For The Girl Who Has Everything
Come gather 'round and hear a lost tale, ten years secreted away in between the pages of Black and White: the story of Savior's first Christmas at Titans Tower and the difficulty he had finding a gift for a very special young woman. What's that, you say? There's no plausible way to fit the missing Christmas season between the chapters of that story? Each event flows into the next with no real room for a break in the action? Well, that may be true. The same could be said for Beauty and the Beast and that didn't stop them from making a Christmas special for it!
That Christmas special was horrible? Oh shut up and read already.
Noel Collins—red hair, slim, hovering on the line between handsome and average-looking, lay on his bed, his newly appointed guest room in Titans Tower. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the distant melody that emanated from the T-Car's speakers, the sounds of jingling bells and roasting chestnuts, and an all-Thanagarian chorus of Adeste Fideles. It was the last Saturday before Christmas and the Titans felt they had a lot to celebrate; new friends in the form of honorary Titans: the newest Aqualad, called Zen, as well as Superboy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, and other heroes with less impressive pedigrees. They were the guests at the Christmas Party that Beast Boy had insisted on throwing to celebrate perhaps the greatest gift: the fact that the Titans were all alive.
Killjoy. A term acquaintances at high school had often applied to Noel himself when he refused to humor them their petty joys and mild complaints about their parents. Now it meant something else, something horrifying. And if it hadn't been for Raven's vision—her dreamscape premonition of murder—now all the Titans would be dead and Savior would once-again be homeless, teamless. Friendless. Perhaps Batman would have taken him in—replacing one surrogate son with another.
It was remarkable; Savior had idolized Batman for as long as he could remember—for standing up to power, to taking back the night from thugs and gangsters alike. For being a rich man—Savior knew he had to be rich given the equipment he used and the training he had procured—who stood in complete opposition in every way to what Maxwell Collins was. Yet Savior never truly considered the logistics of training a teenager to follow in his footsteps. That there had been more than one Robin, for instance—that the boy who now held the title, Tim Drake, was the third, after the acrobatic Nightwing and a second, meaner Robin who died at the Joker's hands. How many more might there be? What if Batman had a biological child: would the child take up that mantle, or refuse to have anything to do with the vigilantism?
Savior laughed. "That's ridiculous," he said, turning over on his side. "Batman probably doesn't even know what sex is. He'll never have a kid."
At that very moment, in Istanbul.
"Agh! God damn it!" shrieked a lovely woman in an unlovely position. Surrounded by doctors, red and covered in sweat; pain between her legs indescribable. She pushed once again, gritting her teeth and longing for the lesser pain of getting shot. Suddenly there was a cry, the smell of blood and else, and the pain began to subside. Talia al Ghul fell back and rested her head on the pillow.
Around them, the attending doctors gasped, whispering in hushed Arabic. Ibn al Xu'ffasch! Ibn al Xu'ffasch! Son of the Bat.
"I've had many grandsons," Ra's al Ghul said, watching as the doctors cut the umbilical cord. "But this one—I feel he'll be special. His genetics are, if I do say so myself, impeccable. My little Ibn al Xu—"
"Damn it, father, we are not calling my son Ibn al-anything. His name's Damian Wayne. Put that on his birth certificate. Damian Mother-Lovin' Wayne."
Noel couldn't stop thinking about her—about Raven. Not just because her dream had saved the Titans, but because she was so different. Her empathy seemed to affect others as much as it affected her, and she could cut through any front you put up. She was—because of her powers and her strength of will, the type of person who would never be under Maxwell Collins' thumb. His dad had tried to hook him up with other girls—some significantly older than him—as power plays and mind games. Savior had only felt contempt for those women, sometimes to the point that he wondered if he was simply a misogynist; people like that often made exceptions for their mothers. Raven was different though, and not just because of her magical powers. He had to find something to give her, something for Christmas that expressed how he felt.
