Everything changed for Astoria at 09:13 AM, on Monday 16 May 2016…
The weather was unseasonably warm for the Pacific Northwest, and after a particularly long and wet winter, the inhabitants of the Gateway to the Northwest were more than ready for this early promise of summer-to-come. No one seemed to care that it was a Monday – the people flocked to the city’s outdoor venues, from the Riverfront to Sunset Park, from the Astoria City Zoo to the University of Astoria Quad, to enjoy the sun. But no place was more crowded than the city’s famed Silver Mile.
Cafes, coffee shops, and restaurants all along the mile-long, pedestrian-only shopping street hurried to put out tables and chairs in front of their establishments, and while tourists were still a bit thin on the ground this early in the year, the winter-pale natives were more than happy to take up the slack. Office worker, student, shop clerk, petty crook, high-powered executive, or unemployed music-lover – they all took just a little longer to enjoy the beautiful morning, basking in the sun before starting their particular flavor of the daily grind.
Genius inventor and businessman John Jacob Astor VIII was already at work, contemplating the technical problems of large-scale mass teleportation. Bent over his enormous high-tech workbench, he kept finding himself distracted by the play of sunlight on the river outside the large window that was the north wall of his lab…
Nearby, on Front Avenue near Whaler’s Wharf, pyrotechnics expert extraordinaire Bennie Wilson was considering her prospects. Almost a year since the incredible Rush 2015 World Tour had ended, and everything since had been a bore in comparison. The part time gigs at the night clubs, and the weekday work at the Sagan Planetarium, were paying the rent, sure… but they just didn’t do anything for her soul. She’d turned down the Garth Brooks tour last month, even though his people had repeatedly made offers. She supposed she’d end up doing the Rod Stewart Hits tour in mid-August, and the Toni Braxton show in September. They were only warm-ups for the real deal, however – the Queen + Adam Lambert World Tour, on 3 October. Astoria was the only American city on the schedule, and the grand finale of the whole tour. This beautiful morning, she was heading to the Rivererfront offices of the local promoters to sign the contract securing her services as local lead lighting and pyrotechnics engineer…
Cooper Ravenwing, Native American student at the University of Astoria, was strolling up the Mile after his early morning AA meeting down near Pier 21. His first class wasn’t until 11:00 and he was in no particular hurry this morning, savoring his coffee and the clean smells of spring beginning to burst forth. He enjoyed the rains of the Pacific Northwest… they reminded him of home. Which, admittedly, could be a bitter-sweet and melancholy thing some days. But days like this felt like a renewal of his soul and his hope…
Human slime-ball Marty Armstrong was strolling the Mile as well, looking for an easy mark amongst the happy sheeple grazing all around him. Pickpocketing was not usually very profitable, nor safe, before the summer crowds arrived but he thought today just might be an exception. Everyone was so blitzed out on the nice weather, after a particularly cold and wet spring so far, he figured they were much more likely to be oblivious to the lurking predator in their midst…
Gideon Young was relatively new to the city, having arrived in mid-March, and this was his first experience of how glorious the Pacific Northwest could be when it was warm and sunny. When a… friend… had suggested he go shopping on the Mile this morning he hadn’t been inclined to argue, for several reasons. Not the least of which was the stunning sight of Mt. Defiance rising over the city to the south, golden morning sunlight brilliant on the snowy eastern slopes. Massachusetts surely didn’t have mountains like that…
Danforth Carlyle, Internet blogger, literary poseur, and wannabe Goth vampire lord, was lounging at a table outside a Starbucks Coffee, nursing his mint tea, scribbling bad poetry, and generally sneering at all the bourgeois “normals” around him. He muttered mocking sotto voce comments about the banality of it all as he wrote. They knew nothing, these blind sheep, but one of these days he’d make them see the light! Or rather, the Dark, the beauty of the Dark, he hastily corrected his metaphor, glancing around to make sure no one had caught his little slip…
Kyle Steiner, brilliant physicist, Olympic gold medalist and eternal student, was also sitting outside that same Starbucks. Enjoying the sun, his mocha, and a cinnamon roll, he was deeply contemplating his place in the world, and realizing just how deeply bored he was with his status quo. Hiding out from the world just didn’t seem to be working for him anymore. It wasn’t as if his fears didn’t still haunt him, but maybe it was time to set those fears aside? Maybe it was time for a change…
Bright, funny, and hard-working Elizabet Molina was on her way to the Silver Mile to enjoy a rare day off from teaching her martial arts classes. She enjoyed the work, sure, and it helped to finance her tuition at the U of A and her studies in Central American history. But it was nice to just have some time to herself, she thought, as she parked her roommate’s borrowed car at the Pacific Avenue Smart Park garage…
Research scientist Dr. Ted Carbonet was perhaps too focused on his own thoughts to fully appreciate the lovely day, as he parked his own car at the Defiance Mall and began walking down the Mile toward the waterfront. The mysterious call that had awakened him this morning still disturbed him… the unrecognized voice had suggested that he check out the famous pedestrian shopping area this morning. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he was here, but the voice had been so insistent… and persuasive. But most worrying, it had suggested he bring the two objects he now absently fingered in his jacket pocket. Objects no one else could possibly know about…
Jane Valentine, P.I. also found herself unable to fully enjoy the beauty of the morning, her focus being her current case – finding a missing girl, a 15-year-old runaway named Cassie. At the moment nothing else was more important. There girl’s debit card had been used at a coffee shop on the Mile not 20 minutes earlier, so Jane had every hope of wrapping this one up quickly. Then maybe she’d be able to enjoy the spring weather herself… true, the night was her usual milieu, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate the sunlight when she had the opportunity…
Young Jonny Osaka was strolling down the Mile on his way to work at the BridgePort Brewery at Whaler’s Wharf, and taking his time. He liked his job, but watching the pretty girls, unwrapped at last after the looong winter, was his duty as a red-blooded Japanese-American male! Besides, he was still feeling a bit odd after that accident last week at his second job as a janitor at the U of A. The fresh air was nice, and seemed to be helping him clear his head. As he started up the pedestrian overpass which spanned Pacific Avenue (the one vehicular street allowed to intersect the Mile) his attention was drawn from the girls, and the sun on the river to the north, by the sound of a jet engine…
Marius Night had taken a rare day off from his middle-management job as an investment analyst at Tech-Sector, but it sure as hell wasn’t to enjoy the weather. He was too wrapped up in his own angst to really even notice it, in fact. The simple truth was, he was still furious about last night. He had finally proposed to Ailene (went to a lot of trouble to do it, too, not to mention the expense)… and she had turned him down cold! Jesus, after a year of her not-so-subtle hints, you’d think she would’ve – stalking south over the Pacific Avenue overpass, Mark was pulled from his angry fulminations by an odd sight… why was that corporate jet flying so low? Was that even legal? And was it… vibrating?
The flash of rainbow light when the planed exploded was as blinding as the sound of the blast was deafening —
The detonation sent shockwaves radiating out in an expanding sphere, shattering windows for blocks in every direction. Hundreds of people were blown off their feet, scores of cars on Pacific Avenue went careening into one another, and chunks of flaming debris began raining down over four square blocks. One chunk had the bad luck to strike a gas tanker; the secondary explosion was larger and even more damaging. An ART bus, traveling west in the lane furthest from the tanker but almost even with it, was caught by the edge of the blast. Knocked almost onto its side, only the building it had slammed into kept it canted at a mere 80° angle.
As those not instantly killed or rendered unconscious in the back-to-back blasts and their aftermath staggered to their feet, their stunned gazes were drawn upward — a sphere of prism-like crystalline shards was hovering in the air where the plane had been. Teenager Jason Rothchild captured the spinning, swiftly expanding “disco ball,” as he later called it, on his AzTech® Warrior™ smartphone – a move that would make him an Internet sensation before sunset. As it grew and spun, faster and faster, the flashes of rainbow light began lancing out from it in every direction.
To many witnesses, the rays of multi-colored light seemed almost alive. Survivors would later describe them bending, as if seeking targets – and indeed, whether they passed through walls or struck outside, they seemed to almost always strike a person. Some of those struck were simply staggered, the beam leaving them no more than dazed and confused; many others collapsed into unconsciousness as the beams hit them. Of the latter group, a few went into violent convulsions – and were dead within minutes.
The glittering sphere hovered several hundred feet above the ground, its strobe-like flashing growing more intense as the beams of rainbow energy blanketed more and more of the city, striking into the heart of downtown to the west as well as the suburbs south and east, passing through buildings as if they weren’t there. The assault reached a crescendo of violence — and then the sphere was shrinking, collapsing in on itself very quickly. The beams it was emitting became fewer and fewer… and then the crystalline sphere was gone. It was almost as if it had never existed – if not for the death and destruction it had left behind.
Only 93 seconds after it started the Astoria Incident was over… and the world had changed, although few realized that fact yet.
Jane Valentine had been on the south side of Rush Avenue, a block west of the Silver Mile, when the explosion occurred. While a number of people around her had been knocked off their feet, she had not. As she began to help others back up, wondering what in the hell had just happened, flaming debris began striking all around them. A particularly large piece struck the four-story parking structure just ahead of her, but the sound of collapsing concrete, crumpling metal and blaring car alarms was almost drowned out by a high-pitched whine, like a buzzsaw, as beams of light in every color of the spectrum began to fill the air.
