Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage

by Ian Thomas Healy

  A great stage grew from the dusty plains of North Dakota at Stratocaster’s behest. As Sally watched, scaffolding unfolded out of itself to form an arch overhead. Lights sprouted from it like buds on a vine. Shadowy smoke formed into stacks of speakers. A riser at the stage’s rear bubbled into a massively complicated drum set.

  As he’d explained it, Stratocaster was going to treat them all to one hell of a concert as part of his spell. Sally knew it was more than just that; he was such a showman, he couldn’t resist a performance like this.

  In spite of his protests that it would be safe, National Guard troops formed a perimeter well back from Stratocaster’s stage. He may have wanted to play for an audience, but they’d have to watch him from at least a quarter mile away. To compensate for the distance, Stratocaster erected monstrous video screens and speaker stacks to carry images and sound to the audience. The word had gotten out and a steady stream of curious onlookers flowed into the area. It may not have been a 21st Century equivalent of Woodstock, but people anticipated the performance would be a strong final movement to the symphony of magic which had been the biggest event ever in the high plains.

  Sally reached out and grabbed a Frisbee before it could smack into Jason. Like every other outdoor concert, people were throwing them around, batting beach balls, and cheering. She gaped in surprise to see the Just Cause logo on the Frisbee, which morphed into a likeness of her face before it dissolved into tendrils of sweet-smelling smoke that blew away on the late-afternoon breeze. “He’s really going all out with this,” she said.

  “He’s wasting time and endangering people,” said Doublecharge. “I wish he’d hurry up and get it over with before Goodwin or whoever gets here.”

  As she spoke, the stage lights dimmed. Sally hopped up and down a couple of times to try to see better. Jason laughed and lifted her up onto his shoulders. She curled up to nip his ear playfully and then toyed with his hair as the wail of a single guitar echoed across the plains under extreme amplification.

  With a blast of sound, incendiaries went up on either side of the stage, shooting sparks and flames high into the air as the lights came up. Sally saw Stratocaster decked out in his finest rock garb: tight checkerboard pants tucked into Doc Martens; a sleeveless tank top with some incomprehensible symbol on it that constantly shifted and changed. His mohawk stretched to improbable heights and sparkled from base to tip. His guitar, a duplicate of the same one he’d built in the past with Nikola Tesla, hung low from its strap as he raised one hand in the traditional two-fingered rock salute.

  “Hello, Rugby!” he called into the microphone.

  The audience cheered. Sally felt herself swept up in the excitement and hooted right along with them.

  Ill-defined, shadowy figures rounded out the band on the other instruments: drums, bass, rhythm guitar.

  Stratocaster’s fingers danced across the strings with a flourish of notes which could have made eardrums bleed as far away as Fargo. “Appreciate you all coming out tonight for this last stop on my farewell tour,” he shouted. “I’ve got a few tunes to play for you now.” And with that, he launched into a fast-paced virtuoso performance which made Sally want to get up and dance.

  The concert progressed for what felt like hours, but each tune was so amazing in its complexity and sheer musical power that the fans cheered and screamed their approval with each new number. One piece was so haunting and beautiful that tears ran unchecked down Sally’s face and she felt Jason’s chest hitching with sobs. Another had such a sensuous, driving beat that she was ready to let Jason take her right there amid the audience. She slipped off his shoulders, straddled his waist, and ground against him as they swayed to the beat. Tune after tune, each one a new sensory adventure in emotion.

  During a slow ballad, a dark sedan nosed its way through the gathered crowd to stop by the Just Cause heroes. Three men in dark suits climbed out followed by a furious Christine Goodwin. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she said after surveying the audience enthralled by Stratocaster’s performance. “You men get to the stage and shut that shit down right now.”

  The three agents disappeared into the audience.

  Goodwin closed a hand around Doublecharge’s arm. “What the hell is going on here? I have an order straight from the Director to take Stratocaster into custody, and you’re having a goddamned concert. I will have your ass, Doublecharge. Yours, Juice’s, and everyone else’s on your team!”

  Doublecharge glanced down at the woman’s hand on her arm. Electricity crackled between her eyes and at the ends of her fingers. “Take your hand off me.”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Goodwin with a finger raised in threat. “It is a federal crime for you to use offensive parahuman abilities against a normal human.”

  “Fine.” Doublecharge laid an admirably-fast right across Goodwin’s jaw. The woman dropped into a heap and lay still. Sally gasped in astonishment as Doublecharge hopped up and down, holding her hand in agony. “Son of a bitch, that hurts!”

  Jason whooped with glee. “Tick tock!” Then he looked around, embarrassed at his exuberance. Sally laughed and kissed him.

  Sondra knelt down beside Goodwin. “She’s out cold.” She grinned. “She’s going to have one hell of a headache when she wakes up. God, Stacey, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” said Doublecharge. She peeled off a glove and winced at her swollen knuckles. “But it felt really good.” A smile creased her face.

