The Borer: A Captain Major Tale

By Jim D. Scott

The second Captain Major story in the series, The Borer details Captain Major's struggles with supervillains and single life. Dee Major signs up with ChooseYourOwnCompanion.com, a 80s nostalgia dating site. When a date goes horribly wrong, Captain Major can't jump into action because her new enemies are just too ordinary. Dee Major tries to defuse the situation, but a new super villain is born. The Borer immediately seeks his revenge against Captain Major by destroying the city she comes out of retirement to protect.

The story continues to reward soft-core nerdery, with nods to Dig Dug, Dead Poets Society, GamerGate and super hero tropes from Ben Edlund to Stan Lee.

The Borer includes language and themes likely to be appropriate for those fourteen years and older. It's less explicit than the Deadpool movie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim D. Scott
• Release date: Mar 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310907753

Jim D. Scott

Jim is a deeply silly person fighting middle age by corrupting the memories of his youth and satirizing contemporary mores. He prefers to use nouns as nouns, verbs as verbs and carbon dioxide for inflating bicycle tires.His stories are typically set in a recognizably modern world with a few elements wildly bent.Confederated Justice, his new series, is a super hero tale sent in 2010, following the rise to prominence of Captain Major: super hero, office worker, wife, mother, box wine drinker.

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The Borer: A Captain Major Tale

By Jim D. Scott

Copyright 2015 Jim D. Scott

Smashwords Edition

The Borer: A Captain Major Tale

By Jim D Scott

March 20, 2016

Table of Contents

Chapter Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Preface

In Confederated Justice, the first book in the Captain Major saga...

Captain Major, moderately powerful super hero fighting for justice under the Confederated Justice corporate umbrella, faced her ultimate challenge when Metroville’s first and most powerful hero, Amazing Man, totally lost his shit and threatened to destroy the city in fits of unbridled rage. Captain Major, with the help of the future-sensing Immortal, defeated Amazing Man at a great personal cost.

Spent and dissatisfied with heroing for Confederated Justice, Captain Major retired to allow her alter ego, Dee Major, to spend more time with less of her family. Her husband, Randy, having degenerated into an utterly useless lump of selfishness, Dee decided to kick him to the curb. With two teenagers in the house, Lou and Leigh, Dee continued her day job with Venn Diaphragms, Inc., to pay the bills.

Jim Scott’s personal blog:

http://www.jimdscott.com/ungrump/

For more information on Confederated Justice, the first Captain Major adventure, visit:

http://www.jimdscott.com/ungrump/cfj

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, August 29, 2011

Metroville was fading beautifully from summer to fall as the city woke up to the last Monday of August and the first day of school.

Randy Major was very busy missing it all.

Sheldon Davies held Randy’s manicured hand as they walked past the store fronts on Pioneer Avenue. Sheldon was half a head taller than Randy, with graying temples that framed a beaming smile. Sheldon felt fully the warmth of the rising sun on his face in contrast to the chill in the morning air. He turned his face up to the sun to feel it all the more. He walked, chin up, eyes closed, across the sidewalk with Randy tugging him around obstacles and jerking him along whenever his progress was slowed too much by delighting in the day.

It was minutes before seven when they reached their destination. Randy was a bit out of breath from the four-block walk from their building. They made the walk every day now, but Randy’s body was still adjusting to the microburst of activity. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in decline accelerates until it crashes into rock bottom. Randy's body, at this point, was largely debris. Physics.

Randy had been single and living alone for eight months. It’s fair to say that he was still bitter from the divorce. He was asked to leave his previous employment due to his co-workers finding him impossible to work with due to his increasingly frequent outbursts. He made ends meet now with odd jobs — sweeping out Gail’s Nails Tuesdays and Fridays and taking Sheldon for a walk five mornings a week. The second floor of Randy’s building included assisted living for adults. Sheldon lived there. Sheldon liked most everything about his life. His friends who worked in his building, his friends who lived in his building and his friends who rode the elevator one floor up or one floor down with him.

Sheldon did not like Randy who was always pulling him one direction or pushing him in the other. But Sheldon adored puppies and Randy earned 80 bucks a week by walking with Sheldon to Pioneer Pets so that he could marvel as the puppies woke up to blink at the coming of the light and piddle in the shredded newspapers.

Sheldon loved all the puppies great and small, but he loved the black and white border collie best. Sheldon and the border collie pressed their noses against the glass and stared into the other’s eyes. The puppy licked at the glass. Sheldon wanted to lick back but knew better than to invite Randy’s wrath.

Not that Randy was paying much attention. He was standing back, leaning against a large planter bristling with German flag mums planted by the Metroville Horticultural Society and waiting for the Blog Master 3000 (Professional) app to finish launching on his phone.