The beams seemed to be striking people, and far more frequently than random chance would suggest, Jane thought. Some people seemed merely dazed, but others were collapsing. For a moment, she was torn which way to turn – but strange lights seemed something she could do little about. She turned and raced toward the billowing clouds of dust pouring from the partially collapsed car park. As she did the shrill sound and flashing lights both cut out, as if someone had thrown a switch.
The sudden reappearance of the beautiful spring day seemed jarringly incongruous with the ongoing sounds of falling debris, car alarms and screams of fear and pain. In the distance, sirens began, but if the jam of wrecked, stalled and abandoned cars on Rush Avenue were any indication, emergency services would not be arriving anytime soon… which didn’t mean that help wasn’t available, however…
Passing into the shadows of the parking structure, made even dimmer by billowing clouds of concrete dust, Jane Valentine issued the mental command that turned her street clothes into the midnight-black costume and mystic cloak of Artemis, Avenger of the Night. She moved deeper into the structure, toward the collapsed section, and saw a dozen people, dust covered and coughing in the thick air, trying to pull rubble off a partially crushed car. The muffled sound of children crying could be heard from inside the vehicle.
Leaping in amongst the would-be rescuers, Artemis began heaving half-ton slabs of concrete and rebar aside. The others stood back in amazement, and maybe a little fear. Artemis spared no thought for them as she focused on the sound of the children… she could see the car now, an SUV that had only been saved from being totally pancaked by the chance of two crossed support pillars. But the last enormous slab of concrete and iron over the vehicle was too heavy even for her prodigious strength, strain as she might – and the little bit she did manage to shift it only threatened to bring on a total collapse.
Peering in through the gaps in the rubble, she could see… yes, there was just enough room… and it was certainly dark enough. She stood up and pulled her cloak about her and, to the shock of the bystanders, silently faded into shadow. She reappeared inside the SUV, crouched over the crying children. Pulling her cloak over them in the cramped space, she took them with her as she returned to where she’d started. The bystanders stepped back in alarm, and two actually turned and fled. Artemis looked at the ones who remained, an eyebrow cocked behind her black domino mask.
“Can anyone take care of these children?” she asked the gaping stares after a beat. “I have to go back for their mother.” Her mild words seemed to break whatever spell held them, and several people jumped forward to take the still sobbing children from her. This time when she vanished, they hardly even blinked.
The woman was unconscious, and badly injured, but one of the would-be rescuers was a paramedic; after a brief examination, once Artemis had retrieved the woman, he promised that he would do all he could.
“But if she’s going to survive,” he added grimly, “she really needs to get to a hospital soon. Can you –?”
Artemis nodded in acknowledgement of the unfinished question, and knelt down, spreading her cloak over the injured woman.
“Keep looking for other survivors,” she told the paramedic and his companions. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.” The shadows around the two women seemed to deepen and shrink inward, and then they were gone.
Isobel Dixon Memorial was less than two miles away, and she had long ago made it a point to know where the perpetually darkest corners were in all of the region’s medical facilities… among other places. The ER staff, as surprised as they were to see a cloaked, masked woman kick open the door from the basement, were professionals – as soon as they saw the injured woman she carried, they went into action.
“There’s been a major disaster near the Silver Mile,” she told the lead doctor, briefly describing the explosions and how the woman had been injured. “She is only the first of what I’m afraid are going to be hundreds of casualties. Alert your staff, as well as all the other hospitals in the city.
“But I’m afraid it may be awhile before patients start arriving, the streets are jammed. Can you spare anyone to go back with me, for triage?” The doctor turned to point at two young interns not involved in treating the injured woman. “Ferris, Wainwright, grab trauma kits and whatever else you think you’ll need for field treatment.”
The two spared only a quick, doubtful glance at the mysterious woman, hooded, cloaked, and masked in black, before hustling off to gather their gear. “You’re that mysterious Dark Angel the tabloids have been talking about, aren’t you?” asked the doctor, Ramirez according to his ID badge. “I thought you must be an urban myth… live and learn, I guess. Listen, can you get those two back to us before the mass casualties start arriving? If it’s as bad as you describe, we’re going to need every hand here.”
“Yes, that’s one of the names I’m known by,” Artemis replied with a grim smile. “And it is that bad, unfortunately. So yes, I will return your doctors when you need them. Have them meet me in that storage room…”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Ted had been knocked on his ass by the initial shockwave of the blast, and was momentarily stunned. As he stumbled back to his feet, shaking his head to clear it, he was briefly mesmerized by the sight of a bizarre ball of spinning rainbow lights hovering over the city a block-and-a-half to the north. When it began throwing out streams of colored laser beams, however, he dove for cover in the nearest building, a Gap/Kid’s Gap store whose windows had all been shattered by the blast.
Not many customers at this time in the morning, and the few who’d been in the store were being dragged out the back by the staff as blasts of prismatic light began striking people up and down the street outside… and sometimes passing through walls to strike those inside. Crouched behind a display stand and a couple of toppled child-sized mannequins, Ted watched in disbelief as a particularly large hunk of burning debris, no doubt from whatever had exploded and released the laser-ball-of-death, struck the parking structure across the street, causing a section near the center to collapse.
As dust billowed out and the shrieks of even more car alarms were added to the existing cacophony, he realized he’d have to do something. He fished his mask and goggles out of his pocket and pulled them on. As he did, he experienced a sudden chill – had the mystery man on the phone this morning known this was going to happen, and that he’d be needed? He shoved the thought down – the idea creeped him out, but right now he had to focus. He headed back out onto a changed street.
The mysterious crystal sphere had vanished, and the colorful laser beams with it, but the devastation they’d left behind was even greater than he’d feared. Two minutes ago, this had been a cheerful shopping street full of happy chattering people; now it looked like a war zone. Fires were burning in at least three buildings he could see, aside from the partially collapsed parking structure, and the smoke visible in the spring sky implied there were even more in the surrounding blocks. The pale pavers of the Mile were shattered and blackened in a dozen places by falling debris, and scores of people were injured… or maybe killed he realized, given how still many of them lay. Hundreds of others milled about in various states of shock.
His resolve to rush to the collapsed parking structure was suddenly diverted by a piercing cry for help to his right. An old antique store just across the Rush Avenue overpass had apparently been hit, and flames were beginning to leap up from the roof. The top three floors of the four story building were apartments, and in the nearest of the bay windows on the third floor a woman, with two children clutched to her side, was leaning dangerously far out and frantically screaming for help. Even as he spotted her, smoke began pouring out the window, almost hiding the woman and kids from view. Without another thought Ted dashed up the street, yelling at the top of his lungs to hold on, help was coming!
As he ran, Ted summoned up that weird fizzy feeling that seemed always to be there, just beneath his breast bone, ever since the accident… and felt the bubbles forming beneath his feet. The iridescent cloud of translucent pale blue, green and purple bubbles lifted him up until he was hovering in the air before the woman, more than 20 feet above the pavement.
“Come on,” he yelled at the suddenly hesitant mother who, eyes wide in shock, had frozen on the window sill. “It’s perfectly safe, ma’am, really! Hurry, please!”
“I- I-” the woman stammered, clearly torn between her fear of the flames, which he could see had already breached her apartment, and the terror of stepping out a window onto a cloud of soap bubbles. Her five-year-old son, however, had no such qualms, and wriggled away from her clutching hand to leap out the window and onto the bubble cloud.
“Dylan! No!” his mother shrieked, reaching after him. But when she saw he was safe, indeed laughing excitedly in the masked man’s arms, she reluctantly handed out her three-year-old daughter. But when he urged her to follow, she just couldn’t do it… her reason told her it must be safe, she could see it was, but her back-brain insisted that she’d plunge straight through those bubbles to the sidewalk below. Crouched in the window, she just couldn’t make herself take that leap of faith.
“I’ll be back,” the obviously exasperated stranger called to her when it was clear she was paralyzed. “I’ll get the children down and I’ll come back for you!” Then he began dropping quickly to the ground, her children in his arms.
Back on the ground Ted grabbed one of the crowd milling in the street, gaping at the unfolding drama – an older woman whose name tag indicated she worked at the antiques store – and shoved the children at her.
“Take them,” he ordered, “and get them back from the building while I go back for their mother… all you people, for God’s sake move back!”
But as he turned to once again ascend to the panicked woman, flames began to flicker out of the window she was crouched in… and she jumped. Instinctively Ted poured on the fizz, and a six-foot deep cushion of larger bubbles formed on the pavement directly below the falling woman. She hit… and sank gently into them, her kinetic energy absorbed and dissipated, leaving her to land gently, if on her ass, on the sidewalk.
The crowd went wild with cheers and whistles then, but Ted barely noticed. Helping the woman to her feet he guided her to the clerk holding her children, giving her a quick once-over for injuries. As she dropped to her knees to be tearfully reunited with her now-crying kids he crouched down to look at her.
“I’m a doctor,” he said, leaving out the detail that he wasn’t a medical doctor – he figured in times like this comfort was more important than strict accuracy. “The kids are fine, and you should be too; just some singed hair… and maybe some minor third degree burns there… a bit of smoke inhalation probably… er, but you’ll be fine.
“But listen, can you tell me – is there anyone else in the building? Do you know if anyone else is trapped in there?”
