Rogues

by Darius Brasher

  “I don’t sulk,” I interjected indignantly.

  Isaac rolled his eyes. “Please. You’re so good at sulking, you should list it on your resume under ‘special skills.’ You sulked when Hannah died, you sulked when Neha died, and you’ve been sulking since you’ve been back in your right mind after Doc Hippoc fixed you up. And I’m here to tell you to stop it. Just like with Hannah and Neha, you did the best you could do under difficult circumstances. As far as I’m concerned, you showed what kind of man you are when Doctor Alchemy sliced and diced you. Though Doctor Alchemy probably already knew how to find me, you didn’t know that at the time. You kept your mouth shut about me even though you could’ve cut your torture short by spilling your guts. And, when I came to fetch you, instead of being eager to get away like most people in your shoes would’ve been, all you could talk about was staying to rescue the people Doctor Alchemy has enslaved. So instead of sulking, you ought to congratulate yourself on how well you held up and performed.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t feel like I deserve congratulations. How am I supposed to handle that major crisis the Sentinels warned of if I can’t handle a motley crew of Rogues?”

  “In your defense, one of those Rogues is Doctor Alchemy. Though he’s a toy short of a Happy Meal, his power is nothing to sneeze at.”

  “The fact Doctor Alchemy is crazy makes him defeating me worse. Imagine what terrible things he would be able to do if he wasn’t nuts.” I shook my head. “It’s made me re-think things. Maybe I’ve been going about this world-saving thing all wrong. Despite all my power, I’m just one dude. I can’t be Omega 24/7. I still have to eat and sleep.”

  “And have a personal life,” Isaac interjected. “I’d hate for the best man speech I’ve been working on to go to waste.”

  “And have a personal life,” I reluctantly admitted, thinking of Angel and the Richard Cory poem. All work and no play made Theo a suicidal boy. That made me think of Viola. Isaac said she had gotten safely away from the carnage Silverback caused. Isaac had told her I was out of town on business, which was why she hadn’t heard from me. “There’s a limit to how much I can accomplish alone. Even with working myself to a frazzle in Astor City and the surrounding area, it’s not like crime has dropped to zero. And it’s not as though there’s been an Omega Effect in the rest of the country. It’s become obvious to me why so many prominent Heroes band together to form teams.”

  I continued to look at the slowly turning Earth. Thick clouds were clumped at the top of it, making the planet look like it had on a white hat worn at a rakish angle. If the title weren’t already taken, I’d ask my publisher to change the name of my autobiography to As the World Turns. Unlike in a soap opera, I would not miraculously come back to life in the next episode if I bought the farm.

  “I’ve come out of all this with more than just a cool scar. I’ve also come out of it with a realization: Thinking I can save the world all by myself was an arrogant mistake. Being up here has only reinforced that realization,” I said. “Despite the fact the other Heroes up here treat me like a celebrity they’re too shy to approach, merely being around them gives me a feeling of comfort I haven’t had since you, Neha and I used to hang out together. If our prehistoric ancestors went their own way and tried to do everything alone, lions and bears and other predators bigger and stronger than us would’ve killed humanity off eons ago. Humans never would have become the world’s apex predator if it had been every man for himself. We got to where we are as a species because we learned to work together. Man is a social animal, I think, who feels the most comfortable when he belongs to a tribe. For a lot of people, that tribe is their family and friends. For others, it’s their favorite sports team, which is why you see grown men wearing another man’s jersey, slathering on face paint in their team’s colors, and braving frigid weather during football season. For others, their tribe is their town, or their state, or their country.” I shook my head. “I don’t have any of that. My parents are the only family I had who gave a damn about me, and they’re both dead. Until the Academy, I didn’t have many friends. I never cared much about sports, and care less now that I can do things elite athletes can only dream of. And I’m certainly proud to be an American, but being the vessel for the Omega spirit forces me to care about more than just what is going on within our borders.

