by Ben Bequer
Praise for Blackjack Villain
“I practically wrote half of it. If you see something that’s good, I came up with it. Anything that really sucks, I tried to talk him out of.” - Joshua Hoade, editor/friend
“Eerily similar to something I wrote back in 1984. My attorneys will be in touch.” - Harlan Ellison, “possibly the most contentious person on Earth”
“What? Who?” - R. A. Salvatore
“The most groundbreaking work of fiction since Tolkien.” - Ben Bequer
“Seriously, get the hell away from me.” - George Takei at a book signing
“We’re not in the business of reviewing such filth.” - Publishers Weekly
Blackjack Villain
Ben Bequer
Contents
Praise for Blackjack Villain
Blackjack Villain
Blackjack Villain, Copyright © 2012 by Ben Bequer
Part One
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Three
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Four
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part Five
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Author’s Notes
Cast of Characters
excerpt from: Blackjack Wayward
Selected Artwork from Blackjack Villain
For Victor
Blackjack Villain, Copyright © 2012 by Ben Bequer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to us using the contact information below.
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Cover and interior art by Erik Von Lehman
http://erikvonlehmann.deviantart.com/
email: [email protected]
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Printed in the United States of America
He was not the Model Boy of the village.
He knew the model boy very well though--and loathed him.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
-0-
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of victories
Plato
Part One
FAIR IS FOUL, FOUL IS FAIR
Prologue
I sensed him well before I could see him. A man in my line of business learns to respect every random anxious feeling, or he doesn’t last long.
This guy had the subtlety of a category 5 hurricane. He also had powers and an ego to match. No sooner had I come out onto the balcony of my Malibu home to take in the sunset and down a cold beer than the entire landscape changed. It transformed from the warm purple and orange, to darkness, swept through by shadows, as a whole storm front moved in too fast to be a natural occurrence. The slight breeze turned into a gale, and the clouds above coalesced into the outline of a cruel smiling face, eyes illuminated with white-yellow lightning.
I dropped my beer and threw myself through the sliding glass door as the first crackle of lighting tore into the balcony, exploding inward along with a cloud of wood and glass. I flew through the air like a rag doll flung by an angry child, spearing through a wall into the kitchen and coming to a rest atop the shattered remains of the center island.
The air crackled electrostatically, and my lungs burned as every breath felt like a surge of wafting energy. I came to my feet and glanced over my shoulders through the wrecked wall at the wide chasm that lay beyond the smoldering balcony. I shook the glass and dust out of my face, and noticed the hairs of my arms standing on end as he entered, carried aloft by his god-like powers and after looking around his stern gaze settled upon me.
I blinked my vision clear, but the world still had a bright white tinge. It illuminated him like an angel as he touched down into the remains of my living room. He was tall and powerful, wearing ridiculous blue and yellow tights. He called himself Atmosphero. Yes, Atmosphero. My real name is Dale McKeown, but I’m known as...
“Blackjack,” he said “fancy meeting you here.”
I should have jumped out of the way, or maybe I did but he was faster, lancing his horrible powers at me through the hole in the wall, raw lightning crackling through my body. I screamed, overcome with rage, impotence and pain, as I watched him destroy the remnants of the wall in front of me and shatter the entire kitchen around me. Light exploded in the back of my mind, and I thought bitterly of the sunset I enjoyed a minute before.
A gust of wind lifted me off the ground, like an overgrown marionette, as lightning racked my body like a thousand pulled muscles and tendons all at once. He cackled, reveling in his power and tossed me across the room. I careened into the dual steel refrigerators, destroying them and bathing their contents as I fell to the floor. Caked in milk, juice and egg, I was momentarily out of sight, and that was the only chance I needed.
Because Atmosphero wasn’t the only one in the room with super powers.
He was hidden by what remained of the wall between my living room and kitchen but I could feel where he was, and imagined him strolling forward casually to finish me off.
I buried my dislike for the peacock and flung a massive piece of marble through the wall. It was effortless, like throwing a Frisbee. The huge shard of countertop tore through drywall and studs, like a tank rolling downhill and I laughed, thinking I had him.
Hopping through the wide hole, I saw him standing there, unharmed, the marble countertop floating in the air a few feet from him. His mocking smile dripped with disgust, as if he expected more of a challenge from me.
He flung the countertop back at me but I intercepted it with a punch, detonating it into a hailstorm of marble fragments. I rushed forward, but he took to the air to avoid me and my hairs stood on end as he charged up again.
“Come down here, asshole,” I roared. “And let me give you a proper welcome.”
I was bigger than him, bigger than most people, and a lot stronger. I usually depended on my bow and trick arrows, but in a straight up fight I could crush him.
“Aw, are you mad I beat you so easily last time?” I taunted, hoping he’d get reckless and rush me, but despite our growing grudge, he was a pro. Atmosphero was going to fight me on his terms.
