Tales from Silicon City: Juniata Trasero

Hard Choices

By Psion

A Silicon City Story

All Rights Reserved

Silicon City, a high-tech city in Southern California in a world full of metabeings and superheroes. This sprawling metropolis in the middle of the Central Valley region of SoCal hosted many heroes from the serious to the comical, from the "comic book perfect" to the rotund but no less heroic by any stretch of the imagination. It is one of the latter of which our current story follows...

On the roof of a small apartment building in the city's lower income district, the elastic luchadora Tren battled with a foot soldier of the Cortez drug cartel. A vulpine enforcer fought the metamorphic donkey with a spiked baseball bat, the galvanized metal nails shined in the light of the full moon as he tried to land a telling blow on the masked equine wrestler. But Tren's body was like rubber, allowing the portly donkey to bend around and avoid the worst of his swings. Broad hips swayed like a metronome as the bottom-heavy jenny tried to restrain her foe with a wrestling hold. Her long black mane and brown pelt were slowly growing slick with a faint sheen of sweat, this was taking far too long.

The red-furred fox smiled as he gave his weapon a playful swing. "Oh if you had any idea the price the Cortez cartel put on your head." He teased in Spanish with a sinister smirk. He stared into her green eyes with a cool gaze, ready to try and take her down.

Tren felt a chill run down her spine as her opponent mentioned that name, a number of unpleasant memories coming to the forefront before she dodged his next swing. The Cortez Cartel, one of several feuding drug empires that ruled Mexico like the mob families controlled America in the 1920's and a never-ending source of aggravation for the masked wrestler. As one of the larger ones, they had their fingers in everything, including illegal betting in luchador wrestling. The heavyweight lady wrestler's "involvement" in them was a simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fleeing north to the United States, separated from her family, she hid the best she could to keep them safe. Unfortunately, Cortez was nothing if not persistent in their pursuit of metabeings that could cause them trouble later.

Hence the fight she was in now, a random bit of violence punctuating an otherwise relatively quiet night of bounding about the city like a super-bounce ball, meeting and teaming up with others in the local vigilante scene, and befriending people who might be able to help her get her family out of Mexico. While hardly super villains in their own right, cartel enforcers were far from petty thugs. This particular fellow probably had enough felonies to his name that the local police could easily find something to arrest him for. Just had to beat him up and leave him somewhere they could find him...

Diving under his swing and using the rubber-like properties of her superpowered body, she wrapped herself around her opponent and caught him in a suplex. Bending backwards, she slammed him headfirst into the roof of the building. Groaning, he staggered to his feet as she saw her opening and took it. Bouncing up and landing on top of him, the donkey caught her vulpine foe in an arm lock and spun him around, slamming him face first into the roof a second time. Now to just tie him up and leave him where the police could take him in...

The fox laughed as she drug him over towards the fire escape down to the street below. "Haha, not bad for a fat donkey slut. You must do your family proud Juniata Trasero." He smirked.

In that instant Tren hauled him up onto his feet and stared him right in the eyes. Part of her mind told her she should try to deny his remark yet at the same time there was a certain glint in his eyes the way he said her name... "How did you know?" Juniata Trasero asked, the first words the masked donkey luchadora said since the fight began.

"It wasn't easy, there must be at least a dozen donkey jennies with your measurements in the city. But for what my bosses were willing to give to either destroy you or make you work for us, it was worth it. I'm sure they'll be eager to hear all about you." He bragged.

"You'll be doing plenty of talking in prison." Juniata rebutted, forcing herself to maintain that same defiant calm she saw other heroes use.

"Hah! Face it! No matter what you do, you've lost. I am not a US citizen, there is no evidence I have committed any crime within their borders and even still, there are some very good lawyers in this city that don't necessarily care who pays their fees... You cannot stop me from revealing your identity to Senor Cortez."

Juniata Trasero's face fell as she considered the implications of what he was saying. Her family was still in Mexico, likely only safe because the cartels knew nothing of her real identity. If this miscreant got home, that would change. Her parents killed, her sisters... In that instant she understood what some of the emotionally colder vigilantes referred to as "the hard choices." Yet in that moment, the choice was perhaps the easiest she ever made.

Leaning against him seductively, rubbing her meaty hip against his pelvis, she flashed an alluring smile as she spoke. "Normally I prefer to flirt with males but if you insist." She began... then promptly hip-bumped him off the roof into the alleyway four stories below. "Oops." The donkey heroine said without a hint of regret.

