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Chapter 68 – ComicAlex got up when her alarm clock went off, and she grabbed a fast breakfast. Willow had gotten the hotel to stock a whole bunch of food in the kitchen already, so Alex had three pastries, four microwave waffles with syrup, and a bowl of instant oatmeal. And two glasses of milk and a glass of orange juice. Then she showered and got ready. It seemed weird putting on a costume that didn’t have big falsies and skyscraper heels and a mask. No, the trick she had to achieve this time was making herself look younger. That meant a very sheer foundation with a dusting of a shimmering face powder, and a pinker lipstick than she usually went for, and a very soft look with her eye makeup, although she went heavy on the brown mascara and some brown eye-pencil at the outer corners of her eyes, to make Kitty look pretty from a distance. She also went a little darker on the eyebrow pencil to match Kitty’s coloring.
Then she slipped on the bodysuit. It was the classic X-Men look. It looked like a solid black lycra bodysuit under a bright yellow swimsuit that had no sides at all but oversized cap shoulders. But the yellow was sewn together with the black so it was all skin-tight. All she had to do was put on a thong and a lace bra that wouldn’t show, step into it, and zip it up the back. It was pretty stretchy, but tight through the crotch and across the chest. Even with the darts sewn in to emphasize the bustline. Then she slipped on the yellow belt with the big ‘X in a circle’ logo, a wig-cap and the shoulder-length brown wig, the calf-height yellow buccaneer boots, and the big forearm-length yellow gloves.
Wow, she looked pretty good in that. Definitely Kitty Pryde. She had a messenger bag she was going to carry around for her makeup and camera gear and stuff, but her wallet and phone went into little pockets that some really smart computer genius had arranged to have in the tops of the boots.
She used her telekinesis to pop out her GoPro and get film of her in her costume. Ray would really like it. It was maybe even tighter than her Terawatt costume.
She slid her GoPro back in her bag and walked out. Willow was just coming out of her room. Or rather, Jean Grey was emerging. Because that was totally Phoenix standing there. It was one of the best Phoenix costumes, too, because Alex hadn’t really liked the one with that weird head-thing that left her face exposed but covered her forehead and ears.
No, this was a totally awesome Phoenix in that skintight metallic green bodysuit that looked like Willow was suddenly a DD-cup, along with the metallic gold shoulder-length gloves and the metallic gold thigh-high boots and that gold phoenix emblem between her breasts. It had a gold sash with a phoenix pin holding it in place on Willow’s hips. And Willow was wearing a really sexy, long red wig. Plus, Willow was wearing a lot more makeup than she usually did, including long black false eyelashes and black eye-crayon and gray and red eyeshadows, along with a bright red lipstick color in a shade that actually looked good with the coppery red hair color and the metallic green bodysuit. Plus, Willow had been getting in shape for Jack or something, because she could totally wear that suit.
Then Willow looked at her and burst out, “Oh, my God, Alex! When did you get so buff?”
Alex had to stop and think, but yeah, she had been working out for months, doing the martial arts thing, with all the push-ups and leg-lifts and stretches and sit-ups and crunches. She just said, “Look who’s talking. I’ve got to get photos of you like this, because Jack will love it.”
Willow grinned. “Jack’s easy.”
But Alex got out the video camera again and took a video as she flew around Willow and Willow camped it up, doing the superhero poses and stuff. Then Alex asked, “Do you want to do the real superheroine thing?”
Willow thought for a second and then nodded excitedly. Alex stood on the carpet and lifted Willow up into the air. Then Willow got into some ‘Phoenix’ fighting poses in mid-air.
Afterward, Alex showed Willow what she looked like flying through the air, and Willow just smiled smugly. Alex figured Willow was going to be teasing Jack with the images. Just in case someone looked at Alex’s GoPro later, they downloaded the files to Willow’s computer so they were off the GoPro’s memory before they went downstairs.
Willow clipped her pass to her sash, then hid her phone and her driver’s license and a credit card inside a couple of secret pockets inside the sash. Beaming, she said, “I’m ready to go, Kitty!”
Alex grinned. “Me, too, Jean.”
Willow smiled excitedly. “Come on, I bet we’re the sexiest X-Men in the whole con today.”
Personally, Alex figured there were going to be booth babes and professional cosplayers who would look way sexier than her, or at least skankier than she did. But maybe not as sexy as Willow, who really looked movie starlet gorgeous. Alex asked, “Don’t you need your schedule? And your map?”
Willow smiled. “I memorized all of it … And if I forget, I’ll use my Phoenix powers to telepathically pull it out of someone’s head.”
Alex made sure she had her camera gear and her convention stuff and half a dozen energy bars in her messenger bag, along with a notepad and pen in case she got a chance to play reporter, too. And she double-checked that she had her makeup for touch-ups during the day. She had her convention pass and press pass clipped to her belt right next to her ‘X’ belt buckle. They rode down the elevator and walked across to the convention center. Alex noticed that Willow really had been practicing in those four-inch heels. And the boots and gloves looked like they were glued to the bodysuit. There didn’t seem to be much slack anywhere on that thing. In fact, it couldn’t have been much tighter without being painted on. It even curved around the ‘breasts’ like a bra, instead of like a sweater.
