by Nick Svolos
I pulled the folder with the photos out of my bag, set it all out on the table, and walked through the timeline that lead me to the Polo Grounds. I finished up with the last clue I’d discovered before Richardson took the stage. “So, while I was walking around and interviewing folks, I found out that a lot of people had no idea how they ended up there. People who lived or worked within a few blocks of the park.”
Shibboleth rubbed his chin. “Hmm, that’s a pretty decent range for mind-control.”
“I don’t think it’s anything as brute-force as that,” I said. “I broke free of it pretty easy once I was pushed to do something I wouldn’t normally do. I think it’s more of a suggestion power, like hypnosis or emotion manipulation. Seems like she needed to get the crowd really worked up before she could turn them loose on me.”
Moonchild nodded. “That’s a good point. If she could do mind-control, she could have gotten a few guys to take Reuben out nice and quiet. Nobody would be the wiser.”
“OK, that makes sense. So, how do we find her?” Shibboleth frowned. “Wish I’d have had time to slap a tracing spell on her.”
The green healer reached over to place her hand on Shibboleth’s. “You did the right thing, dear.”
Shibboleth sighed. “I know. Woulda coulda shoulda.”
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, track her psychic signature or something?” I asked. I really didn’t know much about how Shibboleth’s powers worked.
“Naw, magic doesn’t work that way,” the tie-dyed avenger replied. “Back in the day, I’d let people think I could do stuff like that because it sounded cool, and it sometimes tripped the bad guys up. The truth is, I always did it with a tracking spell, and to do that I need to be in eyeshot of the target. I could probably put a spell together if I had a lock of hair or something personal, something that resonates with her spiritual frequency, but unless you have something you haven’t shown us…”
“I’m afraid not. Maybe she dropped something at the rally?”
“I already checked. The cops are all over the place. Anything she might have dropped is gonna be in an evidence bag at the station, and all my old contacts are retired now.”
We went on like that for at least an hour, bouncing around ideas and shooting them down until we ran dry. The couple clearly wanted to go out and get back in the game, and on one level I was disappointed that I couldn’t be more help. On a more practical level, though, it was probably a good thing that was the case. I could tell that both of them were still pretty tired from the efforts they went through to save my life. They were doing their best to hide it, but I could see it in the way Moonchild moved. I didn’t want them to get hurt.
At any rate, it was time to go. As Moonchild gave me a big hug, Shibboleth began a low chant, accompanied by some arcane hand and finger motions, and a glowing oval of light appeared in their living room. I gripped his arm, and we stepped through, emerging into an alcove in the American Airlines terminal at SFO. We ignored the startled reactions from the people passing by. I shook the hero’s hand as I thanked him again for all he and his wife had done for me and headed off to go through security.
Passing through the seating areas outside the gates, I noticed the terminal television monitors replaying the debacle at the Polo Field. I checked in at the gate, and while I waited for my turn to board, I stopped at one and watched for a little bit. A shiver ran down my spine. The screen displayed a shot from a helicopter. The aerial view showed me dodging the initial attacks before a guy hit me from behind with a guitar, of all things. Reflexively, I felt the back of my head and felt some dried blood. I winced as I watched my body crumple like a rag doll to the grass. As the crowd moved in to finish the job, I saw my arm reach out to grab my messenger bag and cover it with my body as I went into a fetal position. I had no memory of doing that. The beating went on for a lot longer than I remembered, a long minute or so of people kicking and punching at something that could no longer be seen by the chopper. Then, there was a flash of light as a dome of arcane force erupted, expanding from a point at the center of the violence and growing outward, forcing the crowd away from something red and broken lying on the field. Another flash of light and Shibboleth stepped out of a glowing oval next to the body. My blood chilled as I realized it was mine. He reached out and touched the bundle of shattered bones and blood, and in another flash of light, they were gone. The image was replaced with a couple of photos of Shirley Richardson overlaid with a hotline number to call if anyone spotted her.