  “The only tribe I really have is you and other Heroes. It was a mistake to let my grief over Neha’s death make me turn my back to that tribe. Because I grew up a loner, my first instinct was to go it alone again. It was a mistake. If I hadn’t been acting alone, maybe the Revengers never would have defeated me and nearly killed me. I can’t let that happen again. There’s too much at stake. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Revengers’ example, it’s that there’s strength in numbers. That a group of people can accomplish things one person can’t alone. If I’m going to save the world, I’ll need all the help I can get. Plus, the Revengers are still out there, not to mention Millennium and God only knows who and what else. And with the Sentinels disbanded, there’s a power vacuum that needs to be filled before some enterprising group of Rogues does it.”

  Isaac said, “If you want to start fighting crime with me again by me letting you become my sidekick, no need to be coy and hint at it in some big speech. Just say so. How do you like the name Kid Myth?”

  “Here I am being vulnerable and admitting I was wrong, and all you can do is make jokes.”

  “You’re surprised? You have met me, right?”

  “Sometimes your mouth makes me regret it.” My smile belied my words. The truth of the matter was I wouldn’t have Isaac any other way. “What do you say? Are you up for being the founding member of a new superhero team? I know it’ll be a burden with your obligations at Pixelate, but you wouldn’t be the first Hero to juggle a job and being a member of a team.”

  Isaac looked embarrassed. “Yeah, about that. I kinda got fired from Pixelate. And by kinda, I mean I most definitely was.”

  “Fired?” I was surprised. “What for?”

  “As you pointed out, I’ve been up here watching your every move for well over a week now. Employers tend to frown on their employees not showing up for long stretches of time. My boss left me a voicemail several days ago telling me to not come back in. She was quite snippy about it.” Isaac shrugged. “I’ve been skating on thin ice with her for a while now anyway with all my unexplained absences. Rogues don’t always have the good grace to wait until after business hours to be thrashed, you know.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before? I know how much you loved that job.”

  “Because I know you’d blame yourself for me losing my job. You’re a master at sulking, remember?” Isaac shrugged again. “On the upside, I seem to be between jobs. I’d love to get our two-man band back together again. It’ll be just like old times. The problem is money. My landlord doesn’t accept goodwill generated by fighting alongside Omega as a form of payment. And I sure as hell won’t take money from you, so if you were about to offer to pay me, you can forget about it. Like I told you the last time we talked about money, I’m not interested in being your sugar baby. All the money in the world wouldn’t make me put out for you. You’re not my type.” Isaac shook his head. “Plus, putting together a superhero team is not as simple as it is in the movies. You don’t join hands, cry ‘Avengers Assemble!’ and call it a day. There are all sorts of things to be considered: liability insurance, where we’d be headquartered, how we’d pay for everything we’d need, getting approval from the Guild, and a bunch of other things I probably don’t even know about. And, most importantly, there’s the small matter of who else would be a member. No offense, but saving the world calls for more than just a dynamic duo. Even when half of that duo is as awesome as me.”

  “I’ve been mulling all that over the past few days. What you call sulking, I call thinking. I’ve got some ideas.” My mouth was dry. I was tired. I had talked more in the past few minutes than I had in the past few days
. “But can we talk about it later? I want to just enjoy the view for a while.”

  “Sure thing.”

  We stood in companionable silence. Maybe the medication Doctor Hippocrates had me on made me maudlin, but I was so grateful Isaac was in my life. And not merely because he had rescued me.

  “At the risk of you making fun of me,” I said, “I want you to know how much I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  We watched the world continue to turn. I felt warm inside. Like I had come home after a long absence.

  “Does this mean we’re gay now?” Isaac said, breaking our silence. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that if we are, I thought I should let Sylvia know.”

  I sighed. “You just couldn’t let it lie, could you?”

  CHAPTER 29

  Isaac and I sat at the clear heptagonal table in the Situation Room of Sentinels Mansion, located on the outskirts of Astor City. In a nice change of pace from the other two times I had been here, Heroic homicidal maniacs weren’t trying to kill me. Then again, the day was young. The way things were going lately, I might be fighting off the entire Guild by dinnertime. If I had learned anything the past few years, it was to expect the unexpected.

