I hope folks like it.

We also (finally) have some fan art to put up. The first comes from Brian Stinson, based on Katie Tandler’s art, and is called Leather the Series. Click on it to see it in full size — and you want to see it in full size:

The second is from old friend of the writing Tephlon, who — like quite a few of the readers — really enjoyed Leather’s Dynamo Girl turn. So here she is in all her lycra glory!

Beyond that, please enjoy! With luck we’ll be back on Tuesday next week, and things will be cheerfully normal.

And yes. That means this is not the last part.

*** *** *** ***

In a way, this was going to be the blowoff to my story just as much as it was the blowoff to the week’s criminal undertakings. This was the crime scene I was going to be at ground zero for. I’d like to say I was feeling a surge of adrenalin and a cool sense of adventure, but to be perfectly blunt I felt carsick.

For the record, I was in the ‘third row’ of the Leathermobile, which was just as big on the inside as the outside. I was sitting on a bench style seat that could be folded into the floor for convenience. I sat next to a brown cardboard box which had been carefully strapped into a seat. This was the Mountbatten Urn, I knew. I’d seen it the night before — it had been snagged without a hitch.

Priceless or not, it looked like an old pot. And while she was psyched — Leather was always psyched after a job worked — she wasn’t nearly as into the Urn as she had been the commercial jewelry they still made fun of. This one wasn’t about money. It could have been any macguffin. And it was being hauled to a new crime scene on the off-chance Leather needed to distract or bargain down Darkhood or the cops.

Which is of course why I was strapped in next to it. The collar was strapped around my throat again. I’d submitted without a struggle, but I didn’t put it on myself this time. Nor did they ask me. This time, I was a prisoner, and the threat of blowing my stupid head off wasn’t to guarantee my good behavior while Leather played at superhero.

Carsick barely describes it.

Leather was drumming her fingers on the car door. “Is the MickDee’s still serving breakfast?” she asked.

“Until ten thirty,” Marco said. He was driving. Wheelman, like they said. The Bagmen were behind the two of them, with me and the urn in the back.

“We should totally get MickDee’s,” Leather said. “Who wants a McMuffin?”

“I could go for a sausage biscuit,” one of the bagmen said.

“The Steve’s halfway to the bank,” Marco said. “You sure you want to take the time?”

“Yeah. Get three egg mcmuffins, three sausage mcmuffins, three sausage biscuits and whatever people want to drink. Chapman! You want anything?”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying not to think about sausage. Of all the ways to prolong my lifespan, throwing up on a bagman seemed at the bottom of the list.

“Okay then,” she said. She was bouncing in her seat, all nervous energy. I remembered what she was like on the Dynamo Girl run — all smooth and professional. Excited but not frenetic. It must make a difference to know how it’s all going to play out in advance. Or at least know how you intend for it to play out.

The plan was, if anything, even more basic than the jewel heist. It was literally “drive up to the bank, double park, get the hostage and the urn out, hit the bank and start grabbing all the cash they could.” There was no finesse, no careful planning. This was an overt shout, taunting Darkhood and the Meridian City Metropolitan Police to try and catch Leather. And in a weird way, it was no-lose for Leather herself.

Seriously. The worst case scenario involved her successfully stealing maybe millions of dollars. If the cops showed up but Darkhood didn’t, Leather would tangle with them, probably win and escape scot free. Her legend would increase and she’d be ready to move on to her new lair and her new touring city. If Darkhood showed, then it was fifty/fifty she’d get away, they’d probably take no money, but there’d be a superhero fight to add to her resume. If she got caught but the henches got away, it would be a phone call to one service. If she got away and the henches didn’t, it would be another phone call. If they were all captured, then the Steve would do his thing. Even as we rode, the Service was pulling everything out of her old Lair, so there was no chance the cops could raid it and get anywhere. The money from her earlier jobs was all laundered and banked. Prison would practically be a vacation for them.

Really, it’s hard not to be cynical. No matter how you slice it, crime did pay for Leather and the gang. All that could happen was jail time, and it was clear Leather and the Henches weren’t scared of jail.

We pulled into a McDonalds. There were three cars ahead of us. “Oh, bullshit,” Leather said. “Someone want to go inside?”

“We could send Chapman,” one of the Bagmen said.

Leather giggled. “Tempting.”

“He’ll tip the cops,” Marco said. “I would.”

“Yeah, point. And we’re in costume.” She made a face. “Hang on.” She pushed out, flipping onto the roof and leaping from the Leathermobile. Curling into a ball, she smashed through the front window like it was tissue paper and landed inside. With the windows rolled down, I could just barely hear the screams and Leather’s demands for Sausage McMuffins. To go.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I muttered.

“What? No. Don’t. Don’t be sick,” the bagman in front of me said, turning. “Do you hear me, Chapman? You are not going to be sick. You are not going to be sick.”

They had spare cloth moneybags. The other bagman got me one in time. They threw it in one of the brown trashcans before Leather got back with a pile of meat and egg swag in paper sacks, and we headed for the real job. To her credit she looked concerned or at least sympathetic when she’d learned I threw up. The smell of cooked egg really didn’t help.

“So I don’t get it,” one of the bagmen was saying. “You didn’t want one of us going in because we’d be recognized and they’d call the police, but you were okay with breaking through the front window and stealing a couple sacks of breakfast?”

“It’s a time thing,” Leather said. “Those guys calling the cops after we’re gone means at least some of the cops will be distracted from the bank heist. If we went in and waited, they might show up before we leave.”

“You just wanted a chance to steal Sausage McMuffins and call it work related,” Marco said with a chuckle.

“I didn’t steal them. I left a fifty.”

“That window would have cost more than fifty bucks.”

“I didn’t say my actions were legal. I just didn’t steal breakfast.” She took a bite of hash browns. “Aren’t we there yet?”

Within a couple of minutes, we were. This bank was at the top of a long sloping hill in the West Highlands. One of the hilltop neighborhoods where tourists and marketplaces were thick, overlooking the Underlands Dynamo Girl had patrolled two nights before. This was an old bank, back when they made them into temples of finance, all granite columns and elaborate architecture, and “THE FIRST MERIDIAN NATIONAL BANK AND TRUST” carved into the top. Of course, all the glass down closer to the doors declared it ‘BankOne,’ the subject of one and probably more than one buyout over the past ten years or so.

Regardless, it was a bank, and a big one. The Leathermobile careened up the fifteen cement steps in the front, coming up on a top landing and skidding around. It felt like we’d driven through a potato field, and if I hadn’t thrown up five minutes before, I’d have done so right then. As it was there were dry heaves, just in time for me to be hauled unceremoniously out of the back seat by one of the bagmen.

