Chapter 5

Now if I had to award a second place prize for the next choicest skirt decorating the room, it would have to be a coin flip between Skulda the Valkyrie Warrior-Maiden or the Green Canary. The others? Who could tell really, under all of those cowls, hoods, masks and full bodysuits. They could have all been dolls or drudges ... who could tell?

The Norse babe had it all; youth, a crisp Nordic face with big blue eyes, long braided blonde hair and more than a hint of well-nourished cleavage under her massive breastplate that suggested her bosoms, when released, might be unmatched in all of Valhalla. On second thought, no ... she was more like Pilsner’s dream woman – young and dumb as a brick, with oodles of bulging baby-fat. She was also, according to tabloid rumors, well... excitable. Supposedly, she was the youngest of all of the Valkyries, the ancient Norse ‘choosers of the slain’, and here on this mortal realm she had little qualms about doing her own choosing, preferably frequently and with the maximum amount of applied bloodshed using her mystical spear or heavy steel mace.

Just looking at her made me nervous, mostly regarding all of the numerous theological issues involved. If Valkyries were real, then did that mean so were the Norse Gods? Or the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Irish or Indian deities too, for that matter? What about Cthulhu and the Old Ones then? If myths can become real, then what’s left that isn’t?

Now that I’ve discovered for myself that Reality can be somewhat flexible, I just didn’t want to know all the rest of these mystical ramifications.

On the other hand, the Green Canary displayed fewer supremely outstanding features but she was inadequate nowhere. She was more of a woman, closer to my age, and her eyes seemed intelligent and perhaps more worldly. Her face was covered solely by a small eye-mask and her features were decidedly feminine. The odds were good that her family was stolidly middle-class and unlike most of the rest of these costumed skirts, she wasn’t born with a silver spoon in hand and might have actually worked at least once for a living. I reckoned that she might even have a real life outside of her costume and could pull off being just a regular sort of broad sometimes, when the occasion demanded. She seemed like the sort of dame that a mug like me could take under arm to the Arcade on Saturday night to parade before the guys with pride ... especially if she was wearing those green fishnets on those long legs with her high-heeled patent leather boots. The tight green leather corset was a swell touch too, but in my opinion to really make that outfit sing out, she could perhaps have displayed a bit more cleavage, like the Amazon Princess sported. Just a tiny little bit more. She was apparently a woman who was proud of her body, but didn’t flaunt it like a round-heeled chippie, unlike Lady Firefly.

I didn’t see her wings ... she was supposed to have big green ones on her back, but maybe they were hid underneath her black leather jacket. Like the notorious Blackwing, who was sitting a few seats further down on her right, right next to Doc Wilder, she too wore a utility belt around her waist, this one also of dark green leather. Famously, it was full of nasty things to use upon people that annoyed her, like criminals such as me. Rumors in the Gazette suggest that this green songbird had more than a few anger management issues of her own, but I do like a broad with some spirit who just won’t take any shit from anyone.

During the melee and resulting scrum, she’d never left her chair, which was actually the nearest seat on the right from me. Instead she had been giving me the secretive feminine sideways eye of appraisal while overtly pretending to ignore me. She might have given me a sly wink too, but if so, it was very subtly done.

As for the runner ups, seated across from Blackwing near the important end of the table was the Amazon Princess, but no, after a third concentrated examination, I realized that ‘she’ was actually a man! Too bad really, as a dame, she was absolutely gorgeous. Chances were that he/she/it was actually a hermaphrodite or transsexual, and not a man crossdressing, complete with real, genuine female breasts under that straining corset. There was also more flowing estrogen in his or her blood than most of the so-called ‘normal’ women here. ‘She’ was also, supposedly according to the Gazette, the daughter (or rather son) of the Goddess Athena and the classical era Greek hero Achilles. So ... in theory, another semi-divine mythological personage. Undoubtedly, there were others.

Honestly, I had to admit that that the “Princess’, whatever her origin, presented herself (and a heroic amount of cleavage and bare thigh right up to her hip bone) with pride and ganache. He, she or it was actually one extraordinarily well put together broad, but any man with a lick of sense would just say no. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Amazon warrior women (and men) killed and devoured their mortal partners after sex. I wondered for just a moment about what the odds were that she in fact preferred to sleep exclusively with other women and surprisingly (or not) discovered that she mostly didn’t. Unfortunately, the evil way she was glaring at me didn’t help to improve my initial first opinion of her, that romantically she’d be way more trouble than she was worth. Also, just looking at her brought up other more uncomfortable mythological issues that I really didn’t want to deal with.

As for the notorious Blackwing, perhaps the island’s most famous dark paladin of the night for well over a decade, her form fitting armored black leather bodysuit covered every inch of her body from her head to toe except for her mouth and jaw but disguised virtually nothing of her shapely feminine form that swelled underneath. She must have been at least forty like Wilma, and I was willing to bet that underneath all of that leather she was still a dish. Her anger against street criminals was also legendary and she didn’t much care whether her captive victims were brought to justice in one intact piece or not. No ... not the gal for me.

