by Matt Carter
“Where is he?” I yelled back, pulling together a plan.
Remember Spongeman.
Her eyes flashed, briefly. “Northwest of you, about eight meters.”
I wasn’t sure exactly how much that was supposed to be, but I gave it my best guess, ripping up a large chunk of earth covered in Everywhere Men and lifting it into the air.
“You got him,” she said, whirling her staff around and preparing to throw it again.
It felt like if she could land the hit that this fight would be over and we’d be able to get out of here with just a few cuts and bruises to our name.
Not so bad.
Then Helios swooped in.
I’d never really felt him hit; he was usually good at pulling his punches. This time, though, he hit me with the full force of his flight and superstrength.
My suit and my powers softened the blow some, but not enough.
I could hear, and feel, my ribs crack, and I could taste blood, and all of that was in the split second before he ripped my feet from the ground
I knew we were flying away at a great speed, and I knew he was punching me, blasts of his brilliant golden sun energy shooting off in every direction with every impact.
I reached out and focused blindly at him, blasting myself away.
I was falling and, like the previous time, was glad I didn’t know how high up I was. I just knew which way was down, and that was enough.
Focus.
I blasted downward with my hands, slowing the descent and trying to touch down gently.
Trying to, at least.
Where I was expecting ground, there was water, so I stumbled and fell in face first.
Everything hurt. It felt like I was bleeding out of every orifice. My suit was torn, my helmet so badly shattered that water started to fill it. It wasn’t even that deep, knee-high at most. Dying like this, drowning in a big puddle, wouldn’t have been particularly dignified, but it would have been easy. A few breaths in, a little struggling, fading into darkness, that’s all it’d take. I didn’t want to die, but I could have if I wanted to.
And if you do, Helios wins.
Fuck that, I thought, forcing myself painfully to my feet.
The helmet was a lost cause; I couldn’t even think it open. I just ripped it off and tossed it in the water, quickly taking in my surroundings.
No way. Cool.
I was standing in the middle of the reflecting pool on the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial to my left, the World Wars Memorial and the twin obelisks of the Washington and El Capitán Monuments to my right.
I’d always planned on visiting someday, I just never expected it’d be like this.
Tourists stared at me in awe, taking pictures with their phones. I waved to them.
A golden blur to my left. Helios was coming at me.
He was fast. He could fly. I couldn’t.
Remember your training.
I couldn’t fly, but I could half-ass it.
I aimed my hands down and focused off the ground as hard as I could, launching myself backward through the air like a cannonball while creating a massive jet of water that blocked out Helios. I could keep ahead of him, barely, by holding the focus out, narrowly aiming myself between the obelisks and landing on the grass of the mall, harder than I’d have liked, but alive.
Unfortunately all this did was buy me an additional three seconds before Helios was back on me.
I focused a shield around myself, able to deflect most of his energy blasts and even his heavy punches. It couldn’t hold it, not forever, and he took advantage of a flicker in my focus, breaking through and blasting me through the wall of the second floor of the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
I must have been a mess. I could barely stand. I tried crawling through the shattered debris and artifacts, attempting to escape down one of the halls. The tourists who weren’t running and screaming and were taking the time to take my picture must’ve gotten one helluva show.
I wheezed, “Run you stupid fuc—”
Helios smashed a hole through the wall and was on me before I could finish. He kicked me in my broken ribs, forcing me to cry out in pain.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I’m the hero! You’re the villain!” he yelled, tears streaming through his mask as he kicked me harder. “The hero always wins!”
I focused on a broken slab of marble and hurled it at him. He blew it apart in midair.
“Cute.”
He grabbed nearly a dozen jagged pieces of debris and a few display cases and hurled them at me. I was able to dodge most of them, but the glass display case hit like a dump truck, knocking me down before shattering against a wall. Dazed and bloodied though I was, I couldn’t help but feel some grim amusement at what fluttered from it.
Well, Aidan, now you can say you’ve seen the Gettysburg Address.
“You fucked up, Aidan. We could’ve had something special. We could’ve been archnemeses for the ages, but you had to grow a conscience! You, the fucking murderer, had to grow some morals! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m not evil,” I spat out. “Not like you.”
“LIAR!” he roared, forming a massive ball of swirling gold and white energy between his hands.
Before he could launch it, he was hit by a giant black cat with claws the size of butcher knives. They tore through his suit and into his flesh, making him scream as he fought it away. Random bursts of energy from his hands blew holes in the wall, the ceilings, the display cases, even setting fire to the Star-Spangled Banner.
“That was very foolish what you did, Apex Strike!” my savior said mockingly.
“Thanks, Nevermore,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said, standing in one of the holes in the outer wall Helios had made. “Also, you look like shit.”
“Feeling worse than it,” I said, looking down at my torn, battered body. “Didn’t I used to have a pinky?”
“You still do. It’s just bent all the way back.”