“Damn man, that’s rough,” he chuckled, glancing around my shattered house. “I guess no subletting this one. But don’t worry; the walls in San Quentin are a bit sturdier.”
I rushed him, but he was quicker. My fingertips almost latched onto his cape as he flipped over me and flung a powerful charge of wind that heaved me out of the house through the damaged balcony, and down the rocky Malibu hill. I crashed down the clif
f through rock, brush and dirt, bouncing a half dozen times until I came to rest on the soft sands of the beach two hundred feet below my home.
Bruised and battered, I came to my unsteady feet and looked up, half-expecting the next bolt of lightning from Atmosphero, but he hovered over my home looking down at me. Maybe he was surprised I was still on my feet, or perhaps he was unsure what to do next, but he got an idea fast.
Atmosphero summoned up his storm powers with a wide cast of his hands, a tornado formed beneath and around my house, a great howl of wind and sand that ripped the structure from its foundation, piping and wooden struts and lifted the whole thing into the air.
Then he hurled it at me.
It came so fast, a whole house hurling headlong at me, that I had no way to avoid it, nowhere to go. I could only chortle before the house crushed me. The sheer weight of the tons of concrete and masonry forced me down, collapsing atop me and burying me deep in the sand. The crashing sound was deafening, a disharmonious mix of exploding wood, shattering glass and twisting metal. But I lived, and started to dig myself out.
Atmosphero helped, noticing the movement in the wreckage and wanting to finish me once and for all. He lifted a whole wall section off me, casting it aside. Still stuck under some of the structure, I could see him floating above; feel the rush of his wind powers lifting whole pieces of the devastated house.
Above me lay the bent and twisted remains of the garage door, and when he flung it away, I struck, hurling one of the destroyed refrigerators at him (though how the fridge ended up in what was essentially my garage, I’ll never know).
It caught him by surprise, slamming into his chest and knocking him over, pinning him long enough for me to reach him. I picked up the fridge and lifted it off his stunned and bloodied form; his eyes were filled with a mixture of rage and fear.
“Hey asshole,” I said, “Thanks for fucking up my house. Now I’m going to fuck up your face,” I said and slammed the heavy fridge down with my full strength back on him. I lifted it and pounded him once more with the shattered fridge, pulverizing the wobbly aluminum and plastic frame. Now it was my turn to rip through pieces of metal to get to him. And his turn to surprise me.
Atmosphero whipped back the remains of the refrigerator into me with his wind powers, sending me reeling a few paces. At the same time, he came to his feet and summoned a vortex of wind that spun around us, whipping up shreds and pieces of the destroyed home like a wall of metallic and wooden death.
“Time for you to learn a valuable lesson,” he said, spitting blood. Atmosphero slugged me across the face with more strength than I had imagined he had, but this was what I wanted: a standup fight.
The only problem was my body didn’t cooperate. My arms were heavy and useless, pinned to my sides and I stood there, semi-paralyzed, as he powered fist after fist into my face. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t focus my thoughts. I could barely stand. He unleashed his full fury and the pain of each blow was intense. I staggered backwards a few steps then fell down on to my knees, receiving more and more punishment, blow after pummeling blow.
The rub is he’d get away with it because he was the hero and I was a scumbag villain.
Chapter 1
For almost two years Atmosphero had been tracking me down, following my every move. I must have made a mistake, or maybe he was casing the regular villain hang out joints, then followed me home.
Takes a special guy to motivate someone to spend so much time after you, takes a guy like me, and it might be because the first time we met, I gave him plenty of reason to be upset.
I was out for the first time as Blackjack though that once I was on the other side of the equation, listening to police scanners, trying to do something decent, trying to make a difference like some idealistic fool.
It was one of those golden LA days, almost too perfect. I should have been on a beach, drinking something cold, but I was possessed those days, eager to use my powers, hungry for action. A call came in over my police scanner, a bank robbery nearby. I’d chased down a few and never made it in time, but this one was a few blocks away, and I got there before the guys were out of the bank.
They were a rough crew, three guys wearing combat fatigues and dark masks, sporting high-caliber assault weapons. The fourth swung a large black SUV in front of his partners as they left the bank, stopping only long enough for his team to dump the bags into the open trunk and jump in for the getaway. Long enough for me to find a nice vantage point.
I was in an earlier version of my costume, all black, with a long cape slung around a shoulder mounted quiver, and an off the shelf compound bow I had barely even practiced with. And why practice, to be honest? My physical gifts made practice a formality. The real challenge was in the field. I’m a super, I’ll be fine.
I lined up the shot at their SUV as it rushed towards my position. The driver was skilled, driving fast, but not so much that the tires made any noise, nor did he drop the gear so far that the engine howled unnaturally. They were barely going ten miles over the speed limit, making my shot that much easier.
