Problem Child 4

“I think the President of America wants me to assassinate Superman,” Aiko told her mom. She put her backpack away on her purple and teal desktop. Nathan sort of tossed his bag and ran off into the house. He was gone before the bag slid across his homework desk and just baaarely stopped before falling off the edge.

Mom blearily opened her eyes, squinted at Aiko as if she wasn’t totally confident this was the waking world, and said, “…don't accept any orders for assassinations.” Outside, the sound of the school bus engine slowly faded into the distance.

Ugh. Not even if the President said it was okay?

“Is this a house rule?” Aiko confirmed, resigned to the tyranny of a household with two adults in it. She couldn’t wait until she was an adult again. Would the president still want to be her mentor then? He was probably relying on the perceived mutability of a child’s plastic mind and undeveloped morality. He might think he’d lost his shot to influence her if she had to wait until she was the civilian age of adulthood. He wasn’t going to get any further on influencing her than Captain Marvel was, but it would be so much easier to get integrated into the upper echelons of society with a sponsor like Lex Luthor. 

“You betcha.” Mom dragged a pillow from the sectional onto her stomach and then patted the now-empty space. “New rule. Sit down?”

Aiko sighed, loudly beleaguered. The president had given her such a good magic rock, too. What a waste. She was lucky she’d been raised somewhere less silly and soft the first time around, or else her artistic spirit might have been crushed under the endless regulations.

Aiko took the offered seat. “What are we watching?” She squinted at the tv. “Ballet?”

Nathan came back in loudly, dragging his current favorite toy behind him. Aiko let his babbling fade into the background as she ran calculations for her dream career. Mom said no assassinations, sure. But she hadn’t outright said that Aiko couldn’t associate with Mr. Luthor. Maybe she could play with him after school or something when Nathan had soccer.

“Hey, Mom,” Aiko said.

“Don’t interrupt when other people are talking,” Mom said. “Nathan, sorry. What truck was it?”

…Aiko hadn’t noticed they were still talking. She sighed and folded her arms to wait.

Nathan blew out his cheeks. “It wasn’t a truck, Mom, it was a semi! It had a mostly naked lady painted on the side!”

Mom took a slightly louder inhalation. “I see. Aiko, what were you saying?”

“Can I accept money, weapons, and training from the President of the United States?” Aiko checked.

Mom sighed again. “I don’t think that’s very likely, honey,” she said. Aiko opened her mouth to argue but then Mom said, “But sure. Politicians should give you money. That’s a life lesson. If someone else has money for funding, you can ask for it, and then you can do whatever research you want. You can study whatever you want when you grow up, whether it’s microbiology or arthropods or even human health sciences.”

“...Okay,” Aiko said, because she still wasn’t really clear on what Mom was talking about when she got like this. “Thanks. I’ll let him know.” She rolled off the couch and went back to her backpack to take out the little phone that Mr. Luthor had given her. 

Mom snorted. The pillow was still over her face. 

‘My Mom says its ok,’ Aiko laboriously typed. This was hard. ‘Plese give me guns and other things.’

About ten seconds after she sent it, the message received a thumbs up. Then came an answer. ‘This is Mercy,’ Aiko mumbled under her breath as she read. ‘Underst-understood. Will consult with the boss.’ Aiko turned the phone back off and put it away in her backpack. She craned her head back to look at her Mom and brother. Nathan was making his toy trucks and plastic lizard do ballet and narrating while Mom peeked out with one eye.

She fidgeted. It felt like she should do something productive with her time. Her intuition said that she should train, but she had already exercised today at school and Captain Marvel was going to supervise some training this evening. So. She needed something else to do.

Thinking about Captain Marvel reminded her of the cool guy she met in Fawcett City. Aiko brightened.

“Mom? Can I use your laptop to look at crocodile information?”

“Yeah, sure honey. Bring it out here and be careful. Snack time in…” Mom squinted at her watch. “Twenty minutes.”

“Cheese!” Nathan bellowed, and then ran to the kitchen even though Mom had literally just said it wasn’t time yet. Aiko heaved a sigh and went off to get the laptop bag.

The trouble with this plan was that Aiko was not very literate. She tried her best, but the words started to swim in front of her eyes. She rubbed at her temples, annoyed. Maybe Mom would read to her? Aiko looked over at the couch and blinked in surprise. It was empty. She padded her way to the kitchen to see that Mom was pouring cold tea into three glasses. A big tray with sliced cheese, fruit, and some crackers was on the table already. 

“Good timing, honey,” Mom said.

After snack time, Aiko had to do her homework, practicing letters and hiragana. By the time she finished, she had to change to get ready for patrol. Aiko was excited about that. 

Even though Captain Marvel was her sponsor, Mr. Batman had provided her outfit. Apparently, he knew all about armoring children. He had color coded her to be easily identified with Captain Marvel, which Aiko didn’t particularly like or dislike. Her little boots and gloves were the red of his uniform, her main outfit was white like his cape, and she got a little detachable gold collar cape which was very exciting. The outfit came with a belt for tools.

So far, she had no tools, because she had not been trained in any of them. Aiko took this coddling philosophically. Maybe she could put the gun from Mr. Luthor in there first.

Training that day was kinda weird and fun. They went to the Justice League facility on Captain Marvel’s credentials, and he let her fight holograms while he said things like, “That’s interesting,” “I see,” and “Can you try that again without killing the criminal?”

After that, she did some gymnastics which were more advanced than what she did at her elementary school. Captain Marvel didn’t do that. Some other guy did that. He did introduce himself but frankly, she had met too many new people lately and was sick of learning names.

She was only in space for an hour, and then she had to go home. Aiko pouted about it. It felt extremely unfair. “I don’t see how I’m ever going to become the most powerful person in the world with these limitations,” she told her gymnastics teacher unhappily.

His blinding white smile didn’t so much as falter. “Is that your dream?”

“Yes,” Aiko lied. That was step one of her dream. That was a prerequisite. 

“Well, I think it will help you a lot to sleep and eat really well, and you have to go home for dinner now. Have a good night!” 

Big sigh.

Aiko was carted home and left to the drudgery of macaroni and cheese, bath time, bedtime, and then school. The only interesting thing that happened at school was that Ms. Mercy came to the office again and started giving her a gun safety lesson, in between this fun assessment test for Aiko’s powers that she gleefully ruined with inconsistent results. She was morbidly curious to see where Luthor was going with this. What did he think he was going to do with her? 

That day wasn’t a training day. It was a patrol day. Aiko was excited to go back to the streets of Fawcett City and see if she could find someone to fight.

It just so happened that it was a great day to get in a fight in Fawcett City– everyone seemed to think so! She arrived to see Captain Marvel disentangling himself with a mob of blank-faced civilians with a panicked attitude and as little force as possible.

“Neat,” Aiko said, and tried out the flip kick she had learnt yesterday to knock a full grown man over with her momentum.