Story #95 - QS

QS

“You’ll never catch me, Quantum Stanley!” Viscount Destructo roared as his minions swarmed over the square, preventing Stanley from reaching him or the large cache of jewels that he had taken during his daring daylight robbery.

Stanley smiled; villains were used to the old set of superheroes, to powers beyond the physical but still bound by sensible, predictable limits. He was not the old, not the predictable.

Inherently.

“I see you, Stanley – you’ll never reach me from there!”

Stanley appeared next to Destructo, shaking his head to clear it after the moment of disorientation that followed.

“Really, Viscount?” He asked. “It seems I’ve found you quite easily.”

“What!” Destructo screamed. “This isn’t possible – you can’t be here!”

“And yet, here I am. I wonder why that is?” Stanley knew the secret, but it wasn’t something he was about to share. The Viscount could have easily learned it as well, but so few villains – and heroes – paid any attention to scientific developments or theory.

A quick cross to the body and a jab to the head brought down the villain; Destructo was outfitted for magical and demonic attacks, but had no ability to resist purely physical violence. Looking at the man’s bloated body as he fell, Stanley could see that the other man hadn’t taken a great deal of time to improve his physique.

Reaching down, Stanley snatched the cache from Destructo’s hands. This belong to the museum, thought he had to admit to a certain desire to take at least one of the smaller crystals from the larger bunch. Someone would notice, but they’d likely say nothing to him since he had rescued not only the cache but prevented the need for military assistance; assistance that would have destroyed more that it would have saved.

The curator met him at the arched front door, face drawn and eyes downcast. He’d been this way since Stanley met him, in part because of the value of the items that had gone missing and in part because it was Stanley that answered the call – he’d have been a great deal more comfortable with one of the “traditional” superheroes.

Stanley nodded to the curators murmured thanks and then stepped quickly down the stairs to his waiting car. He didn’t have a fancy jet or stealth tank like some of the others; his old four-door sedan was good enough for most jobs, and got him away before the police arrived.

Police response was slow these days anyway, since local organizations were strapped for funds and hoped that a hero would hear the call and do their jobs for them. Stanley didn’t mind helping out, but didn’t like dealing with the questions and statements after the fact – especially those about just how he did what he did.

It wasn’t magic, but they’d have been more comfortable it if it was.

Stanley deliberately took a route around the superhero HQ – they’d recently built a new, larger facility on the city’s main street, but he had no interest in wondering what might have been. Apparently science wasn’t something that the heroes of the city were interested in, and every application he’d made for service there had been quickly turned down with no explanation. Showing up at the old building had prompted a terrified response, and he’d seen a number of famous city icons lining up in full battle gear against him “just in case”.

A small house on the edge of the suburbs served as Quantum Stanley’s lair, complete with a self-dug basement lair that tended to mildew in the summer. He didn’t need much in the way of tools or equipment, thanks to exactly how his abilities worked, but he felt that no superhero was complete without a lair to call his own.

It had been an odd thing that led him to this place, an odd twist of fate that had given him the ability to act, essentially, as a quantum state. He hadn’t known what the hell was going on the first time it happened; it had been a bar fight in a dirt-bag pub on the outside of town – some burly moron had taken exception to Stanley just sitting quietly and having a beer.

“Stay right there, pipsqueak,” he’d said, and Stanley had suddenly found himself behind the guy, and he delivered a forward head-smack onto the table that had ended the fight nicely. He’d assumed it was just a one-off, a drunken haze that had gotten the better of him, but then it started to happen more often, and only when someone told him to “stay put”. Eventually, he refined it to a point where he could vanish and reappear even if someone looked his way, but it took him five years to track down why.

Quantum Stanley was born, and villains everywhere had no idea what had hit them.

It was simple once he understood the mechanics, though he didn’t look too deeply into the scientific details. Anyone measuring his position – however that might take place – changed it by their observation. He kept that knowledge quiet and to himself; most heroes and villains wouldn’t bother to search out the underlying structure behind his abilities, but he didn’t need to advise he had a possible weakness.

Pulling into the driveway, Stanley shut off his car and leaned heavily against the headrest. A moment of solid silence followed, and then he slipped out of the car and made for the back door. Two steps from it and a fireball slammed into the ground, throwing him back and singeing the edge of his coat.

“Stanley,” a voice boomed, “I’m so glad I’ve found you.”

Looking up from the flat of his back near the front tire of his car, he saw the caped form of Captain Frenetic descending from the sky.

The city’s premier superhero, the Captain had been his strongest detractor each time had applied, but he hadn’t been aware the man was actively seeking him out.

“It’s time that we had a nice, short chat.” Frenetic’s voice boomed across the yard. Stanley glanced up - he wasn’t sure what the man thought he would accomplish with this – and drew in a quick breath. Across the Captain’s eyes was a large woven bandage, preventing him from seeing Stanley.

- D