Jack was going to pass out when he saw those pictures.
Alex was really glad she was going with Willow to the con, because she knew Willow wouldn’t have dressed like this if she was all by herself. And Willow really needed the chance to feel incredibly beautiful and desirable, because she was so pretty and she was only just starting to believe it. Sometimes Alex thought Cordelia Chase deserved a lot worse than four hundred traffic tickets.
And it happened just like Alex had imagined. As soon as they walked into the massive atrium area to go into the con as soon as it opened, people wanted to talk to them and take photos of them. And because Willow had Alex with her, Willow wasn’t all shy and nervous. She was Phoenix. Alex was kind of embarrassed, but they ended up posing for like fifty or sixty people with cameras. Alex found a Ms. Marvel and a Storm and a Rogue and pulled them in, too, even if their costumes were pretty much all from different eras of X-Men comics. And they all introduced themselves and Willow got all their names and email addys. And they all had cellphones so Willow got them all to type her and Alex’s names and email addresses into their notepad apps.
Willow couldn’t stop smiling. And maybe that was the best present Alex could have gotten her. The only thing that would have made it better was if Jack was here to drool over Willow, but that would lead to ickiness later on, when Alex would want to go to sleep and there would be horribly loud sex noises coming from the other bedroom. Jack was pretty good-looking for an old guy, but he was too old to be having sex with Willow. Willow should be dating a twenty-five-year-old movie star. But movie stars seemed to try to boink everything that moved, even when they were married, which would be totally unfair to Willow, and Alex was pretty sure Jack would never cheat on Willow.
They split up. Alex went off to the pressroom and checked in. Wow, they had snacks and drinks on tables along one wall, and video games to try out on another, and computers to check email or submit stories on a third. And there were round tables in the middle to just sit or write stories or edit material or read newspapers or whatever. She was kind of shocked to see three guys in suits sitting at one table and they were all drinking alcohol, and it was hardly past breakfast time. And not just a little wine. They had the miniature liquor bottles off the drinks table and they were having stuff like a rum and Coke, or a vodka tonic.
She got a Diet Coke and sat down and started playing the new Tomb Raider that wasn’t out yet. She really liked Lara Croft, even if Lara was built like … well, like Terawatt if you wanted to be mean about it.
“Honey, you’re not supposed to be in here. This is for press only.”
Oh, great. That was one of the suits, being a condescending — SAT words strike again! — jerk. And he was standing right behind her, looming like a big vulture or something. She paused the game, stood up, pulled out her GoPro, and started filming him. She said, “Would you mind saying that again? I think I might start a series on not-nice people in the industry, and see if Rolling Stone would use it.”
He looked at her costume and finally noticed her press pass. “How the heck did you get a press pass, kid?”
She thought about saying she found it in a box of Crackerjacks, but she figured that would be too ‘Jack O’Neill’ and would get her in trouble. So she told the truth. “I’m A.L. Mack, the photographer.”
One of the other suits said, “Crap! You’re A.L. Mack? Really? Hey, Kyle, stop being a dickhead.”
‘Kyle’ thought out loud, “Hang on a sec, Mack … Mack … You’re the ’tog who got the first pics of Terawatt, right?”
“Right.”
“And what are you doing at Comic Con?”
She fibbed, “Blending in, so I can talk to cosplayers and get them to talk to me about things they really care about.”
Kyle looked over her costume, even if he was obviously looking over her breasts way too much. She just made sure she filmed him doing it. And she was using her telekinesis to hold the camera steady, so she wasn’t worried about any jitter. He finally muttered, “Damn, you look like you’re about fifteen or sixteen. Except the knockers make you look more nineteen.”
One of the other suits snapped, “Hey, Kyle, do you have to be a complete dick to every woman you meet?”
Suit number two groused, “It’s no wonder you get slapped about twenty times as often as you get laid.”
He leered right at Alex. “Sometimes both, if I’ve been a bad boy.”
Alex just said, “I am filming you while you say this stuff.”
He asked, “Who are you supposed to be?”
She tried not to sound exasperated, but she frowned. “Why are you here if you don’t even know about comic book characters?”
Suit number three said, “She’s Kitty Pryde, round about costume number three, not that any of the Shadowcat costumes were ever that sexy.”
Kyle leered. “Speak for yourself, Ed. Miss Mack is making that suit look ‘marvelous’. Heh-heh.”
He even laughed at his own lame joke! What a jerkhead!
Alex put her camera away and walked over to the table. She shook hands with the other two guys. “Alex Mack. Nice to meet you two, anyway.”
“I’m Ed Oliver, NBC News, and this is Chuck Winston from the local NBC affiliate. The asshole staring at your ass right now is Kyle Andreas, from CBS. We’re all here to cover the panel on Terawatt and superheroing.”
Chuck said, “It ought to be pretty interesting, what with them getting Dwight Perelman at the last minute.”
She managed not to flinch. Much. “He’s the guy CBS This Morning got to come on and publicly slander Terawatt, isn’t he? Mister ‘Terawatt is a deranged vigilante’?”
