Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  “I’ve had plenty of nightmares in my time,” I tell him, “but most nights I sleep like a dream. I don’t expect this to be much different.”

  I give a leering grin I don’t really feel and the kid loses his cool and jumps into the air and at me and brings his rock-hard fist down and I bring mine up and into his solar plexus and it’s like punching the side of a mountain, and it’s around that moment a very odd sensation cuts through me and I see several of my arriving teammates stumble as well and then the kid’s punch lands across my cheek, and like a blast from a shotgun, I’m lifted off my feet and spun around and slammed hard into the floor and the world tilts at forty-five degrees as I slap my hands on the cold tiles just to make it still and the fucking kid laughs.

  “That’s a shit,” Hardass says with a whine of genuine disappointment. “She turned on the fucking Leveler.”

  The other youngsters mutter their disapproval too, for whatever it is the witch has activated, leaving me and Mastodon and Smidgeon and some long-haired dude in black and red and showing way too much chest hair crawling around on the ground momentarily like newborns. Not since I fought Quietus have I felt quite so bad, but I manage to get to my shaky feet and Hardass is standing across from me with his hands on his lithe hips, laughing, and I grit my teeth as the weakness passes and make fists and realize belatedly that in the place I reach into to draw out my electrical powers, there’s now nothing but an empty shelf.

  Absolutely. Nothing.

  I’m powerless.

  And again Hardass laughs, right before he kicks my legs out from under me like a swipe from a wrecking ball and I hit the marble hard enough with my face that the tile cracks and my nose along with it.

  “Fuck,” I manage to stammer, and then again. “F-fuck.”

  *

  THE TEENAGE COLOSSUS is about to wail on me when Loren is there in a fantasy-inducing leather cat-suit and matching mask. The ultra-dense fist comes down and she blocks it with a jo or bo or whatever the fuck those Japanese sticks are the cops sometimes use. Hardass or Sebastian or whatever his name is gives a puzzled growl and Loren rises from her concerned crouch like some beautiful synchronized swimmer and delivers the blow from the second baton to the underside of his jaw and its only then that I get what the kid was saying about his name, Bastion, meaning castle or fortress or something, because the stick makes a noise like it would on a brick wall and Hardass barely flinches except to frown, something immobile now about his face I understand later is because he’s dialed up his molecular density so high the subtle parts of his body have trouble functioning. He reaches down and grabs Loren by her long, tawny hair and mutters, “Get the fuck out of here, bitch,” and she yowls, unintentionally in character as she’s thrown across the room. I weakly roll away from the immediate radius of attack and almost straight away another of Lennon’s kids, a guy who in the last five seconds has morphed into a lizard-skinned version of himself with big dangly-clawed fists, one of which he swings at me kind of in slow motion and I duck, weave aside, and slam my fist into his ribs with about as much success as Tony Danza in Rocky having a go at those beef carcasses in the abattoir. It might look good on film, but my wrist feels like broken crockery as the lizard-kid makes an unpleasant hissing noise and grabs me either side of the face and headbutts me to the ground.

  Suffice to say I lay there for a while feeling pretty miserable with myself and floundering to explain the sudden loss of my powers, likewise for my teammates, but seemingly not for Yoko Ono’s shock troops. At least Tom O’Clock, and regrettably, Nightwind, seem to be functioning still, and the third Lennon girl – her head and hands are on fire despite the persistence of her costume and the fact she seems quite happy about it – tussles with the magic robot until he does something to the air around her that not only causes the flames to gutter out but her breathing as well.

  That’s one down, at least.

  Just as I am recovering, so too Smidgeon, Mastodon and the new guy manage to get from the ground, though without his ubiquitous shrinking ability it seems Smidgeon is about as useful as a three-dollar bill in a whorehouse and it’s only a few seconds after Mastodon grabs Carbon from behind that the big guy, unfortunately not as big as he might like to be right now, finds himself gasping like a gutted trout after the kid’s elongated fingers have pierced all the way through his chest and out his back. Blood gargles alarmingly from the wound and Mastodon grinds his way slowly around in a semi-circle on the floor seemingly with the lone aim of shooting me betrayed glances as the blood sprays onto the corporate tiles like some deranged Jackson Pollock.