He rolled off his bed and left his room, heading into the hall. Before he reached the ops room where the partygoers were, he reached deep into the energy that coursed through his nervous system. There was a flash of light, and suddenly the slim red-haired boy was replaced by a more muscled version of his body, arrayed in white clothes and bearing a spiky mop of white hair on his head—his alter ego, Savior.
It was akin to a jungle in ops, not least of which because Beast Boy as a lion was wrestling with Wonder Girl, the teenage daughter of Zeus. Cyborg, meanwhile, was attempting tinsel application by repeater cannon. Robin, Superboy, and Kid Flash seemed to be hitting it off like old friends, though as far as Savior was aware they'd never met before.
He made his way through to the kitchen where Raven held a cup of eggnog and Starfire was mixing mustard into her punch.
"So," the Tamaranian began, "I have spoken a little about my own planet, but what was your world like?"
Raven sipped her eggnog as Savior approached. Somewhat unbelievably, she had a smile on her face. Raven generally hated large gatherings of people, but now she seemed happy—she even wore a Santa hat.
"Azarath is complicated," she said. "It isn't a planet, it's a city, still in the general vicinity of Earth, but on a higher plane of existence. The witch-goddess Azar founded it hundreds of years ago to combat certain supernatural threats. "
Savior squeezed by Starfire and grabbed up the pitcher of eggnog, pouring himself a glass. Raven was a magic user from a mystical city created by a witch-goddess: Savior was baffled that she didn't hate Christmas as much as he did given her decidedly non-Christian heritage. Though, Savior's disgust with Christmas had nothing to do with its origins or raison d'être, but with the awful, horrible acts that people were willing to commit in the name of crass consumerism. What better way to honor Christ than stomping fellow humans to death on the altar of Mammon to get a sweet deal on an Xbox?
And then there were the bad memories; Savior refused to drudge those up.
"There's not much to tell, really," Raven said. "The monks emphasize peace and tranquility, living in harmony with each other. They study all sorts of unusual magic."
"To fight your father?" Starfire ventured.
Savior saw Raven tense, and he paused. What was this about her father? Savior realized that despite his attraction to the mysterious mage, he knew very little about her past. The Titans knew more, but there were gaps; she fled Azarath with a mystical gem of power and met the Titans when the Gordanians came pursuing Starfire. The gem, the Eye of Azarath, was destroyed in the battle with Torment the previous winter, before Savior had even got his powers. The Titans must have talked then, must have exchanged information. Nobody brings that sort of power to a slum-ridden, crime-infested ass-end of Florida without good reason. Was she trying to keep it away from her father?
"It's Christmas, Starfire," said Raven, tersely. "I would prefer not to talk about that."
"My apologies," the alien sad, gulping down another sip of mustard. "I would like to know more about this Christ-Mass. Perhaps then I could get the handle on what is and is not an appropriate topic for the conversation."
As Raven began to explain Abrahamic religion to a flying orange space princess, Savior stepped away. Raven's opinion of religion wasn't something he wanted to hear about. He wasn't a believer in anything in particular himself, but he respected those who were, and suspected Raven's biting sarcasm would annoy him. He didn't want Raven to annoy him, especially not tonight. Out the window, Jump City sparkled and twinkled across the bay, red and green lights highlighting an overcast sky. It was an amazing sight given what had happened earlier that year. A whole section of the city getting nuked by magic that somehow destroyed only property and not people made national headlines. The TV beamed pictures of the devastation for weeks. Jump City was temporarily a disaster site, and Lex Luthor's final act as President had been to dump a ton of his own personal money at the same time as he dumped billions of taxpayer dollars into the surviving parts of the city, building sixty piers along the new coast and paying for Silas Stone's funeral. Savior wanted to keep away from that mess, even though Jump City was closer to the climate he was used to in LA, moreso than New York, Metropolis, or Gotham. But he figured New York would be safe, protected not just by one iconic hero but a dozen legends—the Justice Society. Somehow, that didn't stop nineteen men with box cutters. Just as Savior realized that nowhere was really safe, he was doused with chemicals and paint and turned into a metahuman.