“Remember, stay close,” the bagman hissed to me as he dragged me to the bank’s front doors. “You don’t want the collar going off.” The other bagman was setting the box with the urn in it next to the door. Leather skipped back down the steps, turned and got a full running start for the doors. She took the stairs five at a time and leapt at the top of them, curling into a ball going at least fifty miles an hour, and smashed through the doorways, shattering the glass overhead and to the sides of both the doors and blowing the doors — designed to open out — into the room.

There was immediate chaos and the sound of an alarm as she rolled seemingly chaotically through the lobby. The lie was put to her seeming lack of control when she turned it into backflips, ending with a handspring that landed her on top of one of the islands where deposit slips and chained pens lived. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she shouted. “Welcome to your very own bank robbery! Everyone down on the floor right now! We don’t want anyone to get hurt!”

There were screams, of course. Men and women alike panicked and fled. There were three security guards, but they had to recover from their own surprise before they could react. That gave Leather a chance to dive, twisting in the air and landing in front of the first. She kissed him, deftly unbuckling the belt that held his gun, mace and radio, and threw it into the corner with a twisting motion. “Be good now,” she said to him as she rolled to one side, just in time to not be maced by the second guard, who’d reacted a little bit faster.

Rather than take the risk that he might actually hit her with the spray, Leather did a backflip, landing behind a panicking businessman. “Hi!” she said, deftly lifting him up and darting to the side, keeping him between her and the guard.

“Put him down!” the guard shouted, voice shaking. “I swear to God I’ll shoot!”

Leather dropped the buisnessman to the floor, feet first, then used his shoulders to spring up and over, hooking her legs around the guard’s neck and rolling over his head, hooking and flinging him fifteen feet into the third guard, who had managed to get out his radio. Why his radio I have no idea — the alarm was already going off. But then, what would a security guard normally do when an acrobatic twentysomething began smashing things and doing handsprings in the lobby. I mean, it doesn’t come up in the training manuals, does it?

The two guards hit and went down. Leather’s lips curled into a smile as she regained her feet, sweeping up a pumppot of complimentary coffee the bank had at the front of their velvet rope line and spinning, throwing it towards the third guard’s legs. He had been running for the gunbelt she’d tossed, and she hit perfectly, making him go sprawling and rolling.

It looked like it hurt. My heart was pounding. This wasn’t like watching Dynamo Girl. These were the good guys, and Leather was humiliating and hurting them.

At the same time, I have to admit she looked fantastic. Her movements were freer than Dynamo Girl’s had been. She did riskier moves, and spent more time setting up elaborate strikes. Now, satisfied that the security guards were down, she did cartwheels to the front of the line. “Don’t you just hate a linecutter?” she asked the woman who was crouched on the floor at the front of the line. “How’s it goin’, boys?”

“Not so bad,” one of the bagmen shouted back. They were handing cloth bags to tellers, and getting money dumped into them. The tellers looked freaked but did what they were told. And no doubt were dropping dye bombs or setting off more alarms as they did it. Clearly Leather and the others didn’t care about that, though.

“Good! We need to hit the vault?”

“Can’t hurt!”

There were sirens outside.

“Hold that thought! Got to make the donuts!” she shouted, running for the door. She blew me a kiss on the way and dove through the shattered facade.

Me?

I followed.

I know. I’m an idiot. But I’d come all this way, I had a bomb on my throat, there was bad shit going down all around me and all I knew was the lead of my story was diving towards police. I wasn’t going to miss this. I had my camera out and everything.

By the time I’d gotten out, Leather had dove down the steps for the cops. Which is smart, if you think about it. She didn’t want them to set up perimeters behind their cars, shooting bullets and tear gas at her. She wanted to be close at hand so they’d have to engage her — especially since there wasn’t any chance they could beat her in a fight.

She made a show of it. Spinning around, pushing off one officer’s bulletproof vest, grabbing the arm of the next and whirling him around, forcing that officer’s own taser onto another while she kicked her legs out and nailed two more as they got close. Movie moves. The kinds of things you never see in real fights because they’re dumb, but when you’re so much faster, stronger and more durable than the people you’re fighting you can do dumb things if you want.

I snapped pictures. My heart was racing. I have to admit, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to root for. This was Leather. I’d been living with her for a week. I’d seen her go out and save a woman’s money and maybe her life. We’d made jokes together and she’d opened up to me. I knew her, at least a little.

But she was a criminal, and these police officers were trying to stop her. And watching her beat and even humiliate them, I felt a little ill. Is this how villains see us? As opportunities to show off?

“Boss!”

It was one of the bagmen. They were coming out, sacks laden. I couldn’t imagine how much money was in those things. Leather turned to look at him, which is when I realized there weren’t any more cops. She’d taken them all down. And what’s more — and perhaps more incredibly and more frighteningly, all at once — I could tell she hadn’t really hurt any of them. She’d bloodied their noses and encouraged them to lie down and be in pain or unconscious, but I doubted any of them would miss a day’s work over this.

I felt small, and tired. Oh, and there was a bomb around my neck. But by now that was old news.

“You ready?”

“Oh yeah! We’re rolling in it!”

“Right! Then let’s hit the Leathermobile and get the Hell–”

It looked like a missile, and when it hit her back it exploded into sparks powerful enough that one arced out to a metal garbage can nearby. Leather convulsed and went down on the steps, her body spasming.

I turned, back against the wall. Somehow I managed to take a picture.

Darkhood was across the way, up on top of a bus that had been stopped by the onrush of police cars. His clothing was rough cut brown and black — it looked medieval, but his gauntlets were modern archery gloves and his bow was pristine. He had turned to cover the bagmen, standing tall, his hood back enough so we could see the domino mask that covered his eyes. “Put the bags down, boys!” he called. “You made a good run of it, but it’s over now!”

I looked back at the bagmen. They looked at each other and dropped the bags.

“Now that’s a good pair of thugs,” he said, dropping to the ground fluidly. He managed to land in a crouch, never changing his aim. “Now, you understand I’ll need to bag you up, of course. It’s nothing personal, but I need to bind up your boss before she comes to, and I can’t have you two sneaking off.”

“Hey man, just don’t hurt us,” one of the bagmen said. “This’s just a job, you know?”

“You might want to rethink career counseling,” he said shifting his grip–

Leather rolled forward, grabbing the nightstick off one of the downed cop’s belts, and threw it at Darkhood. We’re talking a seriously mighty throw — the kind of thing the Big Unit would sell two children and a controlling interest in Roger Clemens’s memorabilia to be able to throw.