“I- I think most everyone else had left for work already, like Mike, my husband,” she replied hesitantly. “But oh– not old man Henricks! He’s retired, on disability… he lives on the second floor… the back apartment on the north side… he, he uses a walker, I don’t think he–”
But Ted was already on his way up, rising toward the building on his cloud of shimmering bubbles and forming a single large, semi-permeable bubble around his head… he’d been trying out the technique in water recently, and it worked well enough – he should be able to filter out the smoke. And a cushion of insulating bubbles all around him should keep the heat tolerable, at least for awhile…
He found the old man laying on the floor in his apartment, alive and breathing, but only semi-conscious. He’d stuffed wet towels under the door to the hall, and had been using one to breath through. He was too out of it to notice, or probably care, that his rescuer wore a blue SCUBA diver’s hood and ski goggles. Ted popped another semi-permeable bubble around the old man’s head and lifted him onto a larger cloud of tiny bubbles, before stepping aboard himself to guide them up and out of danger.
It was definitely more complicated to mentally hold together two breathing bubbles and the lift cloud… but it was doable, he found. He wondered how many things he could do at once, as he set the old veteran down amidst a crowd of willing helpers. And could he fight the fire with his bubbles? Maybe like some sort of flame retardant foam?
As he pondered how he might create such a thing, however, the crowd gave a collective gasp. He turned to look where everyone was pointing, and his own jaw dropped as he saw the flames being pulled up and away from the building, apparently being sucked into… was that a naked glowing blue man?!
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
At the Starbucks coffee shop Kyle Steiner had been caught as much off guard as everyone else by the explosions, but the natural scientist in him was immediately captivated by the incredible scene he was witnessing. Even as part of him was paralyzed with shock, the analytical part of him was noting and cataloging everything he saw. The shockwave had felt… odd… the prismatic crystalline sphere that was hovering overhead looked unlike anything he’d ever seen outside of a disco… it didn’t seem solid, exactly, but rather composed of thousands of individual crystal shards, all spinning around a central point… and certainly those rainbow bolts, every color in the visible spectrum, weren’t lasers… they didn’t seem energetic enough, for one thing, and moved very… strangely…
Kyle was jolted from his intellectual trance when a piece of flaming wreckage struck the far corner of the building that housed the coffee shop. A 20-foot section of a high-end luggage shop collapsed into the street in a shower of brick, glass, plaster and scorched metal. An instant later one of those beams of prismatic light lancing out from the sphere struck that sneering-faced neurasthenic twit who’d been writing, as far as Kyle could tell from the fellow’s occasional mutterings, very bad poetry two tables away. An odd guy, Kyle thought, but he’d better go check on him anyway, he seemed dazed and a little confused… even more than he had earlier…
As he moved toward the reeling would-be poet, Kyle’s attention was suddenly diverted by a loud cracking sound that cut through the high-pitched whine that had accompanied the appearance of the crystalline sphere. Staring past the dazed man he saw that half a block away the section of the Silver Mile that crossed over Crick Avenue had been compromised, either by the collapsed section of the luggage shop, another piece of falling wreckage, or maybe both. Fissures began radiating out across the overpass, and he realized that in seconds the whole section of street might collapse into the tunnel below. Aside from the pedestrians who would go down with it, there must be a dozen or more cars on the roadway directly below, given the usual volume of morning commuter traffic…
“Well shit!” was all Kyle said as he sprinted for the overpass, a shell of silvery carbon nano-fiber suddenly flowing over him, covering every inch of his body and clothes. He hoped like hell nobody had noticed his transformation into his until-now-purely-hypothetical superhero guise. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been thinking about this for awhile now… hell, he’d even decided on a name… but this was NOT how he’d pictured his public debut.
Nonetheless, it was Quanta who leaped over the railing and down onto Crick Avenue. A multi-car pile-up had blocked the eastern end of the tunnel, and he’d underestimated the number of vehicles trapped therein –nineteen, the analytical part of his mind noted, even as he began pulling matter into existence from the quantum realm and forming it into steel girders with which to brace the sagging roof. In seconds he had stopped the imminent collapse, and was able to begin helping people out of the danger zone, pulling apart crushed cars, freeing trapped people, and in a few cases using his quantum healing powers to knit bone back together and seal cuts and abrasions. He was so focused on the tasks at hand that he never even noticed when the shrill whine faded away…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Cooper was staggered by the invisible wave front of the explosion, which sent his coffee flying across his chest, but he managed to keep his feet, unlike many around him. He instinctively threw up a mystic shield to protect himself and those immediately around him from the sudden rain of falling glass as half the windows in the nearby twin Gemini Towers blew out.
Through the tumult of panicked screams and car alarms going off Cooper watched in astonishment as a glittering, spinning rainbow ball hovered in the sky over the buildings south of him. It was like nothing he’d ever seen or even heard of. It clearly wasn’t supernatural in origin – it completely failed to trigger any of his mystical senses – yet in all his studies over the last few years here in the Outer World he’d never heard of anything quite like it. When colorful lights began to shoot out of the growing sphere self-preservation kicked in and he ducked for cover under the iron canopy of the Castor Building.
The bolts weren’t the only thing falling from the sky – a chunk of flaming debris smashed the face of the luggage store on the corner across the street, even as a ruby beam struck into the crowd at the tables in front of the Starbucks next door to it. Realizing he would have to act, Copper decided he wasn’t going to do it in a coffee-stained shirt. Fortunately his leather vest was untouched – once he’d pulled the shirt off and tossed it aside, he slid the vest back on over his bare, tattoo-covered torso.
Just as he stepped back out onto the pale pavers of the street a sharp crack to the south drew his attention – the Crick Avenue overpass was giving way! He began mustering his mystical resources to respond, but saw a figure break away from the Starbucks crowd and sprint toward the pending disaster. His eyebrows shot up as the man suddenly became encased in a silvery shell of metal… or was it ceramic? It was hard to tell from this distance. For a moment he wondered if the silvery guy had anything to do with the crystal sphere and energy bolts, but when the collapse of the overpass halted, and the sagging street seemed to lift back up, he decided probably not.
Realizing he wasn’t needed there, Cooper turned toward the excited shouts behind him. A dozen people seemed to have gone berserk. Men and women were gleefully pulling merchandise from the shattered display windows of the electronics and jewelry stores on the ground floor of the Pollux Building, their eyes glazed, expressions manic. While he still had a hard time fully understanding the Americans’ obsession with possessions and private property, he grasped enough to know that this was very odd behavior for people who’d seemed normal citizens just moments ago…
Before he could decide if this was a situation worth involving himself in, a nearby cry of pain caught his ear. The strange lights and the high-pitched shriek had stopped now, he realized, and people were beginning to help the injured around them, calling for doctors or anyone with medical training. Without hesitation Cooper turned to this far more important task, and hurried over to tend to a man badly cut by falling glass. Summoning his shamanistic healing touch, he laid his hands on the injured man…
As he finished tending to the fifth and last of the most seriously wounded people nearby Cooper’s attention was again diverted, this time back to the Starbucks across the street. Standing up, he moved closer for a better view, as a scrawny, sallow skinned young man with dark hair suddenly rose from the crowd – literally. Hovering in the air ten feet above the others, his clothes suddenly began to shimmer and twist, reforming themselves into what looked to Cooper like an all-black version of faux Medieval costumes, like people had worn at that Renaissance Faire Meg had taken him to once… what were they called? Oh, yes, LARPers. This one’s costume included a dramatic, flowing cape with a high, ornate collar.
The man’s stringy black hair floated around his head in a weird nimbus for a moment before suddenly pulling itself back into a pony tail, held together by a silvery ring that formed itself out of.. a coffee spoon? The man’s hand reached out toward one of the metal chairs nearby, and reddish energy coruscated around it as it too reshaped itself – in this case into a large, glowing ankh, which the man held inverted.
“At last!” the strange figure…well, cackled was really the only word for it, Cooper decided, although he’d never heard anyone actually cackle before. He’d always thought it merely a literary affectation. “At last the Power is mine… mine, as it always should have been mine!
“They once mocked Necron, Master of the Unliving, the fools – but now that the greatest Necromancer of this Age has at last come into his birthright, they will soon learn the error of their mocking ways! And a harsh lesson it shall be!”
The other Starbucks customers had begun backing away when “Necron” rose into the air, but now they stopped, and several tittered at this soliloquy, one woman actually snorting a semi-hysterical laugh. Cooper was inclined to laugh himself, despite the obvious power the twit seemed to possess – it wan’t exactly mystical power he sensed, although it did seem tangentially related to the supernatural energies he knew. Still, floating in the air and making an ass of yourself wasn’t really a crime, so Cooper held back and watched, at least for the moment…
The moment was short-lived. At the sound of the titters, and especially at the laugh, the young man’s face turned crimson and twisted into what he probably thought was a mask of rage, but which Cooper thought just made him look constipated.
“You, too, dare to mock Necron?!” he tried to roar, although it came out as more of a shriek. “You will pay for your insolence, mortal fools! Kneel down before your Dark Master!” He raised his inverted ankh and a dozen tendrils of red energy whipped out, striking the people nearest him and driving them to their knees. With a gleeful look of triumph and deep satisfaction he tossed his head back and laughed maniacally.