Such is life.
He briefly waved to Cyborg and Robin before heading into the elevator and taking it up to the roof. He found a seat by the edge. His jacket and armored shirt were warm in the cool evening, though the chill bit at his ears. If he were the kind to pray, he would have prayed for snow. It was one of the many things that had made New York so much more pleasant than home. He finished the last of his eggnog and heard footsteps behind him.
"You seem tense," Beast Boy said, flopping down beside Noel. "What's up?"
"Stuff," Savior said. "I don't like Christmas, for one."
"Dude, how is that even possible?"
Noel rolled his eyes. "It's pretty simple. Christmas makes people act like bastards."
Beast Boy shook his head. "No, man. Materialism makes people act like… those things. Christmas itself was just fine without it."
"Beast Boy, you're fourteen. Nobody cares if you say bastard." He tried to take another sip of his eggnog, but then remembered it was empty, and threw the cup off the roof. It turned end-over-end down a couple stories before a perimeter defense turret belched a red laser that blasted the cup into fine red mist.
The green Titan's face displayed a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I know. Force of habit from living with Ste—um, Mento and Elastigirl. Also, you're a bad liar. There's something bothering you besides not liking Christmas."
Savior bit his lip. "Well," he said. He looked around the roof, making sure that he and Gar were truly alone. "It's Raven. I don't know what to get her for Christmas."
"You really haven't lived with any of us long enough to know what to get us for Christ—"
"Beast Boy," Savior said flatly. "Mega Monkey: Tokyo Drift. Cyborg: Steve Spurrier's autobiography in electronic format. Starfire: Three cans of Moutarde de Meaux Pommery. Robin: Cobalt Chef's Cooking for Six."
Beast Boy raised an index finger, his mouth hanging open.
"But Raven," Savior said. "I have no idea. What do you get for the girl who has everything?"
"Hah!" Beast boy fell back, clutching his gut. "Raven? The girl who has everything?"
"You're telling me she doesn't?" Savior said. "I'm not talking about money. I know first-hand money doesn't mean a thing. But she lives comfortably in this huge tower. She has a surrogate family of superheroes, a credit line to cover all her needs. Her best friend is an alien warrior princess; she's witty, intelligent, beautiful. And she has magic powers—"
"She also can't feel strong emotions or things around her start to blow up," Beast Boy said. "And—well, have you been inside her head?"
"Inside her head?" Savior arched an eyebrow. What was this about?
"She has this mirror thingy." Beast Boy mimed holding a mirror. "And it sucked me and Cyborg inside it. We got lost and met Raven's emotions in rainbow colored cloaks and then fought her father, who's this big scary red guy."
"Her father was in her head?" Savior said. What the hell?
"Not her real dad." Beast Boy rubbed his nose. "It was like, the red-cloak Raven, her anger, out of control. She was mad because Arthur Light of all people got a cheap shot on her. Anyway, I don't know much about her demon-father thing, but"
Savior rubbed his temple. This was getting him nowhere. "Okay, I get it. Raven has problems. But I still don't know what to get her for Christmas."
"Eh, get her chocolate," Beast Boy said. "Chicks love chocolate. Dudes love chocolate. You can't go wrong with chocolate."
As Beast Boy transformed into a jackrabbit and hopped over to an air vent (so that was how he'd gotten up there without Savior hearing the roof access door open), Savior began pondering. Chocolate was good, that much was undeniable. But it seemed like an incredibly impersonal gift. He had to give her something unique, something irreplaceable, something—
"GERONIMOOOOO!"
