Vampwitch Chronicles: Part 3

Okay, show of hands. How many of you have ever wanted to be a superhero? You know, a magical, mystical defender of goodness and justice and free wi-fi? Yeah, me too. It’s the powers, right? Or the prestige, the fame, the notoriety. Maybe it’s the thrill, the buzz you get crushing badguys and saving the day. So, yeah, we all want it, dream of it, fantasize, hypothesize, visualize ourselves to be beings of power… But just how much do we want it? Would you really be willing to pay the price? I know I wasn’t. In the days before what happened, I could scarcely have imagined what that price would turn out to be.

My name is Andrew Steven Parker, known to my friends as Asp or Snakeboy, known to the rest of the world as Vampwitch. I’m sixteen, a scorpio, and a solid B student. I like Captain Crunch, superhero movies, and videogames with lots of violence and plenty of explosions. Oh yeah, I’m also one of the three thousand most powerful people on the planet.

For all those people who’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, it’s been 90 days since the attacks began. We don’t know who… or why… heck, we don’t even know what the enemy are. They appear out of thin air, cause mayhem, destruction, and death until they are defeated, then vanish back into nothingness without so much as an apology. To date, 83 cities have been hit by a whopping 8,245 “demons” as the press has dubbed them. The deathtoll hit five digits last week, the property damage is close to 12 billion, and the attacks show no sign of stopping.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about our visitors has to do with my hometown, New Salem, Illinois, just north of Shawnee National Forest, dead center between St. Louis, Indianapolis, Memphis, and Nashville. We are, I kid you not, in the middle of Nowhere. Most people don’t even know we’re here. Heck, they forgot us in the last census, if you can believe it. A town of almost 100,000 people, poof, gone, oops. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice town, plenty of green, not too long a drive to happening places, but still, it’s a little like the town that time forgot. Our oldest building is the Amtrak station, our biggest is the high school, our tallest town hall. New Salem is as Americana as it comes, I guess.

In fact, the most significant thing about New Salem… aside from our obsession with witches (we were the first city in America to grant tax free status to a wiccan worship hall) is… well… me… and my teammates of course… team name still under debate. There are five of us, not quite friends, but we together okay… most of the time.

Have you ever watched one of those magical girls cartoons? A bunch of junior high girls get wondrous powers and suddenly they are all BFFAEAE? Sooooo not true… especially with the rainbow coalition of backgrounds and social disorders my team’s made up of. Real life has loads more sulking and bickering, and parents… bickering and sulking and threatening to sue.

Still, in the last 50 days or so, we’ve handled ourselves pretty well. We’ve kicked some serious demon butt, haven’t lost any teammates (better than can be said for those idiots in Chicago. The Chicago Superfans… sigh. Who thought Foamfingerman & Beerhatguy were good hero concepts? Still, Bodypaintgirl was pretty hot… hope she gets out of traction soon.) We have had some… let’s call them squabbles… that led to long lectures about misuses of power… or, in my case, lectures about how it’s my responsibility to keep the girls from fighting and how I shouldn’t loose my temper and try dominating them into shutting the heck up and letting me think. Apparently, using mind control on one’s teammates is a no-no.

Five things I hate
1. Turning into a girl… a really hot girl (I’ve seen the pictures)… in a really sexy outfit.
2. Having to babysit 4 girls who all resent me… okay Fracine is 15 and fairly mature (if a little quiet) but Demi, Lupe, and Miriam are like bratty little sisters… and I already have two of those. I don’t need three more.
3. Being asked on dates by boys I’ve known for since kindergarten, just because I’m, and I quote, “Hawt as a chick, dude!”
4. Not being allowed to smash in the faces of boys who ask me out on dates because I’m, and I quote, “Hawt as a chick, dude!”
5. Chocolate.

You will note that Demons aren’t on that list. There are two reasons for this. 1) Demons are the unknown and my dad always told me “Never hate what you don’t understand; that kind of hate is just fear and ignorance.” And 2) Because I’m allowed to smash in the faces of Demons. In fact, it’s kinda my job.

