Chapter 3: The War of Heroes
THE WORLD
While Sara scrounged together her remaining money to a place so she could maybe not have to live on the street, Deep State had "leaked" the existence of a Deep State, masking the idea that this was a person not some sort of organization. So instead of searching for an address and maybe making a lynch mob, the first thought on everyone's mind was, "What is this shadowy group of politicians, and what are they planning?" That entire mindset of paranoia led to them being easily controlled. Subsequent papers talked about how heroes may or may not be involved in this Deep State, whether the public could trust their actions, and finally reports talking about certain named villains.
Sara noticed Gemini among these so-called villains, but didn't buy the hype. She didn't like that Gemini had meddled in her love life, obviously (even if some of it did turn out to be right), but she was no villain. And she largely stayed away from the fights between heroes, though it made her life significantly harder. She had got a call back from an art studio that wanted to see (what remained of) her portfolio. But that place was knocked apart when Hurricane Force and Bomberman fought over which of them was secretly a villain. Because the homeless shelters were sometimes scary for women, she built a little fort out of scrap particle board and cardboard, but sleeping on the street not only meant harassment by cops but she was frequently in the middle of turf wars, not only by countless groups of criminals but now by heroes who were unsure of each other. She couldn't even name them, any more than she could name the thugs that got into knife or gun fights in the alleys she called her backyard. After one group knocked over her house while she was in it, she finally just bought a pack of chalk, made herself a door in the sidewalk, and then drew the inside as a sort of pocket dimension underground shelter. This afforded her some safety from all these people while she looked over promising jobs and apartments.
Yet the stress of hiding underground probably got to her, especially after most of the buildings one day were smashed up by a fight between Greek God and Kronos the Titan. One building even got stomped flat! More importantly, her drawn doorway only really worked when it had nothing on top of it. But this doorway had piles of wreckage over it. Since the door swung outward, shehad to manage on food and water by what she brought with her. One of the limits of her power was that food or water she made behaved like food and water, but it tasted like paint. Unless she wanted to get very sick, that wasn't a good option. Now, she could indirectly summon water, by making a storm cloud or a water spigot for example, but any water she drew directly was no good. Food was even worse. Still life of food was inedible, and drawing a refrigerator or cupboard would just give her an empty area for storing food. She had some ramen noodles and some fried pork skins, but this wasn't exactly quality nourishment.
Finally, some heroes cleared away the rubble after days of screaming, "Let me out!" Sara had claustrophobia by this point, and needed therapy. But therapy was hard to come by, and she needed food and a home. So she spent time couch-surfing between the apartments of her friends. She found temp jobs working at a thrift store and at WacDuncan's (a fast food store set up in honor of Willem-Alexander), where she was told she would be working for $11/hr, but the part time rate was so part-time and the schedule was so erratic that she might as well be working for $4/hr. The pay was terrible, the food was terrible, but they allowed overnight parking for their employees (effectively validating them). Wacky D's as it was called, was not a terribly great experience, but not having to pay for parking eased the burden on her friends, and she was able to rent a new place.
While all of this went on, there was a lot of weirdness going down. Zombies were rising from the ground from some cause that most people decided was unknown. It was getting so you needed to sleep with a machete to feel safe at night. Sara dealt with one of them. "May I take your order?" she asked, failing initially to notice. "Braaaaiinsss..." the 'customer' said. Without losing her cool (zombies could detect fear, even if they could no longer understand language), she said, "Sorry, we don't serve brains here. There's a French restaurant a mile or so up that serves calf brains in milk, but I think they get it from a can." The other cashier passed her a shotgun from under the table, she calmly thanked him, cocked the gun and blew the zombie's head clean off. It slumped to the ground in a mass of ichor. The restaurant after this incident switched the windows from mostly glass to brick up to chest level reinforced with metal, and the doors went from pull to knob (zombies could push and pull things but didn't have fine dexterity, and turning things tore their arms off). But for today, she had cleanup. She told management, "Someone run cashier duty, I have a mess in my line." The first thing she did was roll the body on to a garment bag then mopped up the floor. One of the line cooks who had nothing better to do helped her haul him to the back of the kitchen. He stripped him naked, grabbed a cleaver that nobody had used lately, severed the feet and hands, bagged them, and tossed them into the trash. Ditto with the sex organs. He chopped the legs and arms, and was doing the same, when the manager said, "Wait, don't toss the torso. We're gonna make a special." Sara balked, "You're gonna serve hamburgers out of zombie meat? It's diseased! We'll have more zombies. Not to mention we'll get shut down!" The manager shook his head, "No, hamburgers isn't an option... It's too hard to clean out the grinder afterward, and you're right, we don't want to spread disease. No, you're right. We need fully transparency with our customers about what they're eating and it needs to be totally hygienic. So we're gonna make a limited time dish! WacZombie is on the menu! Okay Billy, debone this guy, and cut the meat into scquares. Remember, we need to thoroughly spray the counter with cleaner after this, and precook all the meat until it has an internal temperature of 160º before reheating it..." That was the day Sara quit the restaurant business.
The problem of fighting heroes persisted as well. Sara worried at any day some superheroes might smash her car or her place of business. Living in this town was hard enough without weird things going on.
ISEKAI
A large crowd of thugs surrounded Yuki and I while we were walking home. Well, they were not technically thugs. Officially, these were the heroes Expiation Man, Chastity Sister, and Rube Goldberg. They were all very powerful in their own right. Expiation Man had the power to forgive sins, Chastity Sister was a major nuisance to people's love life, and Rube Goldberg was an expert at designing those gadgets that automatically butter and toast bread (or elaborate traps). "Stop evildoer!" one of them said while we were just minding our business and talking about whether the IRS should in fact be abolished and replaced by a fair tax that only charges for sales, "Now you will answer for your crimes!" I shook my head, "Leave us alone! Or Yuki and I will stop you!" Yuki spoke up, "No I won't!" Oh right. Yuki's power was that she only aged on leap years, great for looking young and beautiful and staying school teacher for much longer than the normal working period, terrible for battling villains or thugs.
"Yeah?" one sneered, "You and what army."
"Heh," I said, smirking. I pressed my hand against the ground, and a portal to another world appeared. Out popped sentai fighters from several shows. "Spade Ace!" said one in red. "Diamond Jack!" said the one in blue. "Heart Queen!" said the pink one. "Clover King!" exclaimed the fourth in green. Another group appeared. "AkaRanger! AoRanger! KiRanger! MomoRanger! MidoRanger!" said the red, blue, yellow, peach, green (respectively) squad. A third team appeared, these ones had super suits with geometric shapes in the colors of red, blue, green, yellow, and pink. They didn't bother to announce who they were, until later when they declared they were OhRangers. Yet another group came, this one with ninja-themed powers, only to suddenly change into sentai suits, calling themselves the Ninja Rangers. The later had a white ranger. There was a traffic safety sentai squad, but the less said about them, the better.
The three of them screamed as a large squad of suited soldiers pounded them to the dirt. "I guess, this army?" I said, laughing as the two of us walked home.