Darkhood rolled to the side, firing his arrow at the club and nailing it in midair. His net deployed even as it was knocked up into the air, and Darkhood rolled forward. As he came out of the roll he had another arrow nocked and he fired it, forcing Leather to dive and roll over it — she’d been running for him. As she came up from a roll he shot another arrow at her feet. This one exploded — a concussive charge that threw her back towards the police cars. She twisted in midair and tried to land on her feet, but she misjudged the landing and rolled back over the vehicle. I saw her head hit pavement and winced.

And because I was there, I took another picture.

Leather managed to roll to the side. I could see her looking under the car, watching Darkhood run — he was circling behind, keeping a wide arc. He wanted a clear shot, and he wanted to keep his distance away from her. It hit me that’s what this fight would come down to — Darkhood wanted distance so he could nail her with arrows. Leather wanted to close so she could kick his teeth in. And so far he was ahead on points.

“I got a lot of woozy cops here!” Leather shouted. “So if you intend to shoot a tear gas arrow or a flash arrow or another bomb, don’t let me stop you! I’m sure they’ll feel lots better without eyes or spleens or whatever!”

“Worry not, fair lady,” Darkhood answered. His voice was calm. Measured. He made the ‘fair lady’ thing sound normal too — like this was how people talked. “I’ve got plenty of arrows for all occasions.”

“Yeah? Let’s find out, mumbletypants!” And Leather threw herself backwards, landing on her hands at the base of the stairs and handspringing with enough strength to clear her to the landing at the top. Not ten feet from me.

Right next to the box.

As she flipped, she also had twisted, avoiding a fired arrow by inches. It impacted above us with an electrical discharge. Darkhood ran to the side, another arrow nocked as he jockeyed for position.

“Hey spiky!” Leather shouted, tearing the box and lifting the Mountbatten Urn where it could be clearly seen. “Is this what you’re looking for? Huh?”

Darkhood skidded to a stop. “Leather! Put that down — gently! We can talk about this!”

“Yeah, about that? So not my style!” She giggled. “Think fast!”

I stared, my hands working my camera almost mechanically, as Leather did a forward in air roll and flung the priceless urn out and away from herself, far over Darkhood’s head.

Now, I’ve looked at the pictures, and I know intellectually what happened. I know that somehow — somehow Darkhood threw himself backwards, managing to drop the arrow he was holding, nock twoarrows at once, fire them while the Urn was almost exactly over his head, draw, nock and fire a third arrow, and hit the ground at a horrid angle, stretched out and back-to his enemy. I know that somehow, the two arrows he fired first had a cable connecting them, and embedded themselves both in telephone poles, the cable retracting taut. And I know the third arrow deployed a net that snagged the urn at the precise instant the net would also hit the cable and wrap around it.

I know that. I’ve gone through it. And I have a horribly blurry photo of the net arrow being launched with the other two arrows still in the air. I also know Darkhood doesn’t have superhuman powers. He’s just that. Damn. Good.

But at the time, all I know is he threw himself backward, arrows going flying, and then the urn was tangled up in a net sixteen feet in the air, swinging in the breeze in the middle of the street.

Leather didn’t stop to stare or be agog. She just ran forward, with all that superhuman speed, straight at Darkhood. And that’s why she did it. The urn wasn’t a ransom item, it was a distraction. So long as she was at a distance, Darkhood could take her. But get him focused elsewhere, not moving, back-to her and sprawled on the ground, and she could close the gap. By the time he’d started to turn over, she was in the air, over him, and dropping an elbow hard into him.

I thought it was over, but he twisted and kicked, and she rolled off and they squared off. He snapped something on his bow and it segmented into two halves, the string retracting until he had — mm. Not really nunchucks. Call it a flail. And he laid about with it. She twisted underneath it, sweeping his legs. His footing went out, but he went down into a handspring, kicking up. She rolled under it and got her footing. They closed, striking and punching. Her inhuman grace. His staggering training. He went in with a taser. She ducked and twisted and struck at his ribs. She hit but he seemed to absorb it — body armor of some kind maybe. They turned and struck, and he went around and tagged her with the taser. She went rubbery, and he went over her–

I don’t know if it was panic or what, but as she fell backwards she curled up and thrust out with those powerful legs, and he flew.She got her feet–

And froze. I froze. We all froze, watching. She had kicked too hard. He was a good fifty feet in the air, and he was going over the edge — the long clifflike edge of the ramp. We were at the peak of the West Highlands neighborhood. Leather had kicked Darkhood out to where he would fall to the underlands.

She was staring, her hand clenched. Her body tense. She didn’t move, watching him twist around as he fell. It looked like he was doing something with his flail — maybe trying to get it back into the bow. Get some kind of line arrow….

He fell below the edge of where we could see. We stared. My heart was pounding.

It felt like forever, but with a thunk we heard and saw an arrow slam into the retaining fence at the edge. An arrow with a line on it.

Leather pumped her fist. “Yeah!” she said, and looked around. The cops were beginning to get to their feet. “Okay, book,” she shouted to the bagmen. “Leave the bags, hit the Leathermobile! We’re gone!”

The bagmen didn’t complain. They ran. Leather ran after them.

“Wait!” I shouted. “The collar! You can’t leave me or–” I stared. The dumb bitch had forgotten the bomb around my neck!

Leather skidded to a stop, right at the door of the Leathermobile. She stared at me for a second, then burst into laughter. “Jesus, Chapman,” she shouted back. “There isn’t really a bomb! Who do you think we are?”

I stared as she ducked in, and the car tore out. Stared as the recovering cops opened fire as it escaped. I sunk to my knees, staring, and watched the Leathermobile leave. They got no money from the bank, but they got away. And Leather and Darkhood crossed swords in the light of day. And people would talk about this for weeks. And I wasn’t wearing a bomb.

After I could no longer see the Leathermobile, I did the only thing I could think of. I leaned forward, so I was on my hands and knees, and I threw up again. And then I waited for a policeman to come rescue me or arrest me, depending on how he saw things.

This is a story, as I’ve mentioned before, that I’ve been working on for just over a year. That includes some of my notes, and also includes the character of Darkhood, mentioned in the last couple of episodes as a C-list superhero.

Well, it only hit me last week, with a reference made in a rather poignant strip, that Brad Guigar had included a Dark Hood in his brilliant Evil, Inc. comic strip. No confusion or infringement was intended, which I figure you all know but it’s worth saying. And you should read Evil, Inc. regardless.

