Rogue Superheroes

by Matt Cowper

  “And all of America is about to collapse!” Buckshot raged. “What the hell's the matter with you, man?! Did you really think airing all this dirty laundry would help the country?! Shit, half the stuff you've revealed ain't nothing but standard operating procedure anyway! Now nobody won't do nothing, because they're afraid some gung-ho FBI team or some idiotic congressional committee will come after 'em!”

  “Buckshot, I said to let me finish––”

  “And I just said, right now, that you can go fuck a goat!” Buckshot yelled. “You're standing there so calm and calculating, when there's riots in every major city, people are getting laid off every day, and our own President just resigned!”

  Blaze stood up, and the flames dancing around him doubled in number and size. The temperature in the room instantly rose five degrees.

  The Elites watched him, waiting for him to speak.

  “As much as I hate to say it,” Blaze said. “I agree with Buckshot – on his criticism of you, Nightstriker, not on his politics.”

  Nightstriker nodded gravely. “I'm sorry, Sam.”

  “No, sorry isn't good enough.” His eyes began to glow a reddish color. “You said you'd changed. You said you'd work with the team, not go off on your trademark solo adventures. And during the conflict against the Giftgiver, you did became the leader we needed. But now you've thrown that all away. You're back to the lone wolf Nightstriker.”

  “No, that Nightstriker is gone,” Nightstriker said. “I am still the leader of the Elites, and I am unwavering in my dedication to this team. But, to again borrow a phrase from Metal Gal, this is bigger than all of us. I cannot stand idly by and let more radical superhumans emerge. That puts the team at risk.”

  “We're more at risk now than ever before!” Blaze said. “Criminals thrive on chaos, and you've created an environment of almost pure chaos!”

  “Sam, you're heating up too much,” Metal Gal said, reaching out for her boyfriend. Her hand began to melt as it neared his arm, but she didn't cry out; Metal Gal didn't feel pain in the conventional sense, and she could always absorb more material to replace what had been melted.

  “I don't care,” Sam growled. “I mean, look at the world! He did this. He kept secrets from us. Probably broke all sorts of laws himself to obtain that information he's doling out. Thought he was smart and driven enough to remake the world – just like the Giftgiver. Well, Nightstriker? Do you feel smart and righteous now?”

  “No,” Nightstriker replied bluntly. “I was wrong. Perhaps catastrophically wrong. I thought the wrongdoers and rapacious sociopaths would be swiftly dealt with, and society would move on. I did not think the system was so...brittle. What I've done has only increased the divisiveness within society, and caused the villains to fight all the harder to keep their positions of privilege.”

  “So why are you telling us this now?” Slab said, his voice like low thunder. “Oh, wait, I got it: because you need our help cleaning up your mess, right?”

  Nightstriker didn't reply.

  “Slab hit the nail on the head,” Buckshot said. “I know good and well our arrogant leader wouldn't have told us a single detail of his master plot if it'd gone according to plan. But now that he's fucked up everything, he comes crying and apologizing to us, and thinks cuz we're superheroes that we'll fall in line and do what he says, for the good of all. Well, I do want to fix this mess, but I ain't following you, Nightstriker.”

  With that, he marched out of the room, muttering obscenities.

  “You know, boss,” Slab said, rising, “you're real keen on other folks resigning, but I think it's time you resigned as leader of the Elites.”

  He exited the briefing room as well, his heavy steps creating a racket.

  Anna was the next one to leave. She said nothing, only drifted away, like a fog being blown by a breeze.

  Metal Gal also had nothing else to say. She walked to the door and looked back at the remaining two men. With a sigh, she stepped out into the hallway, and the dense reinforced door hissed shut behind her.

  That left Blaze. Nightstriker stared at the person he considered his protégé. An aura of flame surrounded him, and the room temperature had risen another five degrees.

  “Well, Sam?” Nightstriker said.

  Two fireballs appeared in Blaze's hands. Nightstriker thought he was about to get blasted, and crouched so he could dive out of the way.