Some talking heads came on the newscast to do commentary on the event, but I heard the gate agent calling my row number, so I was spared listening to that nonsense. I turned and headed toward the gate, and almost fell. My knees were wobbly, and I noticed my hands were shaking. I took a few deep breaths, and it went away, but damn. It turns out it’s not so easy to watch yourself getting your ass kicked on the national news. I hoped they served booze on this flight.
***
The next day was Saturday, and since we were still waiting on the final parts I needed for the woody, Helen and I decided to take the day off. She came to my place around ten, and we loaded up a cooler with sandwiches, chips and a six-pack of beer and headed off to the beach. Our warm November weather was holding up nicely, and it was a bright, sunny day. There were plenty of other people with the same idea, but not so many that we had any trouble staking out our own little plot of sand.
By unspoken mutual agreement, we didn’t talk about the events in San Francisco. We just spent the time goofing off, enjoying the sun and each other’s company. Still, I guess I was a little distracted, because Helen eventually called me on it.
“What’s on your mind, Rube? Seems like half your brain’s somewhere else.”
I grinned and sat up, taking a long pull from my beer. “I’m pretty sure my mind’s on your bikini.”
She giggled. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the part of your mind I’m talking about. Come on, man, a drachma for your thoughts.”
I thought about it for a moment. She was right. There was something nagging at me, tugging at the back of my mind. A task left unfinished. “Well, I guess this whole thing with the Jorgensen kid’s still bouncing around in my head.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yeah.” I looked away. “He’s dead.”
“Oh God. Reuben, I’m so sorry,” she said, laying a hand on mine.
“Yeah, me too.”
“What happened?”
I told her the whole sad tale, from the event that left his little sister comatose, to his quest to find a “cure”, the odd circumstances of his death, and the strange findings of the science team at the Tower. “So, I guess I’m feeling a little guilty, sitting here with you when the people who did this are still out there.”
“Yeah.” She sat up and started munching on a sandwich, washing it down with beer. There was a sudden tension in her motions, like she suddenly needed to take action, to do something. “Are you writing about it?”
“I’m still developing the story. I’m afraid if I go with what I have now, I’ll just let the bad guys know I’m onto them. Drive them deeper underground. Make ‘em harder to find.”
“Makes sense,” she said as she finished her sandwich. “Dammit, how many of these kids do we lose?”
As she often did, she’d switched gears and left me in the dust.
“Uh, I don’t know,” I answered once I caught back up. “Worldwide, maybe a couple a year.”
“That’s a couple too many.” She forced control into her voice and glanced around to make sure nobody was listening before continuing. “Sometimes, I lay awake at night, wondering what would have happened to me if not for Dynamo. Would I have figured things out on my own? Would I have hurt someone like Karl did? Would I have gone nuts and have to be put down? Or maybe get sucked into one of those government ‘institutes’ like Sinfonie?”
I’d never thought about it, but she was right. When her powers manifested, her parents took her to a
doctor. That doctor just happened to know Dynamo, a hero with a similar powerset, and he just happened to be the sort of guy who would be willing to take on a sidekick. Nobody’s ever admitted it, but I suspected Dynamo just happened to know Ultiman, which would explain how she got recruited by The Angels after she finished her doctorate. Yeah, she’d gotten pretty lucky.
She stared at the Pacific and shivered. “There’s gotta be a better way.”
It was both fun and kind of scary to see her when she got worked up like this. She was a passionate, impulsive woman by nature; the kind of person who, when she sees a problem, goes out and solves it. It was why she did the costumed crime-fighter thing in the first place.
This gave me a sudden inspiration. “Yeah, someone should do something.”
“Yeah,” she said sadly.
I leaned back on my elbow and took another leisurely pull from my beer before giving her another nudge along my train of thought. “If only we knew some people who’ve been through this sort of thing. People who, you know, might be used to solving problems.”