But before he could turn his powers on the rest of the crowd a green mist began to form in the air above him, raining gently down over both the would-be “necromancer” and his captive audience. In seconds most of Necron’s victims were stretched out on the ground gently snoring, while he himself looked suddenly slack-jawed and dazed. He retained enough awareness, however, to realize what was happening and to spot the source of his affliction. He gestured weakly at Cooper with his quickly dimming ankh.
“You shall not best Necron… with your… primitive magics… savage…” A sullen, lethargic beam of red energy wavered toward Cooper, but faded before it reached him. “No one… bests… me…”
With another gesture and a chanted word Cooper doubled the power of his Sleeping Mists around the idiotic youth. Almost instantly Necron’s eyes rolled back and he dropped like a stone, crashing into a table below him before slithering limply to the ground in a welter of broken cups, pastry crumbs and cold coffee. His dark cloak settled over his head as he began to snore with a high-pitched nasal wheeze…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Gideon was just passing the understated 19th Century elegance of the Mandalay Hotel on Pacific Avenue, about a block east of the Silver Mile, when he saw the small jet explode in the air over one of the Mile’s pedestrian overpasses. As it vanished in a blinding flash of multi-colored light Gideon instinctively went insubstantial, which probably saved his life as the shockwave and flaming rain of debris killed half a dozen people nearby. And then the secondary explosion of a gas tanker sent a city bus careening into the office building next to the hotel. Dazed and in shock, he watched as a strange sphere of flashing prisms hovered in the sky, the last of the plane’s wreckage falling away from it.
A sizable piece of that burning debris looked to be heading his way and Gideon ducked, despite having remained insubstantial – reflexes, man! But the hunk of twisted metal passed far over his head to strike the third floor of the stately hotel behind him. Masonry and glass blew outward as a section of the building collapsed into the street – and directly onto Gideon.
The only person to see him walk out through the smoking pile of rubble a moment later was a middle aged matron who’d just stepped out of her building across the street, a yipping little dog tugging on its leash. At the sight of this apparition in jeans, a leather jacket, and a Hello Kitty t-shirt walking through solid matter she gave a strangled gasp and staggered back. The stairs behind caught her heel, and she fell back to land on what looked to be a well-padded backside, clutching at her pearls.
Gideon had no time to spare for reassuring the old broad – the city bus that had been blasted almost onto its side was wedged into the face of an office building a few dozen yards away. Cars that had been even closer to the blast were in flames, and fuel was puddling around the bus, which was one of the older, non-electric vehicles in the city’s fleet. In minutes, at best, the bus would be engulfed, and with the doors blocked it was clear those inside couldn’t get out in time. Gideon began to run.
He ran straight through the back of the bus and into chaos. The bus had been full almost to capacity with morning commuters, perhaps fifty people, of every age and description. No one was uninjured, and less than half of them were both fully conscious and mobile. Of those, less than half seemed capable of doing much beyond frantically pounding on the blocked doors, sobbing in shock, or trying to scramble through the shattered windows. A few were trying to help the more badly injured, however, and it was to them Gideon turned.
“Get everyone you can gathered as close as you can,” he yelled at the middle-aged Black man who seemed the most organized. “I can get you all out, but you have to be touching!”
The man just stared at him blankly for a second, then frowned. “Kid, I’m a doctor, and we have to get organized to get people out in an orderly, safe fashion – and some shouldn’t be moved until the ambulances arrive–”
“There’s no time,” Gideon hissed, sotto voce, not wanting to start a panic. “The bus is surrounded by fuel and fires are spreading fast. I can get everyone out at once… well, maybe two trips… but they all need to be in contact with each another!”
The man just shook his head in exasperation and turned back to organizing the others. Exasperated himself, Gideon shoved the doctor aside and grabbed the two nearest injured commuters by the arms… all three of them vanished with a weird warping of space and a slight “pop.” The doctor was still gaping at the spot where they’d been when Gideon teleported back in. He gave the doctor a look… and the man didn’t hesitate.
“Get everybody as close as you can,” he called out to the others. “Get the least injured closest to the most injured, don’t try to move those.” He turned back to Gideon. “Where are you taking them? Can you get them to a hospital?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Gideon said regretfully. “My range isn’t that great. But I can get them out of immediate danger.”
“Good enough! Let’s go!” the man clapped Gideon on the shoulder and suddenly grinned. “I’ve never teleported before… what’s it–”
“–like?” he finished his sentence on the sidewalk two blocks from the bus. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Gideon said, grinning back. “It’s like that.” Then he was gone for the second batch of injured.
Two minutes later, when he’d made his last jump to bring out the most seriously injured, and three bodies, including that of the driver, he found the matronly lady kneeling next to a young Native American girl, holding her arm while the doctor prepared to set a break. The woman looked up at Gideon and smiled at his surprised expression.
“I was a candy-striper as a girl,” she explained. “And I’ve always kept up on my Red Cross First Aid certifications… one doesn’t like to be totally useless, you know.”
Before an embarrassed Gideon could respond the flames reached the bus, and it exploded in a fireball that scorched the building it lay against to the sixth floor. Everyone flinched, but kept on tending to the injured with no more than a quick glance at what could have been their fate. Distracted by all the wounded around him, it took Gideon a minute to realize that the burning bus seemed to have been extinguished pretty damn fast… somehow. Very odd…
Before he could consider it further, the matron who’d been helping set the broken arm rose to her feet, task completed, and turned to smile wryly at Gideon.
“I don’t know who, or what, you are young man,” she said, reaching out to grip his hand. “But thank God you were here today. All these people are alive because of you. Thank you.”
Gideon blushed, then turned to look up the street toward the Mile. “Um, well, thank you ma’am… um, I suppose there’s other people who need help too, so, um…”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure that’s true, so don’t let an old lady keep you; and Heaven knows there’s more for me to do here. But before you go – I never thought I’d meet an actual superhero. What should we call you?”
“You can call me… the Phantom Ace,” Gideon said, smiling slightly. And then, with a “pop,” he was gone…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Jonny slowly blinked his eyes open, feeling very strange and disoriented… why was he laying on his back in the middle of… the Silver Mile?! Then in an instant it came back to him… the vibrating plane, a roar and a flash of blinding light, the fall into darkness… he leapt to his feet – and continued twenty feet into the air! Eyes wide in shock, he looked around as he hovered in the air – hot damn, he was FLYING!
But before he could even begin to come to grips with that idea he also noticed that he wan’t exactly himself anymore – his body seemed to be made of swirling bands of brilliant blue plasma — something he recognized from his months working as a night janitor in the U of A High Energy Physics Lab. An aura of flickering blue flames shimmered around him, bright even in the morning sunlight, as he slowly examined his new form. His cloths hadn’t survived his, um, transformation, but a quick check down south reassured him that his most important bits were still intact – if also apparently made of plasma.
So here he was, floating naked and wreathed in blue flame above the busiest street in the city, and – why was no one paying any attention to him? It was then that the chaos and devastation around him began to penetrate his slightly shell-shocked brain, and he realized his shit might not be the most important shit going down right now…
He could see several buildings burning nearby, and smoke rising beyond them implied at least several more large fires. He could see there were a lot of injured people and, he was afraid, dead ones too on the streets for blocks around… but he wasn’t sure what he could do for them in his current condition. He’d be afraid to get too close to anyone right now, for fear of burning them.
Fire. Maybe that was a problem he could do something about! The closest serious one seemed to him to be the Red Robin restaurant on Pacific… but how to get there? He’d been hovering, but how could he move himself…? He faced the direction he wanted to go, willing himself to move – and blasted forward, blue flames trailing behind him like a comet!
Stop!
He instantly came to a halt, directly over the burning restaurant. OK, that was freaky… he was clearly going to have to work on the flying thing. But he seemed to have the hovering thing down, and right now he had to figure out how to stop this fire… he drifted down until he was just a foot above the roaring flames. Hmmm, no real sensation of heat, although he could… feel… the fire somehow. He could almost taste it… he drew in a deep breath, and in that moment realized he hadn’t actually been breathing since he came to!
But before he could freak out about that, and all it implied, Jonny felt a surge of energy. Looking down he saw the flames that had been below him were now all around him, and… fading? As they faded, he felt stronger… was he… absorbing them? He took another “breath” and this time saw the flames being drawn toward him… and then disappear into his own aura of blue flame. And he felt good – really good!
It didn’t take Jonny long to realize that he didn’t need to fake “breathing” to draw the flames into himself, he just needed to concentrate on making it so. In a minute he had absorbed all the flames Red Robin had to offer. Then, as he turned to seek another target, a city bus a block away, just beyond the pedestrian overpass, exploded in a six-story high ball of flame. This time he didn’t think about it, he simply flew toward the fire, drawing it into himself as he neared.
That was a quick and easy one, absorbed almost instantly, and he turned his attention to a real conflagration further south on the Mile. As he flew toward the four story apartment building, with the antiques store on the ground floor, he was amazed to see a man, in street clothes but wearing a full-head mask and goggles, rising up from the back of the building on a cloud of iridescent bubbles, gliding over the flames. Two men actually, the second one was stretched out on the cloud, apparently unconscious. Which maybe meant there were others in the building… he’d better act fast!
