I know this may not be much of a news flash for some of you, but hangovers suck. On a day as important as today, I didn’t need one, but I had a doozy of a headache thumping my poor noggin as I looked over my “troops.”

Resisting the urge to rub my head, I said, “Alright, Morgan will be manning the broadcast van parked at the garage. Morgan, you’ve got six cameras to work with, so I’ll be expecting something damned close to a movie of the week. Things probably will go wrong, but here’s basically what I think will happen. We’ll go live with Vicky, who will publicly ask Miracle Man to save her. I will then ask him to come out of retirement for the sake of the city, and since we’re broadcasting on most every major station, it won’t be long before we’re surrounded by criminals of every rank.

“Now Morgan, you need to make sure you send that footage above all else. Miracle Man needs to see the sheer numbers of villains in his city, or this is never going to work. After thirty minutes, I will assume our hero isn’t showing. At that point, I will issue a final warning to the criminals to leave. If they don’t, I’ll kill anyone who won’t retreat.”

“So will I,” Wallace said.

“I will too,” Leona agreed in a low voice.

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I opened my eyes, becoming aware of my surroundings just as the stasis pod door slid open. Leona and Wallace stood in front of me, both of them pouting with anxious postures.  Leona nibble at her nails, her ears and tail both drooping; while  Wallace  played pocket pool, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

As I got out, I looked toward my work table, where Morgan worked on my suit. Wally watched over his shoulder, an intense scowl on his freckled face as he tried to understand what Morgan was doing.

“How long was I in there?” I asked.

“Two days,” Morgan said. He set down his tools and turned on the stool to face me. “You lost vital signs twice on the way here, but Wallace resuscitated you both times.”

I nodded absently before gesturing at my suit. “You still aren’t done with the repairs?”

“No this is the spare suit. Wallace burned out the flight component and had to walk back to the lab last night.” Morgan shook his shaggy head, spilling brown hair over his unbuttoned collar. “I don’t understand how, though. Theoretically, this kind of damage to the nano-circuitry is impossible, but the components are fused in such a way as to suggest that he’s drawing too much power.”

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

“I already did. I’ve been installing redundant power supplies and backup neuro-pathways to keep the suit from failing in a time of need. I had to, since my inspection of his suit and your collar proved this isn’t a fluke. He consistently burns out equipment.”

I nodded my approval of Morgan’s hard work. “It’s a shame I’m quitting tomorrow. You and I would have been a great team.”

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The dryers were all empty. Shutting the last dryer, I couldn’t help but laugh at my problems. My suit would need to be repaired if it was washed, yet I couldn’t even find it to determine how badly damaged it was. I realized I would most likely need a plan B.

Dressed in one of Chet’s sweatshirts and a pair of drawstring gym shorts that were drawn tightly around my much smaller waist, I decided to walk back to Leona’s to wait for her, at which point I would nicely ask where the hell my suit had gone.

I found Wallace and Leona both waiting for me, and Leona got up quickly, an apologetic look on her face already. “Duggan, I’m so sorry, I washed your suit and then forgot about—” She stopped as she got closer to me, sniffing the air. She crossed her arms while an amused smirk formed on her lips. “My, that’s an interesting cologne you’re wearing.”

Feigning innocence, I said, “I’m not wearing cologne.”

“Oh yes you are,” Leona said, and then snorted. “I believe its called Sweaty Chet number five.”

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I woke up disoriented in a wholly unfamiliar place and position. I felt something brush against my face and opened my eyes to find Leona in my arms. She was sleeping with her back to me, and her tail twitched on my cheek as she dreamt of something that seemed to excite her.

I smiled at this until it dawned on me that my arms were bare. Slipping my other arm out from under Leona, I lifted the covers and suppressed a groan when I saw that both of us were nude.

I hadn’t had enough to drink that I could have blacked out, and it seemed reasonable to me that Leona had woken up and undressed me before going to bed with me. After a few drinks I am a fairly heavy sleeper, and so I took this in stride as I sat up and searched the room for my clothes. I couldn’t find them, so I got up and checked Leona’s closet. Again, no luck.

I heard a knock and sighed, grabbing a robe before I went to answer the door.

Wallace took one look at my robe before gasping. “You didn’t,” he said, a grin already parting his lips.

“You’re right, I didn’t.” I waved him inside. “I went to sleep in Leona’s room when she passed out on her couch. Somewhere during the night, she woke up and came to bed, undressing me before she went back to sleep.”

As I explained this, I went to the kitchen to set up a pot of coffee. “The funny part is, I think she hid my suit so I can’t get dressed until after she wakes up.”

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I sat on the couch for a little over two hours, waiting for Leona to return from her first patrol of the city as a hero. The longer I sat, the more miserable I became.

I could see how all of my plots had been cries for Miracle Man to notice me, to see me for who I was. But all along I’d been deluding myself. My final plot to get him back in the game would give him back the love of his life, which certainly wasn’t me, and I was forced to admit that my entire life had been built around the flimsiest of fantasies.

Worse, I had screwed up by giving in to my desires for Wallace. I could have tried to convince myself that I was happy to learn that he felt as much for me as I did for him. But I heard Wallace reminding me over and over that what I wanted was just another dream. I couldn’t be with him without jeopardizing his career, family and marriage. Even I wasn’t deluded enough to want that.

I was crying to myself when Leona walked in. She took one look at me and went to the kitchen as she began slipping off her bodysuit. I heard her mixing a drink, and she walked up to me with a glass.

She handed me the drink without a word and went to her room, her suit slung over her shoulder. She returned to the living dressed in her kimono robe and sat down at the other end of the couch, for the first time in a while giving me some space.

After several minutes in silence, she scooted across the couch and took my head in her hands, pulling me against her before she rubbed my shoulders.

“Something happened with Wallace,” she said.

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Wallace looked up from his game of solitaire, as did Leona. Sitting on the floor across from Wallace with her elbows propped on her holy relic coffee table, she watched his game with glazed, unfocused eyes as I walked through the door.

When he didn’t lay down the card in his hand, she looked up at him, and then over at me. I guessed she was so bored that she hadn’t noticed my arrival.

I nodded a quiet answer to her questioning look, which made her ears and tail perk up right away. My gaze fell on Vicky next, seated on the divan and holding her arms around her chest like she was barely keeping herself together.

I smiled as I gave her a quick thumbs up. “Yes, he still loves you, and he’ll take you back under the right conditions.”

Looking relieved, Vicky let the tension drain from her shoulders and back as she asked, “What conditions might those be?”

“The one’s I’m making for you,” I said.

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I knocked on the door lightly, and I’d never felt as nervous in my entire life as I did while I waited for it to open.

When it did, I looked up and took a deep breath. “Hi, Chet.”

“How do you know my name?” he asked, sounding almost angry at me.

Still it wasn’t quite the same when he was dressed in jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off

“It’s a really long story,” I said. Bowing my head to avoid staring, I reached up to rub the back of my neck. “A really funny one too, but I…anyway, I was wondering if I could come in. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, maybe we could take a walk. I need to talk to you.”

“You don’t care about being seen with me?” Chet asked.

“You aren’t a hero anymore.” I sighed. “I doubt anybody would care if I…can I come in to talk, please?”

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