Cat on a Hot Bright Moon, Part 1
Cat on a Hot Bright Moon, Part 1
The lab is under new management.
Welcome to Olympus City, where super-powers, physics-defying tech, and unearthly creatures are all possible now. Human nature, however, remains unchanged.
No one is born a perfect superhero, but a few strive to live up to the ideal anyway.
Part 1
The jigsaw puzzle was a man. An actual man, reduced to thousands of flat pieces that Miranda had collected into her cape.
She could hardly believe that Bart Bloman did this. A person transforming into a puzzle was unbelievable enough, but the fact that someone deliberately forced the transformation upon an unwilling victim, then destroyed just enough pieces to impede his restoration … and the fact that the perpetrator was someone she had met …
Miranda remembered shaking Bart’s hand after opening night of The Reluctant Guest two years ago. He was so friendly and complimentary about her performance. She hadn’t noticed even a hint of malice. Granted, he probably hadn’t noticed any hint of the future Ultra Woman in Miranda.
She had never met Ollie Neal, the disassembled man in her cape, but she intended to. So she brought him to the only place in the world where he had a chance of becoming human again.
The place was Hephaestus Enterprises.
Situated near the edge of a plateau, where waves crashed far below, the unassuming hangar facility looked like it could have been built decades ago. The exterior betrayed no hint of the cutting-edge scientific work that occurred inside.
Visiting Hephaestus was always a bittersweet experience these days. Every time Miranda touched down in the parking lot, she expected Dr. Cadelaria Luna to storm out and scold Fantastic Man for commandeering her lab as the Terrific Trio’s unofficial research facility. But Luna always came through with whatever they needed. Technically, she possessed no powers, but Miranda always thought her scientific genius should qualify. No one was better at navigating Olympus City’s revised rules of reality than Cadee Luna.
But she and Fantastic Man were gone, banished to another dimension along with the man responsible for their departure, Warner Pinkney, Hephaestus’s co-founder. Miranda often wondered what those three old friends were experiencing during their time away—wondered how much time had passed for them. Too much time had passed here; that much was certain.
Hephaestus was under new management these days. Carrying her cape as a sack, Miranda strode to the side door and hoped either manager was in. She rang the doorbell and waited.
The puzzle pieces scraped against each other as Miranda switched hands. She flinched, worrying she had hurt Ollie.
The door opened, and Sibyl Shipley smiled across the threshold, one corner of her mouth rising higher than the other as she peered through her large square glasses and eyed the scarlet sack. She had the air of a librarian dipping her toes into punk rock. The skunk hair was new, and Miranda was impressed at how well she pulled it off.
“Ultra Woman,” Sibyl greeted. “Is that a present for me?”
Miranda raised her cape-sack. “This is a man. He was, uh, turned into a puzzle.”
Sibyl gazed at the sack with enhanced awareness and curiosity as Miranda recounted the incident with Bloman.
“So,” Sibyl said, “he figured out a way to transmute a living organism into an inanimate object—well, thousands of inanimate objects, technically—and he also figured out a way to reverse the process? It’s like re-creating life, in essence. I’d love to study this.”
“But the main idea is saving him,” Miranda said pointedly.
“Yes, yes, I understand. Of course that’s the top priority. But there’s still plenty we can learn along the way.”
The very idea of puzzle transformation would have offended Luna—it was such a gross violation of basic scientific principles. But Sibyl’s polite smile had blossomed into a full Cheshire grin. Regardless, Sibyl was Luna’s top protege, and that was good enough for Miranda.
“Where should I put him?” The sooner she got him out of her cape, the better. Carrying a person around like this felt disrespectful.
Sibyl ushered her into the hangar facility, which had changed quite a bit in recent weeks. Before she vanished, circumstances forced Luna to reduce operations to little more than herself, and abandoned projects cluttered the place. Miranda had found a lot of character in that disarray.