Hovering over the inferno, Jonny began pulling the flames into his aura, absorbing their energy into himself, dissipating them into nothingness. This fire was bigger than the other two, however, and it took him a little longer…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
JJ didn’t hear the explosion through the very expensive soundproofing of his lab walls, but he did feel, very faintly, the vibration of the initial shockwave. For a moment he thought it was an earthquake… rare, but not impossible in Astoria… but something about it just didn’t feel right. When his assistant Penny rushed in to breathlessly announce that a plane had exploded over the Silver Mile he immediately tapped a button on the sleek wrist comp he always wore – a holographic screen popped into existence in the air above it, and he began scanning the Internet.
Yes, there… already someone was uploading live streaming footage of the event… static obscured it occasionally, but it seemed like some strange, prism-faceted globe was hovering and spinning several hundred feet above the street. When beams of multi-chromatic energy began shooting out of the swirling mass of crystals JJ wasted no more time – pulling off his shirt, kicking off his shoes, and skinning out of his slacks he was very glad he’d decided to wear the Under Armour today. He focused on the mental command that triggered his organic metal armor, and in seconds the bronze-and-silver liquid metal had covered him from head to toe, solidified into an almost impenetrable shell. Behind the helmet organic LED screens lit up with views from the nano cameras around the armor, along with the continuing Internet feed.
Less than a minute after he started his transformation, JJ was airborne, exiting through the emergency skylight he’d had built for just these sorts of occasions. Or rather Scion exited, he thought sourly as he burst into the morning sky. He wasn’t particularly fond of the “codename” the press had stuck him with, but he supposed he had only himself to blame, since he’d refused to give himself one early on, when he’d had the chance. Honestly, he’d never understood why “Captain Astor” hadn’t caught on… it was his proper rank and name, after all, and it would so have annoyed his estranged and tight-assed cousins back East…
In the few seconds it took him to reach the Silver Mile, less than half a mile from his offices, the strange light-show seemed to have ended, but its results were still very much in evidence. Fires burned in a dozen spots, scores of people were dead and many more than that were injured… his threat targeting computer accessed the incoming information and highlighted the most urgent problems in red…
A man was trapped in his small economy car, crushed against the pedestrian-blocking planters that separated the Mile from Pacific Avenue and a Ford F-150 truck. Down the block a young man was alternating between performing CPR on an older woman and screaming that his grandmother was having a heart attack. But the most pressing threat was clearly a cell phone tower on the roof of a nearby eight story office building.
Apparently hit by several stray bits of the destroyed plane, the upper floors of the building were on fire and the cell tower itself had been damaged. It was slowly crumpling under its own weight and in seconds it would plunge off the roof and into the crowds stumbling around in the street below. Scion leaped uward at speed and caught the tower just as it began its final collapse. He easily hefted the half-ton of twisted metal and electronics back up onto the roof to lay it gently down, well away from the building’s edge.
Realizing there wasn’t much he could do about the fire just now, after making sure there was no one trapped inside, he swooped down towards the street and the old lady and her grandson. Landing on the opposite side of the woman he grabbed the young man’s shoulder as he came up for breath.
“You’re sure it’s a heart attack?” he asked.
“Scion!” the young man gasped, his panicked eyes going wide. “Yes – I don’t know – I think so! She grabbed her left arm and collapsed, and I can’t find a pulse, and–”
“It’s OK,” JJ reassured the kid, motioning him to move back. His own sensors confirmed there was no heartbeat, but if it really was a heart attack, he just might be able to do something about that. He willed the living metal of his armor to pull back from his hands – he’d need skin contact for this – and laid them on the woman’s chest and side. Taking a deep breath, he sent a blast of bioelectric energy into her body. Damn, no heartbeat detected… increase the voltage then. A second blast, and still no pulse. He frowned and focused his energy… this was the most he could probably risk… a third blast… and he had it! A pulse! Weak and thready, but it was there, and she was breathing again on her own, if shallowly.
“Keep her warm and as comfortable as you can,” he told the young man, who stammered out his thanks in a choked voice. “I’ll see that emergency services get to her as soon a possible, but others need my help right now.”
Gauntlets reforming around his hands as he lifted into the air, he turned and zipped toward the crushed Geo Metro on Pacific Avenue. Several people, including the owner of the monster truck doing the crushing, were trying to free the unconscious and clearly injured man from his vehicle, with little effect. More wide eyes as he landed next to the truck, grabbed it by the under carriage and the door frame, and lifted it off the smaller car. Dropping it a few yards away, he turned and tore apart the crumpled metal of the Geo, leaning in to examine the injured man. A quick scan showed a strong pulse and good breath sounds, a nasty looking head injury, but no spinal damage. He carefully lifted the man out, supporting his head, and laid him on the sidewalk as far from fires, debris and panicked people as was practical.
Several of the would-be rescuers followed, and as they seemed competent to provide further first aid Scion turned his attention back to the larger picture. He could hear sirens in the distance, but with these jammed streets it could be a long time before they managed to get to where they were needed… too long. His energies at this point might best be spent on clearing the roads for them –
The thought was cut off by two things – the sight of a very fit-looking blond man rising up into the air over the nearby pedestrian overpass – and by his sensors, which were beginning to flash warnings of intense fluctuations in the local magnetic field…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Elizabet Molina felt… good. Really good! That colored flash of violet out of the sky had struck her, and there’d been that instant of terrible pain, followed by the darkness. But she was awake now, and feeling more energized, more powerful, more… alive than she could ever remember feeling. Then she caught sight of her hands… and laughed. For some reason the fact that they were now covered in sleek dark gray fur with black stripes and silver-white spots, and that her nails had become shiny black claws, which popped out when she flexed, didn’t bother her in the least.
Her feet, also furred and clawed, had burst out of the old sneakers she’d been wearing, and for an instant she felt a tremendous sadness at the loss of her favorite “shopping” shoes… she’d had them since she was in high school… but the feeling was gone almost as soon as she was aware of it, overwhelmed by the sheer exhilaration she felt. She touched her face, carefully, and she realized that must have changed as well…
Leaping down from the second floor of the ruined car park without a second thought, Elizabet landed in a crouch on the pale pavers of the Silver Mile. People nearby screamed and stumbled away from her, but she spared little thought for them. She wanted – yes, there, that was perfect! She pushed off and covered the 20 feet to the sunglasses kiosk in a single bound. This was incredible!
The annoying kid who apparently manned the kiosk tried to stop her as she reached for one of the mirrors, and she swept him aside with a swipe from her claws, blood spraying from the four long gashes across his chest. She hardly noticed as she gazed into the piece of glass in front of her. She had changed indeed!
Her once short, fine black hair was now thick and shoulder-length, a lustrous dark gray with two wide streaks of black on each side and patterns of silver-white rosettes everywhere else. Her eyes were larger, her ears elongated and pointed, and her nose and mouth were… well, all in all she thought she looked very much like an anthropomorphized version of one of those ocelots she’d so admired on a National Geographic special last night. This was fantastic!
Fantastic? Some part of her, deep down, shrieked in horror and struggled to rise to the surface, warring with the feelings of power and exhilaration that had overwhelmed her, body and mind. For a moment she paused, paralyzed by her internal conflict… and Elizabet Molina flickered back to life in her eyes… people were hurt, they needed help…
But at that moment she was hit from behind by a folding chair, wielded by a large, angry man, and the Ocelot was back in control. Whirling around she instinctively leaped at her attacker, claws reaching for his vulnerable throat… but at the last second something made her pull back, and she raked his chest instead. The man bellowed in pain and staggered back, but two more were coming in from either side, wielding improvised weapons…
With a feral grin Ocelot leaped over one of the new attackers to the top of the kiosk, raking his face with her claws in passing. Then she was leaping down on the third man, knocking him to the ground and sending his ad hoc club flying. Crouching over him she snarled and raised her right hand, claws glistening red already – she’d rip this bastard’s throat out, by god!
She was knocked off her victim’s back by a solid blow between her shoulder blades – it wasn’t so much the blow itself that staggered her, but the sudden electric shock that accompanied it that had her hissing in fury. If she’d been merely Elizabet Molina, that would have put her down for the count, she was sure. But the Ocelot was made of tougher stuff! And besides, that was cheating – it had all been just fun and games, really, but now… she looked around for her assailant.
A woman dressed in skin-tight black, masked, cloaked and hooded in black as well, dropped down on her from the roof of the car park. Ocelot rolled aside, raking at the woman’s belly as she did, but the bitch’s reflexes seemed as fast as her own, and she dodged the blow almost as an afterthought. Ocelot rolled into a fighting crouch and growled.
The woman in black was likewise in a fighting stance, and the martial arts instructor in Elizabet – Ocelot! – recognized a professional. This one wouldn’t go down like the local bully-boys had… her heart beat faster and the adrenaline surged in anticipation of a real fight… this was what she lived for, even if sad little Elizabet would never admit it!
Once again those damn escrima sticks flew out, and she barely dodged them, leaping onto another kiosk behind her, a move which clearly surprised the masked do-gooder. Taking advantage of that surprise, Ocelot leapt instantly to the attack, launching herself with lightning speed onto the mystery woman… who deftly sidestepped as if she’d been moving in slow motion. She hit the ground hard, but rolled back to her feet in an instant.
A flurry of blows were exchanged in the next few seconds, to no real effect. Then, as she dodged one of the thrown escrima sticks, Ocelot had just enough time to wonder where the second stick was before it hit her upside the head. Momentarily stunned, she missed a beat and went down to one knee… and before she knew what was happening the woman in black was somersaulting over her, twisting in mid-air, and wrapping an arm around her neck.
