“Well you know you want it, Zeph. Don’t tell me you ain’t curious.”
“Sheesh, pal, even if I was gay, you’d be safe.”
“Yeah, I figure you for a cub-fucker anyway.”
“I . . . have no idea what that is.”
“Tough guys like you gotta be the man even –”
“Please,” I say, holding up a hand and a pained expression. “Make it stop. Gary?”
Streethawk sniffs again and nods, producing a cigarette.
“OK. Follow me. But you owe me, Zephyr. And not a little one. Come on.”
*
I SAY GOODBYE to my gal pal on a fire escape and creep down to where the city says my former teammate lives these days. The rusty metal steps creak as I tiptoe down, eyes on a tea-stained curtain fluttering loose from a half-open window. I figure the city might tell me six kinds of lies, but I don’t have the same cellular connection as Streethawk, so I trust his info’s good to go.
There’s a smashing noise that makes me briefly contemplate the cliché of whether my decision to gatecrash Animal Boy’s apartment coincides with his drug debt to the Russian mafia, a break-in from Scientologists, or an Atlantis cult convinced Gary’s pregnant with their messiah. Instead, the shrill voice that follows assures me it’s nothing more peculiar than your everyday pedestrian dust-up between a spineless married guy and his overbearing wife.
“I can’t do this anymore Gary! I just can’t do it!” a strong Canarsie accent through yonder window breaks.
At just a glance through the curtain-framed view, the aptly-named Juliet looks like she ate a pretty, thin girl of the same name about ten years and six thousand visits to the Golden Arches earlier. Animal Boy’s super-sized wife stands in the middle of their pathetic, piss-stained living room with a dust pan in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other.
My erstwhile teammate crouches in the middle of the floor naked, every rib in his body on display and a steaming pile of fresh number twos beside his foot.
“Ahem,” I say, stepping through and wiggling my eyebrows kind of like a young Tom Selleck (or so I fancy). “I hope this isn’t a bad time?”
Gary stands, furious and agog to see me invading his happy place. He snatches the newspaper from Juliet’s hand and covers his excoriated crotch.
“Zephyr? F-fuck, man. What gives?”
“Oh great,” Juliet bleats, her jowls wobbling as she stares at me from the pits of her sunken eyes. “Second day in a row one of your superhero buddies wants to whistle by just for shits and giggles. What’s going on, Gary? I can’t take it –”
“Yeah yeah,” I interrupt. “You can’t take it any more. Me and half the fucking projects heard you, Fatty Arbuckle. Now buckle up and give me a few minutes with my old pal here, ‘kay.”
Juliet looks shocked. Whatever.
“You should probably listen to him,” Gary says, shooting me a look caught halfway between gratitude and resentment.
“He’ll probably electrocute you if you don’t listen. That’s the way you do things, isn’t it, Zephyr?”
“I coined the phrase Shock and Awe, but they never paid me any royalties. Why is that?” I grin.
“Maybe because you’re an asshole?” he fires back.
“I guess I shouldn’t mention royalties. How’s that all going? Owe much, still?”
“He owes those bloodsucking creeps another three-quarter mil –”
“Juliet!”
Wifey goes back into the seething, bubbling silence from which she has only lately been summoned. She shoots me a foul look and lopes from the room, the smell if not the décor of a disgraceful kitchen beyond the doorway.
“What do you want, Zephyr?” Gary asks, rounding on me. “And how the fuck did you find me, anyway?”
*
“HOLD ON A second,” I say. “Jabba said something before, but I didn’t quite catch the translation. Who was here yesterday?”
“None of your fucking business. What do you want?”
“I need a favor.”
“You . . . what?”
“Psiclone’s helmet. You still got it?”
“Psiclone. Why?”
“So you have it?” I ask. “I needs it. The precious.”
“Fuck you, Zephyr.”
A trace of static crawls across fingers I hold up and wiggle, grinning.
“Don’t make me go all Guantanamo on your ass, baby.”
