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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 14: Takano 161
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Beam 200
Belle hopped in the back seat of the near-limousine sized luxury sedan with Tommy for the ride through the city rush hour traffic, while Keller drove.
“You don’t really have to sit back here,” Tommy said.
“Nonsense. It will give us a chance to get to know each other. Besides, I really don’t like to see the road when he’s driving; I’d rather just trust that he knows what he’s doing.”
Having ridden with Keller driving before, Tommy could appreciate that sentiment.
“So,” Belle continued, “How did you become Truth?”
She scrunched her brow. “It’s complicated? Maybe it isn’t. Did Brian explain the whole verser thing to you?”
“Well, yes, but I’m not sure I understand it.”
“Hey, it’s happening to me, and I’m not sure I understand it. But it seems that I got infected with something, a substance we call scriff, and because of that I don’t get older, and I don’t die, but if I’m killed I come back to life in another universe.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad deal.”
“I suppose it has its perks. I would have liked to have gotten a couple years older before it happened, though. Anyway, I’d died a few times, and wound up in a world where I met a woman who told me I needed to learn how to defend myself, so she taught me some self defense stuff and some acrobatics, and encouraged me to practice. She eventually got knocked out of that world, and some time after that I did. I have no idea where she went, but I came here.”
Tommy adjusted her seat; the lack of seatbelts was annoying, but the seats were definitely comfortable.
“One of the quirks of this scriff stuff is that people who have it can feel each other from pretty far away. So when I got here I could feel Brian. I had met two versers already, so I knew the feeling, and I’d heard stories about several others, so I went looking to find whoever it was, and found him. He was dressed in this goofy outfit, said he was Mister Justice, but he let me collect my stuff–”
“Your stuff?”
“Yeah, that’s another quirk: some of our things travel with us. So I got my stuff, and he changed into ordinary Brian, and then he took me to lunch. Over lunch he explained the whole superhero thing, and suggested I might consider it, since I had skills. I also had this leather jacket and fur cap, and my kawanaga, and I didn’t think I was superheroine material. But then I went to do my laundry, and someone seeing the coat and hat decided it must be a costume and gave me a mask, and then this villain called Sewer Savage suddenly started attacking people out in the street. I decided someone had to stop him, and I was the only one there, so that’s how I became a superhero. Back in the last world one of the things I picked up was doing graffiti with spray paint, and I had been doing my initials, two overlapping Tees, to mark where I’d been. Almost without thinking I painted that on the sidewalk, and I shouted “Truth Triumphs’, which got picked up by the press and became my name. So, what about you?”
“Me? I’m not a superheroine.”
“No, but you are, what would Derek call it, a support character? You make it possible for him to do what he does.”
“Not really.”
“Not really? You even answer his emergency phone.”
“I guess. Well, he really was born William Tell, and his family were quite wealthy industrialists. I met him at school in Geneva, and after we married I helped him create the William and Belle Keller identities and shift all his assets to those names. He had always been fascinated by his ancestor, and had trained to use the bow better than any of his teachers, so he decided to use those skills to fight crime. There had been other superheroes over the years, so although not a lot of people did it, it was not an unheard of career choice, and with the company money and my help with the investments he didn’t need to work.”
“That part must be nice,” Tommy injected.
“Yes, in a way. And being a hero gives him something to do.”
“We’re here,” a voice called from the front seat as the car came to a stop. “I’m starved. Let’s eat.”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