Otherwise — last week’s episode inspired more fan art! One comes from Dave Van Domelen, a cohort from the Superguy days (as well as lots of other things) and features Dynamo Girl shouting the catchphrase I stole from Scott Kurtz. The other come from Gossamer Commons co-conspirator Peter Venables who renders a post-car wrecking moment from earlier in the series. Yay! I get fan art! You should click on the thumbnails for full sized, of course!

Beyond that, please enjoy the story!

*** *** *** ***

“We call this the collar,” Leather said, setting down what was indeed a leather collar in front of me. It had a silver disk on it, and it looked like the buckle could be locked. “It’s chock full of electronics. It has a transmitter and wiring all the way through it. Buckling it into place completes a circuit. It cost more than you’d expect.”

“Okay…” I said, looking at it. Black leather with silver accents. It looked like a Leather special supervillain gadget already. “I’m supposed to wear this?”

“You can choose to wear it,” Leather said. “If you do, you can come with me tonight.”

“That’s it? I put on a collar, and you let me come with you?”

“That’s it.”

I considered. It seemed way too easy. “This has a tracker in it?” I asked.

Marco snorted.

Leather sat across from me. She was in a tan microfiber bathrobe, her hair wrapped in brown stained towels. “Sort of,” she said. “Certainly it’s got tracking equipment in it.”

I frowned. “What am I missing?”

Leather smiled a bit more. “Marco? Show the gentleman what he’s missing.”

Marco smiled too, picking up the collar. He unscrewed one of the accents, sliding it off like a silver button and turning it over. There was a gleaming pink putty inside it, packed in carefully. “You see this?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“It’s explosive. Not strong enough to blow a safe or a door, but you don’t want to know what that shaped charge will do to your neck.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“So long as you stay near me, the bomb won’t go off,” Leather said cheerfully. “Or, if you can’t stay near me, you can stay near the car you’ll be in, and the bomb won’t go off. Or, you can tell Marco you’re in trouble and he’ll help you.”

“I thought Marco wasn’t coming,” I said.

“I’m not,” Marco said. “But there’s a radio transmitter in that thing. I’ll hear everything you say.”

“So, let’s say we get separated, and you’re not close to the car. Tell Marco and he’ll make sure you don’t die a grisly death!” Leather’s grin grew.

“But — but wait a second. If I can ask Marco to keep the bomb from going off, why put a bomb on me in the first place?”

“Oh, silly rabbit,” Leather said. “You missed the most important part. Marco will hear everything you say!”

“So if you call the cops, I’ll hear it,” Marco said. “If you ask for help or tell someone about the bomb collar, I’ll hear it. If you say anything to step out of line, I’ll know it.”

“And he can just as easily set the bomb off as disable it,” Leather said.

“It’s better than that,” Marco said, grinning. “If you don’t get my help, you’ll be in deep. If someone tries to cut the strap, it’ll sever a wire and break the circuit and the bomb will go off before they can get it away from you.”

“Oh, and it locks on,” Leather said. “Unlock or unhook it without Marco sending the disable code first–”

“And it’ll go off,” I answered. “It seems like a lot of these end with my head being blown off.”

“Not off,” Marco said. “There’s not that much explosion. It’ll just tear the soft tissue out.”

“Oh, and tear apart the windpipe,” Leather said.

“Well, maybe. It depends on how it sits.”

“Oh, it does not. That much blow-jelly? That’ll take out his windpipe.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Fine. We can agree that the spine’ll be fine, right?”

“Define ‘fine.’”

“Wait wait wait,” I said. “You have to be kidding me. You’re going to put a bomb around my neck, put Marco — a guy who beat me into pudding last night — on a trigger, and I’m supposed to keep quiet about it?”

Leather snorted. “Not at all,” she said.

I breathed out. “Okay,” I said. “Because that’s what it sounded like.”

“You’re going to put a bomb around your neck,” Leather said with a grin. “All the rest was accurate.”

I stared. “And what if I refuse?”

Marco chuckled. “Then you can join me and the boys in playing with the new video game. We kept one out when we fenced the others.”

“You are not playing that without me,” Leather said.

Marco shrugged. “You don’t have to go play at cowl,” he said.

“It’s not playing. Fine. You sleazes can play with it. But don’t you screw it up! And don’t go online!”

“We’re not stupid,” Marco said.

I looked at the collar while they argued. I felt a little sick to my stomach just looking at it. I knew full well putting that thing on was idiotic. Hell, there was lots easier ways to commit suicide.

But I was still feeling… I dunno. Ego bruised by what Leather had said earlier. That stuff about Hunter S. Thompson.

My story — maybe the biggest part of it — was going out on the town. And I could either watch it and document it, or let my story tell me about it later.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. You’d think I’d be in too much pain to be that stupid, but we all know I was.

As it worked out, preparations were a lot simpler than preparing for a heist. After she’d finished dying her hair — it was kind of a chestnut brown as it dried, and she’d done something so it had a little less flair and a little more wave — Leather was putting her time into research. Maps of the city, newspaper articles — that kind of thing. “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“We patrol,” she said. “I’m figuring out a good route right now.”

“Patrol?”

“Oh yeah.” She grinned. “That was actually one of the fun parts of doing the superhero shuffle. Planning your routes through the city, I mean. You wanted to make sure it was an area you could cover, and you wanted it to cross through high crime areas. At the same time, if you did it right the city could be really pretty.”

“This was Meridian City?”

Leather shook her head. “Nah. I never even visited Meridian City until I took this lair. That’s why I’m trying to soak things up. We’re not going to have a really good route tonight. Those take time to develop. But we should be able to find some trouble down in the Underlands.”

“Underlands?”

Leather nodded. “Yeah, you know the West Highlands neighborhood? Upscale. Has marketplaces, theaters, banks and stuff, all up on hillsides?”

“Sure?”

“Well, you have a lot of elevated bridges and onramps up to it. And people live along the bottom of them too. Stretches into low income neighborhoods, and then out to more industrial areas.” She half-smiles. “Tourists above, townies below. You know how it goes.”

No, I really didn’t.

What got me was how… mellow things were. The henches pretty much had the night off, of course, so they were just hanging around. That seemed strange to me — normally, there was discussion and rediscussion going on. Contingencies discussed. What-ifs for everything from ‘the police show up too soon’ to ‘Transit, Paragon and the Nightwatch happen to be having coffee across the street.’

Not this time. One of the bagmen spent his time doodling in a sketchbook. The Steve watched television. Marco worked on the Leathermobile.

And then there was Leather herself.

I told you how she builds up to a job. How frenetic and nervous she gets. She goes hyperactive, she does the prayer, there are the kisses — the whole thing. The ritual. Performance prep. I’d seen singers and actors do the same shit time and again. There’s stuff you do before a show. And there was stuff Leather did before a heist.

