Inktober 2019 #19: Sling
Based on “Dr. Ultraviolet Meets Her Nemesis“, a supervillain comedy I am working on about a supervillain who has to take shelter with her extremely mundane sister.
“What exactly is this… stuff?” Ultraviolet asked her sister, with a sneer that she hoped was making it clear she could be using stronger language.
“You asked for books,” Scarlett said, “so I brought you some of mine.”
Ultraviolet tried to count to 10, but Scarlett interrupted at 4. “I think you might really like Chiaoscuro. It’s about a superheroine who falls in love with a magnetic, charismatic villain-”
“It’s a romance novel,” Ultraviolet said.
“Yes. I know they weren’t your favorites but-”
“I despise romance novels,” Ultraviolet said. “Would it have truly killed you to go to a bookstore and get me something I might possibly enjoy, rather than just bringing me whatever dreck you happened to have lying around on your bookshelf?”
“There aren’t any bookstores around here. Everest drove them all out of business. I could have ordered from them, but they’re evil.”
Ultraviolet happened to know that this was absolutely true. The last time she’d been invited to attend the Villainy Connection yearly networking event for supervillains, Everest’s CEO Josh Bevel had been the keynote speaker. Given that she herself was a supervillain, this was hardly a dealbreaker for her. “Libraries exist, then. And what about used book stores?”
“Look, I went out of my way to do you a favor, Violet,” Scarlett said. “It’s not like I don’t have a lot going on. I’ve got four kids, the economy’s been slowing down and people aren’t buying houses so much lately, and I’ve been having issues with Gavin.”
From long experience with her sister, Ultraviolet knew that Scarlett wanted her to ask about her issues with Gavin, but Ultraviolet would have had difficulty caring less. “How hard is it to bring me a book that isn’t a godawful romance novel? Do I look like the kind of suburban mom who’s wasted her life dreaming of some Mr. Wonderful sweeping her off her feet?”
“It sounds like you’re saying that’s what I am.”
“The shoes don’t just fit, Scarlett, they’re on sale and you have ten pairs in your closet.”
“Fuck you, Violet. I didn’t need to come here. You know, the doctors told me you were in traction and you broke an arm and both legs and you might have fractured a vertebra in your neck, and I was worried about you.”
Ultraviolet sighed. “I appreciate that you were worried-”
“And I didn’t just bring you romance novels. This one, All The Pretty Little Horsies, is about the hunt for a serial killer.”
“What made you think I was interested in true crime, either?” They were in a private ward, but the door was open, nurses bustling around outside, so Ultraviolet didn’t say what she really wanted to, which was “I’m a supervillain, my life is a true crime story, why would I want to read about cops hunting a criminal down?” Admittedly there was a huge difference between her genius and ambitions to reshape the world in the image she wanted, and a mundane serial killer getting his jollies by killing teenage girls or something, but on principle Ultraviolet did not want to be sympathizing with cops.
“Well, it’s kind of like what you do for your career, right?”
Ultraviolet couldn’t control the exasperation in her sigh. “Only in the sense that your career involves selling people haunted houses where evil brownies will crawl out of the walls at night and devour them.”
“That… has nothing to do with what I do.”
“I rest my case.”
“Usually I don’t even sell the houses! I prefer being a buyer’s agent. The seller gets money at closing, but the buyer gets a new future. A place that’s going to change their way of life. Something that might be an anchor, a touchstone for them for the rest of their lives.”
“Scarlett. I don’t care. The point is, I’m not a serial killer, I’m nothing like a serial killer, and we are not in the same line of work. I am a scientist.”
“I thought you were an inventor.”
“I am. I’m an inventor and a scientist. All the greatest inventors were scientists.”
“Thomas Edison wasn’t.”
“Thomas Edison was a liar and a thief who stole everything he did from Nikola Tesla, among others.”
“Henry Ford-”
“-wasn’t even an inventor. Dear lord, Scarlett, what did they teach you in school?”
Scarlett glared at her. “You went to the same school.”
“Yes, but I didn’t learn anything there. Everything I learned was self-study. I didn’t actually pay attention in class.”
“Then how do you know that what they taught me was wrong?”
Ultraviolet glanced up at her IV bag, which was full, and at the clock, which was stubbornly nowhere near the end of visiting hours. “Get me some books about scientists. Preferably books where scientists are right, and everyone else is wrong, and all the people who are wrong get eaten by dinosaurs, and the scientists get to say ‘I told you so’ and end up very wealthy.”
