably far into the future, if it would ever come to pass. It didn't seem likely they'd ever see each other again.

The thought made her sad.

***

Months later...

The man calling himself Menelaus spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor of the warehouse, and coughed.

"I'll crush your fucking skull under my boot!"

Cindy stood there, panting a little but otherwise none the worse for wear, and crossed her arms over her chest as Menelaus staggered to his feet. "Give up, Menelaus - it's over! Tell us where the Crown is!"

Behind her, a blonde woman in classy black heels and elegant black vest dress waved her arms, and two of her adversaries went flying, propelled by an invisible surge of force. Glowing sigils revolved around her as she turned and flung another attacker away, slamming the camo-clad bandanna-wearing Warrior against the wall. He slumped, out cold, his sword falling from his hand.

"He's far from beaten, Cindy," the woman shouted. "You're going to have to bash harder than this, if we want answers!"

"Give up now, or I'll have to hurt you really badly!" Cindy cried out, the sincerity evident in her voice.

The effect of this on the maddened Warrior leader was precisely the opposite of what Cindy had hoped for. With a bellow of rage, Menelaus leaped forward, swinging his battleaxe at Cindy's face.

"Yes, verbal emasculation is indeed the perfect complement to physical humiliation, as a tool of persuasion," Cindy's ally remarked wryly, in her clipped aristocratic British accent, as Cindy blocked the axe-blow with her forearm - blunting the blade even more - and swung a fist into Menelaus's belly.

Menelaus groaned, and sank to his knees. Spittle flecked his reddish beard as he gulped and wheezed. "The... indignity..." he gasped. "Two... blonde bitches... bringing down... the greatest general... Odysseus has..."

With the rest of the lackeys disposed of, the blonde spellcaster came to stand beside Cindy. "I doubt Odysseus himself thinks of you that way, Menelaus. Give it up! Any man with an ounce of sense in your position would know when to cut his losses and at least make an attempt at a graceful retreat. Tell us where the Crown of Glory is, and we'll leave."

The beaten brute sat back on his haunches, looking up at the two women standing over him, and laughed breathlessly. "Alright... alright. You win for now. But I promise you... bitch..." this last was directed at Cindy, with a glower, "this isn't over between us."

Cindy grimaced. "Just tell us what we want to know," she demanded. Dealing with these men really set her teeth on edge.

This was her first excursion against the gang known as the Warriors, who mainly operated out of Talos Island, where they currently were. They were an almost cultish group of martially inclined men - their membership was uniformly male, though racially diverse - who were a cut above the average thug thanks to some form of magical enhancement. They styled themselves after figures out of ancient Greek culture and mythology, even to the extent of wielding archaic weapons in combat, but dressed in modern survivalist apparel, with red bandannas possibly representing the crested helmets of classical hoplites.

Her current partner, Mercedes Sheldon of the Midnight Squad, had called on her out of the blue a few days ago, and said she was calling in a favor. They had taken in Debbie Dinh, at the request of Genevieve Sanders from the hospital, and tracked down the Circle of Thorns member who had attempted to lure the vulnerable girl down the path of darkness. In return, Cindy had agreed that at some unspecified future time she would pay off the debt with service to Mercedes. That time, apparently, was now.

Mercedes Sheldon needed help to recover an heirloom she called the Crown of Glory, and apparently it had fallen into the hands of the Warriors, who were known for their smuggling of magical artifacts. She'd called Cindy along, therefore, to help beat some answers out of the Warriors.

Barbara had never come up against them directly, in her years of superheroine service, so she had not had much to give by way of advice, only the usual admonitions to be careful and not underestimate the enemy. So far, though, the misogynist meatheads hadn't thrown anything at her she couldn't handle. Even this leader of theirs, Menelaus, was able only to give her a fairly light workout.

He glared at them, and then laughed again, still clutching his sides in pain. "We don't have it, girl. But we know where it is. And if you hadn't shown up, we'd probably have taken it back already from that degenerate thieving slave Hector!"

Mercedes's eyebrows shot up at this. "Indeed? Fascinating."

Cindy cast her a sidelong glance. "Does that name mean something to you?" she asked. She had studied a little of the Iliad back in college days, but she hadn't really boned up on her knowledge of ancient Greece - not that she'd thought she'd need to, after all, since Mercedes had made abundantly clear Cindy was needed for her muscles and probably not much else.

"Has he gone renegade then?" Mercedes demanded, ignoring Cindy's question. "What's happening within your ranks? And where is the Crown?"

Before Menelaus could reply, another voice came out of the shadows. "He has. And I am your only hope of stopping him before he can succeed in his plan to bring chaos to your streets and your city."

The newcomer was a rather short, stocky man, with salt and pepper hair and beard, clad in simple military fatigues and a Kevlar vest. Unlike the dozens of Warriors they had just defeated, though, his head was bare, unadorned by the standard red bandanna. Yet, he walked and carried himself as though he wore a crown. It was obvious to Cindy that this was no ordinary thug.

Menelaus scrambled to his feet, and took a knee, wincing in pain with every movement. The older man ignored him, and stood quietly, including both women with his gaze.

Mercedes Sheldon adopted a wary stance. A nimbus of light played around her hands.

"Very well, we're listening... Odysseus."

Odysseus? The leader of the Warriors? Here, in person? Cindy never backed down from a fight, but this definitely seemed beyond her Security Clearance level!

[TO BE CONTINUED]