Not now.

Oh, she was clearly excited. She bounced around from the upstairs down to the bottom level (including dropping two stories into a crouch. The girl showed off all the time). But she wasn’t nervous. She wasn’t trying to plan out every detail. She was just psyched up.

And me? Well, that was simple. I was scared shitless.

Look, up until that moment I’d interviewed and profiled musicians. Yeah, sometimes the world of rock or rap gets violent, but not all that often. I sure as Hell never cruised the streets with someone looking for a fight. And let’s not kid ourselves. Leather — or Dynamo Girl — was going to be looking for a fight.

“So what am I doing on this trip?” I asked.

Leather shrugged. She was in her exercise gear now — a white tank top and blue stretch pants — practicing katas. “Does your camera work well at night?”

“With the flash.”

“Leave it at home, then.” She smirked. “A camera flash might distract some criminal lowlife. Make him notice you. Maybe shoot you. I’m not doing this to get you killed.”

“So what is my role? Am I your sidekick?”

Leather stopped, staring at me. Now, she’d been sort of flickering between ‘Leather’ and ‘Dynamo Girl’ all afternoon, and the chestnut hair just reinforced that. But that laugh was all Leather. That laugh cut me down to size. “Don’t flatter yourself, Chapman,” she said, still chuckling. “You’ve got no powers, you’ve got no training. You’ve got nothing but an annoying habit of asking questions when a sane person would shut up.”

My face felt hot. “Darkhood doesn’t have powers,” I said. I knew it sounded lame even as I said it.

“Darkhood can neuter a fly at two hundred yards with his eyes closed. You got some hidden talent you haven’t mentioned, Chapman? Some ancient combat technique you neglected to bust out when the henches were pounding you into hamburger?”

I looked down. She didn’t say anything. I realized she was actually waiting for me to answer. “Not really,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “Don’t you get it? You’re not Paragon or even Paragirl here. You’re Barbara Babcock, looking for a scoop and maybe needing the hero to rescue you.” She leaned forward. “But I don’t want to have to rescue you. I’m going to be trying to fight crime out there, and believe it or not, that’s not easy and that’s not safe. If you go waltzing in playing out your Nightwatch fantasies, you might get hurt. You might get killed. Or you might get some innocent bystander hurt or killed.” Her eyes were on me, intense as lasers. “We’re. Not. Getting. Anyone. Killed. Right?”

“Right,” I said softly. I thought about the collar I’d be wearing. The bomb I was strapping to my throat. Was she really unable to see the difference? Could she really be Leather enough to make me a mobile hostage and still be Dynamo Girl enough to care this much about theoretical victims?

“Good,” she said. And she grinned. “You should probably wait in the car anyway. Watch from there. Oh man, you’re going to love this car.”

“You’re not taking the Leathermobile?”

Leather snorted. “Of course we’re not taking the Leathermobile. It’s all wrong for this and besides, the cops have it on tape. Nah, I got something special for tonight.”

Tonight was about ten after eight, as it worked out. She came out, wearing a red dress with an overcoat over it. She had on pumps, but her legs were pale. The togs on under her civilian clothes, obviously. She looked like a fresh faced nineteen year old, perky and cheerful. There were no signs of her piercings — not even the holes — and her tattoos had clearly been covered. “Are you ready, Todd?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. The collar was sitting on the table I was sitting at. I was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, and a black leather jacket — more GQ than biker gang, though. Marco had given me a pair of wraparound sunglasses. “After dark, they make things easier to make out if there’s any light at all,” he said. “Simple enhancement.” And it was a mask, but he didn’t say that.

“Yeah,” I said. I picked up the collar, and slid it around my neck. It clicked shut, and I felt a tingle. Marco was sitting near some of his gear, and I saw it flare into life as I locked the collar on. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” she said. “Roll up your turtleneck and come on.”

I got up, sliding the fabric up. Covering the deadly explosive I had willingly put on. And I followed her.

And came to a stop as she walked around the Leathermobile. She opened up a door beyond, where the next bay was. I hadn’t been in there.

I stopped when I walked through the door. I stopped and I stared.

I swear to God, she was unlocking the door on a dark blue Toyota Tercel. She looked back over her shoulder. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, walking in. “It… it’s just….”

“Yeah?” She grinned. God help me, she looked adorable when she grinned. Which was so not Leather.

“You sounded so proud of your car earlier,” I said. “This isn’t that much better than my Hyundai?”

“Sure it is,” she said, giggling. “For one thing, my car has an engine and a windshield. Coming?” She slid into the driver’s seat.

I shook my head and climbed in. “I’m just saying–”

I frowned, then. I frowned because there was something… off about the interior. Something about the controls, the dashboard. Looking in, I wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But sitting there….

She grinned more broadly. “Judge me by my size, Skywalker?” she asked. “Judge my car by its make and model do you?”

“This… is this some kind of… I dunno, supercar?”

“Something like that,” she said, grinning. She slipped a hand under the dashboard. I heard a click, and the metal garage door began opening.

I glanced back behind us. I saw Marco standing in the door. His expression was unreadable.

I looked forward then, just in time for the car to pull out. The lights came on and we rode down to the road, swinging towards Meridian City and into the night.

“It’s… smooth,” I said.

“It’s been rebuilt from the inside out,” she said, shifting gears. “I’m keeping it down right now, but we could easily do one-sixty if we had to. It’s a Q-car.”

“Q-car?”

She grinned. “It comes from Q-Ship. Old naval term. See, back in the War days, there would be U-Boat attacks on civilian ships. Raids, to disrupt shipping and hamper the war effort. So the Allies would mock up a ship to look civilian, but when things got rough it would pop out cannons and start shooting.” She ran a hand along the wheel, the other hand holding it steady. “This car looks normal, but in a pinch you’d be surprised what it can do.”

“You use this in your… night job?” It somehow seemed wrong to bring up crime right now.

Her grin softened a touch, but didn’t go away. “Not really,” she said. “It’s pretty silly. I spend a lot of money on this car. Make it better, make it cooler. But it’s not really in style for my usual line of work. Besides, I have a driver and a couple of associates. This would be a bit cramped.”

“So why do you do it?”

She shrugged. “Same reason some guy with an SUV, a pickup and a compact car buys a broken down muscle car and restores it. It’s fun.” She grinned. “And it’s perfect for tonight. Hey, I’m gonna pull over at a convenience store — grab a soda. You want? I’m buying.”

I blinked. “A… soda?”

“I always get a soda when I patrol. Start the night off right.” She grinned, then paused. “Got. Got a soda.” She giggled. “I keep forgetting I haven’t done this for a while. Which is weird. It’s not like I ever drove on patrol before.”

