Chapter Text
“We’re looking for Gosalyn Waddlemeyer.”
Hearing her full name spoken in any manner is almost never a good thing.
It’s Abuelo, exasperated and arms akimbo, “Gosalyn Alondra Waddlemeyer, if your room isn’t clean five minutes you can forget about ‘Return of the Mole-Monsters 2!’”
It’s her teachers, who are far less patient: “Gosalyn Waddlemeyer, we do not play with the frog dissections.”
“Gosalyn Waddlemeyer, I don’t care if Tank was calling you names, we never solve our problems with violence!”
“If you can’t sit still you’re going straight to the principal’s office, Gosalyn Waddlemeyer!”
It’s the police officer on their doorstep, his bowed shoulders framed by the falling snow. “Are you Gosalyn Waddlemeyer? There was an accident at your grandfather’s lab. I need you to come back to the station with me.”
Gosalyn hasn’t slept well since she was placed in Mrs. Cavanaugh’s foster home. The other kids aren’t particularly rowdy or mean nor do they smell, and Cavanaugh is strict in a matronly way. But the bed isn’t hers, there aren’t glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling in the shape of the Pleiades star cluster, and the house is too big and too quiet at night.
She has regular nightmares about Abuelo dying in the fire that ravaged his laboratory, but pretends they aren’t the main reason sleep has become an uphill battle.
The fact of the matter is that Gosalyn usually stays awake into the long hours of the night, when the house is settling, the lights are dim, and even Cavanaugh has retired that evening’s whodunit . This night is no exception.
Except that at close to two in the morning, a knock at the front door draws Gosalyn from bed entirely.
Perhaps she’s wary because it reminds her too much of the last normal night of her life, making tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove in anticipation of Abuelo’s return, nevermind that he was running a little later than usual. Perhaps the weeks at Cavanaugh’s, while terrible and lonely, have been uneventful besides her grief and a stranger at the door in the middle of the night is new. Whatever the reason, Gosalyn pushes back the covers and creeps out of the bedroom she shares with one other girl who is very shy and mousy and Gosalyn is too afraid of scaring away to try and befriend.
Once she’s out in the hall, she hears the floorboards on the first floor creak as Cavanaugh shuffles, grumbling, out of her own bedroom. She flicks on a few lights as she goes.
Gosalyn crouches on the stairs’ topmost landing where, obscured in shadow, she has an unobstructed view of the front door directly below.
“Who could that be...and at this hour,” Cavanaugh mutters as she undoes the locks, but leaves the security chain in place as she opens the door. “Can I help you?” she demands through the barest inch of space she creates.
There’s an explosion of sound, a clap of thunder shattering the remaining stillness as the front door is slammed open, the security chain giving way under the force. The door bounces off the wall and Cavanaugh jerks backward with a sharp gasp, clutching at the front of her tartan robe.
Three men shoulder through the doorway, their features thrown into contrasting shadow and light from the lamps within and the darkness beyond. The trio, a lanky horse, a short ram, and a stocky goat with wickedly sharp horns and a pinstripe suit, carry themselves with casual menace and the promise to act on it.
“Who-who do you think—I-I’m calling the police!” Cavanaugh cries.
“Go right ahead,” the goat replies in a voice so nasal it would be funny under literally any other circumstance. “We’ll be done before they get here.”
The men behind him snicker, reaching beneath their jackets as though in search of weapons.
Cavanaugh sounds faint. “What-what do you want?”
“We’re looking for Gosalyn Waddlemeyer,” he says.
Gosalyn’s blood turns to ice, freezing every one of her limbs, her muscles, her very breath. She looks on the scene below her in mystified terror as a voice at the back of her mind insists that she must be dreaming. She wishes she could believe it.
“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Cavanaugh’s voice shakes through her lie.
“Sure you do.” The goat smiles. A single gold tooth catches the light. “Just tell us where the brat is and nobody else has to get hurt. There’s plenty of other kids here, right? It’d be a damn shame if we took the wrong one.”