  But Blaze just stood there, glaring, his eyes now as bright as two spotlights.

  “I'm disappointed in you, Nightstriker,” Blaze said. “You know I trusted you. Respected you. This team could've done great things. We could've done what you wanted, and made sure another Giftgiver didn't emerge. We're all intelligent and capable; we could've formed a plan that would've prevented this mess. But no – you're still the man who thinks he can do everything by himself. You're still the manipulative bastard you were when I first met you.”

  He floated out of the room, trailing flames of various colors. It looked like some burning archangel was leaving, having passed judgment on some fault-ridden mortal.

  How the roles had reversed....

  Nightstriker tried to think of something to say, something that wasn't whiny or begging or self-serving, but he couldn't. So he kept silent, and Blaze departed, leaving him alone in the room.

  With Blaze gone, the room temperature began to settle back to its normal range.

  It was fitting, Nightstriker thought, because his relationship with the team had cooled to such a degree that they all might never recover from it.

  Chapter Four

  Nightstriker

  “Come here, Nightstriker!” the Giftgiver said. “I want what's inside your mind! With your expert knowledge, I can train my Purifiers – and we can remake the world!”

  Nightstriker dodged the man's clumsy punches and rocked him with an uppercut, causing the Giftgiver to yelp and jump back a few feet.

  This wasn't, of course, the real Giftgiver. It was a simulation, one of the hard-light constructs he'd programmed for this training session. The real Giftgiver remained locked up in MegaMax Prison, hopefully for the rest of his days.

  He was fighting the Giftgiver construct in an abandoned warehouse – again, not a real place on Earth, but a construct within the simulation.

  Not just any warehouse, either – this was a recreation of the dim, dripping warehouse where Nightstriker had been taken after the Giftgiver's cronies captured him. There he'd been tied to one of the vertical steel beams and tortured. The Giftgiver wanted the decades of knowledge within Nightstriker's mind, so he could effectively organize and control his Purifiers – and then dismantle all opposition.

  Nightstriker's mind, though, wasn't an easy place to enter – as one of the Giftgiver's telepaths learned. The superhero hadn't given the maniac a shred of information, and luckily he was rescued by Blaze before the torture became too extreme.

  Nightstriker wasn't one to agonize over the past, but his meeting with the Elites had just ended, and he wasn't in a pacifistic frame of mind. Beating up a fake Giftgiver in a representation of the place where he'd suffered was good therapy.

  The real-life Giftgiver wasn't a strong fighter, so the construct Giftgiver's punches and kicks looked similarly ridiculous. Normally, Nightstriker would've scoffed at such an easy training program. Now, though, he grinned savagely as he plowed through his opponent's weak defenses and connected with blow after blow.

  The Giftgiver construct wore flowing white robes and a white mask, like some strange religious figure or someone dressed up as a ghost for Halloween. It always struck Nightstriker as absurd that so many people followed someone who wore such pretentious garb.

  But then, the disenfranchised flocked to whoever listened to them and promised them power, as history had shown countless times.

  A side kick to the stomach caused the construct to “Oof!” and tumble to the dank concrete floor of the warehouse.

  “I'll never surrender!” the Giftgiver said, rising to a knee. “I
'll destroy you, Nightstriker, and anyone who opposes me!”

  “No, you won't,” Nightstriker growled.

  He closed in and grabbed the construct's hair. He'd enjoy pounding his face into the concrete, over and over and over....

  “End simulation,” a computerized voice said.

  The white-robed person before him began to fade, as did the warehouse. The walls of the small training room began to reappear. In a few seconds, Nightstriker was standing in an empty room, panting slightly and confused.

  Why had the simulation ended? He'd locked the program, set it so only his voice could override the lock.

  Metal Gal could mimic his voice, so perhaps she was the culprit....

