In spite of everything, Jason felt rather mellow as he walked to his desk on Monday morning.

He’d been rather steamed at six o’clock Saturday evening, being exiled to do a remote at the Rally by the River, one of a series of themed waterfront festivals held downtown through the summer. This had been the ethnic German weekend, and while he had a very limited interest in bratwurst and sauerkraut, nobody ever said German beer was second rate, and the prospect of a lead story from a remote was almost as good as anchoring … until out of nowhere, the remote had been bumped from the lead to the second section, shoved aside by the piece on Coulter’s confession. That built up a pretty good head of steam, but he’d kept his cool, and while waiting, noticed a statuesque blonde with a deep cleavage looking on, just aching to get on camera. Always alert to opportunities, he’d done a fifteen second interview with her live, and then got to talking with her afterwards.

It turned out her name was Andrea. She worked at the Hooters out on Monroe, was certainly qualified in that department, and wanted to break into modeling. She was beautiful, though no great shakes in the brights department, and she was so grateful for the air time that he was glad he’d driven his own car to the festival and didn’t have to go back to the station. Thus he missed the eleven o’clock entirely, and she’d kept him so busy that Sunday he hadn’t even bothered to flip the TV on. It wasn’t his first score from a remote, and with any kind of luck wouldn’t be his last, but this one had been one of the better ones. It almost made up for getting bumped out of the anchor chair.

But that was yesterday. Andrea may have been beautiful, with big boobs and the mating drive of the average mink, but she didn’t have enough brains to carry on a conversation, so he didn’t waste time talking, and as a result she really hadn’t been much of a challenge. If nothing better came up, he might just call her again sometime, but for now, his priority had to be restoring some order in the newsroom. With the memory of Andrea’s naked, wanton body dwindling in his mind, getting Sally back in her place in the pecking order was far more important. The mousy, flat-chested little bitch was sure full of herself this morning, after co-anchoring over the weekend and stealing a couple of good beats and a story from him the last few days.

Thoughts rambling, he glanced down at the glass of his desk. He’d slid the clipping of the picture of Hippolyta from the Daily under the glass. Now there was a woman to respect, not an easy-lay blonde like Andrea … “Jason,” he heard Ben say. “Anything come of that dairy farm story?”

“More than I thought,” he said, reluctantly tearing his mind away from the black-clad warrior woman. “I talked to a guy from a local paper up there, and he gave me quite a bit of background. Tempers are running high, and there are arguments on both sides of the issue. The farms are basically complying with the standards of the Michigan DEQ, but the monitors are real sloppy and don’t do a good job of enforcement. There’s a local citizens group that’s way up in arms.”

“Citizens-Against-Virtually-Everything type of thing?”

“Pretty much,” Jason agreed, thinking that not one of the women involved offered him even the slightest interest in a score. “Good story, but I don’t think we can tell it in sixty seconds.”

“Probably two, maybe three parts?” Ben asked with a nod.

“Two for sure. Maybe more.”

Jason watched as Ben glanced at the assignment board. “Okay,” Ben said after a moment. “Go head over to the cop shop for the morning take. You might as well take Shane with you, maybe you can get a formal announcement of the Coulter confession. If nothing too big comes out of that, this afternoon you and Shane head up to the cow-patty protest, shoot some tape, see if you can get some interviews. We’ll shoot for tomorrow, maybe Wednesday.”

“Can do, Ben,” he replied, already planning. This had the makings of a good exposé, the Michigan officials turning their backs while the arrogant dairy farmers dumped cow shit into the streams. Not exactly an interview with Hippolyta, but it wouldn’t look bad. “Could you have Sally swing by the Health Department for the restaurant report again?”

Ben glanced at the assignment board again, and frowned. “Better not. I got something else I need her for this morning, and we’re pushing hours on her already after this weekend. You could stop there when you go by the cop shop.”

“I suppose,” Jason said, not very happily. That was going to waste an hour right up front, time that should be going into the manure story. “Sally,” he said with a frown, “I almost hate to ask, but how did you get that Coulter story out of Turner, anyway? I have trouble getting the time of day from him.”