“Zephyr –”
A spark leaps from me to him. Gary hasn’t really explained why he’s naked, but it lends him that air of vulnerability helpful to the moment as he yelps and backs away, looking for the kind of exit you only get in the Matrix. It’s not going to be easy, this way.
“Come on, Gary. Help me out. You must keep a lot of mementos, keepsakes, trophies, you know, stashed somewhere?”
“You know I sold almost everything I got. You think I’m living in the lap of luxury here?” he gibbers back, once familiar tears starting again.
“You hook up with a woman into bestiality, you kinda get what you deserve, Gary.”
“I’m not a hero any more.”
“Oh that’s right,” I said. “You’re not Animal Boy any more. But you’re not Animal Man, either, are you, huh Gary?”
The naked 98-pound weakling’s face goes bright red with frustration.
“People could see you right now, no one would buy the hero you pretend to be,” he fires back, lower lip pouting like a period piece actress.
“You’re not allowed to be Animal Man, are you, Gary? Copyright, huh?”
“You know I had other names –”
“But there’s not too many cool names for guys who shift into different animals, is there?”
“There’s not much time to play hero when you got to work six jobs just to pay off some stupid motherfucking lawsuit just ‘cos some toy company says you’ve infringed their copyright. . . .”
Gary stops, halting himself from hyperventilating. We stare at each other unhappily a few moments and Gary throws aside the newspaper shielding his boyhood. I look away, unfortunately with nothing else for my gaze to fall on than the pile of what looks like goat droppings on the living room floor. My nose crinkles.
“I’m – I’m still learning to deal with a lot of issues from my Sentinels days,” he starts up as I stare embarrassedly at the cairn of tiny toffee-colored turds. “You play a starring role in a lot of that trauma, Zephyr.”
“What, you don’t blame the Ill Centurion for that time you were a horse –”
“Hey, I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. My analyst keeps asking to meet you.”
“How do you afford an analyst?”
Gary looks away. Juliet’s voice wafts from the kitchen.
“Court order. Public nuisance.”
“I had to go,” Gary says weakly. “I thought it wouldn’t be a crime if I was a dog, you know?”
“Shit. You’re a walking Supreme Court precedent, aren’t you?” I shrug and soldier on. “How about this helmet?”
Zephyr 11.11 (Flashback) “An Extra Hand”
EVENTUALLY GARY AGREES to explain what happened with Psiclone’s helmet. It was a little knick-knack we picked up years back, too long ago to count really, after we trounced the bad guy in his lair after some half-baked scheme with Voodoo Queen Mitsy (yes, seriously) to turn the city into a living graveyard of the undead or some-such nonsense.
“I sold it to Raptor,” Gary says after a quick costume change.
We’re at a bar on Eighteen Street. I agreed to buy him a drink and he agreed not to turn into a cat or a bat or a fucking bathmat (he can’t actually do that) while tipsy and then piss everywhere, which explained the shit-hitting-the-fan-or-should-I-say-carpet scene I just walked in on (or should I say, out of, or even running-desperately-away-from).
Gary’s hand shakes as he lowers the glass to the dented, sour-smelling bar cloth and wipes his droopy lip, scanning the empty early-openers like he might be recognized by some of the other barflie
s. Price of fame, I guess.
“Raptor. Who is that again?”
“Uh, about yay-big.”
He holds his hand up to show Raptor’s what we’d call a little person.
“Alligator skin, wall-crawling, has an extra hand on the end of his tail. Took down the Night Squadron, if you remember them? He’s got this hallucinogenic spit-power or something. . . .”
“Wait. He’s a villain?”
Gary drinks. Swallows. Gulps.
“Yeah.”
“You fucking doofus. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking ten-fucking-large, OK?”
“Jesus. You must be really hard up.”
“You have no idea . . . some of the things I’ve done. . . .”
Gary finishes the beer in one big slug and thankfully not that sentence and puts the glass down in a not-so-subtle hint that he expects another. I wave a finger to the barman. I can’t be bothered drinking this piss-water if I can’t even get drunk.