  Or it could be Beverly Gillespie, the Secretary for Superhuman Affairs and the Elites' liasion with the government, and the one person who could override any program, lock, or defense mechanism on the Beacon.

  As the door to the training room swished open, Nightstriker saw that it was indeed Gillespie, dressed as always in a conservative pantsuit, her hair wound tightly in a bun.

  But her face, usually expressionless, was stained with tears, and instead of her usual brisk walk, she was half-jogging towards him.

  “Gillespie?” Nightstriker said. “What are you doing here? What's wrong?”

  He hadn't spoken to her in several weeks, not since she'd found out he was the one behind all the muckraking. The woman was shrewd – he should've known she'd immediately realize what he was doing.

  That conversation had been heated, with not-so-subtle threats tossed around. Ever since, Nightstriker had been preparing detailed plans in case he needed to take on Gillespie. She was, after all, a member of the President's Cabinet, and though she wasn't a corrupt scoundrel like some of her associates, it wasn't very likely she'd just let Nightstriker run around causing trouble.

  But out of all the scenarios he'd planned for, he'd never considered the possibility that she'd interrupt a training session and run towards him, crying and obviously desperate.

  “Nightstriker, we have to hurry,” Gillespie said, her usually strong voice faltering. “I only learned about their plans just now. They kept me out of the loop...knew I was close to the team, knew I would object or try to stop them....”

  Nightstriker grabbed her shoulders. “Beverly, calm down. What are you talking about?”

  “Lancaster. Our President. They're going to use the Beacon as a bomb.”

  At that moment, alarms went off in the hallway and red lights flashed like sprays of blood.

  “Warning: catastrophic system failure,” the computerized voice said. “All personnel abandon the Beacon immediately.”

  “What?!” Nightstriker shouted. “That can't be. I examined the systems myself this morning. The core is stable––”

  “It's been sabotaged!” Gillespie grabbed his hand and began pulling him towards the door. “Come on, we're wasting time! Summon your teammates, tell them to head to the core! Maybe we can still stop this!”

  For a moment, Nightstriker considered the possibility that this was a trick. Gillespie could be leading him to an ambush. Feigning a systems failure and then coming in here weeping would be the perfect cover to remove the troublesome Nightstriker from the board forever.

  But though Gillespie was crafty, he doubted she'd put everyone on the Beacon at risk by creating a fictional cataclysm, all just to get at him. She had some semblance of honor and compassion.

  So he ran behind her, passing frightened Beacon staff members and dozens of blaring alarms. Nightstriker directed the staffers to the escape pods as best he could, then grabbed Gillespie by the arm.

  “Tell me what's really going on!” he shouted. “What did you mean about a bomb?”

  “They know what you did, Nightstriker. They're going to blow up the Beacon, incinerate you – and everyone else on board, just to be sure. The Elites were worrying them as well. They decided to wipe the slate clean.”

  “That doesn't make sense! Lancaster is an authoritarian thug, but he wouldn't dare kill hundreds of innocents just to get to me!”

  Gillespie's glance at him was so fearful, so sorrowful, that Nightstriker felt his breath catch in his throat – something that rarely happened.

  For a woman of this caliber to be so out of sorts....

  “Lancaster is worse than you imagine,” she said. “Much worse. The things he's planning....”

  “But the Beacon...the core is shielded and protected by dozens of security measures. No one should be able to sabotage it!”

  “Nothing is invincible,” Gillespie replied. “Lancaster has employed some superhumans that are extremely versatile. The core's security didn't stop them – and now, if we don't prevent the core from erupting, we all die.”

  “That means...you as well. You came here, put yourself at risk, to warn us.”

  “Of course,” she replied, as if there was nothing to it.

  “Thank you, Beverly,” Nightstriker said softly.

  Gillespie glanced at him, but didn't reply.

  “What have they done to the core, specifically?” Nightstriker asked. “If we know that, we can possibly reverse it.”

  “I don't know the specifics, only the overall plot. The people I...persuaded to tell me what was going on ended up being in no condition to give me more intel.”