  If this is my clue to step up, I do what I have to do and test the powers again with inevitable disappointment. The blonde girl with the cap sees me standing unmolested and sports a nasty grin that makes me wonder just what made these kids so fucking cruel, though years and years of being exposed to some lying, manipulative, shape-shifting mother figure probably doesn’t leave much mystery.

  The girl pulls a spinning backwards roundhouse kick that sees her impressive high-heeled boot catch me in the side of the mouth and flip me over. I hit the ground again with the same acoustic qualities as before and roll to safety with surprising speed given the incredible pain along my side. My jaw, strangely, is less of a concern.

  “I’m Eclipse,” the girl offers. “Shame I can’t kick your ass the way I’d like, but Spectra’s flipped the switch on your powers.”

  “A fair fight would be good,” I manage to say as I wipe the gore from my mouth. “How the hell do you kids keep yours, anyway?”

  “Now, that would be telling,” the little blonde says in a tutorial voice and lashes out with her gloved fist.

  I weave aside, bat her posture open and bring a heavy left into the side of her gut. The girl lifts off the ground despite my depleted strength and makes a noise like a female tennis player serving an ace. As she comes down again, I grab the wrist I so recently cast aside and drive my left knee between her legs. She makes a shocked sound and slumps and I twist her arm across her body and then back and up, pulling her backwards into me with her own arm strangling herself.

  “Tell me how to get my fucking powers back up, you little bitch,” I growl.

  My hearing’s not what it was, but I think she tells me to go screw myself. I tighten my grip and she makes a vain attempt to heel-stamp my feet and I back away and things would be going so right from there if Ruse didn’t kick me in the back of the knee and make me go down like some school yard prank. Eclipse flops on top of me and wriggles free like a wet fish and I’m still searching for my equilibrium when Hardass joins the party, picking me up bodily and giving me a shake hard enough to make my leg joints crackle, and then he bowls my over his hip and into the wooden inner wall through which they’ve so recently come.

  The wall has far too much resistance for my liking and I slide down it like a snail in heat and meet the ground with my temple and things go woozy for a bit. As I recover, I realize Hardass and the girl Eclipse have been speaking.

  “. . . turkey motherfucker.”

  “We’ve been immunized to the Leveller, you asshole,” Hardass sneers.

  “Any other day I’d copy your powers and beat you to death with them,” the girl adds, looking me up and down before actually spitting at me.

  I hold up a hand.

  “Enough,” I say, and cough with the pain biting into my side. “I don’t understand why we’re fighting. John Lennon was my father too.”

  “We know who you are, Zephyr.”

  Hardass speaks down to me in the sort of voice rich with contempt only a teenager could manage.

  “We know who you are, and we don’t give a shit,” Eclipse adds.

  Zephyr 6.14 “Into The Freudian Glare”

  I GET THE impression maybe Hardass wants to say more, but instead he gives an emasculated yelp and sinks into the floor up to his knees. He’s still shocked and looking around (kinda like the rest of us) and Eclipse adopts her crappy, half-trained judo pose and completely
misses Nightwind phasing up from the ground behind her. The expressionless mask looks at me a moment with abject pity, perhaps even scorn, and then he kidney punches the girl and she gasps and falls to her knees and Nightwind back-hands her behind the ear and she lays down flat.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Hardass screams.

  Nightwind’s synthesized voice is surprisingly sinister for a dude who I have consistently written off over the last few years.

  “Have a good time extracting your molecules from that, asshole.”

  Then he looks at me and there’s silence for a good second or so before he says, “Get up.”

  “Just about to,” I fire back and stand and just then it feels like one of my integral rubber bands snap and pain flares from my asshole to my armpit.

  “Oh Jesus,” I manage to stutter and then take a few limping steps.

