“Static?”
She turned more dials. Still only static.
“Superion? Superion! Can you here me?”
She tore the headset off and threw it into a dank corner. Her fingers flew across the Evil: Keyboard as she narrated what she was doing for the sake of the reading audience. “Computer. Search and record Negaflux phenomenon.”
The screen displayed a large overhead map of Metroville, the phrase, “Negaflux search: commencing,” blinked in the lower right hand corner. The map went through a series of close-ups until a single city block filled the screen.
Dr. Menace’s fingers danced madly as she spat, “Blazted computer! What good are you if you cannot even hack into a simple spy satellite?” A few seconds later the screen showed live video feed of Superion Hall. She sat motionless for a moment. “He waz suppozed to check in with me before taking control of the city.” Superion Hall’s windows exploded on her monitor. “What haz that fool done?”
__________
Superion righted himself and turned to face Superion Hall. He wanted to give a sinister grin but found that his opponent was already upon him and and delivering another attack. I had underestimated his strength. Such speed. And that field. It’s like touching an exposed high voltage wire, and that’s with my Superior Powers and Negaflux augmentation. Incredible.
“Let’s end this quickly, boy!” The Crimson Crusader kicked Atomik Lad back a few feet.
“No you don’t!” Atomik Lad snarled, closing in once again.
“Yes. I do.” He punctuated this point with a double-fisted uppercut that sent Atomik Lad soaring straight up into the stratosphere. Superion shaded his eyes and watched as the ex-sidekick diminished above him, finally piercing a cloud shaped like an enormous dog’s head. “Good luck breathing up there. Soldier.”
The cloud pulsed a hellish blood red splotch in the sky and evaporated in an instant. Atomik Lad tore through the atmosphere and crashed into Superion like a fiery meteor. They careened to the street and punctured it. Great slabs of stone lay like a crumpled flower’s petals around their impact crater. The two titans grappled one another in an arena of sewage and stone, each trying to force the other into submission.
__________
“Hm,” Dr. Menace said while watching her renegade and her sworn enemy’s ex-sidekick face-off. “Superion’z Negaflux Field integrity iz ztill at 97 perzent. Quite imprezzive conzidering the forze Atomik Lad haz shown thuz far.
__________
“Do you know why I adopted the name Superion?” he grunted.
“No,” Atomik Lad said. “And I don’t care. Geez, is the gene for evil linked to the gene that impels you guys to tell us your master plans?”
“It is in homage of my father. The only man to survive Project: Superion.”
Atomik Lad slipped a fraction of an inch. “What are you talking about? The only man to survive that was Captain Liberty.”
“That’s right. Dear old dad was a superhero. And he. Was never. There!” Superion yelled. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up without a father!”
Atomik Lad’s Field shook with an angry intensity. “You have no idea how much I am the last person you should be trying to justify your actions to with that bullshit. Don’t blame your father’s sense of duty for your own feelings of inadequacy.” Locked hand in hand, the ex-sidekick flew them to street level. They broke off and circled each other like wolves ready to attack.
“No! You don’t understand! My father didn’t have a name! They took it away from him, they took everything from him so he could do their dirty work and call it justice. The one thing that made it tolerable was that everyone respected him, everyone knew him, even if they didn’t know his son.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Atomik Lad asked.
“And then, after he’d given them everything else, his past, his identity, his family, he gave them his life! And for what! For what! So they could forget him and worship that Nuklear Man freak! My father died for them and they don’t even remember!”
“Yeah, other than the statues, movies, toys, comics—”
“Shut up! Even in his death they use him to protect their economic philosophy.”
“So all of this is supposed to be some kind of revenge against Nuklear Man because he’s so much more popular than your dad now, right?”
“No, you narrow-minded fool. It’s not his fault he’s got superpowers. Taking him out of the picture was just a necessary part of the overall plan, you see. Part of my revenge against them!”
“Them?”
“The government! The people! The world! They forgot him but I’ll make sure they never forget me!”
“Ohh. I see. So you’re taking over the world for attention.”
“You don’t understand. But I don’t expect you to. Everyone loves Atomik Lad. Or should I say loved? They don’t know you anymore. They don’t know anything anymore unless I tell it to them first. Their whole world consists of nothing but me! Even your pretty, pretty Rachel.”