“Why are you driving on patrol this time?”

“Because you can’t get to the top of a brownstone in three seconds and you can’t run forty-five miles an hour.” She winked. “Besides, I didn’t have this car back then.”

She slid into a Cumberland Farms and we got out. “Hey,” I said. “What do I call you? I assume the normal name’s off limits, and since you’re not wearing the mask….”

She paused, frowning.

I paused too. I wondered if I’d just made a mistake. She wasn’t enamored of her legal name, I remembered.

She grinned. “Call me Deegee,” she said. “It sounds like a sorority girl nickname, don’t you think?”

I half-smiled. “It does at that. All right, Deegee.”

We went inside. It was a little weird. I’d been a prisoner for days, and I was still at least sore from the night before. And now here I was, dressed like a metrosexual and wearing sunglasses at night, and we were in a convenience store like normal people. Deegee made her way back to the soda cases. I looked around, surprised that the sunglasses seemed to adjust when I walked indoors. I could see myself in a security mirror, and I knew they were still black — which I realized also covered up my two black eyes, which was a good thing. But I could more or less see normally wearing them.

There was a bored looking cashier behind the counter. A couple of teenaged boys were hanging around the magazines whispering about the copy of Maxim they hadn’t gotten around to picking up. I noticed them glance over at Deegee, and one nudged another. Which surprised me a little. Glancing over, I realized that she looked so different now — so mundane, really — that I hadn’t noticed how pretty she was. The intense, smoldering sensuality that Leather brought to almost everything she did made the pretty, normal girl Deegee was pretending to be seem almost small in comparison.

“Todd!” she called across the store. “They actually have A&W Cream Soda! Score! You want?”

“Sure!” I called back. I looked around, trying to decide if I wanted a Snickers bar.

And that felt so weird to me. I was wearing a bomb, hanging out with a sociopath who wanted to play dressup one last night — and don’t tell me it was my idea. Right then, that didn’t matter — and I was vaguely considering buying a candy bar before we went out and let ‘Deegee’ punch criminals for justice.

“Hey Todd — you coming?” she asked, having reached the cashier.

I decided against the Snickers bar. “Yeah,” I said, walking behind her. I accepted the cream soda, and I followed her out. We got into the car, and both put on our seatbelts.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s go save the world.”

I’m not sure what else I have to say, other than ‘enjoy’ and ‘aside from some saltiness of language, it’s less mature rated.’ So instead, I give you the very first LEATHER FAN ART! This come to us from the Minister of Awesome herself Katie Tandler at bugalight.net (click on the thumbnail to get the full sized experience. Though even the thumbnail is cool):

This is frighteningly accurate (at least, with a “DC Animated Universe” feel, which somehow works for me) and it is amazingly cool. And thank you to Kate for providing it.

Enjoy the new episode!

*** *** *** ***

It was a sunny day, and the light was good, and Leather had declared they weren’t going to pull a job that night. “The heat’s on,” she said. “Do a job tonight and we’ll screw with the blowoff.”

So. That morning was designated for photos. Which is why I had hauled out the tripod from my dead Hyundai’s trunk. It was warm already, the sun on the back of my neck, while I made adjustments to the digital camera. Marco and one of the bagmen were nearby, keeping an eye out. This was mostly because Leather was outdoors and in full combat gear, which was at best a security risk.

We cut it down by staying on the side of the power station that overlooked the water far below, which meant we couldn’t be seen from the road. Leather was smoking a cigarette between sessions. She looked damn good, having oiled (or had one of the henches oil) the good combat suit so it fairly gleamed in the light.

I know my way around a camera because once upon a time I had pretensions of photojournalism. It was helpful as a music reporter because I could get candid shots ‘on the scene.’ A practice I wasn’t encouraged to follow on this assignment, for what should be obvious reasons. At the same time, I’m not well known for model photography because I don’t really know from shooting models. So, we’d gone outside for the light and because Leather’s lair had white painted brick facing the water, and I was erring on the side of caution by taking a few thousand pictures.

Leather was game. I had wondered, briefly, if there would be awkwardness today, but there wasn’t. Not with her, not with the guys. Leather had been right — getting the fence’s money had made all well.

Really well. Apparently, they’d hit the motherlode.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “How could you get that much money? Wouldn’t the fence’s cut knock it down?”

“The laptops did pretty well and it turned out they had a buttload of them,” Leather said, crushing the cigarette out against the brick of the wall and flicking it away in an arc that might have hit the water below, for all I could tell. “Real high end shit, too. But that wasn’t the best part. We scored a prerelease video game console.”

“Huh?”

“Big launch event for one of the new next gen video games,” Marco said. He was grinning a lot today. “Apparently they had like five hundred of them shrinkwrapped in their warehouse, with ‘do not open before’ notes all over them. Works out we didn’t sign that release.”

“You’re saying a video game brought you more money than the laptops?”

“You have no idea,” Leather said. “There are psychos out there who’ll pay ten thousand dollars a console to get it four or five days before it’s originally released. And since they’ll sell out on opening day, there’s lots of others who’ll pay three or four thousand on eBay. The fence probably came when he saw what he had.” She grinned. “We had a good night.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said. My back hurt. So did my stomach. My lip was still puffy. And while there hadn’t been any swelling thanks to the ibuprofin and Leather’s cold gel mask, I still had black eyes. Looking in the mirror after I showered that morning, I could hear myself saying “no, officer, I walked into a door. No, officer — you just don’t know her. She loves me, but sometimes I make her do things….”

Leather set a new pose, arching, lips pouty, eyes twinkling. She knew how to exploit what the costume covered and didn’t cover, and wasn’t afraid to show it off. “Let’s do this thing,” she said, and I began snapping another few dozen pictures. I would give her suggestions and she would adjust for them. And there’s one thing I realized: glamour photography was just as boring as any other repetitive work.

“Will this cover what you need?” Leather asked. “Like, do you need shit for the inside too? Or will you use these?”

“This should cover what I need. I’m gonna assume the henchmen don’t want their pictures taken, though if I’m wrong–”

“You’re not,” Marco said. “Last thing I need is proof in a magazine I work for a supervillain. My wife’d kill me.”

I didn’t follow up about his wife. I’d learned there were questions henchmen won’t answer. “Anyway,” I said. “this is pretty much it. Although….”

“Although what? Oh wait, let me guess. Tasteful nudes, right? Maybe do nude sunbathing on the roof, and after that we can go to the back seat of your Hyundai and look at your etchings?” Leather was teasing. She was in a good mood. The ever happy, ever bubbly supervillain pixie. And her bearing, her cheer, her grin meant the Henches were in a good mood too. Everything forgotten — just another night of doing business. Even the guy she’d hoisted over her head acted like there was nothing new or different. Marco gave her shit like he always did despite being thrown against a wall the night before.

