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The Dark Avenger Begins - Chapter 4
The costume shops around the university had been rented out
for weeks by the time Darin and I sprung into action, so I did the only thing
that came naturally. I called my mommy.
"We do not have enough time for this," Darin said as we crossed the
river over to the suburbs on Saturday morning. "How is your mom going to
make two ninja costumes in an afternoon?"
"I have no idea," I confessed. "But she said she'd do it, and
then we'll have ninja costumes."
"And be the dorkiest guys in DeVargas," Darin pointed out.
"We won that honor when we staged the complete light saber battle from
'Return of the Jedi' in the stairwell," I said. "I'm okay with that
if you're okay with that."
"I have a Warf costume complete with synthetic forehead at my parents'
house," he said. "I'm more than okay with dressing up like a ninja.
And sticking it to Ivan."
We discussed the plan we formulated until we got to my mom's house. She lived
in stuccoed one story ranch deep in the suburbs, the home she bought three
weeks after my father's death. I was nine. I parked in the driveway and waved
at Mrs. Mulch, the next-door neighbor, like I did every time I came home.
Mom was waiting for us in the living room with a plate of warm chocolate chip
cookies. "There's coffee in the kitchen," she said as she hugged each
of us. "I thought we'd work in the den."
"You really don't have to do this, Barbara," Darin said, taking a
handful of cookies and going straight to the kitchen for his caffeine. "I
mean, really."
"Don't worry," Mom called after him. "I don't have to, because I
already did."
Darin came out of the kitchen, cup to his lips and eyebrows arranged upwards.
"Eh?"
"I pieced together the basic costume after Peter called," Mom said
affectionately. "Ninjas, right? For the Halloween mixer." She sighed
and started down the hall towards her sewing room, chattering a mile of minute.
"I shouldn't be surprised that Peter wants to go as a ninja. He's been
martial arts mad since his daddy took him to his first karate class. And you
know, I met Peter's father at the Halloween mixer my sophomore year. He was a
pirate. I was a princess. It was absolutely magical. We fell in love that
night, and we stayed in love right up until he died."
She turned around and hugged me impulsively. "I'm so glad you're
going," she said. "Maybe you'll meet a nice girl. Now, try on your
costume."
She handed Darin a hanger. He grinned at me and scurried off to the guest bath
to change.
"So, where's Warren?" I asked while we waited. Warren was my mother's
second husband, a man she'd met and married the year after I went to college.
We'd never gotten along like gangbusters. Just after he married Mom, Warren
expressed his opinion that I was a "no-good, arrogant bitch of a
boy," while I preferred to call him a motherfucker.
"He's out playing golf," Mom said, fluttering her hand. I nodded and
didn't press the issue. At nineteen, I would have made a couple of snide
comments in his absence. Now, at twenty-two, it was beginning to dawn on me
that my mother was lonely and enjoyed the company of Warren, because he made
her...happy. And in theory, I wanted my mommy to be happy which meant, in
practice, accepting the guy I hated. For my mom. Because she was happy.
Look, sometimes I don't get the emotional crap right off the bat.
"I'm glad you're still living on campus," Mom said suddenly. "I
sleep at night knowing you're there. I don't know how I'm going to manage if
you stay in the city after graduation."
"Ma, I'll be fine," I assured her tugging on my shirt cuff.
"Living in the city proper isn't going to be that much different than
living in DeVargas."
She shook her head. "As long as you're on campus, I know that they won't
touch you. I don't have that guarantee when you graduate. You know, your
father,"
"It'll be okay." I had to cut her off. It was okay to hear her
talking about meeting Dad at some mixer thirty-five years ago, but I didn't
want to talk about the battle that took him. I started babbling to cover my
awkwardness. "Look, it's not like any of the new school villains would
even honor that old code. I mean, you never know. Some whacked-out professor
might try to ransom off the school, or some sorority girl might begin a reign
of terror on Greek Row. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."
She looked at me, her face falling into a pattern of worry lines. "You
sound like him, too."
Darin picked that minute to pop out of the bathroom. "I'd say tah-dah, but
ninjas do not advertise their whereabouts. Barbara, you knocked yourself
out."