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Switchboard. “She tripped on a loose rock. Fell and hit her head. Lucky for her, Just Cause was here to take care of her.”

  “What about the other agents?” asked Jason.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about them, baby,” said Sally, and pointed. “Look.”

  The crowd had raised the three suited men up and were bodily passing them back toward the heroes. They struggled to no avail against the massed hands that pressed them inexorably away from the stage. The crowd deposited them none too gently on the ground by Goodwin.

  Switchboard did something to them. Their faces blank, they collected Goodwin, got back into the sedan, and pulled away from the audience. “They’re going to take her to the hospital to get her head checked,” he said.

  Stratocaster finished a tune with a powerful flourish that made the aurora borealis gleam overhead. He grabbed the microphone. “Thank you, Rugby! You’ve been great tonight. I’ve got just one more tune to play for you all and then I must be on my way.”

  People in the audience began to raise their hands, cigarette lighters extended. Sally felt something in her own hand and looked down to see a silvery lighter in her hand emblazoned with the horse-head logo she used as her trademark. Jason already had his hand up and a small flame flickered from a lighter. She shrugged, laughed, and raised her own in salute.

  Stratocaster began his last tune. Where the other pieces had affected the audience’s emotions, this one seemed to focus on the world itself. Reality twisted as it throbbed in time to the driving melody. A bright star appeared high overhead and started a slow descent. Sally watched as it grew until she realized it was a giant, glowing guitar dropping body first with its neck pointed toward the sky. Mystical strings vibrated across its face with each strum of Stratocaster’s pick hand. Like a rocket slowing for a landing, the eldritch instrument touched down upon the stage behind Stratocaster to tower a hundred feet over him.

  He stopped playing, but the huge guitar continued without missing a beat. A portal opened in its base, filled with the purest white light Sally could imagine. Stratocaster stepped into the portal, only a shadow against the brightness. He reached out a hand and a petite female figure stepped up onto the stage.

  Sally realized it was Ace and took a step forward. “Wait, what’s she doing?”

  “She’s going with him,” said Sondra.

  Ace took Stratocaster’s hand and together they entered the brilliant light inside the guitar. Steam shot forth from beneath it
as it rose into the air like a majestic balloon, so bright it hurt to look at. Sally squinted at it and raised a hand in farewell. She hoped they could see her as the giant guitar flew higher and higher. The music reached a final crescendo with a massive drum fill and crashing power chord that peeled paint off parked cars and cracked windows but didn’t harm anyone listening.

  The guitar overhead flared bright like a supernova filling the sky. Everyone raised their hands to block out the glare. It vanished in a heartbeat, along with the stage, the music, and all the magical artifacts that Stratocaster had so liberally spread throughout the onlookers.

  Sally blinked and looked around in astonishment. She felt like she’d just awakened from a dream. If so, she decided, it had been a good dream. She slipped her hand into Jason’s to reassure him as he gaped at the uncertain crowd in the middle of an empty plain in North Dakota.

  Stratocaster’s final music still rang in her ears.

  Epilogue

  “Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.”

  -Nikola Tesla

  December, 2004

  Just Cause Headquarters

  Denver, Colorado

  “Happy birthday, dear Sally, happy birthday to you!”

  The gathered members of Just Cause and the Lucky Seven sang cheerfully off-key. Sally blushed and wished she could just disappear. It had been bad enough a year ago when it was just the Lucky Seven singing to her. Now it was all of Just Cause—even the new interns—and she felt quite overwhelmed at the attention.

  Turning nineteen wasn’t supposed to be this big of a deal.

  Jack had taken charge of the party, as was his wont. He’d gone all out to decorate the cafeteria in gaudy red and yellow streamers. There were tasty appetizers, which Jason inhaled by the plateful, and gallons of punch, thoughtfully spiked by the intern Carver. Sally felt a little tipsy, but kept Jason close by her in case she started to sway. Juice turned a blind eye to the alcohol, but hinted in a short speech that anyone misbehaving from it would be called in for emergency drills early in the morning.

  Sondra and Jack gave her a DVD collection she’d been wanting for a long time. She hugged Sondra and surprised Jack with a kiss that made him blush like a schoolboy. Jason gave her a cowboy hat she’d been coveting since she saw it online. She whispered to him she’d wear it for a special present she had in mind for him later. He grinned.

  Then Juice stepped up and presented her with a pin recognizing her first year of service with Just Cause, marked with three gold stars for active deployments and exceptional valor. “Take a week off,” he said. “A vacation. You’ve earned it.” Jason stood up a little straighter and Juice laughed. “Please, take this overgrown puppy dog with you.”

  Doublecharge shook her hand. “It’s been a crazy year, but I’ve been proud to serve beside you. You’re a real asset to the organization.”

  A Just Cause staffer entered the cafeteria with a box and headed for Sally. “From my mom?” she asked, but it was postmarked from somebody called Harbaugh, Scraggs, & Jessup. “What is this? I don’t know these people.”