In an over-pompous voice, Chuck mimicked, “That’s PROFESSOR ‘Terawatt is a deranged vigilante’ to you!” Alex figured Chuck didn’t like the guy, either. And Chuck was kind of funny.
Ed grinned at her. “I take it you’re his biggest fan.”
Kyle muttered, “Yeah, Dwight’s been getting shitloads of traction out of his position.”
“Who is he really?” she asked.
Kyle smirked. “He’s a professor at USC. He teaches social policy.”
Chuck said, “I take it you’re going to the panel, too. Are you doing a Terawatt series here, too?”
She sort-of-fibbed, “I was planning on it. There’s been an explosion of Terawatt cosplay, and there’s expected to be enough to have a Terawatt get-together on Saturday. I want to talk to these women about why they’re dressing up as Terawatt, instead of, say, Spiderwoman or Phoenix, and I want to hear what Terawatt means to them as a role model. I guess now I’ll also be asking them what they think about Professor Perelman.”
Chuck grinned evilly. “Hey, why not use one of the net-connected computers to research ol’ Dwight and torpedo him at the panel? Kyle will hate it, because CBS squeezed him into the panel at the last minute for more airplay.”
She looked over her shoulder, where Kyle was still staring at her butt. She glared. “Kyle? Before you get too carried away, let me offer you two syllables. Jail. Time. I’m seventeen.”
Kyle just smirked again. “Honey, just let me know the second you’re legal. I will give you a night you will never forget.”
Chuck added, “Along with a case of herpes you will never be rid of.”
Ed laughed out loud while Kyle flipped him the bird. Alex made a mental note to have Riley research Kyle for his next time playing ‘Rich Frank, sleazy reporter’.
Kyle said, “Anyway, I know about superhero shit. There was a Jean Grey out there who is definitely going to be my next conquest.”
Alex managed not to cringe too much.
Chuck asked, “Which Jean Grey? Blue-and-yellow unitard Jean? Green minidress Jean? Green-and-gold bodysuit Jean? Re–…”
“That one. She was one fine redhead. And I cannot wait to get my hands on those cans, and that ass.”
Alex really glared at him then. What a jerkhead! “I dare you to walk up to her and say that, because if it’s who I think it is, she’s the most dangerous woman on the planet.”
Ed asked with a chuckle, “What? Danielle Atron’s come to Comic Con?”
Alex said, “No, she’s one of the top programmers and computer security gurus in the world.” She stared at Kyle. “If you piss her off, expect to get audited by the IRS, then have the FBI find child pornography on your computer, then have someone in Nigeria run up massive bills on all your credit cards, and then have your life come apart even more with security camera footage of every misstep you make from here on out.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Like anyone can really do all that.”
She glared. “Remember. I warned you.” She turned her back on him and walked over to the net-connected computers, where she logged in using her press pass and did five minutes of research on Professor Dwight Perelman.
And that was all she needed. He had his own website where he patted himself on the back a lot and hyped his books on what police forces were doing wrong, and on proper ways to rehabilitate criminals. Then the Wikipedia entry on him was completely different and was locked because someone — someone whose initials were probably D.P. — kept changing stuff. But their entry on him was … informative.
She went back and helped Lara Croft get through one level and get killed in the second level before it was time to go to the Terawatt panel. She was definitely buying that game. And she was definitely buying Ray a copy. Maybe even Louis, too. And she was definitely going to beat that second level the next time, and not let Lara die like that.
The room for the panel was packed. No, it was PACKED. And it seemed like there were thirty or forty Terawatts sitting in the crowd, which was kind of eerie. But a miracle occurred, and Ed stood up in the front row and waved her up, and there was a seat for her between Ed and Chuck so she didn’t have to sit next to Kyle. Ed and Chuck kept accusing Kyle of having ‘wandering hands’, which was really bugging him, so Alex figured Kyle wouldn’t grope a woman here but still had some story about being grope-y that Ed and Chuck knew and liked to torture him about.
She really thought Kyle needed lots of verbal torturing.
So the panel moderator was Chris Hardwick, the webcast guy. He introduced a guy who had produced and written for a couple of TV superhero shows, both of them kind of okay, and a guy who had written some comics that Louis liked even if Alex hadn’t read them, and a guy who had done a screenplay for one of the Marvel movies that Alex had thought was barely okay for Marvel when she saw it and now in retrospect she didn’t like it … and Professor Perelman. Then Chris said that since they only had 45 minutes from right then, they should just open the floor to the audience and give the panel the chance to put forth their thoughts at the same time as the audience got to ask questions.
So she immediately put up her hand. There were five people running around with wireless mikes so the questioners could be heard. The first person had a question for Jerry, the movie screenplay writer. The second person had a question for Anthony, the TV producer. Chris pointed at her as the third questioner.