The Captain’s Chronicles was flat on traffic despite the search engine optimization schemes he subscribed to and all the places where he’d posted nearly genuine comments on other blogs to spread his signature and link back to Captain’s Chronicles.

The thing is, there wasn’t a great appetite for a harshly critical review of Captain Major these days. In December, the heroine had teamed up with The Immortal, until that point a super villain, to defeat Amazing Man, who had been, up to that point, the city’s first and greatest hero. Amazing Man’s personal decline into madness and violence nearly destroyed the city and threatened greatly Captain Major’s life. Randy was fuzzy on the details, having not paid too close of attention to the events at the time despite being married to Dee Major, Captain Major’s secret identity. In Randy’s defense, he had been very close to finishing the main quest in Skyrim without reaching level 14 and was filling his down time trying so very hard to like L.A. Noire.

The Majors separated before Christmas and were divorced over the summer. She got the kids and he got the shaft, or so Randy told most of the fellows at the bar whenever he could buy them a round and rent their attention for the duration of a beer.

The blog was his outlet, his howling in the wilderness, his way to strike back at the twin falchions of darkness — hey! He had a new comment. Randy was surprised to see both that the comment appeared to be from a human being and from someone he didn’t know in real life. Maybe a doctor, too: his screen name was simply M.D. That, of course, was inconclusive. Randy’s screen name was HitHerBack, though he hadn’t thrown a punch since grade school.

The comment itself was simple. It expressed general agreement with Randy’s theses, a trick many bots used to try to manipulate vanity to escape the spam button. The second sentence consisted of six words describing Captain Major. The last two were curse words. One of which Randy used profusely in all situations. The ultimate word was also the last. An epithet Randy had, so far in his life, refused to speak aloud. Not as a joke, not in a drunken boast to prove he had the stones to say it. On his worst day, from the depths of a bottle of Irish-sounding whiskey he had thought it: thought it very, very hard about Captain Major and Dee Major, too. Now he read the word again and again in tiny letters on his phone. He let his mind work through the sounds as he repeated the word in his head. He let his lips linger silently around the word, enjoying the sensation of how it would feel to say it, to mean it, while screwing up the conviction to utter it.

And, oh but it was with pleasure that he approved the comment and let it publish through to his readers, and he smiled a vicious smile as he grabbed Sheldon by the arm and pulled him away from the puppies. Sheldon whimpered and stumbled backwards, slow to turn away from the little collie starting to bark at the rubber chew he shared his cage with. And there the word was, primed for Randy’s use. And it fit well and felt right and slid over his tongue and clicked against his teeth in the aptness of the epithet.

Come on, Randy hissed as he dragged Sheldon faster, stumbling him with the hurrying. And, as Sheldon continued to tarry, Randy’s frustration found voice. He stopped short and turned, purple-faced and spitting with rage: "Move faster, you stupid cunt."

Shannonanigan’s Pub was abrasively green throughout, but Dee Major made special note of the avocado-colored bathroom stalls between her second and third Irish Curses. Shannonanigan’s started with the popular Jameson’s and ginger ale, served it in an unfortunately short glass and then garnished it with fresh ginger, a pair of filberts and a slice of lime skewered on a plastic shillelagh. They successfully charged an extra four bucks for twelve cents in garnish derived from tongue-in-cheek ethnic stereotyping. Dee Major, of course, loved drinks with umbrellas, swords or shillelaghs but hated filberts. Not enough to make a fuss, though, so she fished them out with her fork and dropped them in the bowl of edamame husks from the second round of appetizers.

Dee scrupulously washed her hands as she took a hard look at herself in the mirror. She promised herself she would have just one more drink. The look itself was metaphorical rather than literal. She didn’t notice her bright, black eyes or the pools of golden light that chased like snakes around her pupils. Nor did she notice her skin, which was as pale as a fish belly in the moonlight. A perfect fit for the environs. And she didn’t have to adjust her dark violet hair, which was held in place by the invisible Band of Adornment. The Band was standard issue for all female Confederated Justice super supers. After the property and casualty coverage, it was the most valuable benefit CFJ provided. The insurance automatically canceled when Captain Major left, but the personal items were manually collected. It was terribly easy for an invisible hair band to go missing. Even the visible ones are always hiding under beds and behind sofas. Why, the risk of accidentally misplacing it was so damn high, Dee felt a moral obligation to wear it constantly in real life.

Rather than noticing anything about herself, Dee reflected on about how she had spent her 42 years — especially the last 42 weeks. Her life had been a steady escalation of duties concomitant with a steady diminishment of support. Without meaning to, she began to count the weeks until she would have another full day of vacation: no kids at home and no work at the office. Her resolve toward tenuous sobriety wavered. By the time she reached the last two women from Life After Five who still remembered her, her resolve to behave responsibly had collapsed like an out of fashion Vegas hotel.