“Yeah.” She sat silent for a second before continuing with growing excitement, “Yeah! A group of people with a big tower chock-full of training equipment!”
“Not to mention a couple of people with teaching experience and an international reputation for getting things done.”
She impetuously spun and smooched me full on the lips. “You’re such a clever man.”
“Yup. Good looking and a snappy dancer, too.”
She laughed. “Don’t forget humble.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve always felt my humility is what makes me so much better than everyone else.”
We joked around for a while as she built the idea into a pitch she could present to the rest of The Angels. I didn’t know how being a history professor translated into setting up a training program for super-powered adolescents, but she certainly seemed to be in her element. For my part, I was just happy to see her run with the idea. Maybe if this thing took off, the Jorgensens would be the last family to be destroyed in this way. It felt good.
Helen was lying on her stomach, excitedly going on about the plan, when I noticed a glint of light out in the ocean. I couldn’t make out what it was due to the sun’s glare, so I shielded my eyes with my hand to get a better look. In the time it took my eyes to adjust, another object appeared, and then a few more. At first, I thought they were just kids messing around on jet skis and wandering too close to shore, but as they got closer and began to rise from the ocean, I could see I was wrong.
I tapped Helen on the shoulder, saying, “Uh, hon, you might want to take a look at this.”
She turned and followed my gaze out to sea as someone down the beach screamed. Metallic humanoid forms, my count was now eight, were slowly marching towards the beach. It was hard to make a guess at their size without a reference, but they were still a fair distance from the shore and only their torsos were above the waterline. One thing was for sure, they were big.
“Um, those are giant robots, aren’t they?” she asked in disbelief.
“So it would seem,” I answered as I fumbled my phone out of our bag and activated the camera.
“Dammit, I get one day off….” The end of her sentence was lost as she grabbed the bag and sprinted off towards the restrooms. Panic started to grip the people on the beach, and I got to my feet to avoid being trampled by the headlong flight of the beachgoers fleeing my way. One of the robots raised an arm, firing what looked to be some sort of laser beam at a lifeguard station. It exploded into a cloud of burning splinters and kindling that rained down on the beach. A couple of people went down in the blast while the rest of the crowd passed them by.
Amid the chaos, I felt something—it turned out to be our bag—land at my feet as Herculene, now in her trademark Grecian toga, bounded past. She landed next to the injured sunbathers, scooped them up and leaped to the parking lot by Ocean Avenue. She deposited them behind the cover of some cars and bounded back to the wet sand of the shore, bounced onto the lead robot and started pounding and tearing at the metal cowling that formed the machine’s head. I did my best to keep my camera on her while stuffing a beach towel into our bag to cover Helen’s wig.
I took a quick look around the beach to make sure there weren’t any people stranded out there and was relieved to see I was alone. There was a small crowd taking cover in the parking lot, and another group watching the action from the amusement park on the pier, but mostly everyone did the right thing, namely, run like hell.
Well, everyone but me of course. I went back to taking pictures of the havoc my girlfriend was wreaking. Having yanked the head off of the first robot, she hurled it at a second, striking it in the chest, knocking it off its feet to land splashing flat on its back in the ocean before she leaped onto a third mecha. As her first target, sparks flying from the hole in its upper torso where its head was supposed to be, crumpled to its knees in the surf, I smiled and took more photos of her in action. Even at this distance, I could spot the wide grin on her face. From the abandon with which she tore into those robots, it was clear they were unpiloted. It wasn’t often that she got to cut loose without fear of killing anyone. She was having a blast.
The robots, now aware that they were under attack, turned their attention towards Herculene. They were closer to the shore now, giving me a frame of reference to estimate their size, about forty feet tall. One of them targeted their antagonist with its arm laser, but the warrior goddess spotted the move, deftly swinging around the torso of her current victim as the robot fired. The beam melted through the armored torso where Herculene had been just a split-second before, and another robot jerked spasmodically and fell into the surf.
