Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

B) someone says how proud you must be of your girl, or how terrific she’s been.

C) You see a news report about your little girl stopping a plutonium monster that tried to marry a nuclear missile silo.

D) Your husband tries to tell you it’s time to move on, look on the bright side, stop beating yourself up, or get some perspective.

Drink two shots if

A) Someone says how sorry they are, and yet how proud of your girl you must be.

B) You see a baby in a “Captain Champion” Halloween costume, with an exosuit made of old bleach bottles.

C) A publisher calls up and says they’ve already written your autobiography and they just want you to agree to put your name on it.

D) Someone calls you “Captain Mom.”

E) You realize your husband has moved out, and you didn’t notice.

Florence came home, six months after she disappeared. Teri was half drunk, watching a news report about the Action Squad defeating Klownopolis (a whole evil clown–shaped city, walking on stilts), which had tried to swallow up Sheboygan. She heard a clanking noise from the stairwell outside her apartment, then went to her fish–eye lens and saw Florence, wearing a lion–shaped exoskeleton from which her face just poked out. Her baby was a sphinx. Teri opened the door before Florence could raise a metal paw to ring the bell.

“You can’t come in,” Teri said.

Teri’s apartment, a one–and–a–half bedroom loft that had been tidy and gilded, now had layers of filth on the hardwood floors and garbage everywhere. Teri was ashamed for her baby to see this, plus letting this imposter in would feel like a betrayal to the real Florence.

“Aw, come on,” Captain Champion reared up on her back paws a bit. “You gotta let me in. I mean, we can chat out here on your doorstep, but the neighbors’ll talk.”

“Okay, fine.” Teri stepped back to let the lion, almost soundless except for its footfalls, into her home. The lion clambered up on the couch and sat on its back legs, exposing its stainless underbelly.

Florence stared at a baby blanket, which Teri had hugged during one of her recent drunken episodes. Her eyes widened.

“I didn’t think I was going to see you again,” Teri said. She wondered for a moment if she should offer Florence some refreshment, but she had nothing baby–safe in the house.

“Wow.” Florence lifted the blanket to her pink little face, which was still not quite a toddler’s. “I remember this blanket. I dream about this blanket, all the freaking time . It’s weird, you know. I have super vivid dreams about your hands, too. And your scent.” Florence leaned forward and sniffed Teri, who was still standing over her. “Although you don’t smell like I remember. Now you smell like cheap whisky.”

Teri sat on a pile of crap on the coffee table. “You ruined my life.” She looked into Florence’s eyes, saw a flinch. “I guess I shouldn’t blame you.”

“Yeah, it was a dumb break,” Captain Champion said, hugging her own metal body. “Those assholes should have figured out a way to cope without me.”

Teri shrugged. She felt unstable on her perch.

“After I died,” Captain Champion said, “The Megagyrus Energizer flew away, probably back to the Mountain of Perfection. I can feel it and all, but it won’t respond to my commands until I’m well into puberty. I probably have another dozen, maybe fifteen, years of being a weakling unless I wear the suit.”

“So…” Teri thought for a moment. “So you would have turned into Captain Champion anyway? Even if they hadn’t, uh, woken you up?”

“Well, yeah. Although I might have come up with a different name this time. Like Mega–Maid. Who knows. Hey, do you mind if I smoke? These baby lungs, they’re so pink. It freaks me out. I have to do something to dirty them up.”

Teri couldn’t think of a way to say no fast enough to stop Florence gripping a cigar in her metal paw. Soon cigar smoke was masking all the other stenches in her apartment. It felt warm and friendly and evil.

“Are you taking care of yourself?” Teri said after watching Florence puff for a while. “I mean, is someone changing your diapers and stuff?”

Florence laughed so hard she nearly coughed up a lung. “Diapers. Heh heh. Well, you know, the robots give me a bath every now and then. I stay in the exo as much as I can, because this body is so inept. It’s floppy. I don’t think I’m technically potty trained or anything, but the exo has waste disposal, so it doesn’t really come up.”

“Huh.” Teri wanted a drink so bad, it was like cockroaches were crawling up her nose. “So I guess you should go fight some supervillains or something. I mean, it’s nice to see you and all.”

“I just got here.”

“Yeah. Huh.” Teri shoved all the magazines and papers and wrappers off the table onto the floor, so she could feel the sag of the pasteboard table directly beneath her. “So why are you here? I mean, this is freaking me out all over again.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry. About everything. It’s just… I don’t have any friends.” Florence looked down at her paws and the cigar slowly flaking away in one of them. “You know? Not real friends. It’s this life. Even before I died, I just… You know, the Action Squad, they’re my crew. We hang out, you know. But I don’t really like any of those guys. And since they brought me back, it’s been… weird.”

“Wow. Well, thanks for sharing.” Teri couldn’t hold out any longer. She went and poured herself a half mug of no–name bourbon, gulping half of it before she even got back to her seat. “I guess everybody has their own problems. It’s funny how that is.”

“You’re the closest thing to a friend I have in this world.” Florence—Captain Champion—had tears in her eyes. Her face had gotten redder. She was sweating in her lion suit.

“You are really freaking me out.” Teri took another monumental swig.

“I love you,” Florence said.

“You… what?” Teri shrank away.

“I love you. I don’t know if it’s some atavistic oxytocin thing, or just because my only tender memories are of you, or what. I just know, all these months when I’ve been getting tossed out of spaceships in low orbit and chained to dirty implosion bombs, I thought about you. I imagined your hands touching me, and… you know, it saved my life a few times.”

The cigar was a dark nub. The lion suit carefully tucked the butt into a little compartment, and even vacuumed up all the ash, as if a little more crud would have made a difference in this dirty hole.

“You’d think…” The lion lurched off the sofa and stood up clumsily on its back legs. “You’d think after dying once, that I can remember anyway, it would be no big deal. But you just cling harder. Anyway, I guess I dumped on you enough. Just, you know, I wanted to say. I’d like to live with you again.”

“You what?”

“I know it can’t be like before.” Florence swung back onto all fours and spoke over her round, chrome shoulder as she padded towards the door. “But it could be cool. Be a family again. At least think about it.”

“I don’t think I could…” Teri couldn’t breathe, she took another slug.

“I’m rich,” her baby said. “Like, rich rich. Long story, but the Action Squad basically found some asteroids full of stuff. We could live in a mansion, and have robots and servants. Think it over.”

“Couldn’t you quit being super instead? We could go into hiding, like witness protection, pretending to be a mom and her baby. After all, neither of us has any super–powers.” She almost added, unless you count knowing too many agonizing secrets, or indulging in unpleasant vices.

The lion shook its whole metal head. “We’d never get away with it. People would find us. A lot of people want me dead. Again. Anyway, I guess it’s a dumb idea for us to try and be a family, after everything. I’ll see you around.”