“It’s one thing when he’s in uniform down at police headquarters,” she said with a smirk. “It’s another thing when you catch him with a beer in one hand and a wire brush in the other, working on a fender of a ’38 Lincoln out in my dad’s barn. He and Dad are old buddies. He showed up for a visit with Dad while I was getting dressed to come in Saturday, and I thought as long as I had him there, I might as well ask.”

“That accounts for a lot of things,” Ben snickered. “Not the least of which is the fact that three other TV stations and both papers were going frantic all weekend trying to track him down. You don’t happen to know why nobody could get hold of him yesterday, do you?”

“It might be that he rode along with my dad when he took the deuce coupe and the ’64 Mustang convertible to a car show yesterday. Dad was kind of pleased. He got Best of Show with the deuce, and he only hauled it along as an afterthought.”

“Damn,” Ben said, mind obviously wandering. “That makes me think of the saddest sight I ever saw.”

“What’s that, Ben?” Liz asked from behind the assignment desk.

“Beautiful summer day, a guy driving around in a really cherry red ’64 Mustang convertible, beautiful blonde next to him, everything I could have asked for when I was a kid,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why’s that so sad?” Liz asked in a loud voice.

“The Mustang had historic vehicle plates on it,” Ben replied sadly. “It made me realize just how long ago ’64 was.” He shook his head again and brightened. “Anyway, Sally, I’ve got to get your hours back under control. As soon as we break up, you and Keri head over to the Women’s Crisis Center on Monroe. It’s one of the places the mayor is talking about cutting funding for with the city budget crunch. Do a short story on the impact that the closing would have on the community. Get it built up into a package, then take the afternoon off.”

Couldn’t be better, Jason thought. Today would be a hassle, but he’d get a multi-part series out of it that might look real good on a demo tape, while Sally got a dog that would get maybe fifteen seconds on the air. That’d go a long way toward restoring order. Too bad Andrea was working tonight, because it’d be nice to celebrate …

Sluggy’s was fairly full with the after-work crowd, but it was starting to dwindle about the time the six o’clock news came on—Channel 5 First to Know News, as it turned out. Still, Charlie and Sally had managed to find a quiet booth back in the corner. Sally built up a good head of steam as she watched the six o’clock. Finally, just before the second break, they ran her package on the Women’s Crisis center.

“That damn cheesehead,” Sally snorted to her brother.

“Which one of the many Worst to Know News cheeseheads are you talking about?” Charlie asked with a grin.

“It about had to be Koser. I had a good thirty-second piece out of that, and he cut it to twenty for the five o’clock. Now he cut the damn thing again, couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds, and just cut the guts out of it. It’s just meaningless, he cut it so bad.”

“Come on, Sis. You know that editors aren’t happy unless they can gut the meaning right out of any story. Doesn’t matter if it’s TV, radio, or print, they’re all brainless worms.”

“Yeah, but what pisses me off is the fact that those people at the Women’s Crisis Center do a good job helping women who’ve had troubles with domestic violence, rape, and a lot more. They do a hell of a good job with hardly any budget, and now the idiot mayor is cutting them off at the knees.”

“Happens that way,” Charlie said philosophically. “Come on, kid, it’s not the first time you got the shaft from an editor, and I guarantee it won’t be the last even if you quit next week. Hell, I get it all the time, too.”

“It just burns me. I had a chance to do something worthwhile there, and they gutted it.”

“If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll mention it to this gal I know at the Daily. She’ll probably pick up on it anyway, but if I nudge her it might get a little more attention.”

“Better than nothing for them,” Sally said with a sigh. “It can’t hurt and might help them out a little.”

“Hey, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’m kind of proud of my little sister for burning everybody’s ass this weekend on the Coulter confession. I even had Macgregor call me Saturday night. I didn’t have any idea of where to turn Bill up, and I never thought of him being with Dad.”

“Hey,” she retorted. “I’m sorta proud of my big brother, too, for the way he handled the thing Thursday night.”

“Oh, don’t give me that much credit. Macgregor kind of pissed in that one, too. I was trying to downplay Hippolyta and play up the rescue of the Spangler kid, but after last week, he wanted more play of this Amazon we both happen to have heard of.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I think you got the proportions about right. Hippolyta was in on the deal, there’s no denying that.”

“Just dumb luck that Hippolyta was in on it at all. Of course, you realize there’s two different ways that it couldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been in on it.”

“I know,” she agreed. “Just dumb luck. Worse than that, God or Zeus or someone had to be watching.”