But Sibyl and her new partner had swept that all away, into some hidden storage. In their place, a series of dividers and cubicles had sprung up, separating the hangar into a multitude of workstations. They were vacant for now, though sticky notes offered hints of future projects. A note saying “Teleportation” tagged one divider. “Matter Reduction” identified another. Miranda wasn’t sure what the note saying “Corps” referred to, but that station received additional square footage.
“You’ve got people to fill all these stations?” she asked.
“We’ve just finished hiring. The new team starts next week. Of course, we’ve got room for one more, if you happen to be a scientist in your other life. Preferred specialties are biology, chemistry, and physics, though given the peculiarities of this city, we can use a sharp mind from any scientific field.”
“I am not any sort of scientist.” The very idea elicited a quick laugh. “Not even a little bit.”
“Oh, well. Don’t feel too bad. You’re at least a scientific curiosity, which is the next best thing.”
Miranda made a face at that. “You flatter me.”
“Let’s use this one,” Sibyl said, leading her into a station where a long folding table was already set up. “Spread the pieces out here.”
Miranda untied her cape and gently poured Ollie onto the table.
“He can’t possibly have a nervous system in that condition,” Sibyl said. “Just dump him.”
“He’s a person. I can’t just—”
“He’s not a person, not right this second. Isn’t that the whole reason he’s here?” She tilted her head back, double-checking herself. “Or I suppose ‘it’ would be more accurate for now.”
“Let’s stick with the goal—he’s a he. You think you can help him?”
Sibyl picked up a single puzzle piece while Miranda continued to slowly pour.
“It will be an interesting challenge, and one I very much look forward to solving. Carey, too, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, is he around?”
“I am!” a masculine voice called out from some ambiguous location within the hangar. “On my way!”
Quickening footsteps grew louder, and Carey hustled into the workstation a moment later.
“Sorry, ladies. I was on a roll with the new armor and didn’t want to break my flow. Good to see you, Ultra Woman. Welcome to the revamped Hephaestus Enterprises. Bit of a work in progress, but we’re getting there.”
Miranda put her cape back on. “Yeah, sounds like you’ve been keeping busy.”
“Only way to be.” The puzzle pieces drew him toward the table. “Did I hear correctly? This puzzle’s a man?”
“Yes, he is,” Miranda said, with a sharp glance at Sibyl, who didn’t seem to notice.
Carey scratched the side of his face as he examined the pieces without touching any. “This is certainly a new one. Never encountered any living puzzle on my world, and I thought we had seen it all. We’ve got a Mistress Marionette who turns people into her namesake, but nothing like this.” He whistled at the novelty. “What did this degenerate call himself?”
Miranda hesitated, not wanting to give Bloman the satisfaction of using his supervillain name. “Called himself the Puzzler, but—”
“Puzzler.” Carey nodded, eyes fixed on the pieces of Ollie. “Yet another reason for me to get the armor operational. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can for this poor fellow, of course.”
“It won’t be easy,” Sibyl said. “I’ll need to examine the machine that did this to him.”
“I’ll talk to the police. They already know I’ve brought him over here,” Miranda said.
“Excellent.” Carey gave a thumbs-up. “Keep the authorities in the loop. Always a good idea to maintain a strong relationship there.”
Miranda strove to maintain a good relationship with everyone, but she let the comment go unsaid. “Thank you both. I know you’ve got plenty to do already. And, um, speaking of which … I know I keep bugging you about this, but …”
They both understood. “We’re still exploring options for your missing people,” Carey said. “No luck yet, but we’re not giving up.”
“I owe it to Dr. Luna,” Sibyl told her. “Just as you do to Fantastic Man. I won’t leave her, or any of them, trapped in some other dimension if I can help it.”
“Thank you. I know. I just …” Miranda sighed. “Just wish there was something I could do.”
Sibyl thought about it a second. “Actually, there is. Would you mind running up to the moon for us?”
Miranda already regretted opening her mouth.