CapeCon Columbus (C3) 2016, Writeup: The Trip [Fic]

So, alright. Let’s start with the basics here. My handle’s Wellspring, and I’m probably one of the very few folks who actually flew down from the general Ottawa region… because there’s also not a lot of capes in the Ottawa region. No, I don’t get it either. Cosmic joke, I guess, loads of folks elsewhere, you get some folks down by Barrie, Niagara, whole bunch in KWC, Bruce County has one hell of a brick, and Toronto, hoo, but Ottawa? Well, we’ve got another person over in Orleans, but he mostly just foils bank robberies. You might think that the capitol of an entire country would run a LOT of us, but… somehow, for some reason, it just doesn’t work out that way. Not that I’m complaining too much.

I generally hang about Sandy Hill, if you’re asking. That guy in Orleans and I have drinks every couple of weeks, but his taste is beer is abysmal and he’s also completely not my type, so we typically just play weird board games and shit-talk each other. I dunno, I’ve had worse friendships.

You’re probably also already wondering about my powers. Well, I’m this weird science-y type, so I built this device that gives me control over water. Yes, water. Okay, fluids of various types, but it’s not as stupid as it sounds. Have you ever looked up how humid Ottawa is? I can pull practically anything from the air around here and start playing games and tricks. Put me in the Sahara or the Great Salt Lake and I’d be useless, but around these parts I’m pretty strong.

I’m not telling you how that works, of course. Who knows who might be reading this impromptu blog? (If it’s Obsidian: Hi! Please don’t eat me, I’m crunchier than I look and also less tasty. Or so I’ve heard from very reliable sources.)

I guess that’s kind of why I decided to take a break. We don’t get a whole ton of supervillains up here either. I guess there was that maple syrup heist over in Quebec a few years ago, but once they managed to pin the perps down, it was just a group of baselines pulling a very well-executed plan which just turned out to have a couple flaws. Flaws like ‘they didn’t cover their tracks’ and other failures of infosec. But I rant.

Mostly I’m an auxiliary. I skate my way up and down King and Queen (it’s Canada, there is always a King and Queen) and the assorted sides, keeping an eye out for the various ne’er-do-wells, and making my presence known. I know that people feel better with a superhero-in-residence. My mere presence is a deterrent, as is the case with nearly everyone who can drown you with a wave of her hand. I know.

But it is so flaming boring.

So, on the grounds that superheroes don’t get paid anything special by the RCMP outside of assistance on highly specified grounds, and as my WFH job was currently stalled and not desperately in need of my continued attention, I decided to take a week off.

Yes, this would put a pin in my doctorate. But it’s a week.

Yes, this would potentially cause a rise in general crime in the city. But it’s a week, the police force are already bereft of actual work, and supervillains (of which we have three regular offenders, none of them casually violent and most of them just out for kicks, and a smattering of other masks) typically Do Not go out and wreak havoc during this particular week.

You see, it’s Con Week.

— = —

The history of Con Week, were one so inclined as to look it up, is about as basic and clear as you could ever get. It’s honestly not something you’d pay too much attention to if you weren’t a history buff, which I am very much not, so here’s the abridged edition:

Back in the ’50s, the 1950s for you cute kids reading this in the future, a bunch of superheroes and supervillains got together and decided, “You know what? We should have a yearly meeting. Not to fight, just to talk and maybe play a few games of poker or baccarat or something, anyway.”

That was then, and from all I’m given to understand, it worked out pretty well. A small detente was formed for a short bit, some folks found common cause, folks sauntered across the aisle as they found fit, and all told, it wasn’t bad. There were, of course, explosions. You put two capes in a room, you get one explosion. You put four capes in a room, you get six.

This is now, and it’s a twice-yearly thing. Every six months, once in the spring, once in the fall, things go on hold. Master plans work around it, giant counterintelligence things get put aside. Because every six months, the whole cape community decided that they would hold a pow-wow, shake hands, and generally … talk.

Or, you know, just wave their whatevers at one another, settle old grudges, hold massive arcade tournaments, or just dissolve into cursing matches. It’s a convention, it takes all kinds.