“If you’re trying to cloud my judgment by getting me angry by using her as emotional bait, it’s not going to work. All I have to do is defeat you and the strangle hold you have on the minds of my friends will disappear. It’s how these things work. You should know that, being in the family business and all.”
“Right again, Atomik Loser. Let’s just hope there’s enough left of their minds to matter should you defeat me. After all, if you take away that upon which their world revolves, well, it could be terribly dangerous to their mental health. It sure would be a shame if that pretty Rachel of yours ended up a vegetable.”
“It’s still not working.”
“Of course, she really doesn’t need a mind for what I’ve got planned for her.”
“I’m going to attack you now, but I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m doing so only to stop your blather from turning this into some kind of male adolescent fantasy of woman domination and not because of your ploy to anger me into taking rash actions.”
Superion shrugged. “Either way.”
Atomik Lad charged and was repelled by a mighty punch. He came to a spontaneous halt mere inches from a store front. The glass rattled in its frame. He blast back at his aggressor. The backlash of force crumpled the store like a house of cards. Superion sidestepped at the last second, grabbed hold of the ex-sidekick’s field and slammed him into the pavement, holding him there.
“And the name Superion works on another level too,” The Aegis Against Evil began.
“Do you ever shut up! We’re not even talking about this any more,” Atomik Lad spat while struggling to free himself and his Field.
“Like I said, it’s an homage to how my father gained his powers. And it’s true that I too had to go through the Superion Process in order to temper my body so it could endure the ravages of Negaflux Augmentation.”
“You done yet?”
“My body has been infused with raw Negaflux energy.” He shook Atomik Lad by his Field. “How else do you think I’m able to hold onto this damned Field of yours? My own Negaflux power counteracts it.”
“Okay, I was kinda wondering about that part, actually.”
“Oh, and it can do so much more than that.” He heaved Atomik Lad by the neck – or the part of the Field that was around his neck – and held him with his feet dangling above the ground. “My inherent Negaflux field counteracts any energy that it comes in contact with, thus mimicking invulnerability. By extending the field I can seem to release unstoppable energy blasts, Superior BeamsTM! And it can redirect any energy and amplify it against itself so with gravity constantly working, I can also mimic super strength and the power of flight.”
“Good for you.” Atomik Lad noticed Superion’s arms shaking with strain. His torso almost quivered with effort, the veins of his face and neck began to bulge. “What’s the matter? Can’t take the heat?”
“Quite the opposite.” Superion’s body began to give off a faint purple glow. He smiled knowingly. “Countera
ct, redirect, and amplify any force it comes into contact with. And I couldn’t help but notice that your own Field has quite an abundance of force behind it.” The violet glow surrounding Superion became more tangible and Atomik Lad could’ve sworn a railroad spike was driven into his forehead. “Menace gave me all kinds of intel about your powers. She snatched it from Überdyne’s databases. What was that Dr. Genius said about your Field? That it was essentially your own soul?”
Atomik Lad’s body jerked as every muscle involuntarily tensed. “Ghk! Wh-what are you doing to me?!”
__________
Dr. Menace jumped from her seat and lunged at the screen. “What are you doing?!”
__________
“Tearing you apart,” Superion stated plainly.
__________
“No.” Dr. Menace whispered as she watched Superion’s Negaflux integrity fall from 96 to 15 percent in the blink of an eye.
__________
Atomik Lad felt his mind fracture. Searing pain exploded through his body. Superion tore the Atomik Field in two. Atomik Lad screamed, his voice cracked at the moment his vision was assaulted by a blinding all-encompassing white that burned across each of his senses. The field’s two halves retained their existence separate from each other and their host for just over a second and then dispersed. Atomik Lad collapsed on the debris strewn street like his skeleton had suddenly gone missing.
Superion fell back a step. “Not bad kid, but I warned you what would happen if you opposed me. Still, I nearly had to use all my power for that one.” He looked to the sky. “Don’t worry though, I’ve got more than enough to deal with Menace.” He casually took to the air at speeds that should’ve been impossible.
