Dial H for Heroics

Josie let Jack deal with the Endwrights while she walked Lady Endwright to the

courtyard outside. She still had her paper and she had an idea of what she wanted to

do. And she had the means to get it done.

She doubted the noblewoman would like what was going to happen, but she had a

small amount of patience for people hurting others. She supposed that was too much

comic book reading coming up from the back of her brain.

“What are you going to do?,” asked Lady Endwright.

“I’m going to change forms and take all the information I can from you,” said Josie.

“Then I am going to send you somewhere where you can’t do any more harm.”

“I would like to live,” said Lady Endwright. “Isn’t there something material you

want?”

“Your organization tried to make me a mindless pawn,” said Josie. “All I want is the

fulfilment of my quest so my patrons know that I am still working on the job that I

said I would do.”

Josie reached for her watch face.

“I’m not your judge,” she said. She pushed down for Zatanna. “I’m your judgment.”

Josie wished for all the relevant facts that she wanted to appear on clean sheets of

paper. She read the contents as the words wrote themselves. She nodded at the

confirmation of Donald Corle’s involvement. And the fact that he was dead made her

feel even better about Jack operating on his own.

When the spell had run its course, she bound the information into a notebook and put

it to one side.

“What are you going to do now?,” asked Lady Endwright. She tried to catch her

breath to recover from the assault on her mind.

“I’m going to let you go,” said Josie. She wished for her victim to appear in the sky

over the city and start falling to the ground.

She returned to her normal form and sighed. She should have thought of some way

to express mercy instead of vowing to kill all the members of the Montrose.

Executing them was starting to take a mental toll no matter how much they deserved

it.

Maybe she needed to send an invitation out to get as many as the Montrose together

so she could get rid of them all at once. Maybe that would ease her pangs. She had

totally wrecked herself out of anger.

She throttled her regret down. This wasn’t the first time she had jumped into

something without looking where the bottom was. She had survived those, and she

could survive this.

And she had the kids and Elaine to help with that. They made some of this worth it.

She saw Jack coming out of the house. He looked grim but satisfied. Helping people

suited him a lot more than it did her. Out of the two of them, he was the one who was

doing better with the challenge they had been given.

He could survive anything with the same cool attitude as getting a tea out of the

fridge. He had survived a few years getting shot at and had slipped back into civilian

life without a problem.

“Ready to go?,” he asked.

“Yes,” said Josie. “The nobles?”

“Fixed,” asked Jack. “Could you clean up the place?”

“Really?,” Josie turned her squint of doom on him.

“Pulling out a tooth sometimes requires gum surgery,” said Jack.

“You’ll have to carry me back to the girls,” said Josie.

“Deal,” said Jack.

Josie shook her head. He didn’t look as regretful about his request as he should in her

opinion.

“How did you get a gun?,” asked Jack as she turned back into Zatanna and checked

her watch.

“Bulletgirl,” said Josie. She didn’t want to use her full power on the house. Maybe

something out of Mary Poppins would do. The staff, whomever remained, could

handle anything she didn’t after they left.

“Bulletgirl?,” said Jack. “Bulletgirl. I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” said Josie. She picked a spot of blood on the

floor. She told the blood to start burning up the rest of it as fast as it could. The

bodies would vanish as the blood did its work.

She cast a general clean up spell to do the rest of the work. The servants might leave

when they saw things hopping around. There was nothing she could do about that.

“All right,” said Josie. “Let me put up some monitors, and we can go.”

Birds appeared and perched inside the house. When the area within their watch areas

cleared, the bird would vanish.

“We can go now,” said Josie. She almost smiled as damage started repairing itself in

little dancing motions. “The birds will make sure the job gets done.”

“All right,” said Jack. “You ready to fly?”

“I guess so,” said Josie. She let Zatanna go so the watch could recharge.

“Let me call up Gravity and we’ll be on our way,” said Jack. He made the switch to

an outline of color and pulled them both in the air. They soared above the city at a

leisurely pace. “Do you think the Montrose will start coming after us now?”

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “Lady Endwright had a lot of deals in the works trying to

increase her fortune. Her death might throw a spanner in the works, might make the

organization try to hold her husband to her deal.”

“I told the servants to turn anyone with the Makeover away,” said Jack. “I don’t know

how long that will hold with a force of armed men.”

“Probably not long,” said Josie. “If we keep taking back their slaves, we might rise

above being minor annoyances.”

“If we keep killing their personnel, we might rise above being minor annoyances,”

said Jack. “If we can force them out of Hawk Ridge, we might rise above medium,

and into the major threats to their dealings.”

“I was feeling tired,” said Josie. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should work on

trying to clear them out of Hawk Ridge. I would love to get as many as I can together

so I can get rid of them in one fell swoop.”

“What do we do?,” asked Jack. “Advertise?”

“I doubt they will go for something like that,” said Josie. She rubbed her face. “This

is making me car sick.”

“Really?,” said Jack. “Why?”

“I think it’s the falling without hitting the ground,” said Josie. “Still, it’s fast.”

“I can go faster, but I didn’t want to try that inside the city walls,” said Jack. “I

didn’t want to splat against a building.”

“Thanks,” said Josie. “There is the Corle house. Bring us down, and we can walk

the rest of the way.”

“Bringing us in,” said Jack. He let the natural gravity of the planet slowly take over

and they drifted to a landing.