It seemed weird, but then I was acting like these guys were the same guys I’d been hanging out with and interviewing all week, instead of the thugs who’d stomped me into kibble the night before. It was just the atmosphere. That was just business. They screwed up and they paid. And me?

They’d all said they were sorry. And then they dropped the matter, and I figured out I was supposed to too, so I did. It’s how the situation worked.

But Leather was waiting for my answer. “Nothing like that,” I said. “And no bikini pictures either. Unless you want bikini pictures.”

She gave me a look.

“Hey,” I said. “You can’t tell me this isn’t an exercise in public relations for you. For all I know you want a bikini spread.”

Leather smirked. “It crossed my mind, but honestly I look better in the suit. Besides, it’d break the mystery.”

“The mystery?”

“Sure. Think about it. My birth name’s in my arrest record. My hair and style and tattoos are distinctive. I want to be recognized when I rob something. So why should I wear a mask?”

I frowned. “Wait, let me guess. Theater?”

“Got it in one.” She leaned back against the wall, one arm draped up alongside it, one leg bent at the knee, and looked sidelong at me. I took the picture, then another, then another as she shifted slightly. “Me showing up, even in a leather suit, just looks like they’re being robbed by an alt/fetish model. Put a mask on my face and it becomes something more. Something grander. There is mystery, and allure, and it makes everyone more comfortable.”

“There are both heroes and villains without masks,” I said, shifting to the side to take another four pictures. I was glad I had a lot of memory cards. And glad I had a pro grade digital camera.

“Sure, but they still have a defined look. The mask is part of my defined look,” she said. “Plus, it makes things more convenient. If I want to go out and have breakfast, it’s a lot less likely I’ll be recognized and someone will call the cops, because all the news reports have me in a mask. And there’s ways to distract the folks who’ve happened to see one of the mug shots.” She smiled a bit. “You still haven’t told me what the ‘although’ was for.”

“Hm? Oh. I was wondering if you had any pictures from your… well, former career?”

“Huh?” Marco asked.

“What?” Leather said, frowning. Then she grinned. “Oh! You want to know if I have pictures from my Dynamo Girl days!”

I blinked. “I didn’t think you’d told your henchmen about that.”

Leather snickered. “Was that your way of trying to be coy then? ‘Former career?’ The next time you try to cover for someone’s past or secret identity, try not to make it sound like they used to be in porn, okay?” She stepped away from the wall — a sign we were going on break, so I stepped back from the camera. “But yeah, I told them. It’s part of the screening procedure. You need to let the guild know if you used to play the other side of the street, so bad situations don’t come up at bad times.”

“Bad situations?”

“Henchmen go to jail sometimes,” Marco said. “And get beat down sometimes. When we’re in the whole recruitment phase, we need to know if our new boss is an ex-hero. There was some bad shit went down a few years back. An ex-cowl recruited four henchmen he’d put in jail before he crossed the river. They figured out it was him, they decided to get revenge. Guild had to pay reparations to the villain and to the henchs’ families.”

“Dumbass,” one of the bagmen said. It was the one Leather had lifted over her head the night before. “Who gives a shit if your boss put you in jail last year. If you get paid today, yesterday don’t matter.”

“That’s why I love you guys,” Leather said.

“Anyway,” I said, steering things back onto track. “It’d just be a good counterpoint to the article if I could get some pictures of you in the old costume. Unless you’d rather not.”

“No,” Leather said. “No, that’s fine. I’m just trying to think if I’ve got something. I used to scrapbook and shit, so I should have some old newspaper photos. Hm.” She looked thoughtful. “Grab some more coffee. I’ll be right back.”

We watched her bound into the building. I realized I was alone with the henchmen for the first time since the beating.

“You take milk, right?” Marco asked, heading to the back door.

“What? Yeah. Yeah, thanks.”

He paused, looking back. “How you feeling?” he asked. “Want some Advil while I’m there?”

I was pretty sore, I’ll admit. Getting more codeine would have been nice, but I didn’t want to be foggy while I was on the clock. “Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.” I tried to smile gamely. “You guys are good at beatdowns.”

He shrugged. “Not so much, really. Some of the guys are what we call security specialists? Bodyguards, mooks, call ‘em whatever? They can fight. We’re just tough.”

“Heh. That much I figured out. That’s why I couldn’t be a henchman, I guess.”

Marco grinned, shaking his head. “Man, you think any one of us could go three on one and not end up tasting blood? You get down to it, you passed the only real test.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re still doing your job.” He turned and walked in. “Coffee and Advil, comin’ up.”

It was weird, but it felt good. I guess it had never occurred to me, but in a Henchman’s world, getting beat up was an occupational hazard. How you dealt with it the day after probably counted more than the day before. I nodded to the bagman nearest me. He grinned, thumbing up.

I should note that the bagmen never gave me their names. And Leather and Marco never used them around me. That’s also not unusual, I’ve come to find out. Henchmen were jobs as much as anything. The bagmen. The wheel. The Steve. Marco was Marco because he was the supervisor. It’s entirely possible that wasn’t his real name either. Earlier in the week, I’d asked one of the bagmen if that bothered him — the anonymity of it all.

He laughed at me. “Man, I get paid to haul shit. I’m like one of the teamsters. If my name never comes up, my name doesn’t end up on the cops’ lips and they don’t show up at my mother’s asking stupid questions. Let the supervillains take the spotlight.”

Back at the photo shoot, we were drinking coffee. Leather’d been inside for like fifteen minutes now, and I was a little worried about losing the morning light. And as I’d only gotten a few hundred pictures on multiple SD cards, I wasn’t sure I had enough.

“That’s far enough, boys!”

All four of us jumped, startled. One of the bagmen dropped his coffee. The voice had come from above–

She leapt from a fourth story window, a smile on her face, a blur of red as she twisted and rolled in the air. She landed smoothly, legs bending to full crouch to absorb the fall and sprung forward, doing a handspring-cartwheel combo to get on the other side of us before dropping into a fighting crouch. Her hair was brown — a wig, but a good one. Her face was covered with a blue half-mask with white accents. She wore a red leotard, more or less, short sleeved with a turtleneck top, clinging just right — a blue and white star emblem with almost military chevrons coming off it. Pale tights that showed her legs, translucently. Legwarmers and high end red and white sneakers. And the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve seen that mouth form.

She’d taken the labriet out, too.