Struggle as she might, she couldn’t break that damn choke hold, and her claws raked ineffectually at the woman’s arms… what the hell was that body suit made of? As the darkness closed in the Ocelot raged at the unfairness of it all… but just as unconsciousness closed in Elizabet flickered back up from the depths, and her last thought was ‘…thank God she stopped me before I killed someone…’
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Marty Armstrong screamed in horror as he saw his reflection in one of the few shop windows to survive the explosion. He had been knocked unconscious, apparently, and when he came to, groggy and disoriented, the first thing he’d seen as he staggered uptight was his reflection. His face was a hideous mass of drooping, sagging flesh – it was as if he’d been changed to wax and then exposed to a blow torch! He raised his hands to his face only to have the horror redoubled – his hands were fused lumps of rubbery flesh, the fingers barely distinguishable anymore… and his skin… his skin looked like the horrible gray porridge they’d fed him as a kid in the orphanage. Fuck! What had happened to him? He was monstrous!
He lashed out in fury and terror, smashing his mitten-like fists against the window and its taunting reflection of his grotesque transformation – and was surprised when the thick plate glass shattered like cheap crystal. Marty cringed back as several shards of the heavy glass fell across his forearms, but rather than the cuts and gush of blood he’d expected, there were only faint white creases in his gray, rubbery flesh, and those quickly faded away. He’d hardly felt the glass at all, he realized…
Then the brilliant morning sunlight glinted off something in front of him, unexpectedly riveting his attention… it was a ruby, set in in a gold ring and surrounded by diamonds… shit, the window he’d smashed belonged to a jewelry store! One of the really fancy ones, too, the sort that helped give the Silver Mile its name. There must be thousands, hell tens of thousands of dollars, of valuables just laying there amidst the broken glass! His for the taking… if only he still had hands… he stared down at the gross lumps of flesh at the end of his arms and fervently wished they were normal…
To his amazement, his fingers began to pull apart, and in seconds his hands looked almost like they should! The skin was still that nasty gray color, if looking a bit less like congealed porridge now, but the shape was human again! Feeling suddenly hopeful, he plunged both hands into the store’s display cases and began grabbing up valuables as fast as he could, stuffing them into every pocket he possessed. But there was too much to carry. He needed bags if he was going to take enough to pay to find himself a cure – or, if there was no cure, at least to pay for hookers who’d ignore his looks for enough cash. His mind shied away from thinking about what might be happening below his belt…
Looking around, Marty saw a tote bag kiosk nearby, one of the dozens of kiosks filling the center of the street along this part of the Mile. Just what he needed! He hated to leave his treasure trove, though, even for a minute – in this city some low-life was sure to come by and rob him of his loot. At the thought he felt a twitch in his arm, and he suddenly had a suspicion… he reached toward the kiosk and his arm began to stretch! Yes! Thirty feet away, without moving from where he stood, he grabbed several canvas tote bags, then pulled his elongated arm back into himself.
Holy crap! That had felt so weird! He was like that old toy he’d had as a kid, the one he’d loved so much because it had the same last name as him – Stretch Armstrong, that was it! His older brother had given him shit about playing with a doll, but he hadn’t cared… he’d spent hours imagining superheroic adventures with his real brother Stretch… a much better brother than that asshole Josh, for sure. Hey, maybe he’d use that for his super name – Stretch! This sure as shit qualified as a super power, right? Although, looking at himself stuffing stolen jewelry into stolen bags, he supposed he wasn’t likely to be going down the superhero route. Well, supervillains were cooler anyway — better to stick with what you know!
Marty had filled his fourth tote bag with Rolex and Cartier watches, taken from smashed display cases deep inside the store without ever leaving the sidewalk, and was turning to scope out his next target, when a blast of iridescent bubbles struck him in the chest. Falling back a couple steps, more out of surprise than anything else, he looked up to see some dude wearing a really lame Lucha Libre mask and ski goggles across the street, floating ten feet off the ground on a cloud of fuckin’ soap bubbles! The building behind him looked like it had been burning, although only wisps of smoke rose from it now.
Marty had been so focused on his own problems, and then on his overwhelming greed as he’d looted the jewelry store, that he’d been oblivious to the commotion around him. But now, dozens of people on the street were pointing at him in horror. Flushing in sudden shame, Marty realized he’d forgotten about his face during his “shopping” spree… clearly it hadn’t gotten any better. But maybe he could fix it, like he had his hands, given time to concentrate. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Scrubbing Bubbles there planned to give him the time.
“Jesus, man,” the dude said, apparently really seeing Marty’s melted face for the first time. “What the hell happened to you? Actually, never mind, I’ve got a good idea what happened, and you’re not the only one. But it still doesn’t make any of that jewelry yours, now does it?”
“Hey, it was just layin’ around, pal,” Marty shrugged, his eyes shifting about for a likely escape route. He knew this part of town well, if he could just break contact, like they say in Call of Duty… “Finders, keepers, ya know? Anyway, whatchu gonna do about it Mr. Bubbles?” He began sidling slowly toward the alley next to the jewelry store.
“Stop right there, buddy, and put down the bags,” the floating man said, his cloud of bubbles bringing him closer. “And that’s DOCTOR Bubbles to you, ‘pal’.”
When he didn’t stop, the would-be hero sent another barrage of those stupid bubbles at him, and this time they hit harder. Hard enough to make him stagger back, if still not enough to actually hurt him. Marty threw out one arm to catch himself on a lamppost, and was surprised when it crumpled under the impact. Transferring all four bags to his right hand, he grabbed the lamppost and pulled. It was shockingly easy to rip it right out of the sidewalk! It also seemed to weigh no more than an aluminum baseball bat he thought, as he swung it at Bubbles with all his strength.
The bubble cloud shot up, lifting Bubble Boy out of reach… or so the punk thought, Marty… no, Stretch… grinned inwardly. His arm elongated again, and the twisted lamppost shot through the bubbles, knocking the smug bastard off balance. Unfortunately, the bubbles just formed beneath him again, catching him before he was even halfway to the ground. It did make him back off a bit in surprise, though.
Damn, if this was going to turn into a fight, Stretch realized that, no matter how strong he might be, he was going to be handicapped by having to protect his loot. What he really needed was another couple of arms… he gasped in surprise as he felt a tugging on either side of his torso. In just seconds two more arms burst from his sides, shredding his shirt as they elongated and reached out, grasping for weapons. One took the lamppost from his “real” hand, allowing him to rebalance his loot bags, while the other hefted a concrete garbage receptacle from the sidewalk.
Shit yeah! Stretch Armstrong (the toy) could never do this! He was gonna own this town! Today, Astoria – tomorrow, Portland – after that, who knows? His fantasies of dominating the city were interrupted by another stream of high-velocity bubbles although his arms seemed to act instinctively to protect him, batting the barrage aside.
“Ha! you’ll have to do better than that Bubble-Boy,” he taunted the interfering do-gooder. “Stretch Armstrong is not so easy to take down, asshole!”
“Hey, watch the language Rubber-Maid, there are children present!” the punk responded, even as he sent another stream of bubbles towards him. These seemed to swarm around Stretch, trying to encase him, but his new arms again made short work of them, to the dude’s obvious frustration.
He lashed out with his makeshift weapons, but again the damn bubble-head somehow managed to dodge them — and his next attack actually hit Stretch in the head, momentarily dazing him. At that point his natural cowardice surfaced in full force, and he dropped his loot to focus on defense. Fuck it, he could always rob another jewelry store, or maybe an armored car – but only if he could get away.
He reached out with his four rubbery arms to the crowd watching the fight – they’d moved well back, but the fools didn’t realize just how far he could stretch. He snatched up four hostages, and whipped them around, shrieking, to wave them between him and Bubble-Man. Feeling safer now, he began to think about how to get himself out of this mess… and maybe actually keep his loot, too…
Stretch barely saw the black rod flying toward his head in time to deflect it, and the fear rose up again in full force as he saw a scary-looking woman in black off to his right. Shit, she had a cape and a mask and everything! But Astoria didn’t have superheroes anymore, everybody knew that… just occasional visits from that Portland fag Stormfront. It wasn’t fair! He shifted two of his hostages to put them between himself and this new threat.
Dodging or knocking aside the two heroes’ ongoing attacks, Stretch slowly backed away, careful to keep the hostages properly placed… damn, he wished they’d stop screaming, it was hard to think. So hard in fact, he completely failed to notice the flaming blue man in the air above him to his left until a blast of blue fire narrowly missed him, and almost took out one of his hostages.
Jesus, another one?! And this asshole didn’t seem to care who he killed trying to get to poor old Marty. A new flurry of attacks from the other two distracted him for a moment, and when he looked again the blue man (shit, this guy was flying around naked!) had a flaming sword in his hand… and Marty felt that when it hit one of his arms! Screaming in pain, fear and rage, he dropped one of the hostages to fake out the flaming bastard – while the hero dodged a blow from one massive fist, another one snaked around so that he could grab him around the neck to throttle him.