“I appreciate your sharing Gary, but I don’t want to know about your sideline in animal porn, OK? Just tell me how I can get the helmet.”
“What do you want it for, anyway?”
“What do you think?” I ask archly. “Same reason as this Raptor dude. Psiclone’s helmet made him immune to mental attacks. I need it.”
“It’s not really your look though, is it?”
“Jesus. Go spray a pole or chase a fucking police car, will you? I just need it for this one . . . mission.”
“Mission?” Gary looks at me, something mildly retarded in his myopic stare, curiosity like a swirl of cinnamon in the week-old coffee of his gaze. “You seriously call them that?”
“No I . . . fuck, bad word choice, okay? I have a job. It’s Mentor.”
“Yeah. You always were a light touch to the psions,” he says.
“Like you can talk, Animal Noob.”
“I remember there was this one time. Who was that chalk-white chick you fancied? The villainess? The skinny one with the boobs?”
“Look, Frost and I aren’t on good terms these days,” I mutter and signal for a drink as the barman brings the second round for Gary.
“You got money for these?” the gruff old dude asks.
“Ha! Your reputation’s proceeded you, Zeph.”
“Yes, I have money,” I snap back at the barman and resist elbowing Gary off his stool. I produce a crumpled twenty from my belt.
The barman sniffs and takes it, shrugging.
“You know, superheroes and their tight costumes. Never did know where you fuckers put your bill-folds.”
He wanders away and I give a brief hurt look I share with Gary.
“Fuckers?”
“I know. The attitude of some people.”
I grunt.
“Where’s Raptor? How can I get a hold of him.”
“You got a mission, huh?” Again Gary’s with the drool-wipe and grin.
I don’t like the way this is going. “Uh-huh.”
“Sounds like a mission for. . . .”
The grin clouds over along with his eyes. He stutters.
“What,” I say. “You seriously don’t have a replacement name still?”
“It’s been a while since I wore the costume, you know, for real.”
“Great.”
*
THIS IS DRAGGING on longer than I would like. I’m keen to open a can of whoop-ass on Mentor, but instead Menagerie Man and me (no I don’t like it either, but what the fuck am I meant to say to the guy?) are doing our best Batman and Robin across the benighted rooftops of downtown Lincoln.
Gary’s “costume” these days consists of a pair of rubberized y-fronts, boots and a huge furry parka he can ditch at a moment’s notice. The boots are more like galoshes. They’re a couple of sizes too big and he keeps stumbling as we creep towards where he says Raptor met him a few years previous.
“Why don’t you just change into a cat already and stop fucking around?” I snap.
“I’m just . . . don’t pressure me, Zephyr. Remember what you promised.”
I grunt. My stomach rumbles. I fuelled up at a nori roll cart in Jackson, but I need more carbs given I haven’t slept in about sixty hours.
“You better be right about this,” I warn. “I’m not fronting the media for you if it turns out this is just Raptor’s mom’s house or something.”
We move to the edge of the ten-storey tenement and peer across to the top floor of the building opposite. Loud ghetto music thumps out, and true to Gary’s word, I catch a glimpse of gang-bangers in urban get-up toting Uzis and smoking joints as they patrol the roof and the lit-like-a-disco top floor of the apartment building.
“So what’s the muscle-man for drug-runners need with a psi-proof helmet?”
“He said something about trouble with some vigilante with mental powers. . . .” Gary says while scanning the other site.
“So you’ve actually aided and abetted a villain against a fucking superhero?”
“We didn’t really talk shop for long,” Gary snaps. “The guy has a Paralympics-grade lisp.”
“Hey, don’t diss the Paralympics.”
“Fuck you, Zephyr.”
“Hey, fuck you, Ménage-a-Trois Boy.”
Gary uses his famed powers to shake that one off.
“What’s the plan with these creeps?” he barks.
“Yeah I’ve been thinking about that,” I say with mock seriousness. “Just like in the good old days, while you change into a honey glider or a bat or a chimpanzee and sit here eating your own goddamn dick-cheese, I’ll go over there with my superpowers and kick their heads in. Solid?”