Val was teasing the poor man-child who had been waiting on them since 11:01 a.m. Val’s style of drinking included beating the lunch rush. The server’s classic faux-upscale serving attire — white Oxford shirt, shitty black pants and deeply unstylish black shoes — was literally capped with a bright green beret. The beret, in turn, was capped by an orange puffball which served as an unfortunate reminder of the large pimples still dotting the server’s forehead and face. The girls at his community college didn’t seem to mind, but he also lived in his own place which made him seem so very different from the other boys in Composition 18.

Dee delighted in Val, who was always a little too drunk, a little too gross and a little too forward. Dee called her first the night before to see if she had kept the tradition Dee had abandoned: celebrating the first day of school with day drinking followed by a movie to sober up and then a take-out pizza to savor in front of their kids.

Val had been in as many dicey situations as Captain Major and had escaped with slightly fewer, and vastly less powerful, dick punches. In most of her encounters, Val dealt more damage than she took. The exception was her divorce, which had come as a complete surprise to her and left many a mark. She recovered from the surprise in time to fully engage in the acrimony that marked every day of the eighteen months of litigation it took to reconcile the divorce to an exhausted, bitter detente.

Amy was a soccer mom with a secret: she hated soccer as much as she hated sweater sets. She hated the games, hated the unevenly enforced throw-in rules, hated the flopping and hated the goddam spots on the goddam balls. She had driven over ten thousand miles to watch games in wind and rain and sweater sets without a word of complaint, because she loved being a mom. Not much of a secret, but Dee had never considered Amy to be much of a secret keeper. Dee was wrong.

Dee and Val arrived first. Val used the opportunity to explain that Amy had been sober for nearly four years. Dee shook her head to jar loose all the details from her fond memories of their fun nights out. The whole Life After Five group would eat or dance or sing karaoke. The leakers would sneak home to their husbands and kids while Val and Amy kept the party going. The night often ended with Dee insisting on driving Val and Amy home. They lived but a block apart at the time and not more than two miles from Dee, so it was only an inconvenience the nights when Val threw up in the back seat.

What Dee never knew, and Val only suspected, was that Amy’s night didn’t end when Dee dropped her off. While Val slipped into bed for clumsy and apologetic sex with her husband, Amy stole into the kitchen to drink until she couldn’t feel anything. She kept drinking until she passed out to keep the feelings at bay for as long as she could.

Amy’s divorce was sad rather than angry. Once the divorce was certain, it took but a few nights alone in a studio apartment for Amy to start to give up drinking. After a few months of stops and starts, sobriety became easier and even a relief. She began to feel better and eventually she returned to how Dee remembered her: smiling broadly and giggling endlessly. She was fueled now by leafy greens, fair trade coffee and energy drinks rather than dark rum and diet cola.

She had even, accidentally and unexpectedly, picked out Dee’s blouse for her. Dee hadn’t asked for help. She was a grown woman capable of dressing herself. Amy stopped by with a casserole and a kind note in the days after Randy moved out. Dee and Amy were chatting in the living room, with Dee’s hands full of casserole. Dee was horrified, as ever, at the state of the house and glanced nervously at the massive pile of clean laundry teetering dangerously in Randy’s recliner while it waited patiently to be folded. Amy’s kids honked the horn from the driveway like they were auditioning for a boogie woogie neuftet. Amy worked retail all throughout high school and began to reflexively fold clothes and layer them on the coffee table in a mall-worthy display. She made quite a fuss over one of Leigh’s tops, assuming it belonged to Dee. Amy complimented it so much that Dee felt compelled to wear it the next time they met. Dee felt entirely too exposed in the v-neck to the point where her fingers were wearing grooves in her collar bones from her demure fidgeting.

Sitting across from Amy now, Dee remembered her smile, worthy of a movie poster for any summer blockbuster. Her lips were naturally full and her wide smile beamed with gloriously white, perfectly straight teeth. It was a smile that many missed because they were uncomfortable with her left arm due to the minor ulnar deficiency. Amy was clumsy with her three-fingered left hand, but she suffered from no ill effects other than those caused by ignorance.

Val ordered another Irish Curse for Dee and sent the server on his way, pantomiming a friendly swat on the backside with the drink menu. Another drink would go a long way toward relieving Dee’s insecurities. A couple more drinks and she might be swatting at the server, too.

You guys have to use the bathroom, Dee remembered excitedly. The stalls taste like avocado.

Taste? Amy noticed.

I’m glad the nachos come with the guac on the side, Val added.

Dee chastised herself for what she slurred. Jeez, Dee. Hold it together a little bit.