Marco looked like he was caught between running like Hell and losing bowel control. After a half-second he burst into laughter. “Oh shit!” he shouted. “It’s Dynamo Girl!”

“Watch your language, punk!” Leather shouted, shifting to make arms akimbo. “It’s punch o’clock, and I’m late for work!”

Now all the henchmen were laughing, which I think was her point. Certainly, they didn’t feel threatened. I wasn’t, because I wasn’t sure what the rules actually were now. Did the costume mean she was on the side of the angels, even if only briefly?

Seemed unlikely, really. She was posing and joking with the henches. In the meantime, I was watching her. The lycra was, if anything more clingy than the leather she normally wore. And of course it couldn’t be shaped so easily. The effect made her seem smaller, and more human. She looked younger, too. And I’m forced to admit I understood what she had meant before, about ‘the Sidekick physique.’ I knew she was an adult and a supervillain to boot, but honest to God looking at her I wanted to see an older hero standing behind her, calling her ‘good chum.’

“Right. Let’s get these pictures underway,” she said, darting over to the same wall I had been photographing her against before. She posed again, waiting.

And I began to take pictures. “Why’d you keep the old costume?” I asked.

She giggled. “Why throw it out? I had some good times wearing this thing.” She shifted — her poses more action oriented, less seductive. She was cute, and pretty, where ‘Leather’ was smoldering and coy. Her bearing had completely changed.

“True enough,” I said, snapping a picture and then another. “So why the wig?”

“As Leather, my hair’s a big part of the whole thing,” she said. “People come to expect it. Or expect hair tricks. ‘Dynamo Girl’ had naturally colored hair, so if you want an accurate picture of the good old days….”

“No — I mean, sure, makes sense. But I meant ‘why do you happen to have a brown haired wig?’”

She giggled again. ‘Dynamo Girl’ was more of a giggler, it seemed. “Cover,” she said. “Like I said — the hair tends to be distinctive. When I’m in town just living, I don’t want to get recognized when I’m at Home Depot or having breakfast at Denny’s. So I throw on a wig. A wig, jeans, a tee shirt, flannels instead of a leather jacket — you’d be surprised how easy it is to pass as just some chick.”

I laughed. “Not that surprised. I mean, you don’t look anything like Leather right now.”

She kind of blinked. “Really?”

“He’s right, boss,” Marco said. “Total makeover. Different attitude.”

“And you don’t stand the same way, either..”

She cocked her head. “Huh,” she said. “I just figured it was dressup. Putting on the old togs for a laugh.”

“Do you feel any different?”

She considered that, stretching. “Sort of,” she said. “Old habits, I guess. I was always very careful about what I did or said in the togs.”

“You said that twice. Is that just an anachronism, or is it some kind of industry term?”

“What?”

“Togs.”

“Huh? Oh. Fighting togs. It’s what they used to call superhero suits in the old Shazam comics. So it’s what villains call hero suits.”

“But not villain suits?”

“Nah. That’s different.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “It just is.” She stretched again. “Yeah,” she said. “yeah, I do feel different. And a little weird.”

“Why weird?” I kept taking pictures.

“Well, the last time I was in this was the liquor store holdup I told you about. You know? Which means the last time I wore this was the case I lost. The failure.” She shrugged. “It’s just weird. Dynamo Girl’s last hurrah involved stealing eight thousand bucks from a liquor store. It’s weird to have the togs on again, now.”

I frowned. “Why does that have to be the last hurrah?”

The silence was palpable.

I shifted where I stood. “Seriously. I mean, you’ve already said you’re not going out and stealing anything, tonight. So instead of Leather going out, why doesn’t Dynamo Girl go out instead. Spend a night fighting crime instead of causing it. Break a few muggers’ heads and leave them for the cops?”

“I… never really thought about that,” she said, frowning. “I mean, I went bad.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but so what? I’m not saying reform or give back the money or anything. I’m saying that if you feel bad that Dynamo Girl’s last night ended in crime instead of justice, don’t let that be Dynamo Girl’s last night. Make a different last night instead.”

She looked honestly stunned, leaning back against the wall.

“Hey, now wait a minute,” Marco said. “Look, your business is your business, boss, but we don’t do Good Guy Shit. That’s not in the contract.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” she said, cocking her head. “I mean, seriously. Super heroes don’t use henchmen. You’d still have the night off, all the usual rules in effect.”

“So long as we know that.” Marco frowned a bit more. “This wouldn’t become a thing, would it? You wouldn’t go all Robin Hood on us or have a conversion and leave us high and dry? We have a deal here.”

“No,” she said. “No, nothing would change. But Todd’s right. There’s no reason I couldn’t do this. Just for a night, but still.” She grinned. “Why not? I mean, seriously — why not?”

The bagmen looked at each other. Marco kept looking at his employer.

“Oh, stop fretting. I’m not crossing back over. This is just a lark. It’s fun. Besides, we lived in this city for a year. You think I don’t want to see the streets cleaned up just a little?”

“They got two cowls already doing that,” Marco said. “Okay. What if you get caught?”

“What are you talking about? Who ‘catches’ a superhero? A villain?”

Marco shook his head. “Shit, man. You’re Leather, remember? What if someone figures it out and you get caught?”

“Oh!” She considered. “Keep an ear on the police scanner. If you hear I’ve been taken in, punch the panic button like normal. Clear out, let the service take care of things.”

Marco nodded. “Good enough.” He shook his head again. “You’re really gonna do this?”

“Well… there’s some work involved. Need to dye my hair — the wig could come off. I’ll need to grab my dermacover camouflage for the tattoos…” she smiled a bit more. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am gonna do this. Why not? One last ride into the sunset!”

Marco snorted. “Your life, man.”

“I wish I could see it,” I said.

She paused, and peeled the mask off. “What was that?” she asked?

“I said I wish I could see it,” I said, noticing that the costume looked strange on her when she wasn’t wearing the half mask. Less like a uniform, more like a costume party.

Leather got a slightly wicked smile on her face. “Who says you can’t?” she asked.

I blinked. “Well… I… was under the impression I was a prisoner here. Why would you let me out?”

“Well now, that raises an interesting question. How badly do you want to see this part of your story?” She sat down, pulling off the wig, her bearing Leather again. Amused Leather. I found myself wishing she’d put the mask back on.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe,” she said. “Well, Hunter rode with the Hell’s Angels. These guys went out and they did, Chapman. Do you really, really want to be on hand for the return of Dynamo Girl? To get that story, even if no one ever gives a shit?”

I frowned. Right then, I could feel my aches from last night again. “Well, yeah,” I said.

Leather’s smile turned predatory. “Would you bet your life on that?”