by Kipjo Ewers
“What should have been basic common sense, the treatment of heroes who took the call to action on one of the worst days in the history of this country was not a priority for our government. Working was no longer an option for me, eventually what money I had in savings was used up for my medical bills; I could no longer afford my medication.
While I was enduring my slow and painful death sentence, which I was told only gave me between six months to a year; I put seven of my brothers who are in the picture behind me into the ground. I settled up all of my affairs, made peace with my Creator, and waited like a good Catholic for the end to come.
That was until that fateful day on September 9th, 2008, what we all know as Judgment day.”
The crowd erupted in cheers and began to chant once again.
“We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die!”
“Yes, we are!” Maximus Absolute roared. “Three days after Judgment day I like many of you here today was not only judged but had their lives changed forever! My breathing came back to normal, I could eat properly again, my weight along with my strength returned, but it didn’t stop there.
I like many of you was re-born again a better more superior human being. I naturally thought it was a miracle, a blessing from God Himself, a second chance to not only live but to do right by my fellow man.
So, I returned back to being a firefighter, and on my off days, I became a superhero.
That was until the truth was revealed to me.”
He paused a minute holding up a hand.
“Correction, that was until the truth was revealed to all of us.”
“Mother Peace! Mother Peace! Mother Peace!” became the new chant of the energetic crowd.
“Is everyone hearing this bullshit?” Merge snarled.
“Only in America can a psycho become a hero,” Blitz huffed.
“What about Syria and North Korea?” Cyclone interjected.
“What about keeping the line open for important shit, do you all not understand?” Rogers barked. “We’re dealing with fanatics, boo hoo; move on.”
“Superhuman fanatics Sarge,” Heavy Element corrected him, “A lot of them.”
“You’re gonna find out whose worse if you don’t keep this damn line clear!”
“Alright! Alright!” Heavy Element shot back.
“That’s right! Mother Peace revealed the truth to us!” Maximus Absolute continued his speech. “In one speech, she exposed the lies and secrets our government had been hiding from us for decades, and revealed our true purpose. We were not chosen to be heroes or soldiers! We were not chosen to be the protectors of our feeble counterparts! We were chosen to flourish and surpass them, to become the rightful rulers of planet Earth, while they wither and die returning to the dirt in which they came from!”
The crowd returned to their original chant.
“We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die! “
“Sergeant Rogers, Ms. Dennison has just left her island and is en route here based on her trajectory,” Maxine announced within Rogers’s earpiece. “Her estimated arrival time is three minutes.”
“Shit,” Rogers muttered lowering his head.
He quickly raised it back up focusing on the task of watching the rally from his viewpoint, while Maximus Absolute continued his speech below.
“Here is the truth! Hate groups like the KKK and Neo-Nazis will never see or understand that White privilege, White power or White supremacy is nothing but a farce, an illusion!” Maximus Absolute turned pointing to the picture of his past frail self. “Look what my so-called ‘white privilege’ got me in my greatest time of need! People like these will forever be the unwitting victims of an age-old ploy engineered by wealthy people to divide poor people!”
“Yes, they will!”
“Activist groups like the Black Panthers and Black Lives Matter will never see that not everything is about racism, and to take responsibility for situations going on in their own community before they point the finger at others! They are quick to march when a dirty cop kills an innocent, but slow to act when one of their own shoots up a neighborhood park full of children!”
“Yes, they are!”
“Religious extreme groups like ISIL and the Westboro Baptist church will never see that there is no holy war! Because you cannot war with God! That God or Allah, if He exists, does not need them, and has most likely abandoned them, because they brazenly twist and defile His laws and words to suit their own means, not His, and that is why we were chosen, and they were not!”
“We were chosen! We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die!”
“Listen to the truth!” Maximus Absolute howled, “The one percent will never stop breaking the backs of the poor, raping our ecosystem, or driving our wildlife into extinction, because greed is an incurable disease!”
“No, they won’t!” The crowd roared again.
“The ninety-nine percent will never know their self-worth, and will forever remain under the heel of the wealthy and their government because they are weak! They are forever looking up wishing to be in the castle with the one percent not understanding that they are the wealthy’s foundation as well as the foundation of their government and that without them, they would both come crumbling down to nothing!”
“No, they won’t!”
“And finally …our world leaders …”
Maximus Absolute paused with a sinister grin on his face as the boos and jeers became the loudest they had ever been during the rally.
“They dodged a huge bullet, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did! Yes, they did!”
“Our world leaders and our governments around this planet will never learn that they were each put into office to serve the will of the people, not the other way around! They are like everyone else who has not been chosen and evolved into what we are! All who I have mentioned are weak, inferior creatures forever enslaved in the circle of archaic ideologies that will destroy them all! And from their ashes, we shall rise!”
“Yes, we will! We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die!”
