Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots Read Online Free
Author: Seanan McGuire
child hood disease and a thrift store bunny rabbit with one eye missing. If anybody had ever wondered why she wasn’t as committed to the cause of justice as some of her teammates, they should really have taken a look at her crappy origin story.
*
Tying her garish green apron around her waist, Velma bared her teeth at the mirror in what was intended to be a cheery smile. That was instruction number seventeen in the helpful Employee Handbook provided to her by Cyndi, the general manager. Cyndi dotted the “i” in her name with a little heart. As far as Velma was concerned, that actually told her everything she would ever need to know about Cyndi. Still, this was the only job in town, and she was determined not to lose it over something as simple as refusing to smile when she was told to. Even if smiling was hurting her cheeks and likely to frighten customers.
“Ve-el-ma!” called Cyndi merrily from the front of the store. Cyndi did everything merrily. Cyndi probably vomited in a merry fashion, with cartoon birds helpfully holding her hair out of the splatter radius. (That was an unfair thought, and Velma scolded herself accordingly. The Princess was a very effective superheroine, and one of the nicest people she’d ever worked with during her own short career as Velveteen, in addition to being one of the few heroes to stick by her after she retired. Since the Princess’s powers largely manifested themselves as stereotypical icons of the “princessing world,” she was forever tied to cartoon birds in Velma’s mind. It was just that the cartoon birds in question were usually vultures.)
“Yeah, boss?” called Velma, turning away from the mirror.
“Come on, silly bunny! It’s time to meet your public!”
Shrugging away the thousand horrible memories that came with the word “bunny,” Velma gritted her teeth, forced her smile to stay in place, and turned to meet her fate.
*
There was a single table in the darkest corner of Andy’s Coffee Palace, an otherwise pleasantly well-lit haven for the caffeinated, the cool, and those who just wanted free wireless access. At the table, there were two chairs, each of which seemed to be located in its own pool of slightly darker shadow. And in those two chairs were two dark figures, both casting shadows twice as dark as they should have been, both jittering with the slow, constant vibration of people who have consumed far more coffee than the human body is really equipped to deal with.
“Everything moves toward r-r-r-readiness,” said the first of the two, voice dropped to an unnaturally low register that was probably meant to project an aura of menace. All it managed to project was the over-wired mania of a man who should really have logged off his MMORPG hours ago and given his body time to forgive him for the traumas of the day.
“Our G-G-Glorious Leader has confirmed that the final shipment will be arriving tonight, ready to b-b-b-brew and consume at the very stroke of midnight.” The second voice was almost an exact mirror of the first. Only the most careful of listeners would have been able to hear the stutter for what it really was: not a speech impediment, but the slight delay of a speaker unable to process the amount of data it was receiving at a realistic rate. A listener that careful might also have had the perception to see the way the hands of the speakers trembled as they reached for their coffee mugs, fingers blurring in and out of visibility as they forced themselves to slow enough for those brief moments of contact.
“And then—”
“—at last—”
“—we will have a sufficient quantity of the sacred fluid—”
“—to baptize this Godforsaken town in the sacred name of the bean and the brew and the beginning of all things!” The two spoke faster and faster as their words began to overlap, until the artificial deepness had been shed entirely, replaced by a chittering buzz that sounded almost like a coffee grinder going into full
*
Tying her garish green apron around her waist, Velma bared her teeth at the mirror in what was intended to be a cheery smile. That was instruction number seventeen in the helpful Employee Handbook provided to her by Cyndi, the general manager. Cyndi dotted the “i” in her name with a little heart. As far as Velma was concerned, that actually told her everything she would ever need to know about Cyndi. Still, this was the only job in town, and she was determined not to lose it over something as simple as refusing to smile when she was told to. Even if smiling was hurting her cheeks and likely to frighten customers.
“Ve-el-ma!” called Cyndi merrily from the front of the store. Cyndi did everything merrily. Cyndi probably vomited in a merry fashion, with cartoon birds helpfully holding her hair out of the splatter radius. (That was an unfair thought, and Velma scolded herself accordingly. The Princess was a very effective superheroine, and one of the nicest people she’d ever worked with during her own short career as Velveteen, in addition to being one of the few heroes to stick by her after she retired. Since the Princess’s powers largely manifested themselves as stereotypical icons of the “princessing world,” she was forever tied to cartoon birds in Velma’s mind. It was just that the cartoon birds in question were usually vultures.)
“Yeah, boss?” called Velma, turning away from the mirror.
“Come on, silly bunny! It’s time to meet your public!”
Shrugging away the thousand horrible memories that came with the word “bunny,” Velma gritted her teeth, forced her smile to stay in place, and turned to meet her fate.
*
There was a single table in the darkest corner of Andy’s Coffee Palace, an otherwise pleasantly well-lit haven for the caffeinated, the cool, and those who just wanted free wireless access. At the table, there were two chairs, each of which seemed to be located in its own pool of slightly darker shadow. And in those two chairs were two dark figures, both casting shadows twice as dark as they should have been, both jittering with the slow, constant vibration of people who have consumed far more coffee than the human body is really equipped to deal with.
“Everything moves toward r-r-r-readiness,” said the first of the two, voice dropped to an unnaturally low register that was probably meant to project an aura of menace. All it managed to project was the over-wired mania of a man who should really have logged off his MMORPG hours ago and given his body time to forgive him for the traumas of the day.
“Our G-G-Glorious Leader has confirmed that the final shipment will be arriving tonight, ready to b-b-b-brew and consume at the very stroke of midnight.” The second voice was almost an exact mirror of the first. Only the most careful of listeners would have been able to hear the stutter for what it really was: not a speech impediment, but the slight delay of a speaker unable to process the amount of data it was receiving at a realistic rate. A listener that careful might also have had the perception to see the way the hands of the speakers trembled as they reached for their coffee mugs, fingers blurring in and out of visibility as they forced themselves to slow enough for those brief moments of contact.
“And then—”
“—at last—”
“—we will have a sufficient quantity of the sacred fluid—”
“—to baptize this Godforsaken town in the sacred name of the bean and the brew and the beginning of all things!” The two spoke faster and faster as their words began to overlap, until the artificial deepness had been shed entirely, replaced by a chittering buzz that sounded almost like a coffee grinder going into full
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