Marty screamed in real pain then, as the flaming nimbus around the blue dude seared his rubbery flesh. He instantly let go, and thankfully the flaming bastard fell back, clearly surprised. Good, Marty thought through the haze of pain, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to try that again. Shit, that hurt! He’d thought his ugly new skin should at least be fire resistant, was that too much to ask? It was definitely time to get out of here…
Hurling his remaining three hostages at his opponents, he used the break as they tried to save them from injury to scoop up two bags of loot and begin scaling the building behind him. If he could just get to the roof, maybe he could disappear into the alleys of the city…
But Doc Bubbles and Blue Fire Guy were on him before he was halfway up the building, bombarding him with alternating bubble and flame attacks. He managed to dodge or block most of them… but most wasn’t all. He’d need another distraction to get away. He spotted a cell tower on the roof above – if he threw it down on the crowd below, that oughta keep the fuckin’ do-gooders busy! And thank god that scary broad in black couldn’t fly, at least he didn’t have to worry about her!
He reached the roof a moment later, and as two of his arms reached out to grasp the cell tower his eyes widened at the sight of the black-cloaked woman hurling those damn sticks at him! Taking one to the head, the other to the gut, he staggered back… and was hit by a searing blast of flame from the right and a pounding stream of bubbles from the left. He whirled around in rage and pain, staggered into the short wall around the edge of the roof, and plunged over.
His last thought as he plummeted toward the roof of the building next door, five stories below him, was ‘…no! it’s not fair…’
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Marius Night swam slowly up from unconsciousness… he’d had the oddest dream.. the whole world had been made of rainbow colors, and he’d been able to move the colors about like finger paints on a canvas… wait, where was he?!
Then it all came flooding back, the overpass on the Silver Mile, the plane, the blinding light… he stood up and gazed in amazement at the devastation surrounding him. Fires and smoke, shattered buildings, car alarms, sirens and the sobs of the injured… but all of those quickly faded from his awareness as he saw the incredible rainbow of colors that surrounded everything.
He could still see the physical word, as clear as ever. But overlaying it all were waves and bands and swirls of light and color. It was quite overwhelming in its intensity — and the physical sensation it engendered in him was almost sexual. He felt like he could reach out and swirl the colors around… like in his dream… he reached out a hand, and the colors responded! Small bits of blue-green light in the street below shifted at his gesture, then rose into the air as he lifted his hand… as he drew them to himself he could see that the blue lights held bits of aluminum, while the green bits were steel… and the two were attached in each case…
As he tried to move other things, he quickly discovered that it was really only the green lights he could effect… the iron-based matter. Ah! The metaphoric lightbulb went on over his head – it must be the electromagnetic field he was seeing, and it was only the magnetic objects that he could command. He smiled in delight at the realization of just how incredibly powerful this made him…
But he didn’t care about power… did he? The rational part of his mind, stunned into quiescence after his trauma, struggled to reassert itself. They, he could use these abilities for good, that was what he should… what he did want. He was a good guy…
To hell with that! Where had being a “good guy” ever gotten him? Last! A dead end job at a second rate company he hated, an ex-girlfriend who dumped after he spent years on her… Well, those were no longer his problems, because now he had the power to do what he pleased… to take what he liked… and not have to answer to anyone ever again!
He certainly had no plans to be a so-called superhero, but he realized he did need something for the public to identify him… he’d need a proper brand, and how better to start establishing that brand than with a cool look? He began gathering up all the smaller bits of ferrous materials in a one block radius – there seemed to be a lot of them, between wrecked vehicles and shattered buildings – and began forming them into pieces of armor, floating them into place as he finished each one. He considered a mask or helmet, but decided several curved panels of iron, revolving around is head would both obscure his face and make for an iconic “look.”
It was at this point he discovered that he could also manipulate the EM field to lift himself up – holy crap, he could fly! As he rose slowly into the air over the pale brick-paved pedestrian street crossing over Pacific Avenue, his metallic shields spinning dramatically around his head and new armor glinting in the morning sun, he began to smile. Now, he thought, how to start our new life?
“Sir, are you alright?”
Marius spun around to see a man in bronze and silver armor floating in the air about twenty feet behind him. He frowned, thinking he looked familiar… oh, yeah, he was Scion, the local rich-guy and reluctant superhero. He smiled then, thinking how stupid it was for a man in metal armor to approach him, with his particular power… the smile faded slightly as he took a closer look at the hero. The rainbow lights warped around him in an odd way, and he realized he must be using the EM field just like he was, to fly… but the light around his form was not the green he’d expected. The suit must not be ferrous, and whatever it was made of, there was nothing else like it in sight. The EM color was… indescribable…
“Sir,” Scion repeated, holding out a hand toward him. “Why don’t you come down to the street and we can talk, OK? You’ve had a terrible shock, and clearly gone through some… changes. You should probably give yourself some time to think about what you want to do next.”
“Do next?” Marius laughed. “Whatever I want, of course.”
“You could do a lot of good with these new powers,” the some-time superhero suggested. “People can always use a new beacon of hope in this crazy world… look around you, look at how many people could use your help right now –”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” Marius laughed again, although some part of him resonated with those words. He tried to shove it back down. “Aren’t you famous for not wanting to be a superhero?”
“Maybe, yet here I am. I still come out and do the right thing when I’m needed,” Scion replied. “I’m not saying you have to become a full-time hero– you’re right, I only do this occasionally – I’m just saying that you should give yourself some time, consider all your options – and maybe lend a hand right now. What’s your name?”
“Night, Ma–” he started to give his standard Bond-esque answer to that standard question, then realized he’d be a fool to give away his identity so quickly. ” Nite, Magnite.” That should cover the slip… wasn’t that a type of iron ore? Or was that magnetite? Shit –
“OK, Mag-Knight, I can work with that. So, will you work with me, at least for the duration of this crisis? There’s a lot to do.” Scion reached out again, offering his hand.
For a moment Marius wavered, and a younger, more idealistic self briefly rose up in his mind. He began to reach out his own hand… but then the new Marius roared back with a vengeance, shoving that idealistic fool back down into the dark, where he belonged. To hell with this goodie-goodie bullshit, he thought – Ultra had been all into helping everyone, and what had it gotten him, the most powerful superhero of all? Dead, that’s what. No thanks, he’d look out for number one from now on, and no one else!
The hand that had been reaching for Scion’s turned into a fist and a blast of green energy surged out of it, hitting the do-gooder full in the face. His armor might not be ferrous, but Marius had disrupted the hero’s own EM field with that concentrated blast of magnetic force – Scion staggered back, suddenly unable to control his flight. But if he was surpeised it didn’t last long – he immediately raised his right arm and fired a stream of bullets at Marius!
The rounds mostly splattered against his shields, and the few that got through were easily deflected by his magnetic field… they at a least were iron-based. Sending out another blast of concentrated magnetic energy, he began pulling in more iron scrap, forming it into more armor and buffing up his rotating head shield. After all, fair was fair…
A sudden warping of the EM field around him took him momentarily by surprise, as bars of steel began to form a cage around him. Blinking in delighted puzzlement, he followed the lines of force back to to… there! A silvery man on the ground half a block away was the source of this sudden prison. Attempted prison.
“I thought this city didn’t have superheroes,” he muttered in amusement, casually reaching out to tear the cage to shreds. The pieces would make a nice addition to his defenses, he thought with a laugh. But even as he attempted to pull them into place they faded away as mysteriously as they’d appeared.
“Enough” he shouted. “If it’s a fight you people want, then you’ll find Mag-Knight is ready for you!” Not too bad for a spur-of-the-moment name he thought, especially since Scion had clearly mis-heard him, changing Marius‘ word-fumble into what was really a pretty cool moniker. He’d have to thank the hero for that! Someday.
Reaching out along the lines of force, he lifted a charred city bus from where it was wedged into an office building and hurled it at Scion. The hero might’ve avoided it entirely, but he was obviously trying to stop it from hitting any of the innocent bystanders, and so ended up on his ass on the ground, holding the wreck up.
Before Marius could follow up with a new attack, however, a stream of silvery-white balls struck him in the back, sending him reeling forward, his spinning head-shields jerking wildly away for a moment. It was that damned silver dude, he realized, pulling himself together and getting the shields back up. He sent another blast of concentrated magnetic energy in Shiny’s direction, then rose higher, to get a better tactical view of the situation.
As he turned to scan the area he was again surprised, this time by the sight of some young guy in a Hello Kitty t-shirt and a leather jacket walking up thin air toward him. He lifted a downed lamppost and hurled it at the kid, only to see it pass through him, like he was a ghost. Jesus, how many of these types were out here today?! Of course it was possible that he wasn’t the only one to gain powers from that explosion this morning…
The kid wasn’t moving fast, thankfully, and since he wasn’t sure what exactly he could do Marius decided to float a bit further away. This brought him into range of Scion again, however, who was back in the air and throwing some sort of glowing net at him… electric, but not ferrous… not that it mattered when he could knock it aside wielding random debris easily enough. The elctrobolts that followed the net, however, was not so easily evaded. Taking several hits to the chest, he was momentarily staggered again.
A second stream of those idiotic balls struck him again as well, ringing his bell a bit, but otherwise serving mostly to annoy him. He hurled a nice mid-sized sedan at the Silver Pedestrian (thank god he didn’t seem able to fly), and turned to blast Scion with another pulse of energy, staggering the hero again in mid-air. But once more, before he could follow up a new threat reared its bizarre head – a giant eagle-head, to be exact, like some old Egyptian god, with glowing red eyes. The rest of him was human, slender and wiry but muscular, wearing only a loincloth… and he had giant eagle wings that must’ve spanned 30 feet…not a bad look Marius had to admit, except for those talons in place of feet – yuck!