  Nightstriker searched through his knowledge of the Beacon's core. Immensely powerful, of course. The Beacon's original core had been an inter-dimensional generator, but the current one was a specially-designed arc reactor. It was about the size of a two story house, and generated enough power daily to run an entire city.

  If it blew, it would vaporize everything within at least a mile radius. Luckily, they were many thousands of feet above Earth, hovering over Z City, so no city-dwellers would die.

  Everyone else on the Beacon, though, would perish.

  If they had time, they could evacuate, but Nightstriker suspected time was not on their side.

  They needed to stop the core's meltdown – or, if it came to it, absorb the energy released before it killed them all.

  And Nightstriker knew of only one person on the Beacon capable of such a monumental task.

  He yanked his commlink out of a pocket on his spandex suit and shouted into it.

  “Elites! Assemble at the core!”

  Chapter Five

  Blaze

  One second, he was snuggling with Metal Gal in his room, discussing Nightstriker's arrogance and duplicity. The next, all hell broke loose.

  Alarms began blaring, and emergency lights turned the soft white light of the room into intense red.

  “Warning: catastrophic system failure,” a computerized voice said. “All personnel abandon the Beacon immediately.”

  “System failure?!” Metal Gal shouted. “What the hell?!”

  She jumped out of bed, and for a moment Sam admired her slender, nude body. Even during this moment of crisis, he couldn't help thinking that his girlfriend was incredibly sexy.

  Then Metal Gal closed her eyes, and shifted her body's material. Now she was no longer nude, but wearing a lab coat and a black skirt, as she had earlier in the day.

  “Come on, Sam!” she said, pulling him out of bed.

  It took Sam longer to dress, as he had to put on his orange and red spandex costume the old fashioned way. Metal Gal bounced on her toes impatiently as Sam shoved an arm through a sleeve.

  “Quit looking at me like that!” Sam said. “I can't morph like you!”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “I'm sorry!”

  “Elites! Assemble at the core!”

  Nightstriker's voice. He was communicating via their commlinks. The two lovers stared at their communication devices for a beat, then nodded and exited the room.

  The hallways were bedlam. Dozens of Beacon staffers were running to the escape pods, fear written across their faces.

  All of these men and women were well-educated, highly trained, and supremely motivated. For them to be scurrying ar
ound like frightened rabbits meant the situation was truly dire.

  “We can get to the core quicker if we fly!” Sam shouted.

  Metal Gal nodded, and her legs morphed, turning into thrusters. A sound like a jet engine roared from the area that was formerly her calves, and she rose into the air and then blasted down the hallway, over the startled heads of the staffers.

  Sam ignited his Fire Shield and rose as well, then surged after his girlfriend.

  *****

  Blaze and Metal Gal arrived at the core just after Nightstriker and Gillespie, but the other Elites were only seconds behind. The group stared up at the pulsing circular power source as waves of heat and a feeling like static electricity washed over them.

  A strange noise, like someone crumbling tin foil, filled the large room. The Beacon's core almost seemed to be growling at them, warning them that their doom was nigh.

  “Gillespie?!” Buckshot shouted, staring at the Secretary of Superhuman Affairs. “What're you doing here? I ain't seen you since––”

  “Focus, Buckshot!” Nightstriker barked. “We'll have ample time to discuss Gillespie's actions after we stop this sabotage!”

  “Sabotage?” Slab said. “But who––”

  “What did I just say?!” Nightstriker yelled. “All of you, focus!”

  “But focus on what?” Anna said, her smoke form wavering. “We can't stop that!”

  A tendril of smoke formed a rough arrow, pointing at the core. In response to Anna's pointing, the core's growl seemed to intensify.

  “We can, and we will,” Nightstriker said.

  The words were delivered perfectly. They might as well have been carved in stone. Sam couldn't help but grin; though he and the others were furious at Nightstriker, there was no doubt his determination could motivate even the slackest superhuman.