Gosalyn isn’t especially fond of Cavanaugh on the best of days and she knows that she isn’t exactly her foster mother’s favorite person. She refuses to call her ‘Mrs . Cavanaugh’ for one thing; she broke a vase last week playing indoor hockey, loosened the lid on the ketchup bottle before yesterday’s lunch and got in trouble for swearing at school. And even though Abuelo is the only person who’d ever been on her side, Gosalyn thought that for all of Cavanaugh’s gripes, she would at least care when it mattered.
Her gut gives a sickening lurch as she is proven wrong.
Instead of staring the man down, Cavanaugh ducks her head. Instead of standing her ground, she takes a step back. She points up the stairs to where Gosalyn is hiding.
“Second door on the right,” she says quietly.
Fury jolts Gosalyn out of her immobilized state and she’s on her feet in the next instant, bolting down the hall behind her.
“Hey! Did you see that?” one of the men snaps.
“It’s the kid! Grab her!”
“Gosalyn!” Cavanaugh cries, and the sound of her voice ignites Gosalyn’s fury into a white hot rage that is so overwhelming it practically deafens her.
There’s a tree beneath the window at the end of the hallway. For weeks, Gosalyn has been trying to find the perfect time to climb onto the roof and jump to it and tonight it seems she’ll finally have the opportunity.
She wrenches the window open as the men thunder up the stairs and pulls herself up over the sill and out onto the roof. The night air washes over her in a frigid embrace, momentarily stealing her breath and making her break out in goosebumps. It’s a strange counter to the heartbeat pounding at the base of her throat, adrenaline suffusing her body with electric energy. The shingles are slick and freezing cold beneath her bare feet, her steps small and measured to ensure she doesn’t go sliding off the roof.
The men are clamoring at the window, none of them small enough to fit through and follow her. Their grasping arms swarming out of the black portal are like something out of the horror movies she so enjoys, and Gosalyn resolutely looks away, focusing on the tree just beyond the roof’s edge. She’s five feet away. Now four.
“Move it—get out of the way, you idiots!”
It’s the goat with the funny voice.
“Kid, we ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he says, in a tone that’s cloying as dollar store syrup. She’s learned to bash in the shins of people who talk to her like that. “Come back here before you fall off the roof. That’ll hurt for sure.”
Gosalyn doesn’t turn around.
She’s three feet away from the edge.
“Kid,” he says, voice hardening. The sweetness turns to stone. “Kid, get back here now. Goddamnit.” Scrabbling, presumably as he tries to fit through the window. “Get outside! The boss wants her alive.”
Gosalyn jumps off the roof, and hears the goat give a strangled shout. She lands solidly on a tree branch, so solidly that it almost knocks the breath out of her. The bark scrapes her arms and palms and even her face, and her eyes sting, though only partially from the pain. The men are still yelling from the window so she starts her descent as quickly as she can. Leaves and sharp branches catch on her hair and jab her through her pajamas, but she doesn’t allow herself to falter.
She falls out of the tree more than climbs down and pain flares along her side, the lawn a poor cushion. But Gosalyn pulls herself to her feet and runs, blindly, down the street and toward the glimmering lights of downtown St. Canard.
Gosalyn doesn’t know if she’s still being followed, and she’s too anxious to stop running. St. Canard is a bustling city at all hours, and the rumble of every engine, the movement of every shadow, every shout that sounds too near, sends her heart skidding against her ribcage. In her blind panic, she strays toward far more desolate streets, alleyways choked with garbage and muck, lit only by a handful of orange streetlights. She’s in the part of town that Abuelo always taught her to avoid.
It could be hours, it could be minutes, but having run with nothing more than the clothes on her back, she finds herself exhausted, freezing, and utterly lost.