I do what I can," she said as I circled Darin to admire his costume. It
was a perfect ninja getup: he was head-to-toe in black, with only his eyes
exposed. He looked freaky. He looked stealthy. He didn't look like Darin at
all. I nodded my approval.
Mom handed me my own hanger. "Now you, dear," she commanded.
I don't think I cut quite the same figure as Darin when I came out of the
bathroom. For one, his outfit didn't have bunny ears. Or a pink pom-pom sewn on
the seat of his pants. "Maaaaaaaaaa," I whined.
"Oh, indulge your mother," she said, not looking particularly
concerned that she had dressed her only child as a ninja rabbit. "Your
father was in a bunny suit when I met him."
I struggled to articulate my humiliation and frustration that our plan might
not work, without tipping my hand that there was a plan, or that a plan was
even needed. I settled on, "I can't go out in public as a rabbit,
Ma!"
She traded an amused expression with Darin. He was eating it up with a spoon.
"Of course you can," she said. "And you will, because your
mother made you."
"And I'm not going to say anything against your mother, dude," Darin
smirked. "Not after she made me this kickass ninja costume."
"Language, dear," Mother corrected gently.
I frowned at my expression in the mirror. It was a duplicate of Darin's
costume, except for the ears. Long, flowing black ears with pale pink inserts.
"You can shape your ears," she said proudly. "I modeled them on
Bugs Bunny's ears." She tugged on the ears to demonstrate how I could make
them stand straight up, or fall over my shoulders, or perch on my head in a
V-shape.
"I think that's awesome," Darin said. "You're adorable."
"I'll slug you."
Mom snapped her fingers. "That reminds me," she said. She pulled out
a pair of black boxing gloves. "Your paws!"
She hand them to me and I saw she had painted on pink pads. Paws, even if they
were gloves, were where I drew the line. "Well, Ma," I said.
"That's great. You really knocked yourself out."
She groaned at the pun. "I think that's your cue to leave," she said.
After we changed into our street clothes, she ushered us to the front door and
demanded we have a good time and meet nice, sweet girls looking for a little
romance.
"With any luck," I promised her, kissing her on the cheek. I didn't
finish the thought out loud: that'll never happen.
~*~*~*~
"You do realize," Darin started as we headed east across the river.
"That I can just take the ears off and she'll never know?" I
finished. "Yeah. Already thought of that."
"Not that," he grinned. "She told me while you were changing
back that she's got the ears like quadrupledly sewn into the headpiece, so that
if you try to take them out, the whole thing will be ruined. Same with the
tail."
I groaned. "It's like she still can't grasp the fact I'm almost twenty-three."
"You'll always be her little boy," Darin mocked, pinching my cheek. I
pushed him and nearly caused a three-car pileup. "Anyway," he said
when the surrounding drivers finished flipping me off. "You do realize how
things have changed, right?"
"Whaddya mean?" I asked concentrating on traffic.
"When we were freshmen, we would have totally gone along with this party
scenario," Darin frowned. "Hell, we would have been eager. Getting
laid without the girl remembering, without having to be bothered by those pesky
'where is this going' conversations. But now?"
He looked out the window, and drummed an angry cadence against it.
"Now it's total sleaze." I said.
"Ivan's sleaze."
We got back to campus and dropped out costumes off at the suite before traipsing
off to do a little recon work. The mixer was being held on Smith Plaza, a wide,
bricked square between DCU's main library and the student union building, and
when we got there, we split. Daring headed to the SUB while I went to the
library under pretense of writing a paper, but really, we were checking the
grounds.
From my third floor study carrel, I had an unencumbered view of the
proceedings. I noted how the edge of the plaza was lined in hay bales
stacked two across and two deep. I counted sixteen propane heaters scattered
through the plaza. I watched as Ivan circulated through the underclassmen
conned into setting up, pointing where the DJ booth should go and where to set
up the booze tables and flirting with girls hanging black and orange crepe
paper.
"Whatcha got?" Darin asked when we hooked up an hour later.
"Good view of the layout, but I didn't see the cups or the drugs," I
admitted. "You?"
