Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect Read Free

too,”
Stuart shouts from the living room. “Hop to it, cookie! Chop chop!”
    Matt cranks out six more
sandwiches, half of which go to Stuart the human incinerator. Once those are
gone, and we’re sure Matt’s mom is out the door for her weekly shopping trip, we
move on to the gift-giving phase of the day.
    Round one is part of a cool
birthday tradition the group has: a music exchange. Years ago Sara and Stuart,
in an effort to break Matt of his slavish and inexplicable devotion to one-hit wonders
of the seventies and eighties, burned CDs of their preferred musical tastes,
and it became a thing. In the interest of further expanding Matt’s musical
horizons (which, sadly, remain rooted in cheesy pop of the past), I’m
introducing him to the greatest Chicks Who Rock of the past fifty years: Grace
Slick, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde, the sisters Wilson, Pat
Benatar, Liz Phair, Nina Gordon and Louise Post, Amanda Palmer, Amy Lee. The
mix culminates with Patti Smith’s Because the Night (which she co-wrote
with Bruce Springsteen, because of course I’m not going to pass on a chance to
bring a little of the Boss into someone’s life).
    “Time for the main event,”
Sara says, handing the gift-wrapped package to Matt. “This is from all of us.”
    Matt tears off the wrapping
paper to reveal a large cardboard box. He opens it, beholds its contents, then
looks at us, uncertain yet excited.
    “You’ll want to thank
Natalie, too,” I say. “She kindly acted as our consultant, and called in a few
favors on our behalf.”
    “Then...this is what I think
it is?” Matt says.
    “Go try it on.”
    Matt is off like a shot. He
returns several minutes later, and I must say, he’s quite impressive in his new
super-hero uniform.
    The boots and black military
pants were easy grabs, thanks to the local army-navy store. The rest of it is
specialized gear, which is where Natalie came in. The facemask is a modified
protective mask like paintball players wear. Natalie replaced the goggles’
plastic lens with the same impact-resistant polymer my flight goggles are made
of, then installed a spare Protectorate comm system in the mask itself. At a
glance, the shirt looks like a normal long-sleeved black shirt with deep blue
accents, but the material is two layers of woven Kevlar. Between those layers
are what Natalie called “ballistics level IIIA shock plates,” which are capable
of stopping a nine millimeter full metal jacket bullet. The leather gloves,
intended to go on under his magic gloves, have a thin but dense padding along
the knuckles and the heel of the palm, to minimize any damage to the wearer
when throwing punches (Matt does not need to break any more fingers). The pièce
de résistance , the new trench coat, is a shorter cut than Matt’s battered
old wreck of a coat, which makes it harder to trip over and gives opponents
less to grab onto.
    “Dude, you look bad-ass,”
Stuart says. “For once.”
    “Definitely an improvement,”
Sara says.
    “What do you think?” I say.
“You like it?”
    “Um. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s
really cool,” Matt says. Oh my God, I think he’s about to cry. We need some
levity, stat.
    “You think it’s cool? Nuts,
we were going for stupid and dorky. You know, to match your style.”
    “Told you we should have
done the coat in rainbow colors,” Sara says. “We could have called you Captain
Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.”
    Missy squeals with laughter.
“It’s funny because you would have looked dumb!”
    “Oh, thanks,” Matt says.
    “Speaking of looking dumb,”
I say, “this lavish gift comes with a price: you need to trash your old coat.”
    Matt pulls the facemask off.
“What? Why? What’s wrong with my old coat?”
    “You want it alphabetically,
or should I list its offenses in order of severity?”
    “The thing’s falling apart,
man,” Stuart says. “It looks like you stole it off a homeless guy.”
    “It’s not that bad,” Matt
says.
    “It’s