  Wherever Ono disappeared to, she returns in a blur of black light and brutally karate chops the guy in the background with the long hair before he can even turn around. Mastodon is still on the floor, but the robot, Brasseye, stands over him exchanging fisticuffs with Carbon while Loren makes like the good barbarian’s girlfriend and camps out at his knee.

  Smidgeon struggles up from wherever he’s been playing possum and Ono, like some diminutive Darth Vader in drag, barely pauses as she lashes out and takes him in the side of the head with her long-nailed fist and his head splashes back and he topples to the tiles. The Demoness then grabs the lizard-guy by the shoulder and points to Nightwind and me and throws her hands above her head and suddenly there’s gale-force winds and a banshee screaming and I fall to my knees for the umpteenth fucking time and cover my ears as Nightwind tries to clutch on to a piece of furniture that’s nowhere to be found and then Hardass and Eclipse and the other Lennon kids are either gone or they are disappearing rapidly from my sight down some black tunnel that has opened up midair before us as the torrential breeze dies down and again we’re just a bunch of spent superheroes in the ruin of a Tokyo skyscraper with no sign of the enemy.

  “Fantastic,” Nightwind says and puts his hands on his hips almost like a mockery of me. “Fucking fantastic.”

  Loren scrambles over to Mastodon, who continues gasping like a carp and shooting me evil glances and she cries, “Tony needs triage immediately,” and I kinda wonder when Seeker and Mastodon got on a first name basis. I guess I haven’t been around much. The robot groks out on the whole apparent lifelessness of Smidgeon before managing to get him up and stumbling around like a drunk man walking off the night before, and the tall, long-haired guy in the seriously v-necked superhero costume moves over to me with a concerned expression on his bruised, leonine features.

  “Zephyr? Are you alright?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I gasp.

  “You don’t remember? Manticore.”

  “Manticore,” I manage to repeat. “Manticore. Right. Rhymes with Man-o-war.”

  The blonde guys grins and he nods. “That’s right.”

  “Makes me think of Manpower. And that costume ain’t helping.”

  I hobble away declining to drink in his crestfallen expression and watch as the injured are loaded into the ghostly apparatus of the Wallachian Fortress which has kindly floated in to co-exist briefly with the Paladin building once more so we can make our escape. Brasseye helps Smidgeon up the slope and is followed by Manticore and Loren directs a group of black-cowled monks floating the ‘Don on one of their mysterious stretchers and then a gloved hand falls on my shoulder from behind.

  “Not so fast, fucktard.”

  *

  I WOULD TURN around myself except the force of Nightwind’s grip twists me back anyway and it’s true to say I am not wholly prepared for the punch to the face that follows. Someone opens up a jar of cranberry juice in my nose and I’m so appalled by the spectacle that I stagger back, bending over to let the bloody fiasco splatter the crushed tile floor of the former conference room.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “You’ve had this a long time coming, you arrogant prick,” Nightwind replies.

  He steps in and I can barely comprehend what he’s doing. The boxing moves seem as alien to the situation as dirty dancing and that’s the only explanation I can offer as to why I let this motherfucker lay another glove on me. I double over as all the air vacates my lungs and rather than knee me in the proffered face, Nightwind grabs me by the hair and pulls me back the other way and like a lazy wrestler performing for a crowd, he scandalously kicks my legs out from beneath me.

  I manage to spit out something about not knowing what the fuck he thinks he’s doing and I stand like a drunken old man and defend myself, still completely powerless as he launches a serious of hard and fast blows to my head. My face I manage to protect. Sadly, I am not so well prepared for the sneak blows to my solar plexus and gut and I resist doubling up again only long enough to catch a left hook that nearly sends me to Nevond-fucking-Nevnend.

  “You asshole,” I stammer, appalled, desperately trying to clear more goo from my mouth and nose, spitting out blood and chips of tooth and wiping the tears of pain from the slits in my mask.