  Expect the unexpected. Maybe that would be the motto of the new Hero team Isaac and I were forming. Expect the unexpected sucked as a battle cry, but that was unsurprising since I had come up with it. “Time to batter Rogue butt” and “Who else wants some?” were the less than glittering gems I had come up with when facing the Revengers. Coining catchphrases clearly was not my strong suit. I was an ace at alliteration, though.

  Both Isaac and I were in full costume. So was Ninja, who wore her usual loose black costume that covered her from head to toe, leaving only a slit exposing her Asian eyes. As she always did, she gave the impression that if she held perfectly still, she would be hard to spot, even in this well-lit room. Like Isaac and I, she sat in a tall, silver-colored chair, except hers had a red glowing katana emblazoned on the front and rear of the back rest. It was the chair the Sentinels had reserved for her. Since the Sentinels were defunct and she could sit wherever she wanted, I guess old habits died hard. Isaac was in Tank’s old chair. As for me, I sat in Doppelganger’s chair, the one with the black and white pattern on its back that looked like a Rorschach inkblot test. I saw déjà vu in the inkblot. I never thought I’d set foot in this hateful place again.

  The other four Sentinels’ empty chairs were around the table. I had almost sat in Mechano’s chair until I had realized whose it was. I wanted nothing to do with that murderous bucket of bolts, so had sat here instead. The temptation to take a dump in Mechano’s chair might have gotten the better of me.

  The mansion was different than the last time I had been here. For one thing, no one was trying to kill me. For another, Sentry had been deactivated. Sentry was the computer system the Sentinels had used to monitor the world for signs of trouble. As the massive computer system was covered by a thick tarp, it made the Situation Room look like it was about to be painted. Also, the Situation Room and the rest of the mansion were emptier than I remembered, like a dead man’s house the contents of which were gradually given away or sold. Ninja had donated a lot of the artifacts in the mansion to museums, including the Lockheed Model 10 Electra Amelia Earhart had disappeared in and the painting Starry Night. Isaac, thanks to his Heroic training and former employment, knew something about the art world. He’d told me there was a spirited argument among art experts as to whether the Sentinels’ painting was the original Van Gogh or if the one on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City was. My money was on the former, but what did I know? I had never graduated past the finger paint and stick figure stage of artistic achievement.

  The supposedly extinct flock of passenger pigeons I saw the first time I visited the mansion had been donated to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. There was talk of breeding that kit to repopulate the pigeons in the wild. I knew a group of pigeons in flight was called a “kit,” yet I could not come up with a good catchphrase. Knowing obscure words and stringing them together cleverly were obviously entirely different skill sets.

  “When we last saw each other and I suggested an association, you told me to go pound sand,” Ninja said, making me stop thinking about pigeons. As a result of all I’d been through, my thoughts had been awfully flighty lately. Pigeons. Flighty. Hah! “Now you’re here, hat in hand, making the same proposal you rejected out of hand not too long ago. What’s changed?”

  “I’ve eaten a healthy serving of humble pie with a side-order of crow since we last spoke,” I said. Crow? Huh. What was my obsession with fowl lately? Focusing my birdbrain, I sketched out to Ninja what had happened with the Revengers and Doctor Alchemy.

  When I finished, Ninja said, “So you’ve come to the realization that you can’t do everything by yourself?” The fabric around her mouth twitched. “If I were a smaller person, I might be tempted to say I told you so.”

  “We’re looking for a partner, not a gloater,” I said. It sounded snappish, and I suppose it was. This was the room I had rescued Neha from before the metal that bound her had exploded. Sitting here dredged up unpleasant memories that were never too far from the surface to begin with.