She waited until the person with the wireless mike trotted over to her, and she took the mike. “My question is for Professor Perelman.” He preened and smirked. Chuck started snickering, like he knew just what was coming, so maybe she was pretty obvious. “Have you ever done anything brave in your entire life? Because it seems like you have spent your entire life hiding in a little closet, attacking the people who put their lives on the line to keep you safe. You started out attacking policemen, then you moved to attacking prison wardens and guards and probation officers, and now you’re whoring yourself out to TV shows that will let you go on and badmouth a woman who puts her life on the line stopping supervillains and unstoppable monsters.”
Professor Perelman wanted to say something, but the whole place just kept applauding, which Alex should have guessed because there were like forty Terawatts in there so there were probably a lot of other Terawatt fans in the room.
Finally, when the noise died down enough, he pointed at her. “Little girl, who the hell do you think you are to talk to someone like me that way?”
And, while people booed him for being rude and the moderator tried to ask him to remember the panel rules, even if she had been really rude to him first, she hung onto the mike and answered him. “As it happens, I am A.L. Mack, the professional photographer, and I’m not a ‘little girl’. I’m the news photographer who got the first photos of Terawatt …” She had to stop talking while the whole room applauded. “… and I saw a woman risk her life to save a policeman from being crushed by four hundred pounds of concrete and wood. I saw a woman try to stop three super-powered psychopaths who were armed like it was a war zone, and still manage to protect everyone around, even when the supervillains were firing rocket-propelled grenades, and she didn’t kill or injure anyone, and then she brought a nearly-dead policeman back to life. The city of Paradise Valley has been trying to deputize her for maybe a couple months now, and the Department of Homeland Security wants to deputize her. So how can you say she’s disrespectful to authority, or a vigilante, or sociopathic? Or are you just too afraid to stick to insulting policemen?”
Most of the room was applauding and cheering, and when the wireless mike volunteer came over to take the mike back, Chris Hardwick told the volunteer to leave her alone.
So, while Perelman tried to say bad stuff about Terawatt and kept getting booed tremendously, Chris Hardwick waved her over. When Perelman finally realized no one was going to let him get away with saying Terawatt was a freak for wanting to help people, he shut up. And Chris pointed at her. “Two things. First, that is possibly one of the best Kitty Pryde cosplays I have ever seen. And two, why aren’t you on this panel?”
She said, “Thanks, my friend made the costume, and no one asked me or even contacted me about the panel.”
He asked, “So what do you think about Terawatt and real superheroing, as opposed to comic book supers?”
She said, “First, crazed vigilantes are a bad thing, and crazed super-powered vigilantes are worse. There has been a super-powered vigilante running loose in Tromaville, New Jersey, and he just got captured. He was handling the city’s massive crime problems by tearing criminals apart. Literally, tearing off an arm, or tearing off a head, or worse. He caught the head of a white slavery ring and stuffed her into a dry cleaner’s washing machine and killed her by running it with her in it. This guy needed to be stopped, even if the town had a crooked mayor and a crooked police chief who are now in prison and being investigated by the FBI and the New Jersey state attorney general. And if it hadn’t been for the DHS and Terawatt, it would have been a bloodbath, because we’re talking a super-powered monster-man against an entire National Guard battalion with tanks and mortars and Bradleys, in the middle of a heavily-populated city.
“But Terawatt is cooperating with the police. We managed to get a parabolic mike on her when she flew in to stop two super-powered bank robbers, and she was respectful, she asked if they required any help from her, and then when she was asked to go into what we figured was a huge trap, she let the police deputize her and she did it. If you remember that case, she talked both robbers into surrendering. And what sort of police would be able to stop a two-hundred-foot tarantula? According to the DHS, an Air Force helicopter used a high-speed machine gun to put about a thousand rounds of heavy ammunition into the thing, and it just got mad. Even worse, it was a pregnant female tarantula. If it hadn’t been for Terawatt, the entire southwestern United States might be overrun right now with hundreds of giant tarantulas. Then, if it hadn’t been for Terawatt and the DHS and some courageous citizens, all of Philadelphia might be overrun now by a giant red blob monster. Obviously, we need someone like Terawatt. We’re just darn lucky we have someone like Terawatt now.”
It was kind of embarrassing, because it felt like every time she wanted to go sit down, someone would ask her another question about Terawatt, like was she nice, or what kinds of powers does she have, or was that her natural hair color, or how many tons could Terawatt lift. And Chris Hardwick kept encouraging people to ask her stuff, too. And no one wanted to listen to Professor Perelman, who kept getting grouchier and grouchier.
After the panel ended, she still wasn’t done. People, including half the Terawatts in the room, wanted to congratulate her, mainly for being mean to Professor Perelman, which had really felt great at the time, but now she was having second thoughts about. Ed and Chuck were busy writing their stories, and Kyle was hitting on one Terawatt who was showing way too much cleavage. A Terawatt leotard did NOT dive down to below your breasts in a huge ‘V’! Ick.
Dwight Perelman came right over, too. He wasn’t exactly imposing, even if he tried to be. But he was about 5'8" and kind of chubby, so he wouldn’t have looked intimidating even if Alex didn’t have powers. “Young lady, I am a tenured professor with an impressive academic reputation, and I —”
Chuck interrupted, “That’s a lie, by the way.”
