Blue Saves the Day

Here is a thing for Chuck Wendig’s Baby Pulp Flash Fic challenge. It’s very, very silly and I may have gone overboard with the villain. If you are an Oregonian and my story offends you, I am probably sorry.

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He was a man of simple wants. No woman fishing for a hint of manly aspirations had ever asked him “whatcha thinking about?” and received a satisfactory answer. Happiness as defined by Alan Finch meant regularity he could set a watch to, a soft bed, and if he could get it, a warm tit in his face. He was a man after Blue’s own heart, and that was the only reason Blue hadn’t left the guy hanging by one arm from the Fremont Bridge.

A petite, busty woman dressed in purple spandex grabbed Alan’s hand, hauled him up from the railing, and lowered him to the pavement. “Be more careful, please,” she chided in a soft, oddly flat tone of voice, avoiding eye contact. The interstate was a parking lot. People started getting out of their cars, taking pictures and video of the scene with their camera phones as Portland’s infamous MegaMom shifted the infant on her hip. Blue, also dressed in spandex (his costume was same bright primary hue as his name and had a drop seat just in case), saw movement from the corner of his baby-sized mask (also blue) and looked sharply to the left.

In a lumberjack shirt and jeans so tight it was a wonder he could walk, let alone ride, with earlobes stretched wide around a pair of repurposed soup can cross-sections, the cyclist had been flying along the sidewalk laughing at the stalled cars when his bike collided with Alan and knocked the man over the rail. With MegaMom close at hand to perform a heroic (and distracting) rescue, the hipster decided to make a nice, clean getaway while the getting was good. He picked up his bike and tiptoed away from the scene. Considering the tightness of his pants, a tiptoe was the probably the best he could muster.

“STOP,” droned the young woman, who had yet to look up at Alan or anyone else since the unlikely pair first swooped in on I-405 to investigate the flavor of today’s afternoon traffic jam. “You are a MEAN MAN.”

Blue had yet to master intonation, but he could make his mother shout if he thought hard about it. She was definitely loud now. The hipster looked back over his shoulder at the masked girl, then at the pissed-off baby in her arms. “Superheroes are so passé,” he scoffed. “Nice outfits, though.” Before he could swing his skinny, denim-stiff leg over his bike (there was no crossbar, of course, he’d had to remove it with a hacksaw ages ago for the sake of tight-pants convenience), the front tire bounced off an invisible wall and he crumpled to the pavement in a slow-motion catastrophe of bike parts, checked flannel, and pants that didn’t rip open so much as exploded. Blue’s psychic forcefield was a success.

“My jeeeans,” he cried, moustache askew. MegaMom floated over and tied him to the bridge with his own bike chain, unperturbed. “You WITCH!” he shouted, frothing with rage. “I’ll get you, MegaMom, and your little crotch-goblin too! Child Services will catch you sooner or later!”

The tirade continued as Blue steered her away. Exhausted from the mental strain of flying his unsuspecting mother around all afternoon, the only thing the tiny superhero wanted was a nap. Alan Finch had other ideas. He’d risked his life to ask the heroine on a date, parking his car on the bridge to create the sort of gridlock that invariably grabbed her attention during rush hour, then narrowly escaped an accidental dunk in the Columbia River. He didn’t intend to chicken out now just because of a piffling hit and run. “Thanks for that,” he said, trying very hard not to look down at MegaMom’s chest. “So, where were we? Cookies and milk at my place? My treat… please, it’s the least I can do.”

“It’s time for nappy-naps,” said MegaMom robotically, and turned to go.

“Wait! Can I see you again?”

The girl behind the mask looked up at Alan Finch. Her face softened and she looked almost bashful. Blue leaned over to peer at the man with sleepy consternation and grabbed a hank of his mother’s hair in one chubby fist, exerting control once more. MegaMom’s eyes went blank and she spoke again. “Listen, bub. That’s my mommy you’re talking to.” Alan’s eyes widened as the baby, comically stern, reached up and put a possessive hand on her breast. “And these are mine. Don’t you forget it.”

The KATU traffic helicopter arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of the pair as they flew up and away into the gray, overcast sky. Thelma saw it on the 11 o’clock news later that night after checking on the baby one last time. He’d been sleeping like a rock since dinner, which was good, because she felt pretty worn out herself. As the blue and purple blob on the TV screen vanished into the cloudcover and the camera panned down to a shell-shocked man in a shirt and tie identified only as ALAN F., RESCUEE, the young mother shook her head. That is so dangerous. I hope they catch her before she gets that baby killed.

She changed the channel, then flicked it back. Who was that guy, and why did he look so familiar? A blush spread across her face as she hit the power button. The screen went dark. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. He probably just went through my line at the Safeway a million years ago.

By morning, she’d forgotten all about it.