Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups

by Michael C Bailey

  “Sure,” I say, handing her a pair of cuffs. “You, uh, have a little...right there,” I say, pointing to the blood.

  “Meh,” she says. Just another day at the office for her; though I foresee a dinner of Tylenol and a bathtub full of Icy Hot in her immediate future. “Right. Let’s collect Deuce, call this in to Byrne, and get the hell out of here.”

  “Um,” I say, glancing around, “where is Deuce?”

  The answer comes in the form of screaming steel as Deuce hurtles through one of the garage doors, ripping it off its tracks. He bounces across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water and doesn’t stop until he hits the fence. If it weren’t for his dopey pants, I wouldn’t recognize him as Deuce — or as anything human for that matter because his musculature has expanded to absurd, cartoonish proportions. He’s become a caricature of some steroid-pumped extreme bodybuilder.

  The man responsible for tossing Deuce like yesterday’s garbage shambles out of the garage, his knobby knuckles brushing the ground. Nina curses at the sight of him, a tower of bulky muscle dressed in ragged jeans and a black T-shirt, neither of which fit his freakish body properly. As bizarre as Deuce looks, he’s got nothing on this beast, a Byrne fugitive known as Silverback — so-called because he resembles a giant hairless gorilla. For real. He has a heavy, sloping brow; a jutting jaw; no visible neck; squat legs; and arms as thick at the wrists as they are at the biceps. The total package brushes the seven-foot mark.

  Silverback spots us. He bares his crooked yellow teeth and, with a snort, beats a pair of fists the size of mini-fridges against his chest. The guy is straight out of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

  “Hey, Nina,” I say. “What is the law?”

  “Heh. Not to eat meat, that is the law,” she replies.

  We split. I circle around to Silverback’s left, Nina to his right. He eyes us, unsure which of us to go for.

  “What is the law?”

  “Not to go on all fours! That is the law!”

  I reach into my coat and pull out an aluminum bat for myself. I toss Nina a wooden bat, figuring she can put it to good use. She does; with a gesture, the end of the bat bursts into flames.

  “What is the law?” I shout.

  “Not to spill blood! That is the law!”

  “Want to make an exception?”

  “Abso-frickin’-lutely,” Nina says, winding up. “Welcome to the House of Pain, you ugly son of a —!”

  Silverback pivots to face her, braced for an attack, but it’s a feint. I charge in and swing for his kneecap, one of the universal weak points on the human body. It’s designed to bend in one direction; force it to go in any of the other three and you’ll cripple someone. Harsh, I know, but we can’t risk a light touch with this monster, considering he could take our heads off with a flick of his finger. The bat pings off Silverback’s knee — harmlessly.

  Crap. I knew Silverback was invulnerable to some degree, but I was hoping he wouldn’t be that invulnerable.

  He swats at me with a sweeping backhand. I pull a Neo and Matrix under the slap. I kick into a backward roll, narrowly dodging a crushing stomp.

  Nina moves in with her flaming club and tags Silverback in another universal weak point. Universal for men, anyway. Silverback absorbs the shot to the junk with an annoyed grunt.

  “Well,” Nina says. “This sucks.”

  Our not-so-brilliant Plan A derailed, we execute Plan B: we stall. Silverback isn’t exactly a lumbering hulk, but he’s not as fast as we are. Nina and I dodge Silverback’s fists with relative ease and counter-attack as the openings present themselves, but he has a few serious advantages over us. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, we have stamina scores of sixteen while Silverback is rocking an easy twenty, which means he’ll wear us down long before we wear him down — and he only needs to land one punch to finish us off.

  Nina discards her baseball bat. “Sledgehammer!”

  I pull a ten-pounder out of my coat and toss it to Nina. Silverback swipes at her. She ducks under his arm, spins, and lays into the back of his knee. The weight of the hammer coupled with the momentum of her swing succeeds in taking Silverback’s leg out from under him. Nina spins around behind him — a full-body windup — and smashes the solid steel hammerhead across Silverback’s face. Nina raises her weapon high and lets loose a banshee scream before bringing it down.