Ed added, “He’s not tenured. And he won’t be, because he’s making his entire department look bad with this shit. And his reputation isn’t good in his field, either. Most of his submitted papers get rejected by the good journals in his area.”
Alex chipped in, “I noticed that none of his books were published by real publishers, just USC’s in-house press and one was self-published.”
Kyle leaned into the conversation and said with a smirk, “Well, that would be because they suck.”
Perelman wagged his finger at her and fussed, “You are just lucky you’re a female! Or else!”
Chuck snarked, “Yeah, so you don’t have to worry about him hitting on you.” Perelman really got red in the face at that crack.
One of the Terawatts said, “He’s a sucky teacher, too. He’s got like the worst ratings in the department. The only stuff we got out of his class, another professor told us we needed to unlearn it.”
Perelman snapped, “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this kind of abuse!” He wheeled about and stormed out.
Chuck said to Perelman’s departing back, “Yeah, because the people who recorded your performance for YouTube are going to have titles like ‘Perelman stomped in debate by teenager’.”
Kyle groaned. “And now I’ve got to go call my boss and tell him nice work on forcing Dwight into this venue, and he totally tanked. Somehow, it’ll be all my fault.”
After Kyle walked out, Ed said, “Kyle may be a huge lech, but he’s a good reporter, and his boss really is a douchebag.”
Alex took the opportunity to take all the Terawatts who wanted to talk to her out into the sunny hallway and ask them questions about Terawatt, and why they liked Terawatt, and why they decided to cosplay Terawatt instead of a fictional character, and what they thought about Professor Perelman. She was secretly using her telekinesis while she ‘held’ the GoPro in her hands and filmed everyone, so it was really steady.
By the time she finished doing all the interviews, she had totally missed the other morning panel she wanted to see, so she went off to the ‘press lunch’ even though she was dressed like Kitty Pryde. She was pretty much expecting to see twenty more guys in suits who would all glare at her. Instead, there were like a hundred fifty or two hundred people in the room, and it was like a sit-down lunch in a nice restaurant. There were guys dressed pretty sloppy, and guys dressed preppy, and guys in really expensive suits. There were some women dressed really super-nice and some in expensive business suits. But there were no other cosplayers. Great.
She went and sat at a table that had four other women, with two guys. “Is this seat available?”
They all glanced at her press pass before nodding, or waving her into the seat, or saying ‘sure’. But they were looking at her, so she sort-of-fibbed, “I’m Alex. I’m surprised more people aren’t doing the cosplay thing to get attendees to talk to them.”
One of the women scowled. “You get to do that? I’m stuck trying to get interviews with everyone in a movie on my boss’s list, when no one has any free time.”
Another woman complained, “I wanted to interview Felicia Day about running her own production for web release and trying to fit that into a normal Hollywood schedule. But she’s booked solid, and her interview slot’s going to be cramped. I’ll be lucky if I get one question in and get a fifteen second sound bite.”
One of the guys grumbled, “Hey, at least she talks. James Cameron’s here, and he pretty much hates reporters. Trying to get a decent interview out of him is like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.”
“Ooh, yeah, I heard Winters’ new editor stuck him with that ‘cushy’ assignment.”
“The guy must really hate Winters.”
Alex had no idea who they were talking about, so she just poured salad dressing over her salad and cut it up and wolfed it down.
One of the women finally asked, “So … Alex?” Alex nodded. “I take it you’re not in the entertainment news field. What do you do?”
She went through her fake story. “I got my big break when I ran into a war zone to capture Terawatt fighting three heavily-armed supervillains. Since then, besides Terawatt, I’ve been doing things like sneaking into a meatpacking plant to document code violations. I thought it would be a fun break to talk to the Terawatt cosplayers and see why they like Terawatt so much.”
“And you’re going in disguise?”
She admitted, “Well, really my friend who I came down with came up with the costumes, and I’m wearing this one so she’d have the nerve to wear hers.”
“What’s she?”
“Who are you supposed to be?”
Alex tried not to groan. Weren’t these people supposed to know stuff about comics if they were working at Comic Con? “I’m Kitty Pryde, aka Shadowcat of the X-Men.”
“Oh, right, Ellen Page. Not her best performance.”
Alex added, “And my friend is Phoenix, aka Jean Grey, also of the X-Men.”
One of the guys leaned forward. “Is she the one in the green and gold costume with the gold sash?” Alex nodded. “Would you introduce me?”
Alex winced a tiny bit. “She has a boyfriend.”
One of the women said, “I think I saw her. She’s not a model doing a bit for Stan Lee?”
Alex told her, “This is the first costume she brought. She has three others.”
The other guy asked, “So she’s trying to break into show biz? I could introduce her to a couple people …”
One of the women cut him down. “You don’t know anyone worth introducing.”
Alex insisted, “She’s a computer programmer. A very successful computer programmer. She’s just doing this for fun.”
One of the women asked, “How successful? Microsoft intro programmer successful, Microsoft programmer with stocks successful, or Microsoft upper management successful?”
Alex smiled. “The last one. But you don’t need to know more, unless you’re going to go interview her.”
