The Push Chronicles (Book 3): Incorruptible

by J. B. Garner

  "'T would be an honor to serve, good friend fireman." Archer seemed quick to volunteer after I did, almost overrunning my last few words.

  "I'll do it too because wow exciting!" It was short for Tank but no slower than usual. It came out almost like one blur of words. The Mighty Polymer waved a comically oversized hand behind him.

  "Me too! I don't ever sleep any more anyways, well, not often. Well, like once a week. Maybe. Not always though! I'm good!"

  Ex arched an eyebrow and glanced at Mind's Eye. The seemingly put-upon seer simply shrugged her slender shoulders.

  "Alright then, that's that. Everyone else, enjoy some shuteye."

  I had not really considered the situation I had placed myself in until after the initial quiet had fallen over our impromptu sanctuary.

  It was a relative quiet because, well, the fact was there were two teenagers, both obviously prone to be a bit over-exuberant, one a boy, the other a girl. There was either going to lead to fighting, hushed enthusiastic friend-talk, or hushed talking leading to furious making-out. Whatever it was, it was going to make noise and should probably be private. Thankfully, in some measure of self-awareness, Tank and Polymer had taken the watch post at the main chamber entrance, the furthest away from where everyone else was sleeping.

  That left me in the undesirable situation of being in close proximity to two very different men who, again facing facts, had one commonality, well, aside from the Push Hero thing. On top of that, I wanted to talk to each of them but not at the same time. That would be troublesome, to put it mildly.

  After all, one was an ex-boyfriend that, honestly, I had made more mistakes with than I could count. The other, well, the expression 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' wasn't born out of a vacuum. I needed to make peace with Ex, he deserved that much, and, well, I made a habit in life of pursuing what I wanted. There was every chance that, no matter how hard we tried and my desire to pull this out of the fire, we would all be very, very dead in the next few days. Nothing could afford to wait.

  "Hey, Indy." While I had been working all of this out, Extinguisher had decided to grab the bull by the proverbial horns. "Looking pretty thoughtful there. If you can spare a -"

  "Yeah, I can." I frowned a little. "I wanted to have a chance to talk to you anyhow. Now is probably better than later, you know?"

  He grunted an affirmative and settled down on the sewer floor next to me, a polite, respectful distance to my right. From across the room, I saw Archer quirk an eyebrow and I could see the start of tension as he was about to move but I just gave him a very subtle shake of the head. There was a pause but then, instead of coming over to us, he pushed off his perch on a broken-down pump and moved to a further vantage point.

  "I know what I said when I had that helmet on, when we were falling."

  "I remember." Part of me wanted to drop in with the 'oh, it wasn't you' bit, but that would have been a lie. A lie we both would know about.

  "Maybe it made me do some things I normally wouldn't, say things to be just a bit more hurtful but ... it wasn't a lie." He hung his head. "You know, I always kept imagining, that month after we split, that it was just a phase. That we'd work it all out in the end."

  "I know and, Ex, I'm sorry." I put a hand on his shoulder. "I really screwed things up. All of this, it was so much, so soon, and I wasn't ready."

  He glanced over at me with a spark of some renewed hope.

  "Are you ready now? Does this mean -"

  "No. Not like that." There was a sadness that came over me, but it was more that I hurt a friend, not that I was losing a lover. "We can't be that again, at least not for a long time. Look at Meds and Hex then look at us."

  "Bio couldn't figure it out. Neither could Gaslight. How he resisted the helmet those times." Ex closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. His shoulder, even through the fireman's coat, was soothingly cold under my hand. "Too wrapped up in science to see the obvious, you know?"

  "Yeah." I copied his sigh and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "That's why this is so obvious now. If there was ever an indicator that something just wasn't going to work out -"

  "- that would be it." Just like old times, completing my sentences. "Did I push too hard? You know, to make it more than just friends with benefits?"

  "Maybe a little but, man, it was mostly me." I shook my head again. "I was bitter, tired, breaking down. I lashed out and I lashed out in a way that just ended it with no way to fix it, not that I can see."