  Juice looked at it. “That’s a law firm down south. Pretty prestigious.”

  Sally swallowed a nervous lump. “I’m not being sued or something, am I?”

  Juice laughed. “No, they’d contact Just Cause lawyers first. I’m curious, though. Open it up.”

  Sally slid a fingernail through the tape sealing the box. Inside she found a sealed envelope with a note attached. Mystified, she read the note as the others crowded around. “Dear Ms. Thompson… The contents of this envelope have been entrusted to this firm for many years, with the direction that it was to be delivered to you on this date of your nineteenth birthday.” She looked at the other heroes.

  “Well, don’t keep us all in suspense, girlfriend! Open it already!” said Sondra.

  Sally pulled an old, yellowed piece of paper from the envelope. “It’s a letter.” The name on the signature leaped out at her. “Oh my God… it’s from Stratocaster.”

  She read it aloud.

  “Dear Sally and friends… I hope this letter reaches you and that you are all well. I wanted to tell you what happened after Fairuza and I left North Dakota. We traveled back in time. Way, way back. Before the dinosaurs, before plants, back to when the Earth was empty of life. There I released as much magic as I could except for what I needed to return. It was amazing, glorious as the power flowed out to be absorbed by the planet below. Sometimes Fairuza and I like to joke that we may have started life on Earth with that very act.

  “Once it was done, we planned to return, but knew we couldn’t come back to your present, where I would be a fugitive from the government. Nor could we return to an earlier point of our lifetimes. After much discussion, we chose to return to an earlier point in time. We settled in Colorado Springs in 1900, where we reconnected with Nikola Tesla. With his help, I have divested most of my remaining magical ability into artifacts which we have spread throughout the world. It will prove very difficult for anyone to ever become an Archmage in the future without locating them all.

  “Fairuza and I miss you all, and thank you for the chance to have a normal life together. It was an honor to work with you and to be a part of something greater than ourselves.

  “Sincerely, William and Fairuza Kramer, August 7, 1925.”

  Sally sniffled a bit and the words blurred on the page. She checked the envelope and found two more items within. First was an old photograph of Will and Ace and Nikola Tesla standing outside a brick house. She almost didn’t recognize Will without his trademark mohawk, but Ace’s smile was radiant and Will looked as happy as she’d ever seen him. The other item was a small envelope sealed with wax. Sally carefully broke the seal.

  Inside was a short handwritten note, which she read aloud as well. “If for some reason you ever need me and my magical skills once again, strum any guitar with this pick and it will summon me. Stratocaster.” A guitar pick slid out of the envelope into Sally’s hand. It was inscribed with hundreds of tiny symbols and almost hummed with self-contained power.

  Juice picked it up and examined it. “Sondra, I believe this should go into a secure case in the Archives, along with the letter and photograph.”

  “I’ll see to it,” said the winged woman.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?” asked Sally. She felt an odd mixture of sadness at the notion of more of her friends perhaps having died, but happy that they’d been together for so many years, and perhaps many more.

  “Over a hundred years,” said Juice softly. “I doubt it, Sally. We could find out their eventual fate. Perhaps they had children, and might even have descendants still living today. Would you like me to have Research follow up?”

  “No,” Sally said after consideration. “Not right now. They’re still alive here, and I want to remember them that way.” She tapped over her heart for emphasis.

  Juice nodded.

  The party was winding down a couple hours later when Jason and Sally made a discreet exit and wound up back in his quarters.

  “Happy birthday, baby,” said Jason as he lifted her up.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and kissed him like she hadn’t seen him in a century. “Thanks, Jase. I love you, you big doofus.”

  “I love you too, babe. You’re the, uh, the light of my life.”

  Sally gasped at the simplicity of his romantic statement. It was like a balloon had inflated in her chest and made her float up toward the skies. She smiled and buried her face against his neck. “Strat and Ace wrote that letter twenty-five years after they landed,” she whispered. “I’d love to be with you for that long. Or even longer.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “Put me down, big guy.” Jason obliged and Sally reached up to perch her new hat at a jaunty angle on her head. “This cowgirl’s ready to go for a ride.”

  Jason grinned. “Yippee-kai-yo.”

  ###

&n
bsp; ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ian Thomas Healy dabbles in many different genres. He’s an eight-time participant and winner of National Novel Writing Month and is also the creator of the Writing Better Action Through Cinematic Techniques workshop, which helps writers to improve their action scenes.

  When not writing, which is rare, he enjoys watching hockey, reading comic books (and serious books, too), and living in the great state of Colorado, which he shares with his wife, children, house-pets, and approximately five million other people.

  Ian is on Twitter as @ianthealy

  Ian is on Facebook as Author Ian Thomas Healy

  www.ianthealy.com

  ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST

  S. Bell is a comic book artist and illustrator who lives and works in San Francisco. She holds a BFA in Fine Art and an MFA in Illustration and is currently pursuing her MA in Arts Education. She is the author of the series The Urban Fairytales, the fourth volume of which is forthcoming.