One of the guys lustfully said, “Oh, I could interview her all day long. I mean, did you see her h–…”
“Jim!” snapped one of the women. “Try to reel it in.”
The other guy frowned. “For God’s sake, you’re at the only table with a decent number of women in the biz, and you’re making an idiot of yourself.”
Jim the Horny Guy smiled. “You mean I’m making a bigger idiot of myself than usual? Wow, that’s a pretty high bar to jump over.”
Alex just ate her lunch — sliced beef with a wine sauce, mixed vegetables, and rice pilaf, according to the waiter — and her dessert, while the other people at the table talked ‘entertainment news’, like who was a good interview, and who would hit on you unless you were ugly, and who would hit on you regardless of your gender unless you were ugly, and who would hit on you if you had really big boobs and a lot of cleavage even if you were ugly, and who was being suspiciously cozy with who at the con even though they were both married to other people. And all the women at the table were watching their weight, so none of them ate their dessert or the rolls, and two of them were on low-carb diets so they wouldn’t touch the rice pilaf, and one was vegetarian and wouldn’t eat her beef. Alex really wished she knew all of them well enough to get those servings of beef and rice, but there was no way she was going to try and snitch them after the people had eaten off their plates. Yuck! Still, she managed to eat four rolls with lots of butter, which no one appeared to notice because only the two guys even looked at the basket of rolls, and only one of them even had a roll. Oh, well, she had half a dozen energy bars in her bag. And she could always go over to the pressroom and get snacks and a Diet Coke. Or she could walk back to her hotel room and raid Willow’s kitchen.
The afternoon was a lot calmer. She slipped into an interview session with the guys who were starring in ‘Thor’ and ‘Captain America’ and just pretended to be taking notes while she was really just sort of drooling over them, because they were totally hot. As other-Willow said about other-Selina, ‘hello salty goodness!’ which apparently she got from the Cordelia Chase of the other universe. Alex went to a couple of awesome panels and played two more videogames. The new Mass Effect game looked mega-amazing, and she could play Shepard as female if she wanted, and female Shepard could even ‘romance’ some of the crew of the Normandy! There was even a whole customizing thing she didn’t have time for, so she could maybe make Shepard look like Terawatt. Or ‘green Phoenix’ Willow. From the neck up, anyway.
She had no trouble finding Willow when it was time to meet up in the atrium. Every guy there wanted a picture of Phoenix. Every guy cosplaying as an X-Man wanted his picture taken with Phoenix. And there was a pretty buff guy cosplaying Cyclops in a decent costume, and it was pretty obvious to Alex that guy was willing to do pretty much anything if ‘Jean Grey’ would go back to his room for the night. Not that Willow would ever do a thing like that.
Okay, Willow’s Phoenix was definitely the hottest Marvel cosplay Alex had seen all day, even including the Marvel Comics booth babes, a couple of whom Alex thought were kind of skanky. And even including that Black Widow who had her leather catsuit unzipped down to her navel all day long.
Willow ran over and gave Alex a hug. “Oh my God isn’t this the most awesome thing ever, I can’t imagine why I didn’t go to this before and I had so much fun, and even the booth babes at the Marvel Comics and the Marvel Entertainment booths thought my costume was great, even if they mainly wanted to know where I had my boobs done and who did my nose and it’s my real nose thank you very much and how much I paid a pro costumer to make my costume and who I was working for at the con, and everybody wants a picture of me, and like forty guys asked for my phone number or asked me to go to parties with ’em and okay, some of ’em were grotty but some of ’em were totally of the hotness even if none of ’em are like Jack, and I got a picture taken of me with Stan Lee, and he said Dave Cockrum must have had a picture of me in mind when he drew Jean Grey, isn’t he sweet, and I just had the best time ever!”
Alex waited, and Willow finally took a breath. Willow smiled. “So how was your day?”
So Alex told her about the pressroom and the jerky reporter, and the panel and the jerky professor, and all the interviews with Terawatt cosplayers, and the lunch with the jerky reporters, and getting to drool over Thor and Cap, and awesome videogames.
They went back to their room for dinner, because they were in costume and they weren’t changing out of the costumes because of the evening stuff they were going to go to. But Willow could get any one of the hotel restaurants to deliver, because of the whole ‘super duper rewards level’ thing. So they ordered three dinners, one small one for Willow and two large ones for Alex, and talked about how much fun they had, and argued over which party they were going to go to, because between the official Comic Con thing, and the extra things going on in nearby hotels, there were like seven wild-and-crazy things to go to. They decided on the big BioWare party in the hotel across the street. Alex spent the whole time telling Willow about the Mass Effect version she’d gotten to play in the pressroom, and how she was going to customize her Shepard to look just like Willow, and she was going to name her Willow Shepard.
Willow was really cute when she got all embarrassed.
And the BioWare party was amazing. Mega-amazing. There were waitresses and bartenders made up to look like Asari. There was a team with a black-haired female Shepard in black N7 armor and a Tali and a real Grunt that moved its eyes and opened its mouth and everything! Ooh, and there was a male Renegade Shepard cosplayer walking around with a Tali and a baby carriage, and their baby was the cutest little girl ever, and the baby carriage was customized to look like the Normandy! Alex had to get pictures of that.