But here’s the thing, the central rule of the conventions, or The Cons, if you would, is that they’re neutral territory. Which means that these people who have personal grudges are welcome to solve them… in non-violent ways, or at least ways which won’t actually impact anyone else who’s attending in a negative fashion. Sometimes this means taking their fights outside, but as often as not it involves something different, and usually more fun and interesting.

Conventions like these are a hob-nob and a scuffle, but a gentle one where everyone’s smiling throughout and it’s more like siblings giving each other a noogie. It’s meetups like these that are the reason we know that the Luxurious Leon and the Mylicious Mynx (sic., by the way) aren’t just trading punches and claws — and probably kisses in a back-alley, everyone agrees — but also have a running game of ballistic fruitcake exchanges. Every meet-up, One-Eye Bob, who once tried to submerge the East Coast in molasses — long story — has a Tetris match against Luminaire, possibly the strongest lightweaver in history.

(There is a tale of a superhero and a supervillain, both fantastically powerful, finally settling their differences with a six-hour round of roshambo. Exactly who won, the tales don’t say — or they say both — but I like to think that no matter who did, they went out for drinks afterwards and spent the rest of their lives in a happy union.)

But that’s beside the point. Outside of the usual hobnobbing, there are speeches, presentations, typically a movie night in which both sides of the cape attend (and like in a Rocky Horror production, they boo and cheer the opposite sides and throw popcorn at each other). There are vendors and salespeople and …

Well, it’s a convention. You know, like GenCon, just with a more generally select and often more violent clientele.

And if anyone interrupts it, they have Bad Things happen to them. Contracts dry up. Contacts vanish and ghost. Money… disappears. And in the case when some big threat appears during Con Week…

Well, you should look him up sometime. Invar the Invincible, 1987. The entire Con nodded at one another, packed up, and moved over to where he was threatening the world. It so happens that Invincible is not the right moniker, not least when Larry the Legion starts playing a round of one-man association football with your head.

Which is why I booked a week off from my job — they know that I cape in my off time, the whole work/life balance thing is sometimes untenable and I’m openly out as an auxiliary despite the troubles— booked a week off from caping, which as I mentioned took a little more frustration, and finally booked two airline tickets.

Why two? Well… one of the ostensible supervillains I’d been fighting had been having a really rough time, and I figured he could use a break too. Look, things aren’t all clear-cut, right? He was happy to come along, and he later made a break for himself — in a demi-cape fashion — and retired not long afterwards. Sometimes stories like that do happen, and I’ll chalk it up on my sheet as reforming a villain.

But enough of that…

— = —

Point of note for anyone looking to take an actual airliner: they’re terrible. They suck. Okay, maybe not for baseliners who are used to walking about a a mere 15-minute mile, but for those of us who have alternative methods of transportation…

Actually, I suspect they suck for baseliners, too.

Squished up in a small seat waiting for the clouds to go by while enjoying the company of sixty other people in the same position crammed into a small tube while provided the merest snacks…

Why yes, I would like a tomato juice, thank you.

… when I could happily violate all manner of air traffic regulations with a headpiece, a pair of goggles, and a good suit is galling. If there is one reason to become a supervillainess, I’ve decided that it’s to thumb my nose at NAV CANADA and the FAA.

Unfortunately, the powers that be have decided that we need to ‘properly’ cross the border. This is bad enough for me, who’s twitching in her seat and aching to punch through Mach 2 through the simple expedient of opening up the damned cabin. How bad is this for the NBP folks? Fuck hell damn and blast, I’m surprised Cosmite is still in the US with these regulations. Or maybe he can’t legally depart, which is darkly comic. He could, but he’s a straight-laced guy if ever there was one.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, I am able to keep my gloves during this flight, because nearly all capes on the light side of things are read in as federal air marshals or the equivalent. This doesn’t help. I can practically feel the clouds outside, but I can’t get out there.

ALSO, you’d think I would have had the foresight to throw an MP3 player into the things just because, but no, I didn’t even bring along a pair of earbuds, something which I will be rectifying immediately upon landing… and yes, I put a text editor into them for notes, but never thought about music.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m a scientific genius, not an omnibrain.