Eventually, she’s forced to stop in one of the many identical alleys, her chest heaving and lungs burning from her desperate, endless sprint. What she wants more than anything is to curl up on the ground and not get back up again. She wants to cry, and scream and rage because this isn’t fair . Why can’t she be asleep in bed, in her real home with the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and Abuelo just down the hall, alive and loving her and fighting for her.
The earsplitting rev of a motorcycle jolts her back to her dismal reality, filthy, graffiti-covered walls looking back at her and sirens echoing mockingly in the distance. The icy chill of fear drips into her belly at the sight of a monstrous black motorcycle skidding to a stop, blocking the mouth of the alley. Its dismounting rider is too far away for Gosalyn to make out any details of their appearance, but she doesn’t stay long enough to look closely.
She wasn’t dumb enough to rest in an alley with a dead end. The opposite entrance spills out onto the empty street, less than two dozen feet away. With a few minutes of running, she’s certain she’ll make it to a more populated area of town.
Without giving herself time to hesitate, she bolts out of her hiding place.
When Gosalyn doesn’t hear the stranger pursuing her, she risks a glance over her shoulder. While the motorcycle hasn’t moved, the alleyway gapes emptily behind her. She turns back around just in time to slam headfirst into something solid and unyielding, but also slightly soft. Knocked off her feet, she falls hard on her backside and her collection of bruises twinge sharply in painful unison.
A stranger stands over her in a yellow jacket and black cape, features shadowed by his wide brimmed crimson hat.
“Whoa there, kid,” he says, his voice unfamiliar and rasping. “Watch where you’re goin’, huh?” His tone is sardonic, but he offers her his hand to help her get back up.
“Get away from me,” Gosalyn snaps, scooting back and pushing herself painfully onto her feet once more.
He raises his hands defensively, amusement curling his long beak. Standing now, she can make out his eyes behind the black mask he’s wearing. “Easy,” he says. “Name’s Jim. I’m one of the good guys.”
Gosalyn doesn’t roll her eyes but it’s a very near thing. “That’s exactly what one of the bad guys would say,” she retorts. She clenches her empty hands into fists, wishing more than anything that she had something to defend herself with.
Jim lets out a huff of laughter, friendly and warm. “You’re not wrong there, kid.”
He doesn’t move to grab her, or threaten her. He doesn’t move at all, standing casual and confident like a character from one of Abuelo’s old movies. His outfit is certainly reminiscent of the mysterious, masked vigilantes she saw captured in black and white, almost as if he’d been plucked out of another century. But his colors are all wrong, lemon yellow and canary red and black so dark it blends into the shadows of the alley. It’s like someone tried recreating Zorro while looking in a funhouse mirror.
“You were following me,” Gosalyn says, rubbing her arms, encircled in her own embrace for a semblance of warmth. Winter is always slow to leave St. Canard, even in March, and with her adrenaline having long since dwindled, the cold is swift to set back in.
Jim grimaces and kneels in front of her. She takes another step back and he lets her go without reaction. “I was keeping an eye on Hannigan and his gang ‘cause I knew they’d be gunning for ya. Didn’t realize they’d already squeezed your address outta your case worker.”
Gosalyn starts at that. “Is Mrs. Muddlefoot okay?”
She’s never particularly liked her case worker; her face is stuck in the perpetual plastic smile of a Barkie doll that becomes pained when Gosalyn comes in with a grass stained jersey or holes in her jeans. She always ends their appointments by suggesting Gosalyn might have a better chance at getting adopted if she acts more like a girl, whatever that means.
Abuelo is the one who put a fútbol at her feet, the hockey stick in her hand. They waded in tidepools together, pockets bulging with discarded shells. He held an umbrella over her head as she splashed in puddles and displayed her mudpies on the windowsill like they were works of art.
Gosalyn is as much of a girl as she ever wants to be. And she’s never going to be adopted.
But it’s not like she wants Mrs. Muddlefoot to get hurt, especially not because of her.