The only other gal that I thought might be of possible romantic interest was the infamous Atomic Girl, who was at about mid-table on my left, with Mighty Maid sitting in-between her and Wilma Reeds. Rumor was that these two older gals didn’t get on. She was another one of the original old guard and founding member of the All-Star Squad back during the war. Back in the day, she was called the Atomic Maiden, and according to the papers she was a one-woman army while fighting the Japanese until the last, the final bitter guerilla fighting in north Japan and then Korea that lasted until just a decade ago, 1950. Interestingly, she refused to help the government during the later additional ‘police action’ in China afterwards. Supposedly, she went all socialist and denounced our government as warmongers, saying that the over ten million dead American servicemen lost in the last decade of combat had been enough.

For an older gal about the same age as Doc Wilma, Mighty Maid and Blackwing, she was admitted still a dish ... if perhaps a crazy ultra-socialist one. She also has a teen-aged daughter now, Starlite-Starbrite, but I’ve heard almost nothing reported about her in the papers. I didn’t see the daughter present here right now, but I briefly caught a glimpse of the duo working together during the warehouse battle.

Gossip in the Gazette suggested that both mother and daughter were both rather ‘bohemian’ and often could be found hanging out in the Village coffee shops and bars. I didn’t ... so I hoped that never crossed paths socially with either of those crazy women!

As for the Mighty Maid herself, well ... let’s just say that there was frankly nothing the least bit feminine about her. Even her muscles look like they’ve got muscles of their own! The same could be nearly be said about Commander Grimm, whose own patriotic colored full bodysuit demonstrated that she was undoubtedly a woman in the flesh underneath, but perhaps an overly muscular one as well.

Well ... in any case, I wasn’t here to select out a date for the weekend!

Once I’d thoroughly scanned the female flesh on display, it wasn’t too hard for me to ramp down my natural masculine interest at being the guest of nearly two dozen powerful and important women. Unfortunately, I was willing to bet (even without checking the odds) that most of these gals only had romantic thoughts for other skirts as well. That was good, maybe ... that meant that at least we had that shared interest in common. Besides, lesbianism hadn’t been a punishable crime for a decade, since the ‘Equality for Women Act’ and constitutional amendment of 1949. Even most of the notable female politicians were much more publicly candid about their same-sex partners these days. Heck, if you read all the major glossy magazines or newspaper tabloids, being a Sapphic was not only modern and trendy, but becoming in Hollywood and high society the new ‘normal’.

The popular print media, along with movies and television, were doing their best to subtly promote male homosexuality too, since men supposedly needed to find something to keep their penises occupied with, other than women. That was still a newer and fairly still exotic trend that so far was only being adopted by younger males, mostly just the high school aged ones. I guess it’s being pushed hard now in the all the schools not only as an option of choice, but as the politically preferred ‘socially responsible’ option. Birth control education for girls is government mandated and young women are positive pushed to have education and careers first, and save reproduction, if necessary, to their thirties. The moral stigma of having a baby in their teens now far outweighs any disgrace of having a child later, without any formal husband as the father.

Even worse still, is the new trend of testing the sex of babies in the womb, early in the pregnancy stage, and ‘recommending’ that at least half of the male fetuses be prematurely terminated. According to the newspaper story I recently read in the Times, males are becoming increasingly genetically unnecessary, and an inefficient waste of social resources (according to the women scientists) so long as a sufficient sperm supply is available in a test tube for inseminating mothers. So much for the old way of making a baby! This assumes, of course, that there will never be another Great War ever again ... I wouldn’t bet on that!

Most other guys, like around my age or older, I suppose still feel the old, pre-war social stigma against ‘fags’ and are concerned about an entire new generation of girls growing up in female-only households, but I guess everyone deserves to be happy their own way. As for my father’s generation ... well, they’re mostly all either dead, or casualties of the long war, both physically and mentally, or just politically irrelevant. They came home to a pension ... but yet another economic depression with damned few jobs or willing women now willing to become traditional wives! They’re mostly angry at the way the world has completely changed during my generation ... but they’ve got fuck-all political clout to change things.

Wow, I thought to myself as the fog in the room finally completely lifted, how the world has completely changed in just my lifetime! I remained where I had been seated, unharmed and with barely a hair on my head blown out of place

I think it was the Revenant, the famous dead (but still kicking) mystical Gypsy or ancient pharaonic Egyptian queen with strange eldritch powers that eventually managed to start bringing the throng of annoyed and rather unhappy heroines back under some sort of dignified order, and both seated and quiet. Handy Andi was certainly not helping the alleged seriousness of the situation by hanging from the ceiling upside down by four of her eight limbs, while giggling hysterically.