"I found the cups," Darin grinned. "They're being stored in the
basement of the SUB next to the computer lab. Our roommate was ordering some
schmuck to 'take care of them.' "
"Meaning lace them?" I asked. Darin nodded. "Think we can stop
them?"
"Do you think our roommate even looked at the schmuck?" Darin
grinned. "I paid some freshman fifty bucks to sit there and nod while Ivan
bossed him around. The drugs are in liquid form. Ivan's got them in makeshift
pony kegs attached to regular kegs. The beer dispenser guys just have to keep
an eye on gender."
"Guys get regular beer while the women get the tampered drinks," I
finished.
Darin grinned. "Not any more."
"What did you do?" I asked. He continued to grin longer and harder
and the answer struck me over the head. "You've already switched them
out."
"The only thing the girls are going to be getting is salty beer," he
nodded.
"Salty beer?"
"I couldn't find any sugar. And man, do you know how long it took me to
empty and refill forty pony kegs? And nobody showed up. You'd think Ivan would
be more careful with who was around his pharmacological experiment."
I stood up from my seat and stretched. "Well, I guess that's that," I
said. "Ivan's avenged and I don't have to go out in public dressed as a
bunny."
"Oh, you're still going out dressed like a bunny," Darin said.
"We're nowhere near finished avenging him."
"Where've you two losers been?" Ivan called from the shared bathroom
as we popped into the suite a few minutes later.
We didn't answer. I dumped my books in my room and Darin picked up the phone to
order a pizza. It was imperative Ivan think we were staying home.
"I said, 'where've you two losers been?'" Ivan asked, coming out of
the bathroom. He was dressed like a genie in shiny green and gold harem pants,
curled toe shoes and a puffy turban. I smirked at his bare, puny chest. The
temperature had gone into rapid decline since dusk; even with the propane
heaters, Ivan was going to be cold and miserable.
"Had a paper," I shrugged as Darin hung up the phone. "Anyway,
have fun at your party."
Ivan scoffed. "You're not coming. Why am I not surprised?" He
followed us into Darin's room, where we sat down to start playing video games.
Ivan leaned against the doorsill and began reeling off my faults: intimidated
by women, even when it was a sure thing; arrogant; prissy; weak. "And I
don't even get you, Darin," he said. "Why do you let this loser
follow you around? Doesn't he cramp your social style? I mean, you've brought
babes back here, but then they never stick around."
"Sauce 'em and toss 'em," Darin said without looking up. "I
learned from the best."
"You guys should come," Ivan said without conviction. "It's
going to be awesome."
"Date rape's not my thing," I said.
Ivan charged me; got right up in my face, grabbing me by the neck of my
t-shirt. His face was tomato red and his beady brown eyes were burning with
fury. His mouth twisted into a snarl, and he huffed once, twice, three times.
"Someday, I'm going to get you," he said, before dropping me.
"Fuckin' pansy." He stormed out of the suite, muttering under his breath.
"Dude," Darin said after thirty seconds. "Why didn't you just
kung fu his ass right there?"
"Because," I said, feeling my identity shift. "Tonight he
burns."
~*~*~*~
Despite the freezing weather, throngs of undergrads had filled Smith Plaza to
capacity, clustering around the heaters and occasionally half-heartedly
gyrating to the generic dance tracks. The Costume mixer of my mother's day, it
wasn't.
We'd come in behind a quartet of giggling, slutty milkmaids, watching as they
flashed their student IDs to the bouncers and received their arm bands. All of
them were red.
"Wonder how many revisions have been made based on the trashiness of the
outfit?" Darin mused as we stepped up to pay our ten bucks.
"More times than a freshman term paper," I quipped, sweating through
my mask. I was positive the bouncer, a friend of Ivan's, was going to recognize
us through the costumes and call our scam, even before we got into the party. I
was terrified this would fail. Worse, I was scared it would work. Then what?
The bouncer didn't even glance at our bogus IDs, just handed us our two
armbands and told us to have a good time with a wink and a smirk.
We meandered into the plaza, into the thick of our milling classmates. But I
didn't see Ivan. "Do you see him?" I asked Darin.