And speaking of which, I’m of half a mind to tear apart the damned screen in front of me showing a wondrous commercial for a pyramid which promises to age your wine 1,000 years in a day and repurposing it to something which will get me to my destination faster.

But no. I’m better than that.

I wonder if my ADHD is acting up more in this place.

— = —

Never again.

I’m sitting in CMH at the Charleys hungrily, eagerly devouring the worst cheesesteak known to man, woman or goddess, and I am already composing a plan to get myself back across the border without having to once more sit in one of those tubes.

I will file a flight plan, I will sap the Great Lakes dry if I have to, the bridge between Detroit and Windsor I will take, I will walk across the Niagara Falls if need be, but I am never again subjecting myself to that.

To be honest, I’ll probably just fly over to the border crossing, give them my passport, have them check it, and then fly right off again. Why I didn’t do that in the first place, I’ll never know. It’s not like anyone cares if you fly over residential areas and don’t interfere with actual air traffic, clothesline yourself on an HVAC cable, or cause noise pollution.

Maybe it’s because I’m a very stupid woman.

But here I am! Columbus! Home of this season’s CapeCon! The big… wait, lemme check up on Google…

Buckeye?

Okay, then.

Oh right, I promised myself I’d get a pair of earphones.

— = —

These things keep falling out. I’m sitting in the office trying to register myself as an active superheroine who will very much not be doing anything along the lines of caping during the week and a day I’m here, and they still have five pages of very small-print papers which need to be OCR-scanned, which means I’m going to have to do them at least six times over because my handwriting could possibly accidentally summon an Elder Demon under the proper circumstances.

And without my earbuds staying in, that means that on a irregular basis I’m subjected to… is this a musak version of Nothing Else Matters?

Forget the Elder Demon, I’m already in Hell.

— = —

Okay. So that’s taken care of. Now for the really fun times.

See, the thing about a major convention like this, which happens twice a year, is that it’s enormously publicized. Everyone and their dog comes, if they want, and sometimes they also bring their dog’s puppies, who make a mess on the carpet and —

Sorry, that metaphor was getting away from me.

Point is, the grand poobahs get a suite on the top floor of the convention’s building, they get comped for the visit because they’re the Big Names. You know them already. Lemonade. Industry. Serenade. They hit the floor as the big names they were and are, they’re the big sellers, and they get the top suites.

We got the lower-class tickets. By which I mean ‘lowest-class’.

Which means we had the tickets which had a connection over to a motel. It wasn’t by any stretch a ‘skeezy’ motel, make no mistake. We were still provided with appropriate accommodations for our mode of entry.

They were however still an hour’s distance from the convention centre.

You might be wondering, “If this is one of the biggest events of the year, why didn’t you register well ahead of time?”

Here’s the thing: we did. But there’s a difference between ‘at the earliest opportunity’ and ‘a few months beforehand’, and that’s because despite being a 70-some-odd year affair (give or take a few years for legitimacy’s sake), and despite having a safety record which would put ComicCon to shame, most cities Do Not Want Us.

It was honestly surprising that the con managed a place at the hotel where they did: close to an airport, close to a major city center. Someone must have greased a few palms, because that almost never happens: typically, these things happen at the Overlook Hotel in Maine or Nowhere, Kansas, and the people who can attend are the ones who are old enough to rent a car (thank you, 25 year olds) or buddy up with someone who can. Downtown Columbus is primo space, and that’s putting it lightly.

This also means that every single place even subsequent to a Holiday Inn or whatever else is available… isn’t.

Which is how we wound up in a Motel 10 not too far outside the city outskirts, with two beds (thank the gods) and, praise everything that exists, neither of us snores. I don’t know how that happened, but sometimes miracles exist.

And yeah, I was fine with him in my room. He’s a black hat, not a skeeve. I trust him not to shank me in my bed, he trusts me not to drug him, hog-tie him, and turn him over to the local constabulatory. It’s these things which actually make up a sensible relationship which, as it so happens, is part and parcel of the Con’s whole thing.

That was the first part which was actually Fine, and you know? All told, the rest was too. But that’s for the next post.

Signing off for the moment,

— Wellspring, Water Queen of Canada.