  "I understand." He thought about that a moment, then added, "Well, I'm trying to. I respect that point of view, at the very least." Ex took a deep breath. I could tell he was doing his best to keep himself even-tempered. "We're still friends though, right? You won't go arguing that you need your space and I better hike on out of town?" He smirked a bit. The attempt at humor was a good sign.

  "Of course, Christ, you, the rest of the Five, you're my friends, my family." My smile was pure honesty. "You'll never not be my friend and I don't need you or any of them leaving for your brooding spot in the clouds or some bullshit. I need you here, all of you, side by side with me."

  "Right. I couldn't have put it better." He nodded once, as if to affirm that to himself. I hesitantly pulled back my hand as I felt him start to shift, to stand. "Well, I'm going to do the graceful thing and exit stage right. Check the back tunnels, get some alone time, let this all settle in, you know?"

  "I can do that if you wa-"

  "No way, Indy," Ex said, shaking his head. "I'm not the one with the gaping calf wound. We need you as good as possible before we do ... well ... whatever it is we do." He flashed me a wan smile and headed off into the gloom of the nearby tunnels.

  It had been the right thing to do and, painful as it was, I was pretty sure I handled that a lot better than the entire rest of our relationship combined. Still, I felt for the man. I wondered if things would ever really get back to how they were before we had complicated our lives with that. More than that, the very fact I was contemplating doing it again was probably grounds for being put in an insane asylum. The thing was ... was I actually going to do it or not?

  "Archer, we have to talk."

  For the rest of those long hours of watching the gloom, I had no real company save the occasional muffled peals of laughter or overly-loud whispers of teenaged voices. I almost made my best 'old woman waving her cane' impression at the kids but who was I to decide to ban fun right now? Ex and Archer both seemed to decide, hopefully independently, to give me space, despite the fact I had been pretty clear that I didn't need any. So much for people listening.

  It was when it was time to change positions that I limped over to intercept Archer before we entered the general mingle of the others. If direct was what was called for, then direct I was going to be.

  "Anything you wish, milady," he smiled and glanced past me. "I take it this is something of a private discussion?"

  I answered with my best 'no shit' look which evoked an uncomfortable back step from the bowman.

  "Duly noted, Indomitable." Casting a glance around as he smoothed his mustache, he looked back at me. "We seem to have a moment's privacy. What do you wish to talk about?"

  "You. Me." I pressed my hands together and tried to put thoughts into words. "Look, I've been in two relationships in the past year. One was really deep, one could have been if I had let it, but both of them got completely screwed up, so -"

  "Wait, just a moment, milady." He quirked a smile. "Are you implying by this strange ramble that you engender some tender feelings for me?"

  I punched him in the shoulder, eliciting a cry of surprise. Archer rubbed at his probably-bruising joint as he gaped at me.

  "Don't play stupid. I hate stupid." My scowl was only momentary. "You're not the poncy swashbuckler you play at and you're also not the non-thinking head-bowing Crusader drone you seemed to be at the start."

  "I am guilty of both things yet these things do not automatically imply romance." He raised his hands defensively. "Now, lest m
ilady think that I would not reciprocate such feelings, to be truthful, how could anyone, man or woman, not do so in time once you have set your sights on such? Through sheer willpower alone, not even speaking of your other virtues, milady could bend the most stubborn of hearts to her whim."

  "That's exactly the point, Archer," I said as I rubbed at my temples. "I can barrel right into things, no matter how smart I think I am or how rational I think I'm acting and the last thing I want to do right now is to barrel into yet another one." I favored the bowman with a smile. "Now that I'm not so wrapped up in my own screwed-up head, I can accept that you've got feelings about me. Maybe I do about you."

  "Ah, but you have also realized that you are about to charge headlong into yet another situation, set to perhaps turn another friendship into a tangled morass of confused feelings and burning bridges?"

  "Right in one." I shrugged my shoulders. In my mind, I knew this was the right thing to do but, still, I felt like I was hurting another friend. It was probably just my over-developed sense of responsibility. "As much as I want to say 'damn the consequences, we could be dead tomorrow', well, what if we don't die?"