Savior recoiled from the shout even as a body of green and yellow slammed into him. Savior and the figure tumbled across the roof until their momentum was expended heating up the molecules that made up the Tower roof. The white-haired Titan pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and studied the person-projectile. It was a man—or man-like creature—covered head to toe in green spandex. The only distinguishing features were lines of yellow on his face that reminded Savior of a poor substitute luchador mask and a couple foot-long antennae protruding from the top of the head. Savior couldn't tell if they were real or just part of the costume.
"Who the eff are you supposed to be?" Savior said. "And how did you get up here past the Tower defenses?"
The green man groaned as he stood up.
"Sorry," he said. His voice, for some reason, made Savior think of the sitcom Happy Days. "The name's Ambush Bug. I teleported from across the harbor—had to drive a motorcycle off a ramp at the edge of the pier just to get in range, and the thing they don't tell you about teleportation is that momentum carries over! You think Heisenberg compensators are tough to crack? You should try building a Newtonian compensator."
Savior blinked. "I don't know what's worse: the fact that you just admitted to a class three felony or the fact that I actually understood every part of that sentence."
"Take heart, young Master Collins—"
Savior's reaction was instant. He lunged forward, a shimmer gag launching out of one hand and covering Bug's mouth and the other forming a coiling rope that tied the blabber up and ended at his throat thinned into a sharp blade.
"What did you just say?" Noel growled. "How do you know that name? Who sent you?"
"Mm Mffer!" he mumbled from behind the Shimmer gag.
"Your mother?"
"Moe, Dmm Amffer!" the Bug repeated.
Savior removed the gag. "Who?"
"The author!" he said at last with a sharp exhale, though Savior hadn't covered his nose or constricted his throat.
"The author of what?"
"The author of this fanfiction," said Ambush Bug.
Savior examined the creature. Both his hands were empty and he didn't seem to have any pockets—not to hold a printed fanfic, nor a disk or portable data drive.
Ambush Bug grinned. "You checking me out?"
"No." Savior spat. "But I don't understand what you're talking about. Who are you and how do you know the name Collins?"
"Listen, bubbeleh—" In a flash of light, Ambush bug vanished and Savior stumbled forward with the sudden loss of the mass he was leaning on. A pop behind him alerted him to Ambush Bug's reentry. He formed two blades of Shimmer energy as he whirled to face the bug.
"I know all about you. You may not believe me, but all this, Jump City, Titans Tower, even you, are fictional. I'm fictional too. And I know all about you."
"You know—"
"Your name is Noel Alexander Collins. You were born 20 July 1984, 4:18 PM. Your mother was Cystal Collins nee Davenport and your Daddy Dearest is Supreme Asshole Maxwell Domitian Collins, CEO of CollinsCorp in Laus Angle-eez!"
Savior's heart punched his sternum, repeatedly. He felt his nerve endings crying out—do something, kill this crazy freak, erase his memories, it doesn't matter what. Maxwell can't know you're here.
But his better angels prevailed for once.
"Shut up!" Noel barked. "I get it. You know me. I refuse to entertain the notion I'm fictional, though."
"Oh, hoho!" Ambush Bug said. "Well, how about this. Have you ever noticed out of the corner of your eye, or occasionally in your dreams, a little elf clad entirely in pink?"
Savior blinked. "Uh… Yeah, actually. Do you know who she is?"
"Heheh, 'she'," the Bug laughed. "Oh, I know who she is. She's the avatar of your creator—Legend Maker."
"You're full of sh—"
Savior blinked. Ambush Bug was gone again. He spun around, looking for him, but found nothing. He was about to go report the incident to Robin, when he heard Ambush Bug's laugh, trilling down from a direction he couldn't place.
"Where are you? Can you turn invisible too?"
"Nope, that's not on my character sheet," the Bug said. "You can't see me because you're blind to something very important."
"And what's that?" Savior growled. "I can't see on the same wavelength as crazy?"
"You just need to look up here. I'm peering down at you, Savior of Earth-379, from atop the fourth wall."