Three weeks ago, the President signed the Global Defenders Act which grants all “legitimate defenders” pay equal to that of a first leutant (did I spell that right?) in the armed forces… which is, like “Yay!” but also like “Suck!” because my dad says I have to put the money away for college and getting my own house and car when I’m older. I said to him, “Why can’t I have a car now? I’ve got my license.” He pointed out that I can run about a third the speed of sound, even when I’m not Vampwitch, which is soooooo not the point. You can’t exactly carry a girl to a restaurant or a movie at Mach 0.3. Now, granted, I don’t currently have a girlfriend, but that’s temporary… as soon as Bethanie stops being ridiculous and saying that if she dates me she’s a lesbian or whatever. I know she still loves me, she’s just confused.

Anyway, I think I’ve gotten a little off track here… Where was I? Oh, right. The President. See, in most of the countries that have been hit, there’s been a lot of scrambling and finger-pointing, assigning blame pretty much at random. See, it’s odd. Every city (save New Salem) that’s been hit is one of the 200 largest cities on the planet. That kinda makes sense; attack the enemy where there are the most of ‘em, cause the most havoc and destruction. What’s odd is every country that has been hit has at least 2 cities on that list (save cuba, but that Demon started in Miami, so it may not count)… and the Demons have never hit all of that country’s top cities. Take for instance Spain; Madrid got hit, but not Barcelona. Or Australia; Sydney got hit, but not Melbourne. But it’s not always capitals. Three cities in Pakistan have been hit, but not Islamabad. Pretty much the same thing happened in Italy and Columbia. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, although the President of Ghana claimed that this was God’s punishment for the “So called civilized world’s corrupt ways, a modern day Sodom and… something.” I always forget the other city. I think it’s a Godzilla monster… Mothra or Gahedra… I think it might be Rodan. Sodom and Rodan. Something like that… umm, I seem to have drifted awy from my point again. Hmm… yeah.

Okay, so the governments of all these important places have been kinda falling all over themselves trying to figure out what to do. At first, there was a lot of accusations. Since China got hit first, they blamed Japan. Then the US got hit and we blamed the Devil, Iran, North Korea, and China (claiming that they’d hit themselves for plausible deniability… whatever that means.) This Idiocy lasted about two weeks, until it became clear that the demons were targeting population centers, not politics. In that first fight, China tried using its army… lost something like a dozen tanks before the giant crab with lazervision eyes got bored and stated ignoring the machine gun fire. Eventually they had to carpet bomb the thing, which did more property damage than the actual Demon.

As I may have mentioned, the first attack on US soil was Los Angeles, and we didn’t fare much better than china. One giant bunny-thing (yeah, I’m sure Warner Brothers was laughing at the irony) later, bye-bye Disney-Land… still, by the end of that first week superheroes, magical girls, gizmoteers, and other roving bands of do-gooders were springing up like hot cakes. Of course, in those first few weeks, the Defenders were, like as not, also becoming Demon Chow. Take for instance Pony Princess and her Power Ponies… shudder.

Anyway… some countries instantly drafted their Defenders, reassigning them to high profile areas (often instead of more densely populated ones… in certain countries at least) But the United States doesn’t have a draft, so the President had to get congress to kinda create a loophole or something… whatever. The long and the short of it is that we get paid to Bash Demons, which is cool, but we don’t really have to salute or obey orders or relocate just cause the Top Brass says so.

The funny thing was, the Army, Navy, AIrforce… even the CIA and FBI, all claimed we should belong to them. Seriously… The Navy? Sure, some of the Demons crawl out of the sea, but most just “Poof!” appear in the middle of town (or crawl out of the sewers or forest or what have you.) so Navy we are not… unless a Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon-Witch shows up. As for Airforce? Come on! I can fly and even I don’t think we’re Airforce. CIA? Not allowed to work on US Soil! FBI? That “I” stands for Investigation… I can barely finish my homework.

That leaves Army and Marines. To tell the truth, I was kinda pushing for Marines at first, cause it would be super cool to have a sword… then I though about how nuts it would be to give Lupe or Frankie or Miriam a sword. I’m scared enough with Demi’s insane weapon tactics. I guess it’s a good thing the Army (well, National Guard) won.

So, I’m telling you all this why? Because yesterday, this geek from the DOD (that’s Department of Defense) shows up wanting to do a photspread. You know, real hometown Americans defending their town from alien invaders. He wanted us to pose, you know, in our witchiforms (Frankie came up with that)… which was so not going to happen since the magic doesn’t let us change whenever we want to, only when we need to (not even for training… which is good cause it means less minutes spent as a girl, but bad cause we could really use the practice… maybe we should capture a small Demon and keep it around to induce change… naw… where would we store it.) Not only that but he’d brought uniforms… official Witch / USArmy hybrid Uniforms that he wanted us to wear. So, it’s a good thing we can’t transform at will cause I think Lupe would have ripped his spleen out… I don’t really know what a spleen is, where it is (aside from somewhere inside the body, near the lungs I think.), or what it does, but it’s a funny word. Spleeeeeen! If we had a battle cry, it would be hilarious for it to be “Spleen!” But I don’t think the others would get it.

