Stability Girl
I’ve always loved the sight of a glowing neon sign in the rain. Today it was an especially good omen, meaning I was much less likely to die. I was bleeding from my side and probably had a few cracked ribs, plus broken bones and bruised flesh all along my right side and down my legs, the results of a nasty fight. I call myself Stability Girl, but I can barely stand upright now. My armor is cracked, entire pieces destroyed. My jets are completely smashed, none of my guns work. I not only have to heal, I have to rebuild my equipment. There are long nights ahead to recover. To do that, I have to survive.
I forced myself through the back door of the pizzeria with halting steps. Behind the “OPEN” and “PIZZA” signs was a red metal door that I could still push open. Inside I made my way over to the refrigerators. One featured a false back that was really a secret door to my upstairs “headquarters”. Well, it used to be secret. Now, the staff pretty much knew. My friend Ophelia runs this place, and she takes care of me. I certainly need it tonight.
I exhaled upon seeing the stairs. Rather than trying to scale them, I sat down, and hoisted myself up one step at a time. The bruises on my ass radiated pain with each step. Finally, I got to the top. Stability Girl was almost stable, again. Still on the floor, I could just barely reach the red emergency button we’d installed for occasions like this. My fingers found it and just before I pushed, a hand gently cupped mine. Ophelia.
“Breathe for me, darling,” she said. “Just breathe.” I couldn’t stay in contact with anyone during the battle, so I knew she had been worried. I didn’t think she’d already be here. I could tell the adrenaline was wearing off, perhaps because my body was recognizing that I was safe. My vision went white and I was picked up by three sets of arms. To me, they looked like angels.
Waking up alive feels good. But I also knew that the weeks and months to come were going to be the hardest of my life. I wish that dealing with my injuries and fixing my equipment were my biggest concerns. I had to worry about that and health insurance, dating, and anything else that might come up. It was an impossible challenge most days. Finding my armor had given me some purpose, but to be punted several steps back was miserable. I’ve already seen the idealized image people have of Stability Girl. I’ve got news for them: I’m just a girl. I could barely keep myself together before, and now there’s this.
I found a tool that I could use. An alien artifact with liquid metal that could integrate seamlessly with any technology I got close to it. Pretty handy stuff, right? Then I started building my own personal devices. I wasn’t interested in weapons at first, but trouble has a way of finding you when you’re a space-age supergal. Soon, I had a full set of armor with weapons and gravity-repelling devices. That’s how I got the name “Stability Girl.” I can be stable in any situation. My personal life didn’t get the memo, though. That’s my little joke.
I didn’t think I would be a superhero. I thought I would fool around with it, make some money, and try to use it for good. I imagined doing rescue work and publicity stunts for good causes, things like that. Once I finished the armor, I felt invincible. It was smooth, gunmetal gray and blue in a few places. The arms and legs had round, bubble-like shapes that I hoped would make me look friendly to kids, or anyone vulnerable. It was retrofuturistic, I thought. Especially my helmet, with the cool crest and chunky antenna. I felt like a hero, so it was a natural next step to be one. Maybe I was just rising to fill an empty slot: it seemed like there were plenty of villains around, and not many heroes. Now, there was me, and a few others.
Looking down from my makeshift hospital bed now, in the apartment above Ophelia’s pizza place where I found refuge, I can see my armor in pieces. There’s light coming in from the window, so it’s been a few hours, at least. I’m patched up in a few places. Gauze all over my head and something that looks like a cast on my arm. Ophelia isn’t a medical professional in the formal sense, but she takes good care of me. She has since we first met. It could be lonely being a superhero, but I’d be dead without a team.
My armor wasn’t destroyed, but it was in bad shape. You’d think a living metal alloy would be able to heal or shapeshift, like the car in that movie, but no. It responds to my mental commands when it’s physically capable, but I have to build new parts for it to attach to and integrate with. Some of those were completely destroyed. Both of my leg armor pieces were crushed beyond repair, and luckily only one leg was broken with them. The boots and stuff I can rebuild. The hover pack was wiped out, I’m not sure how to repair that. It was alien tech to begin with and I’ve only given it a handful of modifications. I’ll do my best. Stability Girl may have to be stable at ground level for a while.