  Unfortunately, Silverback’s head is no longer there when the hammer quite literally drops. He jerks back at the last second, and the sledgehammer connects with the unyielding asphalt. The impact jars the hammer out of Nina’s grasp.

  We all back away from each other. Silverback’s lips twist like he’s trying to scrape peanut butter off the roof of his mouth, and then he spits a tooth onto the ground. An incisor, I think.

  Having done a lot of reading up on various superhuman abilities, I’ve learned that individuals with certain power sets tend to share common psychological traits. Tanks — people who possess superhuman strength and varying degrees of invulnerability, like Stuart and Silverback — consider themselves impervious to harm. On the rare occasion they are injured, the shock hits them harder, and they’re prone to panicking.

  Silverback glances down at his dislodged tooth and then at us, his eyes wide and wild and — yep, there it is — fearful. His panic attack is short-lived, however, and it quickly gives way to full-tilt rage.

  “KILL YOU!” he roars.

  His first attempt at making good on his threat involves picking up one of the rusted-out junkers and throwing it at us.

  This isn’t as scary as it sounds. Not for me, anyway. It’s actually not the first time someone has hurled a motor vehicle at me. They’re surprisingly easy to dodge, especially when the thrower isn’t taking the time to aim. The car sails well over our heads — and nearly lands on the prone form of Robert “Deadeye” Teller, which means Silverback doesn’t care whether his rampage takes out his fellow escapees. So much for honor among thieves.

  Nina cuts loose, bathing Silverback in fire. The flames wash over him harmlessly. He grabs another car from the pile and rears back. I draw his attention in a time-honored manner: by waving my arms wildly and screaming, “Hey! Over here!” It’s crude, but it works. An old VW Beetle with mismatching doors and fenders sails toward me. I clear out in plenty of time, but the day is catching up to me fast. I’m running on fumes while Silverback isn’t even breathing hard.

  Wait.

  Ooh. That might work.

  I hit Nina up with my idea, trusting that Silverback’s hearing isn’t so sharp he can hear us conspiring over our comms.

  “That’s kind of crazy,” she says.

  “Yeah, I thought you’d like it,” I say.

  For this, I am going to owe Edison an explanation and a big apology — and possibly my paycheck for the next several months if I don’t bring his toy back in one piece. See, Edison is big into nonlethal weaponry, and his research and development team is always coming up with some cool new way to subdue people. One promising project involves an alternative round for gas grenade launchers, which the R&D geeks have dubbed the “goop round.” It’s a wad of non-Newtonian fluid fired in a sabot that upon impact and exposure to air becomes a viscous sludge not unlike heavy-duty rubber cement. Shoot it at someone’s feet, they’d be stuck to the ground. Hit them in the torso, it’ll bind their arms. The best part? If they struggle, the stuff solidifies faster. It takes about ten minutes for the goop to dry up and disintegrate on its own, but it can be dissolved immediately by a solvent like acetone. It has a lot of potential for riot control operations, according to Edison. The reason these babies aren’t in production yet is because of a potentially literal fatal flaw: the goop is effectively nonporous. If someone were to get shot in the face, they could suffocate — which, obviously, completely defeats the whole concept of a nonlethal weapon.

  And yet, that’s exactly what I do. I pull the launcher out of my coat and, while Nina keeps Silverback distracted, start loading goop rounds into the launcher�
�s ammo chambers.

  On my signal, Nina races over to join me. Silverback turns to give chase and gets a goop round right in the nose. I empty the magazine. Out of six rounds, half of them connect, encasing Silverback’s head. He thrashes and paws at his face.

  “We might not need phase two,” Nina says, but I’m not feeling that optimistic.

  In this instance, I hate being right. The goop solidifies enough for Silverback to get a grip on the rubbery wad. He peels it off with a violent jerk and gasps, greedily sucking in a lungful of air.

  Bingo.