Being the only boy in the group is hard. They tend to forget I’m a guy in the heat of combat, but then that ends and they go get icecream and head home. I bet, if they were the same age, they’d be having sleepovers and going out for manipedi’s or whatever it is girls do in those giggily groups of theirs. Sometimes I think I’d kill for another guy on the team, but with my luck he’d be a total spazz or freak or poser… or 8.

Jimmy is 8. Jimmy thinks he is a superhero. Jimmy has nearly been eaten by Demons not once, not twice, but five, count’em 5 times. If Jimmy has powers they are being close enough to Demon attacks to get there before we can beat it and being lucky enough to survive a battle zone repeatedly. So far, Jimmy has attacked Demons with a toy raygun, a shoe, a rock, a slingshot, and a half-eaten PB&J sammie. This kid is a pain.. and the girls (aside from Miriam) all think he’s supper cute. Ugh. He’s like Cartman but not quite so evil, fat, or sane. He claims he’s SUPERWITCH… and SUPERDUPERWITCH or FABULWITCH or GIGAWITCH or Orlock (which I think was supposed to be Warlock but he misheard.)

Anyway, I doubt I’d wish this gender confusion on anyone else. There’s a grand total of two of us gender-shifting Defenders in the whole world (not counting shapeshifters) and although I’ve considered trying to get in touch with War of the Five Horsemen, Aqua Vista, California is a long way away… and what would I say?

“Hi, I’m Andrew… I turn into a girl. You’re Jezabel, you turn into a boy. Wanna talk about it?” Naw… that’d be lame. Plus, I’ve seen footage of the Five Horsemen in action. Those guys (and girls) are scary with a capital “Aieeeee!” And I’m pretty sure, male or female, War is crazy, dangerous, and uberviolent. Still haven’t figured out what causes her to change; sometimes as War she’s Male, other times female. Either way, she seems to really like hitting Demons. Between her and Death, I’m not certain that Famine, Plague, or Taxes have even broken a sweat yet. Aqua Vista must be the freakin’ safest city on the planet with them around… or the most dangerous. I think the record for longest Demon Battle in Aqua Vista is less than a minute.

By comparison, our shortest fight was 18:03:79, according to out senior witches in residence. It’s not bad as records go. At least out longest fight was over in less than 45 minutes. The all time (so far) record for sucktasticness goes to Milan’s own modeloids “La Comunita” at two hours, nineteen minutes facing one Demon. The Cardinals (Rome, not Saint Louis) had to get there and help them out. It’s the only time those crimson robes have seen combat.

There are a lot of teams like that; teams that have seen precious little in the way of actual battle against actual Demons. See, no one is certain what the Demons are up to. They attack population centers around the world. Are these probaing attacks, testing defenses… or terror strikes designed to break morale… or are these, relatively speaking, pathetic assaults really the best they can do?

No one really buys that last theory, so even cities and countries that haven’t been hit yet are trying to cover their asses. I guess it makes sense, but still, why does Switzerland need 30 powered Defenders? Zurich has less than 2 million people, Bern even less. Sure, China, India, and the US have hundreds… and the most cities to defend. Nothing indicates that Switzerland needs Defenders. Some of the countries that have been hit don’t even have 30 Defenders.

Then again, the press said the same thing about New Salem… then we were attacked. Still, no clear reason why. At first the media claimed we had provoked the Demonic Overlords (Overblown name much?) But when other “small” towns started gearing up in their own special (and often creepy) way, nothing happened. Lubbock, Texas? Defenders 3, Demons no show. Akron, Ohio? Spokane, Pleasant Valley? Hell’s Gulch? Grandrapids, Oxnard, Salt Lake City? The Big Fat Goose-egg for the lot of them.

Which I guess brings me to the actual start of my story.

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(Copyright and all that stuff)

If you like my writing, check out the Novel I'm posting on my blog at sapphirechamber.blogspot.com. No TG elements, but it's a fun story. And I post every day.