Menace #22: The Savage Queen
“So, Goggles, you watching or playing?” Jenny asked Nate as they stood, stuck between the three monsters. “I won’t blame you either way, kid.”
“It’s Menace now, actually,” Nate responded. “And of course I’m playing; it’s been awhile, teach, I’m not so little anymore.”
“I feel like I’ve asked you not to call me that,” she said to him, removing herself from a fighting stance to casually turn and have a conversation. “I think I asked you to call me Jenny, and you said something like ‘Nah, teach,’ and I remember thinking: This fucking twat, what is he, like twelve?” She said all this while stretching her arms behind her head and letting out a large yawn. “And then I realized you were like twelve and so I didn’t get angry.”
“I was fifteen,” Nate informed her. “Oh, so you were a bitch,” she laughed, and Nate realized that the monsters surrounding them were being remarkably patient for whatever reason. He surveyed the room and noted that the bat and the dragon stood before him stationary, and the tiger behind him simply walked back and forth in front of the Gentleman.
“Everyone keeps telling me that,” he finally responded, blushing a little as he worriedly continued to look around the exhibits of the museum. To his left, behind Jenny, was the shattered glass of the display for the amulet – the amulet having been moved to around the tiger-man’s neck – and to his right was a tapestry with markings he couldn’t identify. A small plaque underneath it let him know that it was an Endarian scroll, the first found recorded writing concerning Nessians. He looked in front of him to see the Count and the Dragon-lady, and he thought back to when he was fifteen, seeing the Count for the first time. Of course, it was a different Count then, perhaps even more terrifying; he could feel himself in the shoes of when he was a budding hero, just beginning to take on villains he’d only heard about. He thought about how his lip used to quiver, and his legs would shake as he attempted to square himself into something even remotely resembling a fighting stance. He could run a mile in two minutes and lift small cars over his head, but, when he stood face to face with someone like the Count, his strength always seemed to flee from him. He shook his head and woke back into the present moment.
The new Count before him was incredibly tall, scraping nine feet. His body looked sleek and slender, slick and slimy, covered, it seemed, by a thin film of something that caught the light. His wings stretched far behind his back and above his head, listless and resting in the air. The man’s head must have been bald before the amulet, as thin, dark fur rounded off his head and encompassed the rest of his body, making him look almost entirely pitch-black. Except for his eyes; his eyes were vivid and alive in a red fury, straining against his face as though trying to leap out. His hands ended in five claw-like fingers, all stretching towards the ground in a jagged fashion.
Nate turned his head from him to see the Dragon-lady, who he, admittedly, decided he needed a better name for. She was hunched over to the point where all four of her appendages touched the ground, with orange scales encompassing most of her skin. Her wings jutted from her back, extending out to the back of her knees, some six feet down from her head. Bright red hair fell from her head onto the floor in large, unkempt masses. Her eyes were yellow slits against her exaggerated face, a piggish nose sitting in the center of it. Everything about her looked rough and sharp, like a cactus that, no matter where you touched, you pricked yourself.
He risked a glance behind him to the Tiger-man, walking around in circles around the Gentleman. The man looked as though he had entirely become the tiger; the only thing that alluded to his manhood was the amulet that was draped around his neck, and his face, consisting of a very human nose and bright green eyes. The joints in his leg, Nate noticed, also appeared to be more humanlike than not, alluding to the possibility of the beast standing on his hind legs. The Gentleman, wearing his trademark smiling white mask and formal wear, laughed as the beast circled around him.
“So, are we going to get this date started or what?” The Savage Queen asked the Gentleman, who responded by making a condescending tch sound under his breath. Nate knew that the Gentleman had already received what he came for, and staying only ran the risk of losing his merchandise. So he, already in the second stage of his powers, took action.