  Skilled pyrokinetics can cause solid objects to burst into flames at long range. Nina is, by her own admission, not skilled. She tends to use her power to act as a human flamethrower, igniting the air itself. Give her a target and she can hit it, but sometimes she needs a little help to direct her power. In this case, that help is Silverback drawing in a deep breath. In other words, he provides Nina with a path to follow. She fires up as Silverback inhales, and in doing so he sucks Nina’s flame trail directly into his lungs. Silverback clutches at his throat and flails around, his deferred panic attack returning with a vengeance as he realizes what’s happening — which is that Nina is eating up all his oxygen. Even invulnerable people need to breathe.

  Silverback passes out within a matter of seconds, sinking to his knees before toppling over like a felled tree. An exhausted Nina almost joins him. She stumbles and falls into my arms — then we both go down because I’m not exactly running on a full tank myself.

  “Please tell me he’s down,” she pants, “because I do not have enough left in me to do that again.”

  We help each other up. “I think you got him,” I say, “but I’m going to slap an inhibitor collar on him to be safe.”

  “Good call. You collar him up, I’ll call Byrne, and then we can all get —” Nina looks around. “Where’s Deuce?”

  We dash over to where we last saw Deuce, over near the fence, half-expecting to find a pair of cheesy sunglasses sitting in the middle of a puddle of chum. What we find instead is a hundred times more mind-blowing.

  “Huh,” I say. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  6.

  After we take care of the cleanup and help load Spasm, Deadeye, and Silverback into a Byrne transport, we strip out of our sweat-soaked outfits and retire to the humble apartment of Deuce X. Machine — better known to his neighbors as Daniel Janson. I knew that Deuce’s physique expanded as he jacked up his strength, but it never occurred to me that “Deuce X. Machine” wasn’t his default mode. That would be Daniel, who has my build but not a hint of muscle. He’s not doughy, but he’s definitely not a regular at his local gym.

  Natalie passes Daniel a sandwich bag full of ice cubes. “You might have a concussion,” she says. “You weren’t knocked out for long, but —”

  “I’m fine,” Daniel says. He presses the ice bag to the back of his head and lets out a soft groan.

  Natalie drops into a faded easy chair with a large rip in the side. Battered and mismatching furniture, a stack of empty pizza boxes on the kitchen counter, and posters of bikini and lingerie models pinned to the walls with brightly colored thumbtacks give the place a low-rent bachelor pad vibe.

  “We should take you to a hospital to be safe,” Natalie says.

  “I’m fine,” Daniel insists, but that’s his pride talking. He blew his big audition for the Protectorate, so now he’s going to play the tough guy in a lame effort to save face.

  “Deuce. Daniel. I’ve been knocked out before. It’s not something you should take lightly. Come on, let me help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Daniel sneers. “I don’t need your help and I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.”

  Natalie throws her hands in the air. “Don’t say I didn’t offer,” she says before heading out in search of the bathroom. Based on the level of housekeeping in the living room, I expect to hear a bloodcurdling scream when she finds it.

  “She’s just trying to be nice, you know,” I say. “You might want to try being nice back.”

  “Kid, I’m going to give you some advice that’ll make your life a lot easier,” Daniel says. “Don’t waste your time being nice to girls. It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means girls don’t like nice guys. Not really. They say they like nice guys, but I tried being nice to girls for years. You know what it got me? Nothing. I got friendzoned left and right, and it sucked. You know what I’m talking about.”

  I hate to repeat myself, but, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, kid. Nina, Astrid, the girls on your team...you’re surrounded by hotties and you’re not nailing any of them. You know why that is? Because women aren’t interested in nice guys. Yeah, they say they are...”

  “I’m not nailing them, as you so eloquently put it, because I don’t want to. They’re my friends and that’s it — and you know what? I’m okay with that. It’s not some horrible punishment. And it’s not an excuse to act like a gigantic douchebag like you.”

  Daniel reacts as if I’d smacked him across the face.

  “Girls don’t owe you anything, least of all themselves,” I say, “so maybe you should try being nice to them for the sake of being nice and not because you want some kind of payoff.”

