Come Get Some!

      Tyche smiled a little bit as she strolled along a few blocks west of the Cape and Cowl Club.  After her brief dust-up with Ramirez’s goons, things had started settling back into a proper routine.  She’d been out to coffee with Anne- the other woman had also had a bagel with lox and cream cheese, which Tyche had suggested might be a bad plan, given the somewhat more sedentary life the hacker led- and they’d gossiped about who the hottest new metas and actors were.

      It was the kind of girl talk that always made Angelo unbelievably uncomfortable, which was one reason that she and Anne had taken to visiting a small Woodchuck’s café near her clinic- that, and the fact that Angelo seemed to think that Tyche worked herself too hard and threatened to chase her out of her office with a broom.

      After coffee with Anne, Tyche’s had her usual assortment of down-at-the-heels people coming in with a desperate need for medical attention of one sort or other; she generally didn’t mind the kids, although she found them a bit alien, but the adults… more often then she cared to admit, some of the selfish, small-minded, pea-brained idiots that came to her for medical advice tempted her to consider villainy as a way of working out her frustrations.

      The highlight of her day had been examining a golden retriever puppy for an eight-year-old who’d found him abandoned by the roadside.  The kid knew he couldn’t take care of the pup, but he’d harangued his parents mercilessly until they’d relented and brought the animal to her.  Now Angelo had a ferocious attack slobberer who would, no doubt, grow into a fine specimen, always happy to greet him at the door and join him on walks…

      She snorted a little at her hypocrisy; she had no trouble with kids or animals, and she really did have a soft spot for hard-luck cases- witness how she had been fixing up that Lucinda kid pro-bono; she just didn’t like the entitled jerks that seemed to think that, because they had money and privilege, they didn’t have to put any effort into keeping themselves’ healthy.

      Tyche slowed as her musings were interrupted by the sounds of metal scraping on metal.

      She smiled.

      A group of young men- she placed the oldest at about twenty-five- had decided that the prices at Moe’s Home Appliance Convenience Center were a little too steep for traditional payment methods.  One of them was in the process of futzing with the lock by way of his Wonder Bar™, and Tyche almost felt bad for breaking it up.

      She cleared her throat.

      “Hi, guys- I guess your work schedules and Moe’s business hours just didn’t work out, huh?”

      The men looked at her, then looked at each other, obviously confused.  It figured that she’d be dealing with Angel Falls’s most lofty criminal intellects…

      “Helping yourselves to a little five-finger discount?” she tried again.

      Their confusion remained, undiminished.

      “What do you want?” one of the men asked.

      “Ah.  You must be the thinker,” Tyche smiled.  She heard his heartbeat jump.  She had that effect on people, for some reason- she always had.  “I want you and your buddies to quit trying to break into Moe’s store and go elsewhere,” she explained.

      “You a cop?” the smart guy challenged her.

      “Dressed like this?” Tyche smirked.  The confusing gears-and-pulleys design of her costume was enough to give more sensitive folks fashion-apoplexy, but she had to admit that she liked it.

      “Then what you think you gonna do to stop us, huh?”

      “Honestly, boys,” Tyche said, extending a hand in a come-hither gesture, “I was hoping you’d say that.  Come get some!”

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Tyche is my creation and, for a change, so is the artwork for this piece.  I would like to take a moment to thank profusely for lending me her lighting rig, her expertise, and advice as I blundered along making this.  Her aid was invaluable and incalculable.  I would also like to thank for the time and effort he put into finding the gears and pulleys design I used for Tyche's costume- I realize that I may be the only person on Earth who enjoys how busy it makes her costume, but it was exactly what I demanded and he pulled it off despite his reservations.

Tyche amuses herself by thumping thugs in .