Waiting for a Miracle - Chapter 4

It was two days before I needed to see Wallace again. Or rather it was two nights, as I’m not really a day shift kind of guy. Anyway, I had a crisis in the lab that I felt he could help me with. The crisis was also partly his fault, and so 3 AM found me outside his front door, pounding on it like a madman. I am a madman of course, but that’s completely beside the point.

The porch light went on and I sighed with relief. A sting of guilt lanced my neck as Wallace’s wife opened the door, and I ducked my head and hunched my shoulders.

 She looked at me in anger until she recognized my suit. Then she slammed the door in my face without so much as an “oh my God, please don’t kill me!”

I considered blasting through the door with a laser and killing her for being rude. I let the notion go, having a hunch that doing so might upset Wallace. I waited on the doorstep, listening to his wife wailing at him not to answer the door.

Wallace opened the door after many assurances that everything was all right. He stepped outside dressed in a pair of flannel boxer shorts and a muscle t-shirt, which I presumed were his pajamas. Out of his normal clothes he was muscular, a delightful discovery made more evident when he stretched his arms back behind his head.

Yawning, Wallace rubbed his eyes. “It’s kind of late Duggan. What is this about?” He stifled another yawn behind a loose fist. “Did you find him already?”

I shook my head, the action simultaneously answering his question and clearing my mind of a dirty thought. “No, but I needed to see you anyway. I have a major problem with the advice you gave me. Leona was alright with a small kiss the last two nights, but tonight she demanded that I give her a real kiss. She said she wasn’t happy with just a peck on the lips, and she completely trashed my lab when I refused to give in to her.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem alright. How long will it take to repair your laboratory?” Wallace asked.

He’d already deduced that I couldn’t search for Miracle Man without my lab.

“One day, and the nanites can operate independently until then. The problem is that they’ll try to report back to my server in the lab once they’ve finished their search for him, and Leona trashed it. She’s still in my lab, so I can’t make repairs on anything either. She’s really pissed off at me right now, and I need you to talk her down.”

Scowling, Wallace asked, “Why do I have to do it?” His rising voice revealed his fear more than his face did.

“Because it was your idea that I give her a small kiss in the first place,” I replied testily. This wasn’t helping, so I took a deep breath to calm down. “I’m sorry. You’re just trying to help, but I don’t know what to say to get Leona to realize she’s keeping me from finding the big guy. Maybe you could do it, but she just throws things at me and swears like a drunken sailor. I’d be willing to pay you a hazard rate of four times your usual fee.”

“Fat load of good it’ll do me if I die,” Wallace muttered. He made a pathetic defeated whimper and stepped back into his house. “Let me get dressed,” he said and shut the door, closing it at a much slower speed than his wife had.

Twenty minutes later we were sorting through the mess in my lab, searching under the larger chunks of debris for Leona. I caught movement in the rafter from the corner of my eye and spun to look at it. A miserable groan rose from my throat at the sight of her pants hanging from an I-beam.

“She’s naked,” I commented as I directed Wallace’s gaze up to the trail of clothing hanging in the rafters.

The trail ended with her panties, and Wallace’s gasp told me that he’d found her before I did.

Leona was sleeping on an I-beam less than one inch wide, her head resting on her crossed forearms while her curled legs were practically tucked under her chin. Her ears twitched a warning that she was in a light slumber.

“What was she asking you for, specifically?” Wallace whispered.

“She wanted me to kiss her like Miracle Man does,” I said.

Raising his voice, Wallace said, “Remember your promise, Duggan.”

“What?” I asked, feeling frustrated when he shook his head at me. “Damn it Wallace, what prom—?”

“Leona!” Wallace called. “Come down here, please! Duggan has agreed to kiss you right!”

Gritting my teeth, I hissed, “Do you want me to kill you?”

“I seem to recall someone saying they would do anything to get their hero back. Who was that? Was that you?” Wallace remarked in an acidic tone of voice. “This is it, Duggan. This is the moment of truth.”

