Post by Admin on Apr 30, 2021 20:13:02 GMT
 |  |
Congressional Campaign
IntroductionMiss Music provides unusual support services to a Congressional candidate, and AVant Guard meets a new friend.
Setting
San Francisco, California, spring 1962
A Startling Announcement
“Effective immediately, I am withdrawing my candidacy from the 1962 Congressional election for the 12th Congressional District of California. I’m withdrawing for personal reasons, which I am not going to disclose or discuss. I want to profusely thank everyone who has been working on my campaign team or who has considered voting for me. Thank you as well to all the members of the press who have provided me with such great coverage in the past few months.” Marlene Smith, a tall, solidly built black woman in her mid 40s, currently a member of the San Francisco Board of Selectman and a small business owner, sobbed once and then hurried off the podium.
Those attending the press conference were stunned, especially her press agent and campaign workers, who had been told in advance that the purpose of the presser was to announce that one of Marlene’s primary opponents had withdrawn from the race and was throwing his support to her campaign. There was silence for several seconds, and then the room exploded in babble as everyone gathered around the bewildered press agent to ask questions. One of the campaign workers, Tammi Paige, didn’t stick around to try to fight her way to the agent. She was going directly to the source, and would ask her questions of Marlene!
Smith’s campaign had rented a first floor suite comprising a half dozen offices and a conference room as their headquarters in a building not far from Marlene’s Big and Tall Boutique, the clothing store for women owned by Marlene. Tammi listened intently and heard a sob in the back of the building and then the back door to the alley slammed. Tams was soon out the back door, but Marlene was most of the way down the block already; Tammi broke into a run to chase her. Marlene pushed through the back door of her store and locked the door behind her. She walked slowly through the racks to her office near the front of the store. And stopped with a terrified screech as she opened the office door on three standing men, all holding pistols.
“It’s done! Let my daughter go!” Marlene demanded. “I withdrew, just like you said I had to.”
“Actually, da boss changed his mind,” one of them sneered at her. “He wants ya to resign from da Board of Selectmen too. Seein’ as you ain’t no SelectMAN anyways.”
“You promised!” her voice was choked.
“We lied,” one of the other gunman laughed at her.
“How do I know you’ll let her go…”
There was a loud clatter as something fell with a crash, and Miss Music, minus her tricorne hat, staggered through the door as if she had just tripped on something, tried desperately to slow down and keep from falling, failed, and crashed hard to the rug like a sack of potatoes, then rolled to a stop at the feet of the gunmen, where she lay writhing and moaning.
Waldo, the talkative thug instantly bent down and whacked her on the back of the head with the barrel of his pistol, then pressed it into her forehead. “Well, if tain’t dat music bimbo whose been bustin up all da rackets in town. She dohn look sa’tough now!” To Tammi, “One funny noise, little bitch, and youse brains gets splattered cross da carpet. Jackie, gag her and tie her up good. Once she’s gagged, we got nutin to worry about from her. Witout she can’t use her mouth, she’s just another skirt - a teeny tiny skirt, what’s all tied up now. We’ll take her back to da bahs - he’ll figger out what to do wit her.”
The one still covering Marlene spoke to her. “Hey, lady - we still have your daughter. And now we’ve got Miss Music, here, too, so you had best think twice about doing what we tell you to. Resign from the Board of Selectmen.”
“Or else!” Jackie wanted in on the threats, too. He made a zipping motion across Tammi’s throat as he finished stuffing a handkerchief into her mouth.
Tammi’s voice whispered in Marlene’s ear. “Marlene, I’m perfectly OK and my powers are totally unaffected by some stupid gag. I can take out these 3 guys at any time. But I want them to take me back to their boss so I can get the whole gang. Stall for time, tell them that you’ll resign tomorrow at the beginning of the Board meeting. I’ll have your daughter safe and all these scumbags in jail before the sun comes up.”
Marlene hadn’t become the most successful San Francisco politician in years by being slow on the uptake, and she brought a lot of courage with her as well. Like many San Franciscans, she was aware that Tammi Paige, her campaign worker, was also Miss Music. With no show of surprise, and no hesitation, she choked out a sobbing response to Jackie’s threat. “There’s a Board meeting tomorrow; I’ll resign before the meeting. There will be a lot of press coverage so the whole world will know. Will that be enough to satisfy your boss?”
“We’ll tell da boss what ya said, and if he don’t like it, we’ll look youse up later. So youse getcher ass back home right now, and if ya don’t hear from us, yu’d better go through wit it at dat meeting.” He laughed at Marlene’s obvious distress.
“And ya keep youse yap zipped, got it?” Jackie tossed in. “We’ll know if ya try any funny stuff.”
“I’ll do anything, just as long as you don’t hurt my daughter…” Marlene wailed. “I’ll give you money, you can even kill me if you want, just let her go!”
“Tahmarrah, ya skirt. Ya does it right tahmarrah, ya get yer brat back.”
Waldo kicked Tammi in the side. She rolled away from the kick and whimpered, then lay still with her eyes closed.