The top part of the armor, severely damaged but still in one piece, sat on the floor opposite my bed. The chest plate was caved in and will have to be replaced. Both of the arm pieces were messed up pretty bad, taking the brunt of the attacks last night. The guns are basically destroyed, too. I was already working on those. Both prog knives are totally busted. My baton was already in bad shape and that was shattered so completely I don’t even have a piece of it. My helmet was cracked in several places, and the communications and mapping modules were totally gone. Those were easy to replace, but looking at the carnage made me nauseous.
The armor, all my equipment in fact, looked sad, like dirty laundry or a pile of gnawed-on bones. This whole room had a tomb-like quality, a mausoleum in daylight. The floors were scuffed and unfinished, some of the walls bare wood or barely painted. It was an “apartment” only in theory. As a hospital room, it was totally inadequate. But the real hospital would mean questions from authorities that I wasn’t prepared to answer just yet.
As for me, I felt okay. I’m sure Ophelia gave me something, but there was no IV. Just a lot of bandages, stitches, and a cast so far. I don’t know how much work it would take to heal myself, let alone repair my armor. After all, I lost today. You can be a superhero, or whatever I am, and lose, sometimes. I’m supposed to get back up and fight again. Right now, I feel like lying down. Maybe not dying, but not living. I went back to sleep.
The sun was setting when I woke up again. Ophelia gave me a salad and some other easily digestable foodstuffs. Good enough, I guess. I ate, and waited for night to fall. Once the air was cold enough, I decided to get up and walk around. I hadn’t gone anywhere but the bed and the bathroom. My limbs ached, like carrying around wet logs. I used a crutch to keep my balance. We only had one.
I went to the roof. It was a good place to relax during some of my other long nights dealing with this stuff. I’d come here and work on my gizmos, do research, come back for emergency first aid. I even brought back a few friends. Allies and comrades and other people I fought alongside. Some were true believers, and some were just opportunists. I’ll take all the help I can get.
Standing on the roof like this, you could see a lot, even though it was only a two-story building. The skyscrapers were a few blocks off. Looking in that direction, I saw a little silver glint fly by. My throat felt dry, and I thought I should probably go inside. I didn’t have enough water today. But I stayed right there and watched as the shape got bigger in the sky. It crystalized into a silver humanoid form as it approached, and there was no mistaking who it was. Huge, majestic feathered wings flapped once, then twice, and a metallic figure landed gracefully on the edge of the roof.
She stood up. She was completely enclosed in a suit of armor, much more advanced than mine. It was more like a part of her. But she had an angular armor exterior and a smaller inner body. Her helmet unfolded and revealed essentially a human face, but one with silver-blue skin, long white hair, and two miniature bird wings that came out behind her ears. They were miniature in comparison to her own, but proportional to her head. They spread out, as if to stretch, and then lowered back against her hair.
“Sara,” she said, using my real name. She had a disturbed expression on her face. Even though she was a machine, the emotion was visible on her face. I don’t know how it works. She’s a living machine from another world, I don’t question it any more.
“Orthona,” I said. That’s what she liked to be called. Her “hero” name was Metalwing. She was beautiful. I thought that from the moment I saw her, months ago. Even her helmet was beautiful, regal, like a statue. She moved through the sky so effortlessly. Unlike mine, her propulsion left no trail. She just soared. Her armor started to unfold after a few movements of her hand, and it arranged itself at her waist like samurai armor. She was mechanical all the way down, so it was more like a second skin. She had more accessories and armor pieces, too. She was so cool. Underneath her armor, she looked like a person with silver-blue skin in a white tank top. There were ports and linkages visible on her where the armor connected. It must be an incredible feeling to be one with a piece of machinery.
She walked, very hesitantly, a few steps over to me. She put one hand on my shoulder. “I was so scared,” she said. “Don’t— Don’t do that. Don’t do that!”