Menace leapt towards the Gentleman only to be met in mid-air by the tiger pouncing against him, sending them both to the hard, tiled floor of the museum. Nate stood, forcing the tiger off of himself, and turned to look behind him, at the two beasts still standing right where they had been, unmoving. Nate noticed that his sleeve was ripped where the tiger’s claw had scraped it, and he was bleeding. The tiger managed to its feet once again, seemingly unaffected by their tumble. Nate squared himself, and risked a glance at the Gentleman, who was, suddenly, nowhere to be seen. He heard the Count and the Dragon-lady begin to move.
“Focus on that one, I can handle these shmucks,” Jenny ordered him, and, remembering what it felt like to work with Jenny, Menace rejoiced and relaxed back into a suitable fighting stance. This Tiger-man should be no problem for me, Nate realized, it’s just a fucking tiger. He charged forward, towards the beast who, in response, rose to his hind legs, towering over Nate by a few feet. Nate threw his fist into the hybrid’s stomach, forcing it to keel over atop him, pinning him to the ground. The tiger’s paws found their way to his chest and began to press their nails into his chest, as the tiger’s face leaned closer and closer to the young man’s. Nate howled in pain, lifting his knee into creature’s under-belly and rolling it off of him. Nate struggled to his feet, noting that his black costume was now black-and-red-with-an-orange-fur-accent, and swiftly brought his foot into the side of the lying tiger-man, sending it across the room until it brushed rather forcefully against a wall. He then turned to see Jenny, and his heart nearly exploded.
She looked incredible. Nate had seen her fight hundreds of times, and not once did she fail to look stunning while doing it. Her hair had fallen haphazardly into her face, but her eyes popped from underneath, almost forcing the hair out of their way through their own dazzling authority. Her clothes – generally considered too loose to do any fighting – moved with her, her cardigan sticking against her body as though it were her own skin. Whether it was hopping back from one foot to the other or actively dodging enemy attacks, Jenny never stood still in a fight. Nate often considered her powers superfluous to her fighting capabilities, she seemed to be made for it.
The Count’s slim claw nearly grazed the top of her head as she ducked and grabbed his arm from below with her right hand, guiding him past her and firmly planting her converse sneaker against his left ass-cheek as he lost balance and fell; she then leapt to the side, noting the dragon-fire coming for her, which then collided against the falling shape of the Count. The bat howled in pain, but turned to the gorgeous young lady and charged towards her once again, this time ascending into the air and diving down towards her. Nate watched as she bent herself backwards so that her hands touched the ground behind her, narrowly avoiding being skewered by the Count, then regained her posture and began running towards the Dragon-lady, who had begun to set fire to the surrounding exhibits. Jenny slid underneath the mighty jaw of the dragon, forcing the mouth shut with her hand, thereby slamming the jagged teeth of the beast to pierce her fiery tongue. Before the dragon could snatch her, however, she vaulted, using the Dragon-lady’s bulky side as a base, and launched herself from underneath the beast, across the tile floor, landing next to where Nate stood, watching in awe.
“You good there, kid?” She asked him.
“Yeah… yeah,” He said, half listening and half still lost in his own wonder. “You’re incredible.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that,” she joked, then stood herself up and ran back towards the beasts. She grabbed the hair of the Dragon-lady, forcing the beast to howl in pain and spray fire from every orifice of her body, and turned the head towards the shadowy Count, now entirely engulfed in flames. She then guided the dragon’s head into the ground, and stomped it against the floor until the floor shattered, leaving a large imprint of a giant, hideous head against the museum floor. “So, Menace, Goggles, Nate… what do you think?”
“I think Ultraman certainly should not have held the spot as number one hero… you didn’t even use your powers!”
“Of course I did, Nate, don’t be stupid. You know my powers well enough to know that. You think I can naturally stretch back that far? Fuck no. And that slide? Do you know how friction works? The natural viscosity of my back was nowhere near enough, it certainly needed some augmentation. You see, kid, you can’t just throw your powers around. Precision is key. Use just enough and, well, look at what can happen,” she explained, turning towards the wreckage of the museum and the three defeated beasts lying before them. She stood, almost regally, like a queen standing over her bowing subjects, and Nate, feeling much like his impressed fifteen year-old self, remembered why she had received her heroic title.