“Way overrated, dis bimbo is. Can’t believe anyone’s scared a’her. Gag her, she got nutin.” He grabbed her under the shoulders and tried to pick her up. “Jackie, gimmie a hand here, this bitch weighs a TON!”
As Jackie and Waldo, the talkative one, picked up her arms and started dragging her limp body out of the office, Tammi’s voice whispered to Marlene. “He is gonna regret that his momma ever had a son! Nobody, but nobody, calls me overrated and gets away with it!”
Marlene felt a little heartened. In the past couple months, she’d seen examples of Tammi’s determination. If these thugs hadn’t already wrecked her life so badly, she might almost (but not quite) feel sorry for them.
“My daughter better not be hurt!” she warned the blackmailers. “Or you’ll find out what a ‘skirt’ can do.”
“Yeah, like weze worried,” Waldo laughed at her.
“That’s the spirit! Don’t worry, I got this!” Tammi cheered in her ear as the thugs dragged her into the alley. They threw her into the back seat of a dilapidated sedan, then piled into the car and slammed the doors.
Back at the Hideout
It didn’t take long to reach the hideout. They pulled into the garage of a dilapidated row house in a run down neighborhood. Jackie closed the garage door, then opened the passenger door and Waldo roughly shoved Miss Music out. She hit the floor with a loud fleshy crack and then struggled to sit up, hampered by her hands tied behind her back, and partially stunned by hitting the floor.
“OK, bitch, on youse feet” Waldo ordered. Miss Music was unable to stand up on her own; Jackie cautiously lifted her. Waldo roughly stuck the gun in the back of her head and prodded her towards the interior door. “Youse keep movin’ or I’ll plug you one.”
“She’s barely conscious, Waldo, you jerk,” Jackie objected. “If she falls down, and you shoot her, why’d we waste our time bringing her here in the first place? We could have shot her back on the street.”
“Aww, shaddup youse mouth,” Waldo grunted. Andy opened the door, and Miss Music, still roughly prodded by Waldo, staggered through a short hall that led to the dining room, where three other men sat around a table covered with beer bottles, some of them still unopened. A fourth sat on a chair next to a closed door. Miss Music recognized one of the men, Leve Ragburton, the incumbent Representative for the 12th Congressional District of California. Then she tripped and fell to the floor.
The Congressman recognized her instantly. “Holy Horsefeathers! Are you lardass duckheads outta your fudruckin’ minds, bringing that bitch here? The cops and her partner’ll be here in minutes. Croak botha the skirts and let’s get the hell outta here!”
He didn’t get any further. Before his henchmen could respond, several beer bottles on the table exploded, one after another, as Miss Music projected the sound of a 160 db explosion inside each bottle in turn. The thugs were blasted with shrapnel of brown glass, and the ones sitting on chairs shoved backwards and were dumped to the floor.
The Tuneful Titan took advantage of the confusion in the room to squirm her arms down past her feet. She brought her hands to her waist and carefully pressed a recessed latch on her belt buckle, releasing a spring-loaded, small, sharp blade. As carefully as she could given the urgent need to hurry, she sliced the rope binding her - and even with her care, ended up with minor cuts on both wrists. She clicked the latch again and the blade slid back into the buckle - she didn’t want any puncture wounds in her stomach! She pressed some buttons in a particular sequence on the Alliance of Mystery Heroes communicator on her belt, and then turned her attention back to the bad guys.
Miss Music had expended a lot of her power in those blasts. For a while, she was going to have to user her powers more strategically. She raced around the room, starting with the men who looked most active, and disoriented each one with smaller explosive noises (120 db range) but exploding directly outside their ears. As she moved, she picked up pistols from the floor and table, in one case, gently encouraging a fallen thug to let go of his piece by stomping on his wrist. As she passed each distressed man, she then whacked him in the head with the grip of one of the pistols, like using a hammer. When she was finished, she could hear a police siren in the distance, quickly growing louder.
The Tuneful Titan walked over to Waldo, who was lying on her back, his eyes open, stunned but aware of his surroundings. His eye grew wide as she raised her foot high over his hips, then set it gently on his stomach, and maybe ground down just a little.
“You’re lucky I’m one of the good guys, jackass. One good kick and you wouldn’t even need a penectomy. Look it up!” she growled. “Now who’s overrated?”
Satisfied that the bad guys were disarmed and likely to remain harmless at least until reinforcements arrived, Miss Music walked over to the door that had been guarded, knocked on it, projected her voice gently to the other side. “Hi, in there! I’m Miss Music, one of the good guys, and you’re safe now.” She pushed open the door to a small pantry, and dropped to the floor, yelling, as a board, once one of the shelves, smashed into the door frame several inches above her normal head height, just about chest height for most of the bad guys. It was swung by a tall teenage black girl who looked a lot like Marlene.
Miss Music yelped: “Hey! Cut it OUT! I’m one of the good guys, and I’m rescuing you! Marlene Smith sent me! Hey!” She rolled backward, dodging another swing of the board as the young lady burst from the room.
“She’s NOT my mom! No matter what you say…” She stopped as she registered the scene around her, all her prior tormentors lying on the floor, some unconscious, others moaning, several bleeding from their ears. “Holy Moley! Did YOU do THAT?” She raised her board, ready to swing again. “You stay away from me!”