“That’s… really specific.”
“It doesn’t have to be dinosaurs. The people who are wrong could get eaten by aliens. Or viruses.”
“I don’t even know how I’d find a book like that.”
“You’d ask at the library, you heathen. Don’t you read?”
“Yes!” Scarlett snapped. “I read a lot of things! Among them, romance novels and true crime, which are apparently not intellectual enough for the great Doctor Ultraviolet to want to sully her eyeballs-”
“Scarlett! Secret identity!” Ultraviolet whispered in a loud hiss.
“No one’s paying attention.”
“Captain Cosmic knows he dropped me. I wouldn’t put it past him to be searching the local hospitals.”
Cosmic had been trying to fly her to the Max, the ultra-secure supervillain prison that so far, no one had managed to break out of. Ultraviolet had used her nanobot lubricant on him to force him to drop her, without perhaps fully considering the fact that they were a thousand feet in the air by the time it took effect. With lubricant in his eyes and covering his hands, Cosmic couldn’t even see her to catch her, and when he’d flailed around by accident and grabbed her foot by trying to figure out where the screaming was coming from, he hadn’t been able to hold on. She’d had to use her prototype antigravity device to save herself, and it hadn’t had enough power to prevent her from hitting the ground hard enough to break most of her limbs, several ribs, and possibly her neck.
She’d already been in traction for two days, completely immobilized - chest taped, head in a neck brace, legs mummified and hanging from pulleys on poles attached to her bed, arm in a sling. She was bored out of her mind. The only entertainment the hospital offered was a television, and just hearing the sounds of daytime game shows and soap operas and Judge Jeri made her want to kill everyone in the hospital, or at the very least her immediate neighbors on the ward who wouldn’t stop watching that crap. Actually having to see it herself might make her brain fatally overheat with rage.
So when her sister had called and offered to visit, Ultraviolet had begged her to bring books, to alleviate the horrible boredom. But this… dreck wasn’t worth the name “book”. It was a bound collection of paper, containing letters arranged into words that had been assembled to produce some sort of simulation of syntactical meaning, that was all.
“I think if Captain Cosmic was here, there would be a lot more shrieking, and people begging for his autograph.”
“He has a secret identity too. He could be walking right past us dressed as a nurse and you would never guess.”
Scarlett sighed. “All right. I’m sorry I said it, Violet. But you need to stop acting like, just because you’re a genius, everything you don’t like or don’t approve of is stupid. And you could be a little bit grateful. I drove way out of my way to visit you.”
“I’m sure your conscience would have nagged at you if you hadn’t.”
“I tell you what. I’ll go to the library and get your books about scientists, and I’ll bring them by tomorrow.”
“That would be suitable.”
“And I’ll bring Alan. He’s sixteen, so he’s allowed to visit, and I’m sure he’d be thrilled to see his aunt and explain the plot of Battle Island to you, or Kraftwerk, or one of those other video games he’s obsessed with.”
“No! Scarlett, I’m not interested in listening to your offspring prattle on about whatever degenerate pastime has caught his fancy.”
“And I’m not interesting in helping a bitchy older sister who can’t even say thank you, but I’d feel bad about leaving you here all alone. So I’ll bring Alan to entertain you.” Scarlett smiled widely. “I’ll tell him that you’re feeling cranky because you’re in pain, so he should ignore any rude thing you say to him. Since you’d be incapable of asking him to stop politely, I guess that means Alan’s going to have a captive audience tomorrow.”
“Scarlett!”
“See you tomorrow, sis!” Scarlett caroled, and left the room, leaving Ultraviolet to fume about the unfairness of it all. If only she could get decent henches, she could get someone to transport her to her base, where her rapid regeneration machine could heal her within minutes. But no, the union had blacklisted her, and you couldn’t trust non-union henches. Totally unfair. Every other villain had henches lining up around the block - even the ones who routinely shot their own employees. But you mutate the henchmen into anthropomorphic sharks one time… and now, because of that idiot Captain Cosmic and because of the moronic Henchman’s Union, Scarlett was going to force her to listen to her oldest child ramble on about whatever stupid garbage he was in love with right now.
If she could only reach her crutches, she’d get out of this bed and hobble out of the hospital right now.