Your problem, Val interjected, is that you’re holding it together too tightly. This is your rumspringa. Cut loose. Live a little.

Dee shook her head. I’ve got responsibilities. I’m a goddam role model. I can’t show up at home sloppy drunk on a Monday.

It’s the first day of school, Dee. The kids are out making their own mistakes to learn from today, Val added.

By the time they get home, you can be in bed, pretending to take a nap, Amy patted Dee’s arm.

Val continued: I like the sound of that! Down in one! Val threw back her head and finished her drink in two loud gulps, then did her best to squelch the ensuing belch.

Amy blushed. Dave and I used to use that excuse with the kids. He’d sneak home from work early, before the kids got home from school. He could never remember when school let out, so sometimes we were finishing up when the bus dropped off. It was so hard to focus when the kids are trying to unlock the front door.

I was married to Terry for 10 years and he never figured out how to unlock the front door, Val said. She immediately shook her head. That’s not really true.

Dee finished her drink. I bet you taught your kids how to work the lock, though, Dee said.

Amy and Val stared at Dee waiting for an explanation or the opportunity to flee.

I mean, take some responsibility, right? Dee asked. Randy didn’t teach the kids anything except min-max strategies and inventory management. Not that I’m much better. I don’t know if Lou could make himself a grilled cheese. Dee paused to note the ongoing stares.

For Randy, I mean like, literally, he didn’t teach the kids how to unlock a door. With Terry, the lock is a metaphor. For your clitoris. I’m not suggesting you teach your kids how to work your clitoris. They’re children. And, also, they’re your children. For goodness sake. Someone get me a drink and more nachos so I stop talking.

I think Val might have chased our boy away permanently, Amy noted.

I’m good at that, Val agreed.

Me, too, Dee moped. I know we’re celebrating because the kids are back in school, but look at me. I’m a babbling wreck! I can’t talk to people. I mean, I was never great with people, not ever, but two decades of being married to Randy and I got so much worse.

You’re not that bad, Amy said. You just seem a little nervous and awkward, and awkward about being nervous. Relax. And stop rubbing your neck. Your skin is beautiful except where you’re giving yourself a friction burn.

I know. I should relax and give it some time, Dee said.

At long last another round of drinks arrived. Dee took refuge in aiming for the bottom of her glass. She felt warmer as the drink went down. When she looked up from a long pull on her Irish Curse, she saw that Val was staring intently at her.

What? Dee asked.

You don’t need to relax and it’s time to stop giving it time, Val insisted.

You should think about putting yourself out there, Amy agreed.

You should think about putting out, Val cut to the chase.

Amy was gentler. You haven’t been divorced so very long, but how long have you been alone? You were married to a troll. You’re lucky he didn’t steal your kids.

That’s not what trolls do, Dee said. They hide under bridges and eat goats and hobbitses and comment on YouTube. I guess if they eat goats, they must also eat kids. Amy and Val excused Dee’s punning while drunk. Dee, thankful for the indulgence, returned to her drink.

What dating sites are you on? Val asked.

Dee shrugged and nibbled at her food.

Obviously, The Fellowship would be one place to start, Amy suggested.

A lot of short guys on that one, Val said before remembering that she towered over Dee. But you could do worse.

And you have to enjoy Middle Earth cosplay, Amy continued. But you’ve got the skin to be an elf.

What else you got? Dee asked.

Everything, I suppose. It seems like there’s a new dating site every week, each more specialized than the last.

But they’re all owned by the same company, Val added.

Yeah, Amy sighed. And everyone signs up for all of them, so you meet the same guys. But every site has its own theme or gimmick. The ones that are fun last for a little bit. There are still some hard-core Tolkein nerds and barefoot runners using The Fellowship. Plus, there’s no pressure from the new sites claiming they will find you a perfect match. Failure is built in.

What do you use? Dee asked.

Having skipped commercials and blocked online ads for years, Dee was wholly unprepared for the answers she was about to receive. Both Amy and Val raced to be the first to open apps on their phones.

I like Nintendate, Amy was the first to offer. It’s all based on classic Nintendo games.

Dee did a quick search and showed her phone to Amy. Is this it?

No, Amy pulled a face and laughed. "That’s Nintendate DP. You’re maybe not ready for that."

Dee scrolled through a couple screenshots. Perhaps not, she agreed.

So, Amy continued, with Nintendate regular, the first thing you do is pick your avatar family — don’t worry, you can customize later on. Just choose the Nintendo character that best fits your dating style. Some of the avatars are gender-neutral, like the Koopa Troopas, while others are gender-based, like Mario and Luigi. I picked Birdo.

What’s a Birdo?

Birdo is a pink yoshi with a red bow.

What’s a yoshi?

"A