Jim shakes his head, offering a crooked smile that sets some of her nerves at ease. “Nah, she’s fine. Gave you up pretty quick, though.”
Gosalyn scoffs. Disgust roils inside her like a tumultuous sea, burning her from the inside out. “I’m not very popular,” she says, and the truth hurts, broken glass on her tongue. Abandoned twice in one night. She’s sure it must be some sort of record.
She glances back at Jim, who watches her behind a mask that hides whatever he’s thinking. “How did you know they were gonna come after me?” she asks.
“‘Cause I know the guy they work for,” Jim replies.
Frustration wells up in Gosalyn, who was never known for her patience even before the attempted kidnapping. What’s the point of finding someone with all the answers if he only gives her half? Forgetting her fear, her outrage bursts free as she throws her arms in the air. “And why does he want me? Who is he? And why are you helping me?”
Jim leans back under the onslaught, laughing. Under the mask and beneath the shadow of his hat she can make out his brows quirking in amusement. “Geez, so many questions!” he says. “But I don’t blame ya, kid.”
Gosalyn looks on in momentary confusion as he fiddles with the clasps of his cape before removing it entirely. He swings the loose cape around and surprises her by holding it out to her. Gosalyn’s eyes snap to his, and he nods at her, expression wry. “Can’t have you freezing to death while you interrogate me,” he says. Gosalyn scowls at him and snatches the cape out of his hands, which he releases with a laugh.
“Alright, Lightning Round,” he says. “The goat who’s after you is called Hammerhead Hannigan, the other two are Hoof and Mouth. They work for a guy I’ve been trying to find myself. Maybe you know him? Goes by the name Taurus Bulba.”
Gosalyn, busy wrapping herself in the surprisingly thick material of Jim’s cape, is shocked into stillness. It’s hard not to be startled when the last time she heard that name was in a police station, rattled off right after Ernesto Waddlemeyer on the victim list.
“He….he was my abuelo’s lab partner,” she says numbly. Jim watches her silently, looking unsurprised by the news. Indignation replaces lack of feeling, and she’s relieved to feel anything at all. She glares at Jim. “He’s dead . They both are. For months now. They were working late and there was an accident. A-a fire. It burned the whole building down.”
“What if I told you it wasn't an accident?” Jim replies, utterly serious. “What if I told you Bulba was trying to get in with some shady characters and the deal was that he off your gramps before he could join the club?”
“I’d say you were lying,” Gosalyn bites out, without the certainty of before. Her body trembles, though not from cold and her grip on Jim’s cape tightens to the point of pain. She remembers Taurus Bulba, his personality larger than life, his charisma enough to fill a room. Always laughing that big booming laugh, always smiling. He would wrap his arm around Abuelo’s shoulders, their difference in stature (almost two feet!) always so amusing to her, and call Abuelo his “better half.”
“Who else knows you well enough to want to kidnap you?” Jim says.
“Why would anyone want to kidnap me?” she demands, grasping desperately for reason on a night where all reason has fled. Strange men storming into her foster home with her name on their lips, hunting her, forcing her to leave her life behind for the second time in four months, only in a far more permanent fashion.
Jim draws her back to the present. “He was working on some sort of weapon wasn’t he?” he says. “Your grandfather.”
“The Waddlemeyer Ramrod,” Gosalyn replies at once, memories of Abuelo’s blueprints littering the kitchen island rushing back to her. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night to a hushed argument in the kitchen, sneaking downstairs to see Abuelo and Bulba standing on opposite sides of the island, the blueprints between them.
You can trust me with the arming code, Bulba said. If not me, who else?
I’m just trying to be careful, Abuelo insisted.
“It was like a gravity disruptor. I think only Abuelo had the code to start it but he’s...” she trails off, realization cemented and horror growing.
“Well there you have it.” Jim stands, folding his arms across his chest. “Bulba must’ve gotten the gun and thinks you know how to make it work.”