“Now I want to make this part of our message clear to those who have not physically evolved, like many of us have.” Maximus Absolute lowered his voice a bit while holding up a hand. “The fact that you are standing here with us today means that although your bodies have not changed, your minds have! You can see that better future! And you along with us have a part to play in sowing the seeds for the rise of a better humankind!”
Cheers erupted from the crowd once again, mostly from women. The loudest cheers in the front came from rows of women both ordinary and superhuman who were either pregnant or holding infants or children who were also superhuman.
“By doing your part, you not only ensure a better world to come, but you also ensure your immortality! Your perfect offspring will live on like the rest of us to create a better world in your name, so, while others who return to dust will be long forgotten, you will be remembered forever!”
“Yes, we will! We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die!”
Rogers inhaled and slowly exhaled his native New York air as he shook his head not knowing what to make of the anarchy laced speech that the hungry crowd was gorging on below.
“Sergeant Rogers, Freedom is here,” Maxine announced.
“Where?”
“Approximately five miles up from where I am hovering.”
“Connect me to her Maxine.”
“Connecting.”
High above Manhattan, Freedom calmly hovered out of visual range of everyone on the ground. With her earpiece locked in, Vincent tapped into the stage audio system so that she could hear everything that was going on down below, while she watched from the visual display on her bracer.
The face she wore that no one could see said that like Rogers, she did not care for what she heard down below.
“Ms. Dennison, Ser
geant Rogers wishes to speak with you.”
“Patch him in.”
“Didn’t think you’d answer,” Rogers’s gruff voice came into her ear.
“I don’t remember having an issue with you Rogers,” She said plainly, “So why wouldn’t I pick up?”
“I see you decided not to heed Sister Sledge’s advice,” Rogers said sidestepping her question.
“Maybe I would have been more responsive if you didn’t send your girlfriend to do your dirty work for you,” Freedom responded bluntly, “I’m responsible for this gathering. I need to be here.”
“Your presence here could most likely do more damage than help. My team and I have this covered.”
“There are a couple thousand EVOs from around the globe with various abilities on different levels, and you with one A.I. manned ship and a seven-person team.”
“Ten,” Rogers corrected her. “Sam is on board the Tornado ready to deploy. You also missed the three National Guard units, and the Strategic Response Group backing us up.”
“I didn’t miss them. They’re all positioned one block away from the action. You couldn’t deputize some additional heroes for this event?”
“With what’s going on with this election, the last thing I’m doing is deputizing anyone who’s not one of my people,” Rogers answered.
“And your issue with me being here is ….?”
Rogers kneaded his forehead feeling an imaginary migraine coming on.
“Just extend me the professional courtesy of allowing my team to defuse any situation that might occur first before you decide to step in,” he requested.
“I will consider it,” she returned flatly.
“Dennison.”
“I said I will consider it,” she said countering the bass in his voice with more bass in her tone.
Rogers muttered a curse under his breath as he focused his attention back at the highly charged rally and prayed for it to remain peaceful.
Gunshots from the crowd let him know that God was not listening to him today.
“Die you fucking abominations! Die! Die!”
A shocked and terrified crowd of humans and superhumans alike dispersed where the sound of shots fired was coming from. A lone gunman brandishing a Steyr SPP let loose a series of semi-automatic rounds aiming directly at the women and children several feet from him.
Luck was on their side as two of the mothers who happened to be Titans turned their backs covering their own children deflecting the gunman’s bullets with their thick skins. Unfortunately, the ricocheting bullets struck two regular humans in the middle of the chaos.
A roaring Merge in her transformed were-version of a Desert Lynx leaped over the crowd pouncing on top of the assailant slamming him into the ground before he finished emptying the clip from his gun.
“Move! Move! Out of the way! United States Military! Get out of the friggin way!” Heavy Element yelled after transforming into metallic form while attempting to move through the panic crowd to get to his sister.
When that did not work, he began physically lifting and moving people out of the way to get to her, while Blitz and Cyclone descended from their location to where Merge took down the assailant. In the middle of the mayhem, Sister Sledge along with Nitro made their way to the stage to help secure the perimeter of the attempted mass shooting.
“Status report people!” Rogers barked from his rooftop.
“Merge has taken down the assailant,” Blitz answered. “We are currently securing the perimeter!”
The gunman squealed and sniveled as saliva dripped on his face from a feral Merge growling over him with what came off as an intention to bite his face off.
“Merge, secure the assailant!” Heavy Element ordered his sister. “Merge!”
Merge turned snarling at her brother, before going through the procedure of taking out tie restraints to secure the shooter. After a couple of sniffs, she let out a growl and began to tear open his jacket with her claws. Merge ripped out a black tactical shoulder harness with two handguns and a couple clips of ammo.
Heavy Element in his metal form covering his sister felt the heat of hatred and rage around him. He slowly turned to see what was once a startled crowd now out for blood.
“Women and children!” Someone howled from the crowd. “The fucking son of a bitch shot at women and children!”