Over in one side room there were some of the game designers having a talk with interested fans, and Willow got into a detailed discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of UnrealScript and the Unreal Engine with a bunch of them. And there was no way a programmer guy was not going to want to chat with the smartest programmer in the world, who also looked like the hottest Jean Grey in existence. And it turned out that half the programmers in the room were already huge Red Tree Software fans, so Willow walked out of the party with free copies of everything they had on hand, including some t-shirts and a female Shepard action figure, and URLs so she could get all the software and downloadable content for free. And she had business cards from all the programmers so she could send them Red Tree merch, too.
Willow never got out of the programmers’ chat until she was ready to go back to the hotel, but Alex got really bored because she hardly knew anything about C yet, and they were discussing really complicated things like designing a programming language that used ‘objects’ but wasn’t officially an OOP language because it deliberately avoided things like multiple inheritance. So she went and played Mass Effect with some of the other people who had press passes, all of them game reviewers. And they wanted to chat with another press person who also happened to be female and pretty and interested in things they loved, like video games and cosplay. Having all these guys acting like she was totally hot was … embarrassing. Okay, it was also totally seductive, and surprisingly nerve-wracking, and it really made her feel good about herself. She totally got why women were walking around the con floor dressed like Lady Death or Slave Leia and showing off about ninety percent of their skin in a really air-conditioned building.
Alex also ate a ton of the free snacks and had three cans of Diet Coke. And she danced with a few guys who weren’t old and weren’t creepy and weren’t stinky. By the time she and Willow got back to the hotel room, she really needed to sit down for a while. She showered and slipped on her pajamas and then called her mom to tell her she was having a great time. And she sent people some pictures of her as Shadowcat and Willow as Phoenix. Jack got the full video of Willow as Phoenix, including the flying in the hotel room part.
Alex figured it was going to take Cindy over three hours to explain Comic Con to Hanna, because first she was going to have to explain about comic books and anime and manga and any other stuff Hanna hadn’t gotten to yet, and then she was going to have to explain about fandoms, and then she was going to have to explain about conventions and cosplay and stuff. Alex just figured Hanna was going to have a lot of trouble understanding about books and movies about comic book superheroes and people dressing up like their favorite fake superhero when there were now real super-powered people.
* * *
When Alex got up in the morning and wolfed down breakfast, she was ready to get going. But Willow was kind of, well … Alex had to search her brain for a good word, but she finally came up with ‘languid’. Maybe languorous. Some SAT word, anyway. Willow was just all relaxed and smiling and peaceful and not in a hurry to get going.
It turned out Willow had waited until Alex went to shower and go to sleep last night, and then she Skyped Jack and peeled herself really slowly out of her Phoenix costume and then had Skype-sex with Jack. At least Willow didn’t go into the mega-TMI parts, even if as far as Alex was concerned, the whole ‘phone sex over Skype’ thing was TMI as soon as you said ‘Skype’ and ‘sex’ in the same sentence.
Alex’s costume for the day was still Kitty Pryde, but this time it was Kitty Pryde, Agent of SHIELD. She had a skintight black lycra bodysuit that had a narrow vee of light blue from the neck down through the crotch and back up. And it had gel padding in the boob area so Alex looked like about a C cup in that outfit. To go with that, she had a ton of accessories. There were calf-height low-heeled boots, forearm-length gloves, a utility belt, a weird shoulder holster and a holster that strapped to her thigh, kneepads, a headband, a neck mike, and two straps that went around her left biceps, all of them the same light blue color. And the wig was brown, but a bob with one tress that Alex had to put a little hair gel on to get it to lay the way she wanted across her forehead. The utility belt was muy convenient, because she could put her money in one pocket and her ID and a credit card in another, and her phone in a third, and her lipstick and powder compact in two others. And there were a couple of wide pockets on the back of the utility belt that were big enough to squeeze an energy bar in sideways. The boots fit too well around her ankles and calves to have much room for the wallet and phone in there today, and they didn’t have any cool pockets in them, so the utility belt was way better. She also had a huge fake gun to go into the shoulder holster, and she used the thigh holster for her GoPro. And a pocket-sized notepad with a Comic Con pen from her press kit.
She had to wait a few minutes for Willow, so she had another bowl of instant oatmeal, which wasn’t bad, but wasn’t anywhere near as good as her mom’s homemade oatmeal.
And Willow finally came out of her room. Or rather, Rogue came out. It was the X-Men movies Rogue, in tight black leather, with high-heeled black leather boots and black leather gloves. And the red wig with the white streaks in her hair. And enough makeup to look really pretty but not so much she’d look slutty.
Okay, that leather outfit was way tighter than the movie outfits. And Willow had more padding in the boob area than Anna Paquin wore.