“I’m glad for her sake it worked out, for both Missy and our friend. But you know when you stop to think about it, the whole deal is pretty deep in the strange factor. How the hell did that come about, anyway?”

“You should know. You’re to blame.”

“Me?” Charlie frowned and looked around, making sure no one was listening, though he lowered his voice anyway. “What the hell did I have to do with my sister becoming a comic book superheroine?”

“You remember when you moved out for college?” she asked. “You left several boxes of old comic books in the attic.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I always wondered what happened to them. I figured Mom found them and threw them out. I don’t know if there were any real collectibles in there, but I was always a little sorry. Some of them were pretty beat up, though.”

“Mom didn’t throw them out. In fact, they’re in the closet of my room at home right now and even more beat up. You couldn’t have been gone a week when I was up in the attic and discovered them. I literally grew up reading them, over and over again.” She let out a sigh. “I used to dream of growing up and being Wonder Woman. Or growing up and being Batgirl. Or maybe a Mutant or that blonde babe from the X-Men or something.”

“Been there, done that,” Charlie said, obviously reminiscing himself. “Right out of those same comic books, too. Printed on newsprint, a dime a pop. A buck would go a long way. Have you seen a comic book on the newsstand recently?”

“Yeah,” she frowned sadly. “Glossy paper, three and a half bucks. The artwork is a lot better, but that’s a steep price for a kid who wants to dream of being Superman.”

“I never wanted to be Superman. Too much Kryptonite floating around.” He snickered. “I always did envy Superman one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” Sally asked.

“Well, this was when I was a little older,” Charlie said. “I always figured that Superman could use his X-ray vision to see what girls looked like naked.”

“Sounds just like a man,” Sally snorted, but with a smile.

“No, sounds just like an eleven-year-old boy,” Charlie laughed. “Don’t tell me those comic books had something to do with you taking up fencing.”

“Well, actually, they did,” she said, softly and very sheepishly. “Don’t tell anyone though. Really, it’s pretty childish, and I hate to admit it. I was maybe ten, old enough to realize there aren’t any real superpowers. I mean, I thought it was going to be fun, anyway, but I think I had in the back of my mind, even then, if I was ever going to be any kind of a superheroine, I had to have some special skill. Then, after Stan told Mom and Dad to bring me down to the salle sometime, well, I got into it for its own sake.”

“Don’t feel too childish. After all, I always wanted to grow up and be a cop like Dad. Where did our Amazon friend enter the picture?”

“I’m not real sure,” Sally shrugged, keeping her voice low. “I’m sure the fencing got into it. You look into history, and there aren’t a lot of women good with swords. I mean, even Joan of Arc was a commander, not a swordswoman herself, but I discovered some of the old Greek myths and the Amazons. They really are mostly legendary, although there may be some truth behind the legends. As an Ohio State graduate, I’m a little ashamed to say that there’s a lot of Spartan mixed in to the way I interpret our friend. I mean, I felt sort of like a traitor in not going to Michigan State.”

“Better not let any Buckeye fans hear you say that.”

“Some of the women Spartans of old weren’t slouches with swords,” Sally said to shrug off Charlie’s wisecrack. “The real reason I didn’t go to Michigan State was that they dropped their NCAA fencing program. Anyway, our friend sort of gelled in my mind over the years. Then, when I started going to the FantasyCons, she came to the surface.” She glanced around, hoping that no one was listening, and continued softly, “I think I’ve had this fantasy of being Hippolyta for a long time, and the FantasyCons sort of brought it out, allowed me to flesh out the character a lot.”

“I imagine. Where did that weird-ball outfit come from, anyway?”

“Oh, that’s a story. I wore just a black Spandex outfit to the first convention I went to, decked out with a mask and leather belt, the boots, the spiked collar and Penthesilea slung over my shoulder. It was okay, but I just couldn’t bring it off. Somehow, it wasn’t the image I had in my mind. Anyway, not long after that, I was at this meet in Chicago just west of the Loop, and the scheduling was more goofed up than I thought, so I had half a day to kill. I decided to just walk around, get some exercise, and see what the neighborhood was like. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and I saw this shop window that had some really cool but weird leather stuff, so I thought I’d take a better look.”

“A little kinky?”