The fourth what? Savior clenched his fist, trying to locate the voice. He rerouted the Shimmer to his brain, pushing strands of the white energy through the auditory nerves and the sensory centers of his brain. More connections, a greater ability to process and locate sound. Ambush Bug continued to blather on, and as his brain's wiring became more complex, Savior began to notice a strange flatness around him, a sense that, somehow, Jump City, the Tower, was pasted onto a membrane or plane and that one segment, one 'wall' was missing. And as he craned his neck, Ambush Bug's dangling legs came into view, bopping back and forth like a giddy child. And then Savior's mind reeled.
"Oh… oh my… ggggkd."
He trembled.
"I CAN SEE YOU!" he shrieked. "You there! Sitting in front of the computer! You, with the beard and you, blonde girl with the glasses. All of you! This is… what am I seeing? Bug, what's happening to me!"
"Enlightenment!" he said.
The Shimmer strands recoiled, leaping back to the stem of his brain and the lower nerves. Immediately the sensation was over. An unimaginable headache bloomed in Savior's cranium and he fell back onto the roof of the tower. He tried to recall what he had seen, what his mind had just tried and failed to process, but it was a blur. His enlightenment was vanishing. He felt something warm and stick on his face and lips and realized his nose had bled.
There was a patter of feet and Ambush Bug knelt beside him. "Huh, you've blocked it out already. It looks like you're not insane enough to handle the enlightenment. Well, not yet anyway!"
Noel wiped the blood from his lips.
"Why did you come here?" he said.
"Like I said, the author sent me to help you learn the true meaning of Christmas or something. I don't really know. He was kind of vague."
"So now I'm Scrooge," Noel muttered. "Alright, what Christmas are you the ghost of?"
"Hell if I know!" Ambush Bug grabbed Savior's arm. "Come on, I sense a flashback coming on. If we jump at an angle cosine to the parallax scrolling of the planar membrane, we can move from scene to scene with the greatest of ease!"
"Alright, didn't understand a word of that," Savior said. As they reached the edge of the tower, Savior wondered, briefly, if this had all been a trap or delusion and Ambush Bug was really just trying to throw him off the roof to his death. Though compared to how he felt now, death would be an upgrade.
There was whiteness that was full of color and warmth that was tinged by chill, like he was careening through water. Suddenly he found himself rolling in sand. Savior moved to his feet, hacking and coughing, dripping with a thin white liquid, spitting it up, shaking it from his hair. It tasted acrid, like the way ink smells on a page.
"Where are we?" he spat. "What is this—stuff?"
Ambush Bug produced a blow-dryer from nowhere apparent and aimed it at Savior. "That is what we call The Bleed, the stuff between stuff. Also known as the Hypermenstrua."
"Hyper-what!" Noel growled.
"Yeah, it's basically the menstrual blood of the multiverse. You can thank Grant Morrison for that lovely metaphor. As for where we are, it's a little place called First Century Palestine."
"First Century?" Noel blinked, looking around. "What. Which first century?"
"That would be BC, kiddo." He pointed up. "Check it out."
Above Savior, in the sky, the thin sliver of the moon was dwarfed by an enormous fiery star, a star that seemed closer to Earth and fixed in place. "We wouldn't happen to be near Bethlehem would we? I mean, are you seriously taking me here?"
"Look, I have no idea where we're going. I just sense the scenes comin' and take you along for the ride. Where we end up is out of my control. But, hey, it's Christmas, right? Let's go check it out."
The two heroes walked over the rocky fields outside the village. The unusual star's light spread throughout the field. Savior trudged down, noticing in the distance a group of men surrounded by sheep, standing by a small stream. He was hoping no angels showed up: this night was weird enough already.
"So are you a superhero or something?" Savior said as they moved closer to the town. "I have never heard of you."
Ambush Bug shrugged. "Look me up on Wikipedia when you get back to the Tower."
"What the hell is a Wikipedia?"