He directed my attention back up to the rafter where Leona was now awake and staring at me.

He was right, and it infuriated me to admit that. Without repairs to the nanite server, there would be three days of wasted work. I took a deep breath and nodded, raising the lower half of my mask to prepare for Leona’s kiss “Come down here Leona, please? I’m sorry for refusing you, and I promise I’ll kiss you right.”

A split second later she leapt from the rafter, landing just a few feet in front of Wallace before she sprinted to me. Of course, Wallace was still looking up at her outline, and he predictably gasped when it faded away. He turned to ask me where she was and gasped again.

“Is that—?” he began to ask the obvious, looking at her backside. But he shut up when he saw me raise my hand in a subtle cue for silence.

“I get my kiss now?” Leona asked. I nodded, leaning forward to kiss her.

I stopped when she shook her head, and I looked down as she took hold of both my wrists. She drew them around her waist, positioning my hands so that they were each cupping one of her ass cheeks.

“Now you can give me my kiss,” she said.

So I did, for a really long time. No, I’m not kidding either. I promise you, double M never kissed her that long. But I found that the longer I kissed her, the more her body relaxed. Finally she broke the kiss, turning away from me with a smile.

“Will that work? Maybe I could tongue your ear for a few minutes?” I sarcastically offered as she walked away.

Leona nodded, a tiny giggle escaping her. “It will work for now. I’ll go home and leave you be. Thanks, Duggan.”

“Does this mean you won’t kill anyone on the way home?” Wallace asked.

“I’ll try,” she promised before she leapt, blowing out a window as she crashed through it.

Sighing, I pulled my mask back down. “She’s going to kill someone for that,” I said in a casual way, as though I were giving my shrink the time of day.

After a moment of silence, Wallace asked, “Why?”

I pointed to the open window just two panes down from where she’d hit. “She jumped too fast and missed her target, blowing her graceful exit,” I explained, giving a short nod. “Someone is going to pay for that.”

Wallace sighed, but his expression showed nothing but keen fascination. “Was that really—?”

I cut him off, already knowing what he would ask. “It’s the stump of a tail, or what’s left of it, anyway. That’s why she left Devastator. She’d been bragging over a victory against the Rocket, and it pissed Devastator off to be talked down to by a woman. Devastator lost his temper and picked her up by her tail, shooting it off with a Vulcan cannon armed with titanium bullets.”

Wallace frowned, swiveling his head around to look at the broken window. I could hear an ache of regret in his low voice when he asked, “If she was so powerful, why didn’t she try to stop him?”

“She was his sidekick. Until he shot her, I don’t think she believed that he would really hurt her.” I looked down at the floor, blinking to avoid getting tears in my mask. “She couldn’t hurt him even after what he did to her, so she left and tried to make a solo career. The Rocket caught her every time after that, and he made up for his past humiliations by...”

I trailed off, swallowing thickly. Wallace understood what I was hinting at, and he waved for me to go on. “She came to City after getting out of the hospital, and though she wouldn’t tell me anything, I got a look at her files. She...the last time he beat her, she was in intensive care for three weeks. You can understand why going back to San Francisco isn’t an option for her, can’t you? That city has nothing to offer her but pain and bitter memories.”

Wallace nodded, a faint whimsical smile touching the corners of his mouth. “You know Duggan, when you talk like this, it’s hard to remember that you’re the bad guy.”

I shrugged. “Even a bad guy needs friends. Thank you for coming, Wallace. I’m sorry I had to bug you and your family so late at night.”

“Forget it,” Wallace said with a dismissive wave. “I got hazard pay for my troubles, and I got to see something truly remarkable.”

I asked, “A stump of a tail?”

“No.” Wallace’s smile grew. “I saw a criminal’s conscience.”

I flew Wallace home, carrying him in my arms this time. I did grope him in a few inappropriate places, but I think he allowed it for the thousand dollars an hour that he was making in hazard pay.

Later, I found it funny that I paid him for the “danger” he was in, since it was me who was in peril the whole time.