“Oh. That’s where that went,” I said, thankful for the pain-dulling nature of shock.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” she said, putting an arm underneath my shoulders. A pair of massive, black raven’s wings burst from her back, and though she was wobbly in flight and clearly unsteady with them, she was able to glide us back onto the mall.
I started, “The others—”
“Are fine, and they are en route. Trojan Fox’s flight units were damaged, so I was the only one who could follow fast. But they are coming soon. Until then, you just have me.”
“Lucky me.”
“You could do worse,” she said, flashing her rare, human smile.
If I weren’t all covered in blood and dying, I might have kissed her.
Before I could, I heard people screaming and the terrible sound of a mountain being ripped apart.
Helios had used his energy blasts and telekinesis to destroy the base of the Washington Monument and was tipping it right on us.
“Helios, what the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled.
I focused a powerful bubble around Nevermore and myself. For good measure, she threw up a few brick walls from her tattoos in a box around us as well.
Thousands of tons of stone slammed down around us. It took every bit of energy and focus we had to hold the barrier. So much weight, so much focus, we were pushed into the ground like a peg.
But we held.
A little more focus, and I blasted us a path to the surface.
We crawled out, looking at the chaos and devastation around us. Helios was nowhere in sight, but there were plenty of cop cars and news vehicles on their way. We were already being circled by helicopters and drones, but they kept their distance.
“Maybe they scared him off,” I said.
“Maybe we scared him off,” she said.
She laughed. I joined her. It felt like we were losing our minds, but somehow we were still alive.
Then a blas
t of golden light made her body go rigid, and she gave a brief cry of pain. She was lit up like an angel, so bright I had to close my eyes.
When I could open them again, all I could see was the charred skeleton that used to belong to Nevermore.
I couldn’t process. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t do anything but roar blindly into the sky.
Helios hovered in front of me, looking at her blackened bones. “Bitch.”
My body began to heat up as though I was on fire. With that energy, I focused a heavy blast right at his chest, knocking him back down onto the mall. He countered with his own energy. We were blasting each other back and forth so much, screaming and yelling impotent, animalistic sounds as we tried to finish the other but couldn’t quite.
He threw another chunk of the monument at me. I blocked. That was enough distraction for him to blast me in the right foot with one of his energy bursts. My suit took most of the heat away, but the force still shattered my ankle sideways, flooring me to the ground.
“We’ve got an audience. Any last words, supervillain?” he said, floating twenty feet off the ground, his hands glowing.
I looked behind him and managed a broken, awful smile.
“Yeah. Long live the New Offenders!” I roared out, laughing.
He turned to follow my gaze and got half a dozen mini-rockets from Trojan Fox for his trouble. He was able to project a protective aura around his body which saved him from serious damage from these. Her lasers, on the other hand, they hurt him.
Before he could retaliate, he screamed in fear.
“I’m blind! Give me back my eyes you supervillain fucks!” he cried out, spinning around and firing blindly, shots smashing into museums, police cars, the sky, the ground.
Thank you Spasm.
“Now, Geode!” Ghost Girl called out. Geode lifted her into one of his massive hands and tossed her through the air. Her gloves were off, and when she hit Helios, she tightly wrapped them around his neck. His screams stopped, and a look of pure terror took over his face as the two of them slowly fell to the ground. The glowing aura around his body began to flicker, then fall apart when they hit the ground. Ghost Girl seemed to be the only one able to walk away.
“What did you do to me? What was that?” Helios roared.
Spasm was at my side, fixing my ankle and my ribs and some of the worse cuts.
“You’ll need some time in a pod to fix the worst of it, but I’ll get you on your feet,” he said, pulling me to my feet to prove he was true to his word. I was wobbly, but I managed.
“WHAT DID YOU SHOW ME? WHAT DID YOU SHOW ME?” Helios repeated, looking around with blank eyes.
“I showed you who you are, and all the ugliest skeletons in your closet,” Ghost Girl said, punching him in his beautiful jaw hard enough to send blood and teeth flying.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!” he slurred.
I walked up to him, flexing my hands, trying to direct my focus. Small bits of debris began to float around me as I walked past, and I could feel everything and everyone on the mall. The others didn’t try to stop me.
“Spasm, give him his eyes,” I said.
He did, and Helios looked up at me fearfully. He tried to focus his powers back, but the hangover from what Ghost Girl had shown him had hit too hard.
I focused, lifting him off the ground by his outspread arms. He moaned pitifully, then started thrashing and yelling.
“You can’t do this to me! You can’t! I’m a superhero!”
“You’re not a superhero,” I said. “You’re just an asshole.”
(Witty quips are hard to come up with when you’ve lost a lot of blood.)
Focus.
His body jerked and shuddered in a very familiar way, and that same slurping, crunching sound that Icicle Man made was practically music to my ears as I turned Helios inside out and dropped the steaming mess onto the ground.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Trojan Fox said. “They got the Tri-Hole network back up, and the Protectors will be here any—”
Helios’s remains jerked, starting to rise.