“What do you think about what we found out?,” said Jack.

“The Montrose are big users of alchemists and if we hurt them, we can hurt the

overall production,” said Josie. “The hex we put on the love potion seems to have

permanently taken it off the table somehow. So they can’t make willing slaves

anymore, and the ones they had might decide to fight back if they aren’t broken

already.”

“We might have created an army of amazons waiting for their chance?,” said Jack.

“I don’t know about that,” said Josie. “I haven’t seen any more deaths inside the

organization other than the ones we caused. We are still on our own unless I start

seeing massive losses.”

“Nothing from the hunter?,” asked Jack.

“No, so either he is out of the picture, or he is traveling,” said Josie. “The watches are

making it easy for us to travel, but most people have to take days to get where they

are going.”

“So he might have cleared out everyone around him?,” said Jack. “How would he

know about any others?”

“If he is traveling,” said Josie. “He might be dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“But if he is traveling, how would he know there were more than one little group

doing business?,” asked Jack.

“He has a copy of the ledgers,” said Josie. “That’s the only way.”

“He might have done some Jack Bauer on a few of them,” said Jack. “I like the

ledgers because it matches up to what the Society told me.”

“So he knows as many of the Montrose as we do,” said Josie. “Is he coming the

way?”

“No idea,” said Jack. “We need to do something with what you took from Lady

Endwright.”

“I’ll ask Elaine to map it,” said Josie. “It might give us a hot spot we can clear out

after we clear Hawk Ridge.”

“How did you get Bulletgirl?,” said Jack. “I have been wanting someone I can shoot

with other than Gravity.”

“Still stuck with hand to hand guys?,” asked Josie. She smiled slightly.

“I pulled out the Human Torch,” said Jack. “Setting people on fire doesn’t have the

knockdown that I want.”

“Blade?,” asked Josie.

“Too messy, too upclose,” said Jack. “Sure, I can cut through anything with fifty

blades swinging around, but I am spraying blood and body parts everywhere. It’s like

putting your hand in a cuisinart. Nobody wants that.”

“I suggest you look at any of the old gunslingers and see what they can get you,” said

Josie. “Bulletgirl is an heroine bought up by DC who was the sidekick to Bulletman.

Their real power was flight, but the name change from the watch lets me do with them

what you do with Blade.”

“And that’s nearly the same as the Arrow,” said Jack. “I can see that.”

“There has to be some gunslingers on the watch,” said Josie.

“There are,” said Jack. “The names are what’s stalling me from trying them since they

all have variations of kid in their names. Rawhide Kid, Apache Kid, Two-Gun Kid,

Kid Colt. I am afraid of turning into a goat with a gun.”

“Really?,” asked Josie. She smiled.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I am talking about since you lucked out with

Grundy,” said Jack.

“You’re right about that,” said Josie.

She wanted someone superstrong, but got someone supersmart instead. They had

made it work out.

Their talk had taken them from their landing spot to the gates of the former Corle

estate. They paused when they saw their ducklings playing with other kids. Elaine and

Jane stood off to one side talking.

“So what do we do now?,” asked Jack.

“We let them play while we work,” said Josie. “Isn’t that what Imagine Dragons

said?”

“We haven’t been able to build a town, but okay,” said Jack.

“We might the way we’re going,” said Josie. “Hello, ladies. How are things?”

“We already sent the ones who wanted to go home back,” said the leader of the

refugees. “The rest want to go with you.”

“Why?,” asked Jack.

“Their families couldn’t afford to feed them and sold them to get money to live on,”

said Elaine. “The problem is we don’t have room unless we expand the hole in the

wall.”

“We could expand the hole in the wall,” said Jack. “I would have to look at it, I

guess.”

“A solution would be to let them stay here,” said the head woman. “But if I do, what

do you want in return?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “How long can you support a group of women and girls

here? Josie and I don’t have an idea on what costs are here in the city.”

“If we aren’t extravagant, we can support what we have for years,” said the head

woman. “More people coming in would be a draw on our resources.”

“What do you think, Elaine?,” asked Josie. She didn’t want to bargain with this

woman but she knew they were imposing on someone who had just had everything

ripped up around her. They couldn’t take in every kid they saved no matter how much

she wanted.

“Judging by what I saw, the taxes on this place would be enormous,” said Elaine.

“Turning part of the grounds into a garden might help with food, but they will go

through the fortune they recovered in two years as long as they live modestly with

small amounts of upkeep.”

“All right,” said Josie. “This is what I want. Anybody we rescue and wants to stay,

they stay here. If you want to pick up people off the street, that’s good too but not

necessary. If they want to go home, you arrange for that. In return, I will budget your

tax bill and reasonable expenses with Elaine to keep you afloat. If any of you want

to learn how to fight with swords, or shoot a bow, I will pay to have that done too.”

“Define reasonable expenses,” said the head lady.

“Upkeep on the house, small expandings of the wall to the property line, food and

drink, and one Christmas party,” said Josie. “I don’t want to see golden privies when

I visit.”

“You are not nearly as angry as Jack made you out to be,” said the head lady.

Jack shook his head.

“I can be,” said Josie. “Do we have a deal?”

“All right,” said the head lady. “We will need carpenters and workmen if we have to

add to the house for others.”

“That’s a reasonable expense,” said Josie. “Anything else?”

“What’s Christmas?,” said the lady.