“Fucking unevolved apes!”
“Fuck this! We need to send a message!”
“Kill him! Kill him now!”
As Blitz, Cyclone, and Nitro powered up for a confrontation, Heavy Element’s eyes slightly widened as he realized how vastly outnumbered his team was as those with Apollo class abilities began to power up, while those with capabilities similar to himself and his sister began to transform. Everything went into slow motion as he slowly held up both his hands with palms facing outward as if the gesture could magically hold the frenzied super-charged mob back as he attempted to reason with them. It was all in futility as his eyes barely caught several Mercurian EVOs explode from the crowd.
Blitz being faster fired an electrical warning shot scorching a line into the ground stopping them in their tracks. This only caused several Apollo class EVOs to take to the air ready to square off with him.
Two things that ran through Heavy Element’s mind as Union Square prepared to become a battleground was that the gunman was a good as dead, movies where bullshit and Brett Ratner could eat a bag of dicks.
As he contemplated between either going for his shoulder holstered sidearm or using hand to hand combat, everyone froze at the sound of a thunderous sonic boom which shook the heavens forcing all heads to look up.
She stopped mid-dive several yards up from Union Square and began a slow descent to the ground. The crowd slowly retreated as she became the wall between them and the Regulators with the captured assailant.
Freedom’s narrowed stern gaze was an omen to those thinking of resorting to any type of violent retaliation. She stood with her hands partially clenched waiting for those EVOs within the crowd brave enough to challenge her to step forward, or for the boos to come followed by objects being thrown.
She was not prepared for what happened next.
In one motion, the sea of superhuman and humans fell to one knee with lowered heads bowing before her.
Slowly she turned to the stage to see the members of Vitruvian Absolute doing the same.
The only eyes that were on her now were the speechless Regulators and major news cameras reporting on the rally.
“Oh shit …” She whispered.
Then, the chants began.
“Lead us. Lead us. Lead us.”
Freedom ignored the nervous spasms vibrating her bones as she kept a firm stance and her poker face while turning to Heavy Element.
“Get him out of here.”
Heavy Element agreed with a nod as he radioed in.
“Maxine, we need a transport drone stat.”
“Sending one now,” she confirmed.
Within seconds a metallic silver and blue disc, three times the size of a Frisbee, dropped from the sky and came to a hover. Sister Sledge brought the gunman to his feet as it went vertical and attached itself to his back. Parts of it broke open as it formed a harness around his upper chest.
“Get going,” Heavy Element commanded the drone.
The only thing louder than the chants that were growing was the gunman’s scream as the drone took him back into the sky toward the Tornado. As it brought him in through the rear hatch, Maxine stood waiting to receive him.
“You are currently in a government vehicle and are being held for brandishing and discharging a firearm in public,” she informed him. “Please have a seat where you will be restrained until you are transported to the proper authorities.”
Maxine realizing the assassin was near catatonic gently helped him to his feet as the drone released him flying back to its docking station. She escorted him to a chair sitting him down as arm, chest, and leg restraints popped fro
m out of the chair locking him in.
Down below Rogers lowered his beanie and exhaled defeated New York air through his nostrils as the chants became louder echoing out of Union Square.
“Lead us! Lead us! Lead us!”
Freedom quickly glanced at Sister Sledge who gave her a nod before she exploded into the sky of New York City without a word. The sounds of disappointment swept through the entire rally as the crowd rose to their feet searching for her in the sky. None of them noticed the wicked smiles from the members of Vitruvian Absolute as they quickly glanced at one another.
“That’s okay!” Maximus Absolute yelled while getting to his feet. “That’s okay! Give her time, our mother heard us! Give her time! Let’s give a round of applause to our military’s finest for stepping in, on behalf of the assailant that is.”
The Regulators turned glaring at the members of Vitruvian Absolute on the stage. Heavy Element although keeping it professional wore a look as if he wanted to leap onto the stage and go to blows with the Titan. Merge still in her Lynx form growled his sentiment.
“We’re also going to ask that no one stoops to the level of the person that was just removed from here!” Maximus Absolute continued. “This is what they want, to portray us as monsters easily swayed to violence like they are. But we are not them. We are better than them in every single way, and we proved it once again today. They couldn’t kill us, or intimidate us, they’re the ones who are scared, because now they know …!”
“We are the future! Evolve or die! We are the future! Evolve or die! “
“Merge, Heavy Element, and Sister Sledge, coordinate with the National Guard and SRG unit to peacefully shut this down, and begin to disperse this crowd,” Rogers began with his list of orders to his team. “Blitz, Cyclone, and Nitro head uptown to the Tower and provide additional protective detail to the Republican candidate. Maxine start tracking the direction of the crowd, make sure none of them move in the course of the Tower.”
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After the rally, the Regulators handed over the assailant to the NYPD. Facial recognition from Maxine revealed him to be Mitch Rutherford from Columbia, South Carolina.