Damn! I just now realized that I’d lost my favorite hat in the carnage of the warehouse explosion. Now that my coat and hat were both gone, I now owned absolutely nothing in this world, except perhaps I still had my pride ... which was now debatable, since my bare ass was still hanging out this open backed hospital gown and the various explosive and colliding energy wind blasts had blown the thin fabric hither and yon, quite a bit, probably leaving my scarcely hidden attributes fully presented on display.

So much then for dignity. Well, you can’t have everything.

Everyone kept glaring at me, but at least the weapons had stopped flying, for the moment anyway. We seemed to have a momentary truce, so this seemed to be a good time to stand up and starting demanding answers to my questions... tactfully. If I really started to piss them off my odds of getting out of this room in one healthy piece would start getting mighty slim, and I already had a decent headache from the effort of just making it here in one piece and surviving the last three minutes!

Pilsner had the real brains of our duo, but even as a kid, I was always the calm and cool one when threatened or under pressure. In the Abattoir you learn to fight nearly as soon as you can stand, but more importantly you also learn when not to ... and how to bluff or just be able to stand straight and hold your own ground when someone is just jawing at you. Never let them see you sweat, or bleed, and never show anyone any weakness.

“Hi, for the gals who haven’t been downstairs in the sub-basement dungeon and read my medical chart, I’m Dean Chance. You can call me Chancer. Oh, the doc apparently wrote that I’m completely free from infection ... but since I’m from the Westside, I’d suggest that the lot of yoose go and get booster immunization shots, just in case. I’m here as an invited guest ... since someone, and I guess that means you over there Blackwing, brought me here. So now, I supposed that I just ought to come on up and join yoose guys. Maybe just perhaps, we’ve got a few things together that should be discussed to our mutual benefit.” Or not ... Blackwing had the decency to almost crack a smile, but that was meaningless since she’s a known psychopath. The Professor, Rachael up at the far of the table from me, looked like she was about to turn into a bright red very angry tomato. Saying ‘yoose’ is strictly outer boroughs street talk, and normally way too ‘rube’ for me to jaw, but I wanted them to underestimate me and perhaps relax their guard a bit. Besides, odds were that Prof. Reeds, a gal of her age, being well over fifty, and with the pressures of her day job and heroic hobbies, had at least her share of blood pressure issues. The chances were very good of that, I could tell, and I didn’t want to make any overt threats.

“Well Mr. Chance,” Reeds snarled, pointing an angry finger at me, “you’re also a twice convicted criminal and now a known associate of Doctor Fate as well! You’re heading back to prison son, just as fast as one of us can spare the time to escort you there. Aiding and abetting, conspiracy, felony collusion with a federally wanted criminal! You and your crippled friend were the only living people apprehended from that warehouse, untainted people that is, so they’ll likely add multiple accessory to manslaughter charges to the pair of you, as well for all of the rest that didn’t make it out.”

I had to snort with laughter. The odds of those sort of criminal charges sticking were remote and frankly laughable, and she knew it ... and I told her so. “I’ll take those odds, because those charges are all meaningless. You may know a friendly DA or two and have entire rolodexes’ with the phone numbers of eager federal agents and attorneys, but I must frankly tell you that your chances of making any kind of successful state or federal case against me are even now at best, three thousand six-hundred and forty-seven to one. Trust me. Me and Pilsner, we wuz both just drivers, given orders to take a few lugs from Point A to Point B. Just peons ... not even enough of minnows to be worth using as cast bait. You’re seemingly rolling in the cabbage with your fancy digs here, care to lay down a meaningful wager, here and now? Well ... after someone first finds my pants, so I can count up my left-over change first. Yeah, I’m a twice-convicted felon, but I’m no liar, and I’m willing to yap my mouth about what I know, and I know plenty ... if it can work to our mutual benefit together. Now, someone here, one of the docs, must have my pants somewhere ... and as you can see, I’d really like to have them.”

The poor Professor seemed well on the path to either a heart attack or a burst blood vessel, and when she suddenly seized me in a spectral fist of power, clinched and controlled by her angry outstretched right hand. So much for tact and patience. I decided to remind the middle aged lady Brainiac that she just might not be immortal after all, regardless of the colossal size of her apparently legendary ego.

Nearly immediately she began to turn even bright beet red and her threatening arm, once rock steady, now began to shake and twitch, and the spectral force grip on me began to relax almost immediately before she could begin to crush me.

“Chances are that you’ve really been ignoring your blood pressure lately.” I advised her in a calm and steady tone of voice. “There’s too much pressure on your heart as well ... there, didn’t it just speed up real fast right now and then it skipped a beat? Whoops, there is goes again. I’d think you’d better sit and rest and maybe actually take some of those pills that your wife gives you, instead of tossing them into the trash can. Odds are, if you keep on being belligerent, that you just might have that first overdue heart attack ... now none of us would really want that now, would we?”