“Jesus, you’re such an ass, Zephyr. What is it about personal growth that is so alien to you?”
“If you are an example of personal growth, Gary, pass me the fucking shotgun. I’m ready to die.”
I give him a dose of my moonlight-chiseled profile and suss the enemy fire escape over yonder as a big black guy in clown make-up, a red jacket and unlaced trainers clambers out carrying an honest to God WW2-era Browning Automatic Rifle.
I push off.
Zephyr 11.12 (Flashback) “Attack Formation Delta”
SUFFICE TO SAY the bad guys find themselves caught in a proverbial contradiction. Having spent God-knows how long preparing for a possible siege by enemies or maybe even street-level punk heroes with psychic attacks, they are at the same time completely unprepared when I rocket across the gap between the buildings, hitting the big fat guy with my best cannonball and ploughing into the window and on into the small-time cartel’s lair, doped-up girls and startled ethnic youths in misappropriated streetwear flying left and right as I deposit BAR-boy in a tangle of stolen electrical goods and snap the big rifle in half over my knee.
I turn slowly, surveying the scene as the gangstas pick themselves up, plaster and broken glass and tipped over furniture and a weird assortment of stuffed toys everywhere, a fine mist of cocaine and ganja in the air, the girls with freakshow make-up and the guys, several whom I appear to have caught mid-blowjob with baggy pants down, their expressions of surprise only slightly less lurid than the juggalo paint they wear on their faces.
“Hey, what’s happening?” I say, tossing aside the pieces of snapped weapon. “Did I interrupt something?”
A bruiser still with his pants on growls a command as he waves a white-gloved finger at me.
“Kill him!”
Several of these closest goons whip out Tec-9s and I guess they expect me to dive for it or something, because they hesitate about opening up when I simply stand there exhaling with a mild frown, glancing aside to see if any of these stupid girls are going to get cut down in the crossfire.
“That’s right,” I say amid their hesitation. “The pointer finger goes on the trigger. Like this.”
And I point and there’s a flash and the lightning bolt puts their leader into the dent in the wall next to where the guy from the fire escape is now laying, breath coming in whimperi
ng, I-just-got-torn-a-new-asshole gasps, blood running from his nose from what I’d guess is punctured lungs (but hey, I’m no doctor).
I move faster than they can track, grabbing two girls by their upper arms and slinging them to safety – even if it does mean they smack heads together and go down in a screaming heap – as the 9mm bullets crackle through the big living room expanded in days past by creative use of a sledgehammer. Once the girls are down I actually do that cool thing where I run up the closest wall and come down behind one of the gunmen and karate-chop him across the back of the neck. Unfortunately, there’s no one here to film how awesome I look pulling that move and it’s probably a bit much to expect the cannon-fodder here to appreciate it.
That guy goes down on his keister and the one next to him turns, red-painted mouth agape, so I put my fist through his jaw like he’s one of those ping-pong ball-swallowing sideshow clowns I hate so much, and the hardware goes spinning off into space.
I pour on the super-speed I save for special occasions because frankly it leaves me pretty wrung-out, moving from juggalo to juggalo who stand in almost suspended animation, pulling the guns from their hands and silencing their attacks with elbow and knee strikes. In about two seconds flat the room is quiet except for the rattling breaths of the unconscious and the cries of terrified hoes hiding behind the upturned sofas.
“OK, I’m looking for Raptor.”
As the deafening non-responses continue, it occurs to me maybe I should’ve asked this before knocking everyone out. quietly I curse and move from that room and into the next, the need for all the plush toys laid bare by the long tables with doggie bags of coke and teddy bears laid out like Santa’s pathologists are cranking up for autopsies after a massacre in Toyland.
A scared-looking guy pops up from behind a stack of boxes, the Uzi in his hand shaking like a kid just pretending to spray caps. I scowl and Taser him and he goes down in an explosion of hot bowels. Another guy with a riot shotgun storms through a door and in the same move I zap him too. He goes down with the shotgun going off into the ceiling.
*
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