Saving the World for $12.50 an hour Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3

It works perfectly.

E-mails flood in. Some are legitimate, some are jokes and some are offers for penile enhancement and herbal viagra. Dr. Justice saves those for later review.

Meeting at the Angel City Main Library, Dr. Justice and Lady Truth sift through the best of the offers and put them into three categories. 1. Immediate need. 2. Long-term projects and 3. Is this is a joke.

Most of the immediate ones can be taken care of in a matter of hours. Like getting little Billy to quit farting on his brother's head, or getting Minnie the Mooch to get off of his brother's couch and get a job. It's quick money and involves little more than some talking and the occasional threat of violence. Though, that little Billy was a tough asshole.

Flush with cash, (well, flush with a little cash) the doctor and Lady T are starting to feel good about their new business venture.

Vicki's e-mail falls under Immediate Need.

Vicki Vixen's child Valerie is missing and no one will help her. You see, as far as the authorities are concerned, Valerie Vixen doesn't exist.

The police tell her in a no nonsense way, that they have no record of her child and that her medical records say she is childless and they refer her to a psychologist for help. But Vicki says it's not true. She has a child. A sweet blond-haired 8 year old named Valerie with eyes of blue and a button nose too. She likes puppies, rainbows and all of the other things little girls are supposed to like. And she has a mommy who misses her very much.

Vicki needs help and she needs it now.

Lady Truth looks over at Dr. Justice and says, "This is our job. Whatever the cost. This is our job."

"No one elses," Dr. Justice agrees.

After a quick call to get an address, Lady Truth leaves the public library they are using as their headquarters to meet with Vicki Vixen.

Into the dark places of the bad side of Angel City, Lady Truth travels on her Honda scooter, festooned with black and purple flames. She leaves behind the malls and clean yards of the Angelic suburbs for the dank hole that sits at the city’s heart. The buildings change from dwellings to ominous abodes of vileness.

At its center Angel City has fallen into Hades. The once stylish outer facades show the wear and tear of decades of misuse. The corners crumbling and the windows of the brown buildings are permanently darkened with grit and grease. Welcome to the inner circle and all who live here have abandoned all hope.

Lady Truth keeps her laser cannon arm warmed up because she knows this is the neighborhood where bad things happen. Dark dreams are real here.

This is the neighborhood where she comes from and hopes she never returns. Ten years is a long time, but its fresh for her. She remembers waking up in these oily, garbage strewn streets and finding herself alone and unable to remember who she is.

Lady Truth can see the sun starting to set through the towers of stone that man has built. Soon it will be night, soon the darkness will swallow up these poor streets and the real horrors can start.

But that was then, she thinks. I’m not the scared little woman who woke up here with nothing. Now I’m Lady Truth and I have a life and powers and a job. And that job is to help Vicki Vixen.

The grimy five-story Greenhouse Arms Hotel and Apartments has seen better days. It's once-bright cement porch is almost black with grit and the brown stone that makes up its facing is streaked from decades of dirty rain. Lady Truth rolls right past her rendezvous point and only realizes it when she sees the hotel’s neon sign flashing in her side mirror.

Lady Truth lets out a sigh and mutters an obscenity as she hits the brakes hard and fishtales the scooter around towards the Greenhouse.

She drives up the porch steps and into the lobby before stopping with a "Woah, Nelly," She jumps off and cuts the motor, taking the key with her.

A shabby, unkempt fat man behind a cage yells at her. "You can't park that here," the building manager thunders in his weedy voice.

"Apparently, you're wrong, because I just did," Lady Truth responds, as she wonders where guys like him find pre-stained wife beater T-shirts. "And it better be exactly where I left it when I come back."

Chapter 4

Lady Truth takes the aging elevator to the fourth floor. It shakes as though an old man with trembling hands is pulling the car upward and smells like the public urinal it probably is. When she reaches the fourth floor, the doors open with the grinding sound that means they haven’t been oiled in years.

She walks down a dingy, poorly lit hallway. The walls are covered in some kind of flower print wallpaper that probably used to be colorful and cheery but now is just brown with dirt and grease. Lady Truth isn’t sure if the floor actually has a carpet or if the dust has just matted into a uniform covering.

The light from the fixtures is intentionally low, so no one notices just how bad the place really looks.