The eagle-man gestured at him and a bolt of blue-white lightning flashed from his hands. It struck all around Mag-Knight, mostly absorbed by his metallic armor. But what did get through hurt, and he could only imagine what that would’ve done if he’d been grounded. At least the blast of magnetic energy he hurled back seemed to impact Bird-Brain, at least a little, despite having no metal on him. Maybe it was the iron in his blood? Did birds have blood?
More armor piercing rounds from Scion, another salvo of that weird ball-blast from Silverado, and suddenly the Ghost-Boy was upon him! He dodged the kid’s grasp as he reached right through his armor, and sent a blast of energy at him… it seemed to have no more effect than the lamppost had. Fortunately, before he could try for another grab the kid was distracted by something on a nearby rooftop – and he vanished, with a faint “pop” like a soap bubble.!
Blinking in surprise, but not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Mag-Knight (yeah, that name was really growing on him) renewed his attack on his other three adversaries, and in the next few seconds managed to knock them around a fair bit. True, he kept taking hits himself, but damn he was tough now! Hell, he’d been thinking about fleeing when the odds had gotten so high, but he was beginning to think that he could really take down all three of these doofuses! Doofi?
Suddenly another cage formed around him, and began to drop toward the ground. Idiot, he thought, that hadn’t worked before and it wouldn’t– he didn’t finish the thought as the top of the cage hit him in the head and he began to fall with it, stunned. Struggling to focus, strain as he might, he couldn’t lift the weight of the damn thing – it was totally non-ferrous! Actually, it looked like the same material as those damn balls – the cage, and he, slammed into the ground with a sound like a cannon shot. The pavement shattered in a wide circle around them, and Marius smacked into the bottom of the cage with a grunt.
Momentarily dazed, Mag-Knight (and he was going to make sure these bastards remembered that name once he got his hands on them!) staggered to his feet as quickly as he could. His spinning head-shields had been knocked aside by the fall, and as he began to raise them again a sound like a clap of thunder almost deafened him. He turned in time to see Bird-Brain hovering over the still form of the Ghost-Boy, while a purple mohawked woman (gotta be a dyke with that build, he thought) ran madly down the street, laughing.
What the hell was going on with that?! But there was no time to think about it – if Tweety decided to lightning-bolt him again while he was on the ground, he’d probably fry. Better to be proactive… he reached out with his new powers and lifted a nearby abandoned car, hurling it at the winged man.
The winged man whirled in mid-air, as if warned by some sixth sense – but not in time to avoid the two tons of steel and glass Marius realized, grinning. His grin faded, however, and his jaw dropped, when the freak caught the damn car, falling back a bit under the weight, but otherwise completely unfazed! Lifting it over his head, he turned and looked like he was going to throw it at that fleeing purpled-haired chick – when a cage very much like the one around Mag-Knight formed around his half-avian body!
His wings and arms, and therefore the car, remained outside the cage, which was much tighter than Marius’ own prison. But unlike Mag-Knight, he seemed to have little trouble staying airborne despite the weight. What the hell was wrong with these people? Not that he really cared – if they kept taking each other out, that was fine with him, it only increased his own odds of ultimately winning the battle. Or at least of escaping…
But as he turned to look for another car to hurl at someone he was shocked to see Scion standing just outside the cage, his hands reaching toward him. As the blue electricity flash from those hands and engulfed him, his last thought as the darkness descended was “…nooooo! I’m going to kill them all next time…”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Bennie Wilson had never passed out, even when one of those freaky-cool laser beams had struck her. True, it had been a bit of a shock, and a little painful; but hell, she’d had worse hooking up Rush’s amplifiers back in August of 2010. So she’d been awake to feel the energy flowing through her, to feel her body respond to it, and… change, somehow. And to hear that almost, but not quite, subliminal voice that had urged her to fight.
But Bennie had never really been a fighter, knew herself to be a peace-maker more than a war-maker… definitely more of a lover, a sinner, a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker… who sure as hell didn’t want to hurt no one. But the compulsion to do something was overwhelming…
As she watched the various super-heroic things going on around her (the teleporting dude in the Hello Kitty tee, who could walk through solid matter, was way cool) she began to imagine herself in those situations… and to her surprise saw those imaginings take shape in the air before her! It didn’t take Bennie long to realize she could create incredibly realistic images of anything she could picture in her mind. and she could project them pretty far, too. Sort of like creating her own holodeck images, but without all the Star Trek techno-babble. Hell, she was her own holodeck now which, come to think on it, could come in really handy in her line of work… hmmm, that might actually make a good stage name: Holodeck!
When it seemed like Scion, the Silvery Dude, the Bird-man and Ghost Boy might have the Magnetic Knight on the ropes, the thought suddenly occurred to Bennie that she really didn’t want the fun to be over quite so soon… and maybe Holodeck could do something about that. Casting about for the perfect spot, she quickly decided the roof of the scorched office building where the bus had exploded would be the perfect spot to stage her little vignette… if she could project that far.
She could! Next up, setting the stage… a vision of herself as a super villain… a small group of people on the corner of the roof nearest to the fight, being menaced. For a little twist, she made the villain a male version of herself, but with a purple bandana over his mouth and nose. For the people he was threatening, she decided on three of her cousins who she didn’t particularly like, homophobic rednecks that they were.
Sure enough, Ghost Boy took the bait and popped over to save the day, and Bird-man turned his attention that way as well. With both of them distracted maybe the Magnetic Dude stood a chance (he was pretty cool looking, especially in that armor he’d created outta junk) when a cage suddenly materialized out of nothing to surround him and bring him crashing to the ground. At the same time Hello Kitty Boy pierced Bennie’s illusion, and called a warning to his buddies.
Well damn, that had turned out to be a bit of a bust… if also a bit of fun. But really, what had she been thinking? Why had she done that? It felt like a fog was slowly fading from her mind. Well, at least it hadn’t got her directly involved in the –
“There!” the bird dude cried in a piercing voice, pointing directly at Holodeck. “She’s dressed like the one on the roof, she’s producing the illusions!” Teleport Kid was looking right at her now, and that wasn’t good…
“Shit!” was all she had time to say before she heard the “pop” behind her that signaled the kid’s arrival. She jinked to one side, faster than she’d ever moved in her life – apparently that laser had given her more than just those illusion abilities! But discretion is defiantly the better part of valor, Bennie decided, and it was time for her to go. She took off running…
…only to have the kid teleport in front of her. She skidded to a stop while twisting away from the teleporter’s outstretched hand, again deftly avoiding being dematerialized or teleported or whatever… oh shit, now the bird guy was swooping in! Bennie dodged around a car, avoiding another grab by the Hello Kitty fan… and was brought to her knees by by a deafening clap of thunder.
As she staggered back to her feet, dazed and maybe bleeding from the ears, she saw that Phantom Ace (yeah, she knew the kid’s name, she’d heard him tell it to the old Society dame earlier) was down on the ground nearby, unmoving. She staggered over to him and knelt, checking on him… still breathing, thank God. But jeez, that winged dude was ruthless! And it wasn’t even like she’d done anything illegal, really! Obviously, dude had no sense of humor at all…
Bennie’s eyes widened as she saw the hovering man prepare to clap his wings together again. In a purely instinctive desire not to go through that pain again she raised her hands – and a beam of ruby light flashed out from between them, hitting the bird-guy full in the chest and knocking him back, ass-over-tea-kettle! Holy shit, she had laser hands, too! Way cool, but still, she’d rather run than fight, if these guys would just let her…
As the winged dude, looking really pissed off, swooped back toward her Holodeck saw the Magnetic Knight, imprisoned in a cage of silvery-white stuff, gesture at a car which rose and hurled itself toward Bird-man. Bennie’s eyes widened and she pointed – the guy was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to be squashed. Surprisingly, her warning worked, and he spun in mid-air to actually catch the tumbling car in his bare hands… a perfect time for an under-employed pyrotechnic master to make her escape. Without a backwards look Bennie took off eastward down Pacific Avenue.
Only to be brought up short by a burst of bullets striking the pavement in front of her… Scion, the city’s only resident superhero, at least until today, hung in the air nearby, readying another volley of hot lead! Once again acting on instinct, Holodeck let loose with a blast of red laser energy, and once again struck her target full in the chest. As the hero reeled back, she tried once more to beat feet out of there… only to have the bird dude, now somehow encased in a cage like the one around magnet guy, crash to the pavement directly in front of her.
The impact knocked Bennie off her feet, and the car the winged nut-job had been carrying crashed down behind her, pinning her neatly in place. Which left Holodeck completely vulnerable when Scion swooped in and launched some sort of electrified net at her. The sudden shock caused her muscles to spasm, and she sank into unconsciousness…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
With the last of the new meta-human threats put down, the seven heroes had time to turn their attentions back to the injured, trapped and still missing civilians around them. Taking only a few minutes to introduce themselves to one another and learn what powers everyone was working with, they quickly set to work pulling survivors from the rubble, healing the most badly wounded, clearing the way for emergency services vehicles, and in general reassuring the citizenry that the worst was over… for now.