"Oh, right," the Bug laughed. "It's not quite entered public consciousness yet. Well, just Google it when you get back to the tower, and then look me up." He paused, studied Noel for a moment. "You do know what Google is, right?"
"Yes, I know what Google is," Savior barked, noticing for once how petulant he sounded. He kept silent for the rest of the journey. Numerous people—small compared to him and even the twig-like Ambush Bug—milled about, closing up stores and houses for the night. Lines of people were turned away from ins. Savior stopped dead when he noticed two young people, a couple. A woman—a teenage girl, really—on a burrow, followed by a man in a blue tunic wrapped in a white traveling cloak. Savior followed them as they made their way to a cave in one of the rocky outcroppings at the edge of town. Up above, the unusual star hovered and broiled.
"What do I do?" Savior said. "What is this supposed to teach me? That Christianity is the true religion? That I'm going to have to apologize to that Fundie with whom I argued in 9th grade about whether Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem or if it was just a legend that evolved later on?"
"Well," Ambush Bug said, "you have to remember that this is a fanfiction, so you probably shouldn't be taking it as a statement of cultural hegemony or anything."
And suddenly, there was with the star a multitude of heavenly hosts. As if every star in the galaxy suddenly doubled in brightness, highlighting the spiraling arms of the Milky Way. Off in the distance, Savior heard a thundering Aramaic voice, in the direction of the shepherds they'd passed. And there was music—not the sort of music you hear with your ears, but something cosmic and transcendent. His worries and frustrations abated, and his mind grasped something tenuous and fleeting.
"The music of the spheres," Noel quoted. "He appeared and the soul felt its worth."
Ambush Bug handed him a camera. "I think the next scene's about to come up. Might want to take a snapshot of this for posterity."
Another dip in the bleed and suddenly Savior found himself rolling through a wine cellar. He bowled a person over—a man who let out a weak scream that was abruptly cut off by a loud KLUDD. At first Savior thought he'd hit Ambush Bug, but when he looked up, he saw Bug standing on the other side of the man. The man himself was a handsome black man, a snazzily-dressed bartender—perhaps for a fancy restaurant.
"Where are we, Bug?" Savior reached down and extended the Shimmer into the man's brain, feeling his way through the gray matter until he reached the poor guy's concussion. A few simple repairs and the guy shouldn't even need an MRI.
Bug pulled out a small handheld and looked at the screen. "Huh, we're in Chicago. At the Hilton, no less."
"What could we possibly be doing at the Chicago Hilton?"
"I dunno, but I don't think we're in the present anymore. Look at this guy's cell phone." Ambush Bug picked up a huge bulky thing from the bartender's belt. It was the size of a brick. "Better not go out looking like that."
Savior transformed back into his Noel form and quickly changed into the Bartender's clothing. He extended a Shimmer line from his foot and into the man's ear, downloading the bartending skills and memories and quickly collecting the champagne bottle the man—whose name was Barack—had come down here to retrieve.
Noel ran back up front and delivered the bottle.
"That took long enough!" a mustached man in a gray tuxedo said. "Where's that fellow who was bartending before."
"Oh," Noel said. "Barack had to run. He's working another job over at BI."
"That's sad," the man said. "He was a nice fellow. Said he wanted to run for office someday. Say, you look awful young to be tending a bar."
"I get that a lot," Noel lied.
He moved to start taking another customer's order, and just as he poured a glass, he heard a voice that struck him with a tidal wave of emotions, a voice familiar and alien and impossible. He looked back to see a woman joining the mustached man.
"Roger! Oh my goodness," said Crystal Collins. "We keep meeting like this."
"Mom?" Noel whispered. His legs were trembling. She was younger, years younger than his last memory of her. And here, now, she was so vibrant. Her cheeks had color and her eyes were lively. Her teeth weren't yellow from years of cigarettes.
"Ah, my dear Crystal!" the man named Roger said. "Fancy that."