Room 432. She gives one knock and waits.

A solid, lyrical voice responds from the other side. “What do you want?”

“I’m Lady Truth, you asked for help.”

The door opens cautiously. Lady Truth can see the chain is still bolted and that the eye peering out from behind the door’s crack is wary.

“You look kind of strange,” a voice says.

“Honey, I’m a superhero, I’m supposed to look strange,” Lady T says with a slight laugh and a big smile.

Lady T can hear a sigh of relief as the woman behind the door lets go of some of her tension. The door opens wide and Vicki Vixen stands before her.

Vicki’s beautiful blond hair is slightly disheveled and her face has the look of tension etched into every soft edge. But even though she is not at her best, most women would be satisfied to look like her at her worst.

Her eyes can light fires with their intensity, and her light, yet curvy body takes all the right turns from toe to the top of her head.

“Come on in then,” she says to Lady T.

Vicki sways out of the way to make room for Lady Truth. As she passes, Lady T can smell the sent of Gardenias on her. Vicki offers her a seat on her worn couch that obviously started out white, but now looks more like a dirt rainbow with all the stains.

Lady T is startled by the room. She can see trails. Normally, her cat-eye glasses and their special lenses mask all of the trails of normal humans. If they didn’t she would be blind. She could see the slight emanations that people’s souls leave behind as they travel beside the body. They would fade after a few days, but in a city people were everywhere and so were their soul trails. It was annoying when you were in a crowded room, but useful when tracking someone. Her specialized glasses filtered most of that out, except for Rob Slash's soul. For some reason, she could see his and his clones.

Well, Slash has been here. She could see trails. Old trails. Trails overlapping. Trails of someone short. Like a little girl. Like maybe, Valerie.

She sits down, a slightly quizzical look on her face, and Vicki starts talking. Lady Truth is jolted out of her trance.

“He’s got her. I know it. He’s fucking crazy and he took her,” Vicki says with an almost hysterical edge to her voice. “That bastard tracked us somehow and he took her.”

“Who is he?” Lady Truth interrupts before Vicki can really get going.

“My ex-boyfriend, Valerie’s baby daddy,” she replies. “Robert Shan. He used to be the maintenance man and cum-mopper at the place I last worked.”

Her story unfolded like most love stories. The guy treated her nice at first. Listened to her and told her what she wanted to hear. Then came the lovin. From that sprang Valerie.

“Everything was awesome,” Vicki says. “He was the best daddy ever. I thought we might even make it permanent. Then it’s like a switch went off.”

Five years after Valerie’s birth, Robert started talking strange. He also started doing strange things. He started disappearing for days, weeks, even a month here or there without any explanation.

“He just said he was doing the great boss’s work,” Vicki says. “But I know Moneybags didn’t send him on no outings. He was pissed when Robert started disappearing. If he wasn’t my man, Moneybags would have fired him.”

Then the unthinkable happened. Robert started beating her. Telling her that she needed to have more kids and when she didn’t get pregnant right away the fists started landing home.

“That’s when I cut him off and threw him out,” she says. “But the fucker would keep showing up and then he raped me. That was it. I took Valerie and ran. We’ve been running for two years.”

She thought she had successfully disappeared, or that he stopped looking. Then she met a former co-worker on the street last week.

“Misty looked a little different, but it was Misty. You don’t forget tits like that,” she says.

“Huh?” Lady T says with a little surprise.

“She’s a working girl. I am too. Awesome tits means awesome cash in our business,” Vicki says. “Anyway, she looked different, somehow. Kind of like she was wearing a mask. I just thought she had some plastic surgery and everything was still a little tight. You know.”

“She starts talking about the old times and asking about Valerie. I don’t think nothing of it, so I tell her about our life here. But I didn’t say where I live or nothing.”

“Two days later, Valerie’s gone.”

Lady Truth sees the agony in Vicki’s eyes. She knows she has to help her.

“Do you have any pictures of Valerie or of this Misty?” Lady Truth asks.

“Not here. When you’re on the run, you don’t keep stuff about your past hanging around. But I can get it.”

“Good, we’ll need all you have. I’m going to go get my partner and we’ll be back within the hour to get things going. I promise we’ll help you,” Lady Truth says and puts her hand on Vicki’s arm.

“Thank you,” Vicki says with relief in her eyes.