by Jon Davis
Motioning with a hand, I began walking down a pathway that skirted the upper hill of the valley. A dirt path made for bikers and walkers both; it was wide and took a winding path through the thick forest. Eventually, we stopped running into other guests. At one point, a break in the forest showed a full view of the valley from one side to the other. Treetops mixed in with a wild assortment of flowers in full bloom. It wasn’t a very large valley, but the depth and breadth of it lent to beauty of the scenery.
BJ saw it and whistled. He said, “Wow. Alex said he’d show me the place someday. He wasn’t kidding about the beauty. I never knew Iowa could have something like this.”
I just nodded. The beauty was breathtaking. We watched over the valley for a while longer. On the other side, where the valley rose up on the eastern ridge, I saw a hawk flying above the trees and crying out. As it flew up into the sky away from us, I pulled out the computer disk Eisenhawk had given me. I handed it over to BJ.
After a moment’s look at it, he said, “Have you seen what was on it?”
I said, “Nope. And right now, I want it hidden away. Ian didn’t just zap Alexi’s mind. From what I’ve overheard, everyone who saw that information has developed some selective amnesia. Even Erick Ryan has little recall about it.”
“So why give it to me?” BJ said.
For a few moments, I said nothing. The hawk had appeared again, and I watched its flight among the faraway trees. I took the moment to gather my thoughts.
Then, I said, “For whatever reason, you seem to be an unknown to the public. You weren’t seen on camera at the hospital; what recordings survived show just me, and that’s all garbled now, too. And Delmar only caught your costume, not your face.”
Tapping the disk in his hand, I said, “Add that in with your shielding ability and you should be able to keep Ian’s people from finding out about its whereabouts.”
BJ said, “And what about the other Empowered? Shouldn’t they know about it, too? I mean, we still have a lot of things to figure out.”
I shrugged. I said, “Look its contents over. If you can figure things out, great, but for now the Empowered are in too much disarray with everyone scrambling to catch up. Unless there’s another Yasmine in the world, we all should be able to take the time to work things out about ourselves. As for anyone else, I don’t want them to have information that could get us hurt.”
BJ was putting the DVD in his jacket. He hesitated for a moment, and then, giving me a baffled look, said, “Them?”
The hawk called in the distance, crying out with exultation over its flight. I said nothing for a moment, wishing that I could take part in such freedom.
Finally, I looked back at him, and said, “Oh, the government, the unnamed corporation, the evil masterminds, the vile creatures of the pit, the innocent schmuck with a lust for dominance—you name it. They’re out there.”
I snorted, suddenly realizing something. “Not to mention that the Noumenonii will try to get that info again. You know, I just realized something. The night they tried to send Yama at us…”
BJ cocked his head to the side, giving me a look. “You told me that Alex blocked them by aerobraking the asteroid.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Remember that night? It wasn’t just the Solstice. There was a prophecy thing going on. It was based off the old Mayan calendar and some big-mouth’s ‘recalculation’ of it’s true date for the end of the world.”
The redhead nodded. “Yeah, I remember now. Why bring it up?”
I looked at him. “It just seems awfully coincidental that those guys would send Yama at us right then, is all. The Noumenonii have one sick sense of humor.”
BJ grunted, looking at the faraway hawk. After a moment, he said, “You know that the info will get to them, Vaughn. It’s basic biology. Eventually, maybe even now, they will have an Empowered to examine. Ian’s mind erasure stunts just put the Noumenonii back. But it didn’t wipe out the ability to find it out.”
I nodded. I said, “I know, I know. But right now, we should take the time to see if there’s a chink in our armor. We know of one. I think I ran into it during the fight with Brand. I got hurt bad, and while I healed, it was as though I couldn’t use my power. That’s a bad thing in a fight. So if there’s more, we should be ready for it.”
I grimaced and said, “Wasn’t I just at a joy filled party? I think I had better get back to it. Do you want to join in? Mom and Dad would love to have you.”
He snorted and said, “Nah, I have to go back and see if I can find the servers that Parry used to store the conclave data. I’m hoping to find where she lived. If I can get that, maybe…”
Paradoxis…up until this point, I hadn’t given her any real thought. But without her gathering people in, there was no way of knowing where things might've ended. I would never have lost Brand, or my home, or…well, everything. But she did try to take the proverbial tiger by the tail. Without her, we might have ended up with a far worse existence than what we had now. I just hoped she was able to get out of whatever trouble Yasmine had caused her. And now, I had a feeling that BJ was going to try to rescue her.