The second mecha, now sporting a scarred dent the size of its compatriot’s head in its chest, struggled to its feet as Herculene finished off number three by ripping its arm off and driving it through its chest. The remaining robots moved to form a circle around her, apparently hoping to box her in and maybe tag her with their lasers. It might have worked, too, but Herculene just waited as their arms rose in unison and jumped about thirty feet straight up as they fired. The circular firing squad accounted for two more of their number being sent, belching sparks and coolant fluid, to a watery end.
A blast of air and sand struck me from behind and almost knocked me off my feet. I spun around, thinking I was under attack from some new threat, but saw an African-American man in a lime green skinsuit. SpeedDamon, one of Herculene’s teammates. I figured the rest of The Angels wouldn’t be far behind. “Comeon,sir,youneedtogetoffthisbeach. Oh,it’syou. How’reyadoing,Conway?” he said in a voice like a recording played back at too high a speed.
I grinned and turned back to the action in time to see Herculene using a severed robot arm as a cudgel. Another machine went down in a splash. “Not bad. Just having a pleasant day at the beach. How’s by you?”
The speedster vibrated down to normal and watched his teammate for a few seconds. “Well, I was supposed to help evacuate the area, but it looks like that’s already done. Think I ought to go lend Herc a hand?”
“Think she’d ever forgive you if you did?”
“Nope. Good call.” He pulled a high-calorie energy bar out of a pocket in his lime green skinsuit and took a bite. “Might as well enjoy the show.”
The marauding automatons’ numbers were rapidly dwindling, and by the time the rest of the team arrived on the scene, Herculene had taken down two more. She stood on the smoking wreckage of her most recent victim and bellowed a taunt at the last remaining mecha. It pointed its laser arm at the bald hero, and she nimbly leaped onto it, ran its length and kicked the mechanical beast’s head off like a football.
“Oh, now she’s just showing off,” SpeedDamon groaned as the robot’s head spun lazily through the air and landed in a splash just short of the pier. The people brave enough to stay on the pier and watch the battle responded to getting drenched in the spray with a rousing cheer. Herculene stood on the smoke-be
lching remains of her final opponent and took a deep theatrical bow.
The Angels joined her at the water’s edge. Cops began to arrive on the scene in numbers now, setting up a perimeter to keep the citizens out of the area. There was a story here, and I didn’t want to get swept up in their crowd-control protocols, so I quickly put on my t-shirt, gathered up the rest of our belongings and walked down the shore to join them before some enterprising police officer could shoo me off.
As someone who couldn’t fly, pulling the heavy wreckage from the surf was a bit beyond Herculene’s capabilities. That didn’t stop her from trying, though, which was kind of amusing. The poor thing wound up sunk neck deep in the sea bottom while trying to lift one of the gigantic arms. Two of the Angels with flight soon relieved Herculene of the task. Mentalia hovered above the ocean, lifting the steaming hulks from the water with telekinetic force, while Ultiman flew farther out from shore to dive in after the machines who came to rest in deeper water. He’d emerge a moment later, carrying a dead robot, drop it on the beach and return to the water to retrieve another one.
By the time I got there, several of the giant machines were drying in the sun, with Suave and Three Dollar Bill poking through the remains. SpeedDamon was talking to someone on his communicator. I heard him address the party on the other end as “General,” so I assumed he was speaking with someone in the Army. I dumped my gear a safe distance away and focused on taking photos while staying out of the heroes’ way.
I was getting some shots of a severed laser arm when I heard a loud whistle. I looked up and saw Suave standing on a more-or-less intact robot torso, waving Ultiman over. It looked like he’d found something interesting. The team’s leader flew over to Suave, and the pair conferred for a moment before they went to work. Suave fired a few precise energy blasts from an outstretched hand to free something, a large hunk of equipment, which Ultiman carefully wrenched out of the automaton’s chest and over his head. He flew over to the dry sand, and we all joined him to inspect the prize.