Willow turned in a circle so Alex could get the full effect, and smiled. “I tried it in heavy leather like in the movie, and you know what? That’s stupid. You can’t move in those outfits. I don’t know how they did it in the movie, because I couldn’t sit or jump or raise my arms up or lift my legs or pretty much anything except stand around and walk in little tiny steps. And when I walked, the leather squeaked and groaned like constantly! And don’t get me started about sitting in that on a leather couch, because every time I moved it sounded like I was cutting the cheese. So this is glove leather. Way softer, and easier to move in, but definitely sluttier.”
Alex told her, “You look great in it. And you didn’t need to get it for a bigger cup size, because you’d look great in it just the way you are.”
Willow insisted, “We’re Marvel superheroines. We have to have a D cup. Or bigger. Did you see the one Black Cat cosplayer yesterday with the huge … kitties? I think she was about a triple D for real. Maybe bigger. How would you do stuff like tie your shoes and shave your legs with those things?”
Alex smarted off, “I think if you have boobs that big, you just point them at the nearest guys and say ‘tie my shoes’ and ‘shave my legs’ and ‘buy me dinner’.”
Willow giggled. “Ooh, very catty. Get those claws out for the Black Cat cosplayer.”
They walked down to the con, with Willow doing a not-very-good Southern accent for Rogue. Alex had to show her ‘weapons’ to the guy at the entrance, because you couldn’t bring real weapons or even super-realistic weapons in, for whatever reasons. Probably safety and security and rules the convention center insisted on before they’d let Comic Con have the convention.
And everyone wanted to take their picture again. A few Gambits got pictures of Rogue hugging them. One Wolverine said, “Wow, you’re almost as hot as the green Phoenix who was here yesterday.” Willow and Alex giggled about that all the way to the convention floor. They looked around, and Willow shopped for stuff while Alex took some video footage of some of the cooler stuff. They even dropped in on Louis and Marsha, who were busy showing Terawatt merch to some people. It looked like the ‘What Would Terawatt Do’ t-shirts were doing a big business.
As they walked over to the videogaming area, Willow asked, “You see how touchy-feely Marsha was?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, way more than usual. And Louis was way more smiley than he usually is. And Marsha, too. You think?”
Willow nodded back. “Totally. They so did the horizontal tango last night.”
They played some games together, and in the player-vs.-player games, Willow just crushed her like a bug. Then Willow crushed some gamer guys, too. The only thing Willow didn’t totally rule on was Rock Band, because she hadn’t ever learned the fingering for the guitar. And when one really dorky guy made fun of his friend for losing to a girl, Willow pulled off her glove and in that Southern accent threatened to touch him and suck his life-force out of his body. His friend said, “It’s the only way he can get girls to touch him anyway.” The two guys walked off, flipping the bird at each other and insulting each other. Alex totally did not get what made guys tick. They were so weird sometimes.
Then she went and used her press pass to get to the head of a line to play the new Mortal Kombat. And really, she was just abusing her press pass. Again. Press pass power corrupts, and absolute press pass power corrupts absolutely. Okay, she was sure Lord Acton hadn’t said it about people with press passes at comic conventions.
She wondered if people were saying it about Terawatt. That could be bad.
Then after the press lunch, where once again she was the only person cosplaying and she felt stupid, she headed back up toward the room to get some more to eat, because that lunch was maybe fine for a newswoman watching her weight, or a guy who had just had several drinks, but it wasn’t enough for her.
As she walked into the Marriott to go take one of the express elevators, she thought she heard gunshots. But there weren’t any real weapons at the con. She looked out toward the marina, and didn’t see anything. She checked the street side.
Oh, holy crud. There were three security guards at an armored truck in front of the convention center, and one was already laid out on the street, while the other two were panicking and firing at … nothing. More than one nothing, since they were pointing their guns in different directions.
Why did it have to be invisible badguys? She ducked into a corner and went silvery. Then she flew along the ceiling to the elevators so she could dodge the security cams, and she oozed through the gap between the elevator doors to fly straight up the elevator shaft to her floor.
She popped her phone out of her morph and called Willow. “Please pick up please pick up please pick up!”
“Marie here, honeychile.”
“Oh, crud Willow, call 911, we have invisible crooks robbing the armored car right out in front of the con! I’m on my way to the room.”
The Southern accent vanished. “On it.”
Alex oozed back out of the elevator shaft when she got to her floor. She flew along the ceiling to her suite before diving under the door and heading for her gym bag in her closet. She dived into it and changed out of one uniform into another. How weird.
She headed for the kitchen. She used her telekinesis to grab four two-liter bottles of soda, and then she flew over to the sliding glass door and opened it a foot so she could fly out. She went up, past the penthouse suite, and across the roof to divebomb the badguys, even if she couldn’t see them. Well, once she splattered them with foaming soda, they’d be visible enough.
She swept down toward the armored car. Two guards were down now, and the third one was cowering against a wheel of the armored car, yelling ‘please don’t hurt me!’
And then she saw what she was actually facing. It wasn’t a couple of invisible teenagers. It was something impossible. Something impossible, and way more deadly than few invisible teens. She was so shocked she accidentally dropped all the soda.
Magneto, Juggernaut, and Mystique were robbing the armored car. And it wasn’t three crazy cosplayers.