Noel blinked, staring at them from across the room. They acted like old friends. When he approached Crystal and asked what she wanted to drink, she looked up at him and smiled warmly. "Oh my, you're the spitting image of my father," she said. "But such a young face. It's really weird. Um, but yes. Please just get me a ginger ale. Maxwell would kill me if I drank with his little successor in the metaphoric oven."
Noel looked down for the first time and saw—how could he have missed it—the raised bump of her belly.
"Oh my god!" Roger exclaimed. "You're pregnant? Since when?"
"About two months now," she said. "Maxwell and I have been trying for years. Well, he's been trying. Not that I don't want a child of course. It's just… Max can be so domineering. I don't think he's ready to have a kid yet. He needs to let go of so much pride first."
Noel did the math. Two months meant conception in October. Plus nine months would be July. Holy crap. Holy crap.
"W—what year is it?" he said, his voice thin. He poured her ginger ale mechanically, added a pinch of cinnamon just how she liked it.
Crystal arched her eyebrow at him. "It's 1983, honey. Are you okay?"
"I may never be okay again," Noel said, stepping away from the bar and pouring himself a shot of whiskey. He started to pay for it with his Titans' debit card, but realized the absurdity quickly: the account didn't even exist yet. Batman didn't even exist yet.
"Crystal," Roger said in a hushed tone that he thought Noel couldn't hear. "Are you sure this child is Maxwell's? I mean after our little rendezvous in September—"
"Roger Candide!" Crystal said harshly. "Don't be absurd."
"Well, I know," Roger said. "But you have to wonder."
"I don't have to do anything," Crystal said. "Except take care of these investors. Maxwell is counting on me. CollinsCorp is counting on me. Maxwell may be an evil genius, but this sort of negotiation needs a human touch. And I often find myself doubting if Max is even human."
"You do realize we keep meeting because of our occupations, right?" Roger sighed. "I'm here to make sure that your husband's evil genius remains Lawful Evil. The whole international super-spy thing doesn't really lend itself to settling down and marrying. After this, I've got a bloody assignment in Japan—some dispute between rival magic ninja clans or whatnot."
"I'd rather not talk about work, Roger," she said. "But if you want to discuss pleasure, my room is 1720."
Through the Shimmer strand, Noel felt the real bartender stirring. He ran back into the cellar and pulled the uniform off. He pulled his jeans back on before Barack stirred, but stood topless when the man fully came to.
"Did you strip my clothes off?" he demanded.
"Sorry, sir. I knocked you out by accident and had to fill in for you at the bar. I didn't take anything from you, I swear."
And Noel ran off. He couldn't find Ambush Bug anywhere as he moved through the halls. He reached for his communicator, only to remember it was in his other jacket. Muttering about his weird-ass powers, he found an empty corridor and transformed into Savior. The screen of his Com was flashing with instant messages.
ABug99: Yo, man, I found a newspaper. It's 1983 in the hizzouse.
Savior: Shut the fizz-uck up and find me.
ABug99: Will do, bro.
Savior: Wait a min… how r we online? The WWW hasn't been invented yet.
ABug99: I always keep an antenna in the present just in case.
Savior: Okay, just meet me at room 1720.
Savior tossed his communicator into the air, transformed back into Noel, and caught it. He found the nearest elevator and took it up to the seventeenth floor, and followed the signs to room 20. He saw the door shut just as a gray tuxedo leg vanished through the door frame. As he approached he listened to what was going on behind the door; he heard a soda can pop open, heard it clang against a martini glass. Shaken, not stirred, he bet.
Ambush Bug popped into existence beside him. "You wanna stay and watch?"
"Do I want to stay and watch my mother commit adultery with a hillbilly James Bond? No. No, I do not."
Ambush Bug smiled, grabbed his shoulder, and shouted: "Onward, to adventure!"
To Be Continued
Author's Note: Once again, my Christmas Fic's reach exeeded my grasp. Unless things go horribly wrong, I'll be posting part two of this story on January 6th.