  Isaac raised his hands placatingly. “No one enjoys rubbing in how right he was more than I do, but now’s not the time nor the place. Let’s be frank, Ninja. Actually, I’ll be Frank; you don’t look like you have a penis. We need each other. As the last standing Sentinel and one of the beneficiaries of Mechano’s fortune, you have resources Omega and I don’t. The kind of world-class team Omega and I have in mind that can be ready for any and everything is going to take cash, and lots of it. We’re envisioning something along the lines of the Sentinels. Minus the plotting against other Heroes and killing innocent people part. Plus, you’re a more experienced Hero than either of us. Your experience as a Hero at the highest levels will surely prove useful.”

  “That explains why you need me,” Ninja said. “It doesn’t explain why I need you.”

  “Because associating with us gives you back some of the credibility you’ve lost,” I said bluntly. “Your name is mud in the public’s eyes because you’re a Sentinel. Helping us can rehabilitate your image. Plus, there’s the not so small matter of potentially helping us save the world.”

  Ninja regarded me thoughtfully with unblinking eyes. “You surprise me Omega. I was under the impression from our last conversation that you’d sooner trust a snake than a Sentinel.”

  “Honestly? Being in this room again makes my skin crawl. But like Myth says, you have resources that we will likely need. And, you knocked me on my butt and disappeared even though I was looking for you. Not too many people can do that. You may prove useful. The thought of working with a Sentinel hardly makes me jump for joy, but I’ll do what I need to do to ensure the world’s safety.” I thought of how Avatar had kept The Mountain a secret from the Sentinels, as well as the fact he had hidden the Omega weapon there. “I’m under the impression Avatar had qualms about working with some of the Sentinels too, but he did it anyway in pursuit of the greater good. If something’s good enough for Avatar, it’s good enough for me. Besides, it’s not like we’re broaching this with you without carefully checking you out first. Other than questionable judgment in former colleagues, you’re as clean as a hound’s tooth. Plus, Truman Lord vouches for you.” You could do better, Truman had said about Ninja, pointing at himself with a twinkle in his eye. Then again, you could do much worse. Be hard not to if I’m the standard you’re judging everyone else by. And be sure to tell Ninja she was your second choice. I’ve yet to meet a woman who didn’t love hearing that.

  Ninja cocked an eyebrow at me. “Clean as a hound’s tooth?” she repeated.

  “Omega’s from the South originally,” Isaac said. “He says folksy stuff like that all the time. Bless your heart. Fixin’ to go to the store. I suwanne. Sweatin’ like a sinn
er in church. Grocery buggy. You get used to all the colloquialisms after a while. It’s part of his charm. Have him tell you about chitlins sometime.” Isaac shuddered. “Now the thought of that stuff is something you don’t get used to.”

  “What we’re proposing is a trial run,” I said. “If we work well together, we can continue our association. If not, we’ll shake hands and go our separate ways.

  The room fell quiet as Ninja considered our proposal.

  “At the risk of Omega accusing me of being a stalker again, I took a nice long look at you Myth right around the time I was checking Omega out since I knew you two were friends,” Ninja said. “Both of you seem to have your hearts in the right places. As you say, it appears we need each other. And if Seer was right about you Omega, you’re the key to whatever crisis the world will face. A professional goes where there’s work to be done. Being near you promises lots of it. To make a long story short, I’m in.” She hesitated. “And in the interest of engendering trust, I’ll even reveal my secret identity to you.”

  Isaac and I glanced at each other.

  I said, “Your legal name is Chie Sato, though you’ve gone by the nickname Shay ever since your first-grade teacher in Oregon mispronounced your Japanese name. You’re divorced with no kids. I’d say how old you are, but my grandma told me to never reveal a woman’s age. You live in the northeastern quadrant of Astor City in the Silver Sable subdivision.”

  “You’ve got a real nice house,” Isaac added. “I love what you’ve done with the master bath. You’d think pink and gold wouldn’t work together, but they do.”

  Ninja’s eyes were wide as she sat in stunned silence. It was the first time I had ever seen her taken aback. Batman never would have been caught flat-footed like this. I guess she wasn’t him after all. I said, “Like I said, we checked you out pretty thoroughly before contacting you.”

  “Apparently,” Ninja said dryly, recovering.