“No fucking way—”
An ethereal, ghostly form of gold and white light rose from his body. Briefly, it turned its alien and serene face to me, and smiled.
“I am the Charioteer, one of the fourteen Keys of the Cosmos. Thank you, Aidan Salt, for freeing me. One day, soon, when your planet’s reckoning is at hand, I will return and repay your kindness,” it said in an ethereal voice, rocketing into the sky with a blinding flash of light.
A brief moment of awkward silence took over our chunk of the mall.
“What, the fuck, was that?” Spasm asked.
Trojan Fox shrugged. “Shit like that’s always happening around superheroes.”
She pulled a stolen Tri-Hole generator from her belt and pulled up an exit for us.
“Wait!” I exclaimed, motioning for Geode to help me. Taking Helios’s bloody cape, we gathered up Nevermore’s bones.
She deserved to be buried with friends.
One at a time, the five of us stepped through the Tri-Hole, each of us landing around the Christmas tree in the middle of the foyer back home.
I was tired.
I was hurt.
I was sad.
But I was also relieved. It felt, for now, that for the first time in close to a year, we might have been free.
Someone started clapping slowly from the shadows.
“Not bad. Not bad at all, kids,” she said slowly.
We all drew our weapons and powers on her, but Blackjack made no move to fight back as she walked out of the shadows.
“You did good, but want to do even better?”
#Supervillainy101: Flight of The New Offenders
It’s a rare occurrence when everything goes to hell in your favor, but when it does happen, it’s a beautiful thing.
After the Battle of Washington, DC, most of the surviving heroes (Everywhere Man, Comet Girl, Armada, and Morningstar) were taken into custody and placed in a hardened DSA facility for questioning. Extreme Man escaped in the chaos, though since it’s hard for a guy with a graying mohawk covered in pouches and guns to hide, he shouldn’t stay hidden long.
Most governments and the superhero hype machine tried to gloss over the conspiracy, but the Protectors made enough political enemies to make sure they would be held accountable to the accusations. President Perez has called for hearings, the Supreme Soviet isn’t far behind, and though they’re dragging their feet, British Parliament should join soon enough.
Sponsors of the Kayfabe heroes caught in the Battle of Washington, DC, have already dropped them, and those whose names Trojan Fox released have slowly started shedding them.
The Protectors and many of their satellite teams have temporarily been shut down for “internal review and restructuring.” Though superheroics still take place, they’re more apt to be vigilantes or privately held.
Or El Capitán, since nothing could stop him from saving people.
The New Offenders are still recognized as a terrorist organization by most respectable world powers, but there is a growing swell of support for our actions after we made our story public, and not just among the enemies of the empires (though the aid we’ve received from Lemuria, Atlantis, and New R’lyeh has been nice). Some have started to call us folk heroes, which does have a pretty good ring to it.
We may even manage to earn that title some day.
When we’re not being villains, of course.
#LessonLearned: Everything changes.
24
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have taken my helmet off in DC.
With my face all over the news, it was impossible to be myself in public. A baseball cap, shaggy wig, and sunglasses were all that protected me when Ghost Girl and I attended the next Mary Rising.
“They won’t notice you,” Ghost Girl said. “You’ll be fine.”
Nervously, I spun a pen between my finge
rs.
“It just feels like—”
“They’re here to see Mary rise, not you. So look like you want to see some death, and you’ll blend right in,” she said, comfortingly as we walked through the crowd. I laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I got into this… lifestyle because I didn’t want to blend in anymore. I was tired of being just another face in the crowd. I wanted people to notice me. I wonder if I went a little too far.”
“I think, in this case, going too far was a good thing. The whole world is changing because of you.”
“Because of us,” I clarified.
If her face weren’t wrapped in a scarf, I imagine that would have gotten a raised eyebrow. “I was wondering if you would give us all credit.”
“What can I say, I’m growing up,” I said, catching my gaze wandering down to her chest. “Mostly.”
“Good to see you haven’t changed completely.”
“That’s not a matter of changing, that’s me just trying to get something nice to hold onto while I’m in—”
Spasm pushed his way through the crowd towards us, tossing a lit cigarette on the ground and crushing it out. “I hate to break up your flirtation, but it’s time.”
“Hey, keep your pants on, we’ve got time,” I said as we made our way through the crowd.
“You’ve got time, I’m just here until this job’s done. Then it’s back to Belfast and giving the redcapes all the hell I can.”
“Whatever floats your boat. Just be glad you don’t have to go where I’m going.”
“And we are glad you’re helping us with this,” Ghost Girl added.
True to what Spasm said, it was beginning. A few heroes had come in through a Tri-Hole, but no heavy hitters. Too many people had been implicated in the Kayfabe files, and many others had been taken off duty as potential accessories. It would take a while for them to figure everything out, but until then, most active heroes we’d seen were second- and third-stringers. That would make this next part easy.
The loudspeakers told us to quiet down, again.
Green mist and green light came from the mine entrance.
