Inktober #15: Legend
I probably should have refused the job as soon as she told me I was going to have to change my name, but it was Cat Schrödinger, man. What hench in her right mind wouldn’t give her left tit to work for her?
“I can’t have you calling yourself Diamond Bitch,” she said. “Can you go by Diamond, instead?”
“It’s a play on words,” I argued. “You know. Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. So I’m a Diamond Bitch. What’s wrong with that? I mean, we’re villains. I don’t have to have some kind of hero-code-compliant name.”
“Bitch is a misogynistic slur and it offends me.” She looked up at me through thick glasses like I was a specimen she was analyzing. It made me uncomfortable. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“I… guess I can call myself Diamond,” I said. “Doesn’t sound really original, though. I mean, there are girls in trailer parks who are named Diamond on their birth certificate.”
“If you’d like to call yourself Diamond Dog, I can accept that.”
Yeah, no. Maybe Cat Schrödinger was offended by the word bitch, but I thought it had a lot more chops than dog. A dog is loyal and kinda dumb and will follow you everywhere wagging her tail. A bitch will bite you if you fuck with her. “Nah, I’ll stick with Diamond, I guess.” I leaned back on the wall, adopting my “cool” pose. I like my cool pose. I’ve practiced it in the mirror a lot. “So, what’s the job? You got something spectacular planned for your coming back to the game? Or is it just general henching?”
“Neither,” Dr. Schrödinger said. “I need a bodyguard-”
“Okay, that’s cool, I can bodyguard-”
“-for my kids. Someone who can keep them safe while I go back into the ‘game’, as you put it.”
That was the point where I should have definitely refused the job.
So if you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, or you’re avoiding learning anything about the cape community the way I avoid learning about the Kardashians, maybe you’ve never heard of Cat Schrödinger. In the Umbra, though, she’s a legend. Mad scientist type, you know the kind. Most female mad scientists have to go out of their way to look young and pretty and wear makeup to be taken seriously as a villain, because people expect mains who are women to be sexy or else how dangerous can they possibly be? Henches like me get to be hard and butch, but mains gotta be sexy, whichever side they’re on. But Schrödinger broke that mold. She was overweight, she had frizzy hair, she wore glasses - not sexy, stylish ones either, she wore the kind that get nerds with pocket protectors beaten up - didn’t wear makeup, stared right through people, wasn’t suave or sexy… just incredibly smart and competent. Always six steps ahead of the heewees (excuse me, “heroes”… little Umbra slang, there). She left innocent people alone, for the most part, and went after big corporations, with knockout gas and teleportation rays to take out the security guards instead of killing them. She only engaged with the heewees, like, five times directly, plus her henches took on some sidekicks a few times, but each time she got away without getting hit, captured, or tracked. Despite the fact that she appeared to be a human of only average combat skill and no superpowers.
No one ever captured her, or learned her real name or where she lived. And then she disappeared, for sixteen years.
So when I heard she was looking for a hench, I was there with bells on. She had me come to a nice, fancy, rich-person house, which I thought was a little weird for a supervillain’s lair, and then on the inside it turned out to be decorated like a fancy rich-person house, which was pretty surprising but I figured, maybe the place is a cover. We didn’t get very far in the interview in all when she told me that she’d already investigated me and I was perfect for the job, and then she told me I had to change my name, and the rest you know.
“You want me to be a fucking babysitter?”
“Language!”
“Are you Cat Schrödinger or are you a Sunday school teacher?”
“I am a mother,” she snapped. “And you are going to be taking care of my children, so watch your language.”
“I didn’t come here to take a job being a babysitter, I came to hench for one of the world’s top Umbra mains.”
“And that’s what you’d be doing. I need a bodyguard for my kids. You think being my bodyguard is acceptable, but being a bodyguard for my children isn’t?”
I glared down at her. “I don’t do kids.”
“Perhaps you misunderstand. I don’t need a nanny to read Goodnight Moon to my children and sing them clean-up songs and cut out paper dolls with them. I need a bodyguard. The children are old enough that they can take care of themselves, when we take my enemies out of the equation. They need a hench for a bodyguard because they might come under attack from capes - heroes, or other Umbrals.”
My eyes narrowed. “You said you were looking for a woman to hench for you.”
“That’s right.”
“So what the fuck? You pick me because girls are better at taking care of kids?” I sneered at her.
Her eyes stared right through me, like I was nothing, like I wasn’t even there. “Statistically men are much more likely to be rapists. My husband’s in Europe. I don’t want a strange man in my house.”
“You have a husband?”
“I didn’t get my kids through parthenogenesis, no.”
“Yeah, but I figured… someone like you, doesn’t need to buy into society’s bullshit…”
“I didn’t. I met a man I liked. I decided I would rather share a life with him than take over the world. Then he decided to go on a business trip for three weeks without me. Three weeks is long enough to get a plan into action.”
“He doesn’t know you’re Umbral, does he?”
“No, and he’s not going to… not unless I’ve got the world to give him on a platter.”
I thought about having a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, who wanted to give me the world on a platter, and I shivered just a little. I never had anyone care about me like that. Not that I wanted Professor Schrödinger or something, she was way too old for me. But to work for someone who was that passionate about what she did - who’d give up being a cape for the person she loved, who’d throw everything she had into taking the world so she could give it to that person…?
“I… guess I could at least meet the kids, see if I want to do it.”
She nodded. “They’re upstairs. I’ll show you.”
I probably should have backed out. Like I said. I’m not good with kids.
But it wouldn’t exactly be the first dumbass move I’ve made in my life.