I said, “Well, I don’t want to be a superhero, but if you need help, don’t hesitate to call.”
BJ grinned and said, “Oh, I won’t! Trust me, tweety! You’ll be the first person I call for help!”
I rolled my eyes and, with a wave, began walking back down the path to go rejoin the wedding reception. But before I got more than a few steps, BJ called out. “What do you want, Vaughn? Out of all of this, what do you want?”
I looked back at him thinking on that. What did I want? Angela, Brand—yes, I wanted them back in my life. I wanted to go read a comic and not feel like saying, ‘Been there, done that.’ I wanted to listen to a song and not have to turn the volume way down if I lost the low-level concentration I now needed to enjoy it.
But what did I really want? I said, “Something of Alex’s. By any chance, do you have something personal of his? Something you won’t miss, I mean.”
BJ nodded after taking a moment to think on it. He said, “I think I have something.”
A few days after the wedding, in the early morning, before sunrise, I climbed onto the church roof. I noticed that the backpack we’d left there so long ago was gone. I grinned at the memories of that night and looked over the town. The streetlights showed below on the streets, but that was it. The colors of Christmas would be for another night. I doubted I would be up here then. What sight could ever replace that fateful night?
When the sky lightened up in the east, I walked to the north end of the church. I waited for the morning breeze from the southwest, and then opened up the two boxes I had brought.
“Alex, be at peace…wherever you are.” Ashes flew away, and I closed the box up.
“Brand…give the devil hell, man.” His ashes floated away in the dying breeze. By that point, the sun was starting to peek over the horizon—time to get off the church roof before I was seen. I climbed back down with ease. But once my feet were on the ground, I heard someone clear his throat. I looked around without a care and smiled at Hector Gutierrez. He smiled back.
“Hector.”
“Vaughn. Good climb?”
“Yep.”
“Nice view?”
“Yep.”
“Finish what you needed to do?”
“Yep.”
“Gonna do it again?”
“Nope.”
“Good morning, then.”
“It is. It really is.”
With that, I walked into the morning dawn, listening to the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
To write a book about the idea of superhuman beings and not acknowledge some of the greatest writers of comics would be a wrong in and of itself. Sadly, one cannot list all of those who have made comic book super heroes great and popular in many ways. That would be a deserved book all by itself.
Indeed, Grant Morrison, a very prolific writer who has helped modernize the her
o for the twenty-first century has himself written such a good history. Not to give him a plug, but if you are in the mood, download or buy the book called, Supergods. I found this to be an excellent source of understanding of how comics have developed over the years.
But there are those who deserve every award possible for their efforts to create a type of art and story that brings forth the essence of mythos in heroism and yes, villainy. The top of these are the men who created them all, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman.
With Superman, Siegel and Shuster developed not only the basis of the ideal hero in a time when it was so very needed for morale in a country at war, their creation went on to become a decade’s long icon seen as the core for all heroes in the super-hero genre. Indeed, Superman was in some ways the single greatest hero from which all others could emerge from in the decades following.
Without Superman, no other superhuman hero would exist. And the world would have indeed been a darker place. Moreover, from Siegel and Schuster, others continued their actions. A prime example is Jack Kirby, artist to Fantastic Four and creator of the New Gods. As an artist, he defined so much of the genre that even today we still follow his lead in the worlds created by his command of the pencil and ink.
With him was Stan Lee who, during a time when so many heroes had fallen to fear that such art and stories was evil to the youth of America, he knew that it was time to create new heroes and return the old ones to life. He created Fantastic Four, Spiderman, X-Men, and oh so many others. From him is the hero of today that we see in movies, television, and comics.
More personally, this is for the artist/writers Dave Cockrum and John Byrne and the writer Chris Claremont. In the late 1970’s and the 1980’s, this trio created a completely new world of heroes that rebirthed the concept that different was good. The X-Men were there at a time when a young man so very much needed the moral boost of the story.
But beyond comics, this is also for Eric and Rich, who kept me going after every incarnation of this series came back to haunt me.
This is also for Breez, who pushed me to go on in one way or another throughout the years.
Cover Art by Ross Jura. (Thanks, my good friend)
And a special thanks to Ashley Davis for the wonderful editing. Without her efforts, this book would be far less than what it is. If any mistakes are found in this rewrite, it is my fault, not the editors.