  “Like I said, Zeph. You’ve had this a long time coming. Sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  Nightwind then actually laughs, putting the lie to the whole charade. And this time we dance like seasoned fighters, him far more lithe and limber than I’ve ever seen him credit since he’s usually first before the cameras and a long way from where any of the actual action occurs. You wouldn’t think he had it in him. Or I certainly wouldn’t, as the circumstances presently show, though now I treat him seriously enough as we block and counter-block karate strikes and I manage to put my booted toe into a painful spot in his thigh, but without my powers there’s nothing but the strength of my yes, still quite considerable frame to make the blows hurt, and I am sure whatever technical apparatus allows Nightwind to avoid Ono’s power eraser, it’s also adequate to the job of helping him wipe the floor with me.

  Nonetheless, I put up a decent fight. He’s faster than I would’ve thought and without my friction-easing speed I am not the match I’d like to be. Too many times I move to block a feint and the bastard sinks his knuckles into the vulnerable meat above my hip or under my ribs or even punches into the heaped muscles of my upper arms to leave me numb and staggering like a punch-drunk pony and walking into the killer counter-attack he plots out like a chess nerd strategizing checkmate in under twenty moves. It comes out in my frustration as I roar and try to use brute force alone to bring him down, though just when I feel I am beginning to get a handle on the situation, my haymaker sails literally right through him and my fist smashes through the thick plate glass of the boardroom’s external windows. I miraculously manage not to slash my wrist and Nightwind, using the phasing technology he’s got under the hood, emerges out of subspace with a sarcastic snicker and simply puts his toe forward again and lifts his dukes and mocks me with the energy of a much younger boxer.

  “You fucker,” I gasp and spit. “Must be some freaky enmity you’re finally managing to work out . . . on me. Shame you had to wait till someone cancelled my powers.”

  “This has been coming since long ago.”

  And then he adds, “Brother.”

  I expect him to punch me and in my shock at his statement I’m simply not prepared for any deviation from this strategy as he just pushes me double-handed into the fault-line of the skyscraper window and the huge busted pane gives way with a tumultuous crackle and I desperately try to grab for something, anything, and instead clutch empty air and glass shards and stagger inexorably backwards through the vagina dentata, falling into the Freudian glare of the late Tokyo afternoon.

  Zephyr 6.15 Coda

  I PLUNGE THIRTY floors to my death, not too ashamed to say I am pissing myself goodbye as I flail helplessly and manage to achieve very little but collect a couple of weather bots on the way down. None of them do me any good. There’s no winging my way to safety on the back
of an unfeasibly strong meteorological device in this script.

  My desperate trajectory takes me out over several lanes of busy traffic, but not far enough to strike the big erection on the other side of the square. Instead, I can roughly glimpse my own panicked flight in the chromatic glass across from me and marvel at the fact, even without my powers, my heightened physiognomy must be enough to stop me passing out from the fall at this height regardless of what I might wish.

  In full, florid panic I try to activate my powers, fists clenching and rapidly unclenching and arms rigid with the effort to discover some as-yet undiscovered muscle that might somehow propel me from this personal catastrophe. But again, there’s nothing, and right to the very end I somehow hope against hope the persistent failure of predictable outcomes that has dogged my entire life might abate for just one moment so I can have a nice clean comic book conclusion and wrest myself clear and safe from this inevitable disaster.

  I yell, if you can call the broken-throated noise that. And I am pleased to say, having tasted death, my last thought is not for me but my beautiful daughter. There are no words to encapsulate this final desperate hope, since even in the last moment of life the unvoiced speculations of our desperate minds are pitched in the world of possibilities and not the flat-line fatalism of death. I hit the tarmac of the Japanese intersection fully expecting to explode like a week-old melon and instead the surface of the ground gives way like a child’s trampoline and after a moment’s inertia I am flung jubilant and astonished and extremely smelly into the air and then down again, repeating the move with the entropy of motion even Tom O’Clock cannot eliminate entirely, and when I’m more or less lying still on the deceptively hard road surface, I roll over and groan and eye the golden boots descending beside me and look up, the transcendent sun ablaze on the Paladin Corp building behind.

  Brasseye offers me his hand and I take it and stand shakily.