  Good speech, Matt, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Daniel shakes his head at me and says, “You’ll learn.”

  “Not from you I won’t,” I say.

  I sit in my car and fume for a good twenty minutes before Natalie returns. She flops into the passenger seat and apologizes for the delay.

  “I had to explain to Deuce, slowly and using small words, why I would not be recommending him for Protectorate membership,” she says. “Even when he’s not all, you know, Deuced up, he’s still an idiot.”

  “Yes he is,” I mumble.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “What all what was about?”

  “Come on. The walls in that apartment are like paper.”

  She doesn’t push me to talk, but she’s not going to let me off the hook either.

  “I don’t want to turn into Deuce,” I say.

  Natalie laughs. “Matt, buddy, that’ll never happen. He’s an ass. You’re a good guy.”

  “I’m not a good guy,” I say. Natalie gives me a quizzical look. “You asked me if I ever asked Sara out.”

  “You said you hit her up for a date once.”

  “I didn’t hit her up once. I asked her out, she turned me down, but I kept asking her. Not a lot; a few times. Point is, I didn’t back off. I convinced myself that all I had to do was keep at it, prove to Sara I was serious about her, and eventually she’d say yes.” My hands shake in anger, in self-disgust. I grip the steering wheel to make them stop. It doesn’t help. “She didn’t feel the same about me. I always knew that. I should have respected that, but I didn’t.”

  “That hardly puts you in the same class as Deuce. Yes, you should have respected Sara’s feelings,” Natalie says but not like it’s a reprimand, “but Deuce is an adult who’s made a conscious decision to treat women poorly. You’re a young guy with, by your own admission, no real experience with girls. I think you can be forgiven a bad call or two. As long as you don’t make it a lifestyle choice.”

  “God, no.”

  “There you go. You screwed up, you learned from it, you know not to do it again...time to move on.”

  “What do I do about Sara?” I say. “She thinks things are weird between us because she came out.”

  “Talk to her,” Natalie says. “It was good advice to give, it’s good advice to get.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Okay then.

  I start the car. “What say we grab some coffee and a snack for the road and get out of here?”

  Natalie smiles. “Hit it.”

  THREE — SARA DANVERS AND LIGHTSTORM

  THE NEW NORMAL

>   1.

  Sara.

  Mom?

  It’s very dark.

  I know. I’m sorry.

  Turn on the lights.

  I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry.

  Useless. As always.

  I’m not useless, Dad.

  You broke us, but you can’t fix us. Useless.

  I am not useless!

  Don’t yell at your father. Turn on the lights.

  I can’t! I can’t and it’s my fault and I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please don’t hate me! I’m sorry!

  I wake up in a full-body flail, gasping sharply rather than screaming like people do in the movies whenever they wake up from a nightmare. I’m not drenched in cold sweat, either, but I am shaking like crazy.

  Carrie? I think. Carrie, I had another nightmare.

  I mentally shout Carrie’s name for a good two, three minutes before I remember I don’t have my powers anymore. I’ve been doing that a lot. Forgetting, I mean. I spent my first powerless day sleeping. Or maybe I was passed out. Whatever. Either way, I didn’t get out of bed until Sunday night, and even then I was only up for, like, an hour. I went to the bathroom, I grabbed a snack, and then I went back to bed. I woke up yesterday morning feeling fine, all things considered.

  Fine? I felt great. I feel great — better than I have in a long time, which actually worries Carrie. Bart told her she should expect me to freak out, which I guess is normal for psionics who lose their powers, but I haven’t felt anxious or anything. Honestly, this is the first time I’ve been thrown off. I’m so used to talking to Carrie over the brainphone; it’s weird not having her in my head.

  Nuts, now I’m sad and lonely.

  I throw on my bathrobe and cross the hallway to Carrie’s room. I knock on her door and call out her name for a couple minutes before she answers. Man, how does she do it? Not a hint of bed head and no bags under her eyes. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d hate her.