As the big black truck got closer, I released the arrow and it found its mark. My aim was perfect, but my calculations on the explosive arrowhead were way off. The truck didn’t come to a nice and clean stop, its engine dead, as I had expected. The thing actually blew twenty feet into the air, spinning backwards from the explosive momentum generated under the engine, slamming into an oncoming car and coming to a screeching halt, inverted and facing the opposite direction. The devastating explosion blew out the windows of every car and storefront within three hundred yards and several other cars swerved wildly, causing an instant traffic jam.
I must have been off at least decimal point on the Heptanitrocubane charge, because nothing was left of the front half of the smoldering SUV, and the driver and passengers were ejected out in separate directions by the severity of the charge. In a split second’s mistake, I had gone from a hero in the making to a possible murderer.
I rushed to the burning car, coming up to the first of the injured bank robbers, unconscious and covered in flames. Using my cape to wrap him up, the fires extinguished soon enough, and a cursory examination showed this fellow to be in decent shape. That wasn’t the case for the next man I reached. His body was covered in burns that had eaten through his clothing. Quivering in shock, suffering from horrible injuries, I jumped on him, trying to smother the fire, and lay him on his back. He needed immediate medical help, and I didn’t hesitate, digging into my pack for a cell phone.
Then a heavy breeze hit the area, and the temperature dropped dramatically. A caped figure flew over me, and before I could turn to see it, or cry out for help, the super raked my body with lightning, hurling me at the burning vehicle.
It was Atmosphero.
He landed as I rolled into the roaring inferno of the SUV, summoning up another powerful electric charge. But I drew an arrow and fired it without missing a beat. The concussion charge erupted only a few inches from his face, dropping him unconscious in an instant.
And there I was, surrounded by injured bank robbers, by a passed out super who saw me as the bad guy, and at my feet was a sea of green.
One of the money bags had ruptured upon flying out of the rear of the truck, some of the money landing in a pile, some of it floating in the air, like a rain shower of twenty dollar bills, and still more was now kindling for the flames surrounding the car. There must have been ten thousand dollars in the split bag, and four more bags stuffed with money lay at my feet.
* * *
Of course I took the money. I took the bags, and even stuffed several wadded handfuls of burned 20s from the spilled bag into my pockets. I’d gone out to try to help people, to try to do some good, and ended up almost killing them.
I didn’t blame Atmosphero for that. As much of a hard-headed asshole as he was, the guy saw a dude in black doing creepy shit and went to town. That’s how they are.
Now, these were a bunch of hardened crimi
nals who tried to riddle me with bullets without even thinking about it. If not for Atmosphero, the police would have showed up, and I would’ve been a big hero, and that made no sense to me. At least one of those robbers was seriously burned, but the cops would have patted me on the back and sent me on my way. Maybe I would have gotten the keys to the city.
Was that what it was to be a hero? Was that what I wanted?
Not really. But even then, there wasn’t a seminal moment when I had the epiphany to go bad. It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be a villain. It was a series of small steps, each one leading you farther down the downward spiral. I doubt the real bad guys, the monsters the whole world fears, started much different than I. One mistake, then another, and before I knew it, I was the bad guy.
I’d failed out of the system. None of my gifts, intellect, or aptitude could make up for the shortcomings of the world around me. They weren’t willing to accept me; there was always a rule or an angle in place to dull my edge. High school was bullshit, full of idiots and cowards, so easily intimidated by my potential. I never studied in high school and every one of my teachers knew it. There was a very quiet push to get me chucked from the advanced placement program my senior year, but it never materialized. When that failed they decided to override my grades, not enough to fail me, but enough to keep me out of the better schools. I aced every class my senior year but ended up with a report card full of “C’s.” my first thoughts were uncharitable to say the least, but instead I sent out my college applications, my perfect SAT scores pinned to them, and included a three hour video of me disassembling and reassembling every appliance in the house. That was the hardest work I’d ever done.
Needless to say, some dean saw the talent and accepted me. College was the first time I cracked a book, mostly because I had to pay for them. There were some challenging classes, but I excelled. It took three semesters to get kicked out. The same bullshit as high school, except there was no law forcing them to keep me. That couldn’t keep me down, though. I managed to get a job, a friend of a friend needed an idea guy in his engineering lab, and I was his guy. He used the words “limitless potential.” What’s the point of limitless potential in such a limited atmosphere? Meetings led by bags of hot air whining about missed deadlines, blind to the time they were wasting. And the emails? Who would’ve thought something as simple as the freedom allowed by email could be so easily perverted into a tool chaining you to a desk? In the end they fired me rather than accept that their company had more chores than work. If they’d unshackled me, given me the money and time to work, we’d all be billionaires. Instead, they told me I wasn’t a team player, not a good fit for the working environment, and sent me on my way. The pink slip was taped to one of the walls of my lab.