“Um… you’re not from around here, are you? I’m Miss Music, a member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes. And I really am one of the good guys! And who are you? These guys claim you’re the daughter of Marlene Smith, a friend of mine and they’ve been blackmailing her by threatening to hurt you. Well, they are definitely NOT going to hurt you now! The blackmail ring is THROUGH!”
“My name is Donyale Worrell and I’m from Kansas City. These men kidnapped me and brought me here and I was tied up and gagged for 4 days and they promised to kill me if that Marlene Smith person, who I don’t even know, didn’t do what they told her to do. And it was on HIS orders!” Before Miss Music could move, she whirled around and slammed the board into Ragburton’s stomach. He’d been twitching; now he curled up in a ball and moaned. She raised the board to hit him again, but the heroine raced forward, jumped, and wrapped her arms around the girl’s arms, and they both fell to the floor. There was a bit of wrestling, but Donyale was exhausted from her ordeal and in less than a minute, she simple stopped fighting.
Miss Music tried to sooth the young lady. “My partner, Palette, and the police will be here in a couple of minutes, and all these guys will be arrested and go to jail. And me and Palette and the Alliance of Mystery Heroes will help you get home safe and sound. I promise!” Donyale stopped struggling and Miss Music let her go, and then the younger woman started crying, and the heroine wrapped her in her arms and tried to comfort her. And then Palette and the police showed up, and the two heroines did their best to make everything come out as well as it possibly could…
Kansas City Here We Come
A couple of days later, Tammi, Alex and Donyale were on their way to Kansas City in one of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes ‘flying cars’ they’d appropriated from an alien invasion force. Tammi was piloting, Donyale was in the co-pilot’s seat, and Alex was in the back. Alex wasn’t feeling 100% - Tammi had been teaching Donyale to fly, and they had done some gravity-defying maneuvers, only deciding to stop when Alex loudly announced that she was about to empty her stomach on the backs of their heads. Their flight had immediately smoothed out, and now the three were discussing recent events.
“I hated Marlene the whole time I was captured - if she was my mother, she’d abandoned me as a baby and if she wasn’t, the whole thing was her fault anyway,” Donyale said quietly. “But her story is so awful. She didn’t abandon anyone - her baby was stolen!”
In July 1945, Marlene had experienced an emotional breakdown when she’d learned that her husband, an Army private who’d only been 3 weeks out of boot camp and hitting his first beach, had been killed on Borneo in the Pacific Theater. While she’d been ‘in treatment’ for her breakdown, authorities had placed Marlene’s infant daughter with foster parents - who had moved away, leaving no traces, before she’d been released. Nobody had seemed willing to help a black single mother with a history of mental issues find her missing daughter. She’d eventually given up, but she’d never forgotten the helplessness she’d experienced. Once she’d established herself, she decided to go into politics, and her budding political career was built on the promise that she would devote her political efforts to helping the helpless. So far as a Selectman, she had a good record of delivering.
This was an uncomfortable subject for Donya, however. If she was Marlene’s daughter, the wonderful couple who had raised her weren’t her parents - and might even be kidnappers. Nobody had discussed it openly, but she promised herself she’d find out. She changed the subject.
“She was so nice to me! I was so grungy and gross, after wearing the same clothes for a week without those rats even giving me a chance to wash! It was really awesome when she let me pick out a couple of outfits from her store!” After she’d been rescued, Marlene had offered Donya a ‘free shopping spree’ in Marlene’s Big and Tall Boutique. The younger woman had resisted for a short time, but the thought of getting cleaned up and then putting those same gross, grungy clothes back on was unbearable - and she was tall enough that she DID have trouble finding clothes that fit in normal stores.
“And it was really funny when she made the same offer to Tammi!” Donya smiled at her new friend.
“I guess so,” Tammi admitted ruefully. “The smallest blouse she sells would fit me like a circus big top! What’s funnier is that she’s called me twice since then to insist I take her offer - and when I turned her down the last time, she insisted I bring by a friend who can take advantage of it. She just isn’t going to take ‘No’ for an answer.” They both looked at Alex.
“Nope, not me,” she replied to their unspoken urging. “It wouldn’t feel right, taking a reward for mystery hero stuff. Especially mystery hero stuff somebody else did.”
“Anyway, I’m glad she’s rejoined the race for Congress,” Donyale sounded proud of her new acquaintance, whether she was a newly discovered mother or just a newly discovered friend. “It must take a lot of courage to get back out there and tell people why she resigned before. If she wins, she’ll have a chance to help a lot more people as a Congresswoman than as a Selectman!”
“She will,” Tammi replied confidently. “How can she lose, with me working on her campaign?”
Before her friends could respond to that playful boast, she continued. “We’re almost there. Donya, you have to help me find that parking lot near your house where your folks are going to meet us! Stretch, don’t bother me for a few minutes - gotta pay attention to my flying!”
“Well, it’s about damn time!” Alex grumbled, and everyone laughed as Tammi looked for her landing spot.