  "Milady ..." Archer paused, as much from emotion as for effect, "... you do this humble knight a great service with your honesty. Would that all men and women be so noble as to follow in your example, then there would be much less gnashing of teeth and beating of the breast in errors of passion. Besides, 'twould be sheer folly to tie our hearts down now, in this moment of turmoil, when impulse is the driver of the chariot of the mind instead of reason."

  I nodded slowly. This was the part I had been worried the most about. Would the man whose inner thoughts turned him into a modern day knight be able to deal with this kind of, well, rational approach to the feelings he had? Instead, it looked like the rational, scientific mind that designed a suit of power armor (even if it was Pushtech) had prevailed. I felt a smile coming on as I realized he was smiling too.

  "You are a real piece of work, you know that?"

  "Methinks most would argue that you are far more of one than myself."

  "Flatterer."

  "I speak but the truth."

  "Okay, let's just agree to get a shower and some shut-eye before this flirting makes either of us reconsider the sane, rational decision we both just made."

  "On this, I concur."

  So, in the end, that was the end of that. After navigating that tangled minefield, I was feeling strangely optimistic about trying to untangle the Crusader problem.

  It couldn't possibly be more difficult than the affairs of the heart.

  Chapter 19 Change

  Despite the high of navigating my current slate of personal problems, the reward of a good night's sleep was still out of reach. You could argue that no one could sleep well in a sewer, but that wasn't the cause. Now that my mind was clear, all it could do was try to figure out how to deal with Epic and whoever else was calling the shots for the Crusaders now. That was the last obstacle ... without them out of the way, we would never be able to free Alma from her crystal prison in the Plaza and even rescuing Choi and Brooks would be a minor gesture at best. What had, at first, seemed so simple was now a tangle of strings, not to mention our mysterious impossible figure that seemed to be tweaking everyone's nose.

  Though the abbreviated six hours of rest had only given me fitful bouts of sleep, near the end of it, I had a break-through. A single, insane thought. The problems with it were myriad, not the least of which was selling it to a crowd of justifiably eager-to-fight Push Heroes. Still, I had to try.

  Our next meal, which Quentin refused to acknowledge as meeting the standard of a real breakfast (he swatted Hex on the back of the head with an improvised spatula when he suggested such), was scarce and unfulfilling, but it was something. It was also a very real indicator that our time in this sewer sanctuary was over.

  "That's that, folks," Strange said. "Unless you want to go cook sewer rats. I know an excellent Rat on a Stick recipe I've been meaning to try."

  "Had it, ain't a fan, son," Twister frowned under his handlebar mustache. "Besides, it's time to get to doing instead of hiding. We licked our wounds, got some shuteye, nothing more to do."

  "Except we ssstill don't have a plan," Medusa hissed. "We can't go up there and jussst sssstart punching thingsss."

  "I've been trying to think of an alternate plan but so far I've got zilch," Extinguisher confessed. "We can only make a stab in the dark at how many chiefs there are now in the Crusaders. What did you tell me right before I crashed, Twister, there's at least four?"

  "At least. I'd wager that Battalion's little army is working on its own now. Gaslight and Bio have always been more wrapped up in science than anything else, so no doubt they're doing their own work now. Then you've got some folks still waiting for Epic to come out and take the lead again and, finally, us who are looking to break away." The lawman adjusted his Stetson. "And that's not even considering anyone else who's put on some big-boy pants and started ordering folks around in Epic's name."

  "I can confirm that," Archer said, looking up from where he was feverishly tinkering with his gear. "'T would seem that, with how dominant of a force Epic was, that all it takes is to drop his name and to not waver in confidence in your ruse and most Crusaders will do whatever you order."

  "Shoot, I hate to say it," Hexagon said with surprising softness, "maybe we should bust down the dome then. Let the government sort all of this out. We can just concentrate on minimizing the damage, right?"

  "Henry, I don't think that would work ssso well," Meds frowned as her snakes writhed. She put a scaled hand over one of his six. "Who knowsss what they might do? Thisss kind of thing hasss never happened before."