I didn’t respond, just stared at her. She was so tall and regal and intimidating, I was often speechless around her. She took it more as respect. She was wringing her hands together. She had human-like hands with talons and feathers on the outer edge of her forearm. They looked mechanical. The talons on her feet looked almost organic, just like her wings. At my best moments, I felt like a fusion of woman and machine. I couldn’t come close to her elegance.
“I’m sorry, Oro,” I said, using the nickname we used in more informal times. “I really am. I didn’t know it would go like that. I wouldn’t have gone in alone if— I thought I could do something. I just wanted to stop him from hurting more people? That’s— that’s my job! I did a real bad job, Oro. I’m sorry.”
I felt my face get hot and my eyes get wet and the sobs came out in waves. Tears fell from my eyes like floor cleaner glugging into a mop bucket. Before I knew what was happening, Orthona’s armor shifted again, the leg pieces splitting open and revealing her slimmer, more humanoid form in full. She practically leapt out of her armor, wings extended, and hugged me. Her wings wrapped around the both of us and I screamed, voice muffled by her chest. Tears stained her underclothes. I felt stupid already.
“You should not have gone,” Orthona said. “It was unsafe and you could have gotten killed. You were badly hurt. You must not take such risks when your friends are here.”
“'Friends'. You barely tolerate me. I’m just some Mega Man cosplay chick who—“
“Please stop,” Orthona said, cutting me off. “You are not weak. You sometimes allow yourself to be manipulated, but you’re very strong.” She pulled my face away from her chest and touched it gently. “You will heal. And we’ll face whatever comes next together. It’s not in our nature to be alone.”
“You mean superheroes or lesbians?” I said, sort of teasing.
“Both, in my experience,” Orthona said back to me. “Could I come inside with you? It’s cold.” She folded her armor into a large sphere, and it rolled away into the corner of the roof. Inside, she found some old shoes and a hoodie to wear so she didn’t look underdressed.
Orthona sat on the ratty old couch and I rested my head on her lap. Her wings cradled the back of my head so gently, I thought I’d fall back asleep.
“How did you know?” she said to me. “That I was… interested in women that way.”
“I didn’t. I have a crush on you,” I said. I was emotionally exhausted and slightly doped up because it took me several seconds before I realized what I’d just done. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”
“My gender is a matter of… personal choice, I think you’d say. My people, we start with none and choose what we’d like. Many people choose to continue with none. Because we’re a machine race, the changes are very easy,” she said. “So words like ‘lesbian’ don’t mean as much. But I prefer women, certainly.”
“You’d probably rather be with someone like Morgante, or Destroyer Girl… someone really glamorous,” I said.
“Why?” Orthona said, and she began to stroke my hair. “Perhaps the people who make me feel complete don’t even know how much they mean to me. How I think of them during my flights. How when I work to protect people, I imagine their soft, innocent face. Their spritely eyes. The look on her face when she works to solve a problem.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I don’t believe in revenge. But I want to stop the person who did this to you,” she said. “Not kill them, but remove them as a threat. And then I’d like to take you out on a date, Sara.”
“Okay. I’d like that,” I said.
“You can rest, for now,” she said, and I did.
It took a few weeks, but it worked out pretty much as she said it would. I was stuck there healing up for a while, slowly repairing my armor, getting some new pieces, making replacement parts where I could and stripping out things that weren’t working. I had a lean and mean set to work with now. I got my boosters working, sort of, so I could levitate for short periods. Grav boots kinda worked, but mostly I could use them for big jumps. With a good kickstart, I could jump off with the boots and use the jets to navigate. It’s not quite so stable for Stability Girl, but it works out.
As for Orthona, she brought in reinforcements for our fight with the bastard who hurt me. We destroyed the guns he’d been selling and scared off some of the cops who had been working with him. I even asked Destroyer Girl to use her mystical third eye to record some evidence. We sent that over to the police. A whole bunch of officers ended up on unpaid leave a few days later. And, I won’t lie, I was satisfied that Oro beat a bad guy senseless, and dropped him off miles away from anywhere. We watched him crawl away for a minute. He crawled in the opposite direction.
We did go on that date, too. It went pretty well. We had dinner and she took me flying. We were up until sunrise, and we kissed. For the first time since the fight, I felt alive.
© Jessica Umbra, 2024
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