“But-but I don’t!” Gosalyn steps back, wrapping her arms around her ribs as if to hold herself together even as she comes apart at the seams. Jim’s cape slips, but doesn’t fall off her shoulders completely.
Her family was so small, just her and Abuelo, but Bulba had almost been part of it in his own way. Always there, as far back as she can remember. No coworker of Abuelo’s had been closer to them, or known her so well. On the most recent anniversary of her parents’ death, he took her to get ice cream so Abuelo could have an hour’s solitude after their visit to the cemetery.
It’s impossible to imagine that the same man could, what? Fake his own death? Burn a building to the ground? But it has been a night of dangerous impossibilities, and the brutal truth of it slams into her with the gentleness of a brick wall.
Murdered . Her grandfather was murdered. It wasn’t bad luck, it wasn’t fate, it wasn’t an accident . He was stolen from life, stolen from her , by a man who had sat across from her at the dinner table as their guest more times than she can count. There was no one else who benefited from Abuelo’s death. No one but Bulba had known them so well, ingrained themselves so completely into their lives.
Gosalyn finds that she can’t quite breathe, her vision swimming behind a haze of tears. It is her third betrayal of the night and it is perhaps the most crushing blow she has ever been dealt.
“Hey.” Jim’s voice softens, and Gosalyn nearly starts at the sound of it. She’d almost forgotten he was here, witness to her dissolution. He tugs his cape up over her shoulders, securing it around her. “You and I both know that doesn’t matter if you know the code or not. If they get a hold of you, it’s game over.”
Her eyes burn with tears and she’s too exhausted to keep them at bay. Not anymore. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks, and hates how her voice shakes. “I can’t keep running from them. D-do I go to the cops?”
Jim barks a harsh laugh. “Yeah right, the cops. What a joke.” He straightens up and grins at her, a smile sharp in his shadowed face. “No, kid. You’re not running away. Not when you’ve got me.”
“You?” Gosalyn roughly wipes away her tears. “You’ll...help me?”
“You want revenge, don’t you?” The way Jim says it, it’s clearly not a question. “You want to get back at the people who killed your grandfather? Who tried to kidnap you?”
Gosalyn shivers at the word.
Revenge.
It’s a word that doesn’t belong in a rank alleyway brimming with refuse and slush from spring thaw. It’s too big to be claimed by the orphan trembling in her pajamas in the midst of it all, pathetic and weak and abandoned.
But then again, why can’t it be hers? She’s been betrayed so deeply so many times, maybe she even deserves it.
Revenge.
Something cold and slimy and black fills the bleeding hole that grief has carved out of her chest. She wants the pain to stop, she wants to inflict it on someone else, and most of all she wants to stop feeling so alone.
“Yeah,” she says. “I do.” Tears burn like licks of flame on her frigid cheeks, and in that moment she feels incredibly young. But she’s no fool. Gosalyn stares hard at Jim, her eyes red-rimmed. “But why do you want to help me?”
Jim chuckles. “You’re smarter than you look, kid,” he says, teasing, and Gosalyn rolls her eyes with a huff, amused despite herself. He’s strange, and there’s something comforting about that.
His tone verges back into seriousness. “I’m actually after the organization Bulba’s working for. They call themselves S.H.U.S.H. and they’ve got their hands in just about everything. If I can get to Bulba then I’ll be one step closer to taking them down.”
Gosalyn blinks, looking at Jim in a new light. “So you’re like...a superhero?”
He makes an incredulous sound, the darkness beneath his hat hiding his expression from her. “Exactly, kid. A superhero with the whole world against him. But it sounds to me like we both want the same thing.” Jim offers her his hand, tilting his head so the sickly yellow glow of the streetlight hits his face and their eyes meet. “So what do you say, kid? Partners?”
She takes Jim’s hand. It’s not a difficult decision to make.
“Partners,” she agrees.