“No,” Sally blushed in the low light. “Way, way kinky, I found out when I got inside. My God, Charlie, they had stuff in there that I don’t have words for. I wouldn’t dare go into a place like that anywhere nearer, and maybe Chicago was too close. The guy running it wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but he wore all black leather, with a vest open down the chest, and a weird tattoo right in the center. He had about seventeen piercings I could see and God knows how many I couldn’t. The woman clerk was dressed about the same way, and she wasn’t a hell of a lot less scary. Real short leather skirt, leather vest, laced just partway up so you could see there wasn’t a bra, long curly black hair, lots of piercings and tattoos, and wearing handcuffs. I mean, nice, friendly people, but I was really wishing I’d had Penthesilea in my hand right then, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ve met a few,” Charlie snickered.

“The weird part of the whole thing was that some of that leather stuff seemed to be just what I needed to turn Hippolyta into something real threatening. It turned out they had this custom leather corset someone had ordered, but some detail hadn’t turned out right on it, or maybe he got arrested, or something. Turns out he was a transvestite guy, and the corset was supposed to make him look more like a domme, what with the big falsies and all. Well, I tried it on, and it was a perfect fit. The hood was part of the package, with that big flaming red wig built into it. Well, one thing led to another, and we got a little friendly. They really are nice people, even though they’re weird as hell, and they cut me a hell of a deal on it to get it out of the shop. I think I got it below cost.”

“Does the job. You do come across looking like you’re looking for some male slave to whip.”

“Yeah. The part of it that I really think is a scream is that it makes me look sort of like a guy who wants to look like a girl. It really perked the costume up. Charlie, I’ve won awards at FantasyCons in that outfit.”

“I can understand why. I mean, you just aren’t Sally when you have it on.”

“It’s supposed to be that way. When participants go to a FantasyCon, we’re supposed to get into the character quite a bit. You spend the amount of time I have at one of those things, acting like a hardassed woman with a sword, and it grows on you a little. That was fine, I could sort of feel like her, but I’ve always had dreams of what it would be like to really be her. Then, for a couple minutes a week ago Sunday, and then for a few more minutes Thursday night, I really was her for a while. It’s … uh … pretty intoxicating.”

“You don’t want to let it go to your head,” Charlie said. “I mean, really. But you know for a couple minutes there Thursday night, you really weren’t Sally in my mind. I mean, that was Hippolyta out there leading the charge. I didn’t think of it as Sally rescuing Missy with her sword. It was Hippolyta. Shit, like Jan said, right then, I was a believer, too.”

Charlie cocked his head to the side for a moment, obviously thinking. “Look, Sis,” he continued. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about last Thursday night, then our schedules got crossed up with me working out in Waterville and Swanton, and you anchoring. I wanted it to be just us, but Jan and Rick were there and I couldn’t run them off. I was pretty sure you were going to be wound up as hell after it was over with. I know I was. I just wanted to talk you down a little, like one good cop to another.”

“I figured that. It helped. I went home and slept pretty good, not like last Sunday when all I could do was replay the scene at the Shop’n’Go half the night. Even with Jan and Rick there, it helped a lot. Thanks, Charlie.”

“That’s not all I wanted to talk to you about. I know you grew up around cops and you think a little like a cop, but really, you don’t, at least not enough. When you step back and examine both those incidents from a cop viewpoint, both of them were pretty foolhardy. I grant you got lucky, and Missy is probably alive because of what you did, and maybe even the store clerk before her. But I just want to warn you about pushing your luck too far.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that exact thing,” she admitted. “There are at least a dozen reasons why our friend can’t be identified, starting with my career and going on from there. After last Sunday, I wasn’t going to get into the outfit again, ever. Then, that deal with Metheny came up, and I figured, what the hell, and did the photo shoot with you. That really backfired in its intended purpose, to trap Metheny, but then it ballooned into Thursday night. Charlie, I felt real good about those two incidents. I mean, I know I did the right thing. But you’re right, luck like that can’t continue.” She let out a long sigh, shook her head, and dropped her voice to go on. “I think I’m just going to pack up the outfit and see if she can’t fade back into the darkness, even at the FantasyCons. I don’t think there’s room for a comic book superheroine in Toledo in this day and age.”

“Kind of a shame,” Charlie said in agreement. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

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