"Not yet," he said, craning his neck. "But I'm certain the
bastard will turn up shortly."
As if on cue, the crowd parted and I spotted him. He was walking two very cute
blondes towards one of the beer tables. I tugged on Darin's sleeve and tilted
my head in his direction. He spotted the quarry and nodded. "Now
what?" he asked. "I mean, I know I'm the one who got you all stoked
up to kick this guy's ass, but..."
"Just follow my lead," I said.
We split up and moved through the crowd towards Ivan. Nobody noticed. The
party-goers were bunched up around the heaters, trying to stay warm. I circled
around my suitemate, watched as he pressed tainted cups into the girls' hands and
listened as he tried to cajole them into drinking. "C'mon, it's free and
nobody's checking IDs," he oozed. "This is what college is all
about."
"I don't like beer," the blonde on his left said.
"It tastes weird," the blonde on his right said, wrinkling her nose.
Ivan took a deep pull off his own cup. "I dunno," he said.
"Tastes pretty good to me."
The blonde on the right took a tentative sip and then drenched a nearby hay
bale with the contents of her cup. "That is not good beer," she said.
"It tastes...salty."
Ivan watched in horror as the blonde on the left parroted her friend's action.
"Ew. Salty beer."
I was behind him now; I saw that he was turning for the drinks table. Darin was
off to the side. We doubled back and hovered on the edges of the drinks line.
Ivan cut to the front. "Give me a red cup," he demanded from the guy
manning the tap.
"Sir?" the guy asked, obviously surprised. Oh yeah, that guy was also
going to need some avenging.
"Give me. A. Red cup." Ivan over-enunciated. "Now."
The guy shrugged and pulled him a red cup. Ivan took a sip, paused for a moment
and then sprayed the guy with best spit-take I've seen outside of the movies.
"SOMEONE'S FUCKED WITH THE BEER!"
"Well, of course, sir. Those were your orders," the guy said, patting
his face dry with a bar towel.
"Not like that, you moron!" Ivan shouted. "I mean, someone's
fucked with my fucking. The beer's contaminated."
The last sentence rippled through the surrounding crowd. "The beer's
contaminated." "Oh my god, the beer's contaminated."
"There's something wrong with the beer!" All around me, partygoers
began pouring the contents of their cups into obliging hay bales. "The
beer's contaminated."
This displeased Ivan. He snarled at the guy behind the table, wound up...
And took a punch right in the side of the head from a guy wearing bunny paw
boxing gloves.
"Oh, and he goes down!" I shouted as he dropped to the bricks. I
shook off a glove, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up to his feet.
"Did you really think you could get away with it?" I shouted as a
group of Student Senate guys started approaching to defend their leader.
"Please don't hurt me," Ivan mewed. "Please don't hurt me."
Real, hot tears streamed down the side of his face, and I'd only punched him
once.
"Did you really think you could ruin the lives of hundreds of girls
without getting caught?" I shouted. I threw him into his friends, knocking
them over like dominoes.
"The beer was tampered with!" Darin shouted, pointing at Ivan.
"He put drugs in the girls' cups so they'd be horny, but when they woke up
in the morning, wouldn't have any memory of the night before."
The crowd started buzzing. "He put roofies in the beer?"
"Roofies in the beer?" "Drugs in the beer?" "What's a
roofie?" "There's tar paper in the beer?"
Ivan had struggled to his feet and was advancing on me. "You fucking
pansy, I'm going to kick your ass," he vowed. He blindly took a swing with
his right fist. I sidestepped it with a quick hop, and then kicked him in the
knee with a sweeper, popped him in the solar plexus and stepped on his arm.
"You really think you can take me?" I asked in this weird, deep voice
that didn't sound like Peter Coney at all. "Fuckin' punk like you?"
He tried to grab my leg with his free hand. I stepped off his arm and stomped
on his nuts. He rolled over, howling with pain. I picked him up again.
"You. Are. Scum. And it'd be a service to this university if I just kill
you here."
He whimpered. I dropped him on the bricks again. "But instead, I'll let
the university handle you."