  "Well, ma'am, not since the Civil War," Voltage buzzed in. "From my own experience, I would say that the Army does have very specific rules of engagement and will try to minimize any collateral damage unless pressed." His electric pattern distorted. Anxiety, I thought, was the intended effect. "The problem is, well, they are going to get pressed and pressed hard. I doubt any of those Crusader folks are going to just stand down."

  "I've got an idea." I finally decided to say my peace. Quentin and Meds had already been looking at me before I even spoke as if expecting the final answer to come from me. The others seemed to snap to as soon as I opened my mouth.

  "There's only one way I can think of that we can fix this." I glanced around at the ragtag resistance around me. "There's only one person who can get this situation in order."

  "No one's going to like what you're about to say, Doc," Quentin smirked. Ex shot a glance at the cook in black, but quickly moved his eyes back to me.

  "No, probably not." I took a deep breath. "The fact of the matter is we need Epic. We, I, somebody needs to fix him."

  It was the fact that it was so antithetical to my own desires that I had wanted to avoid this most simple of solutions. After all, I had promised Stephanya a few boots to Epic's head. The rampant chaos, though, was because Epic had lost power, lost faith, and so anyone and everyone was in charge. If he was back in control, well, the situation simplified greatly. That was only the tip of the iceberg though, but the rest, well, was a hunch. One that I was sure the others, mostly in the thrall of the Whiteout's reality, wouldn't understand.

  "Uhm, Ms. Indy, maybe I'm waaaaay out of place but," the Mighty Polymer said, raising another oversized hand as if in a classroom, "making the most powerful person in the world more powerful before we fight him doesn't really make much sense."

  "I must agree with the young one," Mind's Eye joined in. "It is tactically unsound and, to be frank, still relies on a degree of conjecture, mainly that empowering him once more will provide an antidote to the splits in the Crusader army."

  "Eye, your stock-in-trade is hunches and prophecy. Sometimes you need to take a leap of faith, you know." This wasn't going to be easy, convincing them, and this was still the easiest part of the whole scenario.

  "Well, I for one think Dr. Roman i
s dead on with this," Strange said, flashing two thumbs up. "It's a great idea and I'm proud to be a part of it."

  "Though I am pained to do so in the wake of such a tired reference," Frost rumbled, "to be true, there is a hint of brilliance in the insanity of your conjectures, Indy." She began to pace, gesturing animatedly as she spoke. "It is like any other tale of a broken fellowship. An aging king lets his nobles run rampant and must once more take up the mantle of leadership to reforge what once was and make it even stronger. True, this would seem to be an ill omen for us but the other options are even worse. Maybe -"

  "- there is a chance for something greater to come of this!" Archer was on his feet and Frost gave him a broad smile, showing far too many teeth for anyone's comfort. "What if, in reforging the fallen Lord Epic, his guiding principles are restored and fortified? Perhaps we can not only bring the wayward Crusaders to heel, but reinvigorate the order with new, stronger principles!"

  "I hafta admit, when you put it that way," Twister said, his eyes lost in nostalgia, "I'd have to say I'd like to see that. Shoot, it's not even been a year, but at the start of all of this, everything seemed so ... golden. If we could have that back and more -"

  "Hold on a moment," Ex interjected. "You guys can't be serious!" He looked at everyone with exasperation in his eyes. "We can't put the Crusaders back together stronger than they were. They're the problem here, not the solution."

  "I know it seems crazy, Ex, I really do." I stood up now, it was time to really push this. Frost had actually stumbled on to, in her own creative way, what had struck me last night. Despite the lingering throbs of pain in my calf, I stood straight and tall, trying to sound as confident as I could.

  "The real enemy has always been the bad guys -- the criminals, the people who bully, oppress, and live with prejudice. In this whole war with the Crusaders, we've been beating each other up not about who the bad guys were, but how to deal with them. Think of all the blood we've spilled because of it and, more importantly, of all the innocent people who got hurt because we were too busy infighting to save them." I raised my hand to deflect the oncoming objections; I was far from finished.