The cartel fox had barely an instant to register was happening before he landed with a crash in an open dumpster eagerly waiting for pickup to come around in the morning. Groaning, he crawled out of the pile of garbage bags and tried to look around to find his way out of the alleyway. Slow, way too slow to escape....

Seeing that he was still alive, Juniata jumped down after him, her supernatural elasticity allowing her to bounce like a child's ball as she landed butt-first on top of him. Bones audibly cracked as the fox impacted with the pavement, arms flailing wildly as he tried to pull himself out from under roughly three hundred pounds of donkey crashing down on him with an unknown amount of Newtonian force. Blood oozed in a puddle beneath her seat as he slowly began to bleed out... it was over. Her secret identity was still safe.

For what felt like a long moment the donkey merely sat there, soaking in the reality of what she had done. In hindsight it really was an ugly thing she just did but then again it was an ugly person... Tren shook her head, it had to be done and there was no sense in rationalizing it based on the kind of person she could only suppose he was; he threatened her family, he got what he deserved. All that was left was to clean herself up and if things followed after her later, deal with them as they came.

A few hours later...

Back in the suburban house she shared with Megan Whitetail, secretly the plant-controlling heroine Cornucopia, Juniata walked through the door and locked up behind her. Megan was going to be out of town for a couple days so there was no one she had to explain why her costume was splattered with blood. Good thing her costume cleaned easily and they lived in an extremely quiet neighborhood.

Her knees trembling as she was once again reminded of what she had done, the donkey threaded her broad hips through the kitchen and bent over to pick up one of the tubs of ice cream Megan kept stocked for a particularly harrowing day. Tonight was definitely an ice cream night. Picking up the tub and a spoon from the cutlery draw, she waddled over to the couch where she promptly stripped down to her underwear and sat down on the sofa after throwing her costume in the wash with bleach. If it worked, well perhaps the faded greens would be a good look for her. If not, well it wasn't like she didn't have a few spare costumes tucked away incase one got burnt... The couch groaned in protest of supporting her fat backside, a sound she ignored as she picked up the remote and began to breeze through the channels.

How could Californians have so much rubbish on their sets with half of the television studios in the country in their state was a mystery to the lazing donkey. Finally she settled on a travel show, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as the host wandered through Panama City. It wasn't home but it was close enough to make her sigh and think about the things she missed. Working with papa and her sisters on building houses for people, her mother's cooking... Shaking her head, she turned off the television and focused on her ice cream. Peaches and cream, Megan always did have a nice, comforting sweet tooth.

Meanwhile...

The detectives were silent as the coroner arrived to collect the body from the crime scene. Crushed to death by something heavy falling on him from atop the apartment building was the best they could figure. Witnesses were reluctant, a quick facial recognition check with the FBI showed why, the dead fox pinged back almost immediately as a known member of the Cortez drug cartel...

"What a way to go, what do you think hit him?" One, an uncharacteristically lanky brown bear, remarked with amazement.

"I'd be more sympathetic if the vic wasn't a drug lord's errand bitch." His canine partner replied crassly, taking the bear aside to where they were out of earshot of any of the lingering onlookers that tried to peek over the police tape. "Look... I know you spent a lot of years being a sheriff up in Montana but-"

"But you still feel the need to nag me with how the city's different." The bear finished.

"I'm just giving you a little heads-up. I can tell you right now that once forensics finish and we finish interviewing one or two witnesses, the captain is probably going to take us off the case."

"What? Why? There's no one else in homicide to put on the case."

"Exactly, and there are at least six cases pertaining to victims that were honest, working stiffs that haven't been assigned to anyone yet. Meaning once we file a report on this guy, it's going to be put in a box in the back of Cold Cases. Given how much work we have, the case will likely never be reopened unless we start getting more bodies with the same signature piling up."

"Don't even guys like him deserve justice though?"

"Justice... Jim, don't even get me started on justice, enforcing the law is complicated enough. Justice? For all we know this might have been justice." The Irish wolfhound replied with a shake of his head. Looking up towards the sky, he silently voiced the other thoughts on his mind. A guy with a rap sheet longer then the grocery list for the annual department picnic gets crushed to death by an unknown object, only in Silicon City...