I turned and started striding to the exit, and the crowd parted for me, but a
girl shouted, "LOOK OUT!" and I turned to see the battered man get up
off the ground, stagger to a propane heater, and push it into an alcohol-soaked
bale of hay. It caught with a plume of red and smoke. I don't think he expected
it to go that fast. He watched dumbly as spread to the surrounding bales.
We were in an inferno.
The students panicked, and the crowd stampeded for the only exit: the cattle
chute-like entrance made out of the burning straw blocks. They would die like
cattle if we didn't save them.
"Get these people out of here!" I shouted at my partner as I grabbed
Ivan by the back of his ponytail. Darin nodded curtly and began pushing through
the flames to open up an exit. A couple of other large jock types, who minutes
ago were going to beat my ass, helped. In seconds, they shouldered
through an exit and began pushing people to safety.
"Listen to their screams," I commanded Ivan, still holding on by his
hair and wrapping my other hand around his arm and locking it behind his back.
"Listen to the people you've condemned to death."
He began coughing and kicking, trying to break free. "I didn't mean! You
fucker, you ruined my fun!"
I didn't say anything. The smoke was thick. We had to get out of there if we
wanted to live. I pushed him towards the improvised exit, but he struggled
against me, trying to fight me. I slammed him over the head with my free fist
and he went limp, and I dragged his sorry ass to safety.
Rescue workers were just arriving on the scene when I made it out, coughing and
wheezing. I laid Ivan at the feet of a startled cop. "This guy started the
fire," I said. "He said he did something to the beer. Get him some
help, or he's going to die."
"Hey!" the cop shouted, but I had turned around and went back into
the flames to pull as many people as I could. Darin was already there, pulling
people through the embers.
"We've got to go!" I called at him.
"Follow me!" he shouted back. He went deep into the plaza and began
pulling at a storm drain cover. I looked at the building flames nervously.
"These tanks are gonna blow!" I shouted.
He lifted the cover. "Let's go!"
I jumped into the darkness, and he followed, letting the cover blot us into
nothingness. I landed on cold concrete and he landed on me a split second
later. He pulled me to my feet and we scrambled through the black. Five or ten
or a hundred seconds later, there was a muffled POW! and the ground shook
under my feet.
"The tanks went," Darin panted.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"Drainage system," he said. "If we go another 600 yards or so,
we'll hit DeVargas, and we'll be home."
~*~*~*~
We were in the suite and in our street clothes when the cops turned up a couple
of hours after the explosion. We answered their questions and assured them we
were in the suite the entire time. "What's this about?" Darin asked.
They told us about the blaze and the blast and that our roommate was in
critical condition at DCU Hospital, accused of starting the fire.
"I wouldn't put it past him," I said without having to lie.
"Dude's a psychopath," Darin agreed.
The cops thanked us for our time and left.
The fire was front-page news on the Morning Bulletin. Someone with a camera had
caught me in mid-punch, ears back, glove extended and Ivan's distorted, contorted
face turning towards the camera. There was even a tooth flying through the
frame. The headline was "Fire at DCU Social" with the subhead reading
"A New Hero Emerges?" The story outlined the details of the blaze,
including the rumor Ivan had spiked the beer, and a description of a shadowy
man in a bunny suit who took the villain down. You've got to love the press in
this town. Everything is black and white to them.
A couple of days later, more cops turned up to search the suite. They carted
away boxes upon boxes of his possessions for evidence. A notebook turned up
(that may or may not have been authored by him, just saying) detailing his
plans to spike the beer, and the university formally expelled him.
Free, Darin and I turned back to our studies and tried to focus on finishing
the semester. Graduation loomed on the horizon for both of us. I would take an
engineering job; Darin would take an engineering job. We'd sworn to give up
these aspirations of playing hero.
But one day in the middle of November, I received a very package from my
mother. Found it odd, since I'd been at her house the day before and she hadn't
mentioned sending me anything. I ripped it open, wondering what I'd forgotten.
Wrapped underneath layers of tissue paper was another bunny suit. Another ninja
suit. And a note that said, in my mother's hand, simply "courage."
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