__________
“Dammit! Too fazt for the satellitez to track! At leazt the computer iz still recording hiz Negaflux readingz.” Her eyes lingered on Atomik Lad’s prone body on the monitor. “I muzt prepare.”
The dilapidated front door exploded into the warehouse and nearly sent a broken plank of ex-door through Dr. Menace’s head.
She spun around. “Superion! I demand to know what you think you are doing!”
He waltzed into the warehouse with his cape flowing behind him like a royal entourage. “Well, I think it should be fairly obvious, Doc. Especially to a lady of your education and fine intellect. It’s an age old story. I’m rebelling against you.”
“Iz that so?” she calmly asked.
“I knew you were only using me to dupe the city into giving up on Nuklear Man, to turn them into mindless lemmings. And I knew you were going to double-cross me to fulfill your own agenda of taking over the world once I did away with anything left that could possibly oppose you. So I played up that anti-Nuklear Man shtick so that you, haughty with ingenious evil, would never suspect me of double-crossing you to fulfill my own agenda.”
“Well, actually I did suzpect that you might rebel againzt me. I’m evil you see, and the firzt rule of evil iz that you muzt truzt no one. Az such, I made certain to make a failzafe when I gave you your powerz.”
“Oh really? And what would that be?”
“You have to recharge your supply of Negaflux energy daily and only I know how to uze the highly complex and volatile machinery needed to do so! Or had you forgotten?”
Superion’s words stumbled on their way out.
“Exactly. Without me, you are nothing!”
“When I run out of Negaflux energy, I’ll still have my powers from the Superion Process.”
“A lot of good thoze did your father.”
The Crimson Crusader’s jaw clenched.
“Yez. Now you see. Without me, you have no Negaflux power. Without the Negaflux power, your Superior CharmTM will wear off of the public and they will free Nuklear Man againzt whom you shall be defenzeless.”
“Maybe I could work the recharging equipment myself,” he said, while running his hand over the thick glass of the containment cell.
“Hah! I seriouzly doubt that. The slightezt miztake could wipe out everything within a half mile radiuz.”
He gave her a madly indifferent look. “Won’t know until we try.” Superion started flipping switches, pushing buttons, and generally activating things he had no business meddling with.
“You muzn’t!” Dr. Menace pleaded as the capacitors powered up.
The recharging apparatus consisted of the Negaflux Generator with a focusing laser inside that transferred the energy into the Containment Cell where it would be slowly absorbed over a period of hours by whatever was inside if it didn’t first die from the hazardous process of absorbing those very energies. Superion had already started the generator and he now stood between the translucent green canister and the focusing laser. He smiled at his warped reflection in the containment cell’s curved glass. He tore the great canister from the rest of the machinery and tossed it to the side without a care.
“You cannot do thiz!” Dr. Menace protested. “The Negaflux energiez muzt be abzorbed slowlyslowly or they will tear your body apart from itz own metabolic procezzes!”
Superion stepped directly into the laser’s path. “I’m willing to take that chance.” The laser was warm against his stomach. The warmth spread throughout his body and his abdomen suddenly felt like it was on fire. He cringed but could not bear to move away. After a minute long eternity, the laser finally faded. Superion fell to one knee, purple energy pulsed like a heartbeat around him. He took a deep breath.
“It would seem,” he exhaled. “That it was well worth the risk, good Doctor.”
__________
“John.” A voice like a melody lilted through the air.
I turn to face the back door of my old house. I’m eight years old, but I’ll be nine in a few months. The sun is piercing over the roof but far away, even further than grandma’s house. Too bright, don’t look. Don’t look.
“John,” Mother’s voice from the kitchen window. I’m outside. The grass is green and smells wet, alive, and dirty. “It’s time for dinner, hon!”
“Don’t want to go in yet.”
“C’mon, hon. You can go back out and play when you’re done.”
“But it’s not time for dinner yet.”
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
Kicking at the grass, sweet grass, makes you itch from sweat in the summer. Got a pool though, so that’s okay.
“Robert! Come get John from outside!” Melody gone from the kitchen window.
“Come on, Johnny boy,” voice of god, hand like a clamp, covers my whole shoulder, so heavy and tight.
“It’s not time for dinner yet.”
“It’s time to eat when your mother says it’s time.”
“I’m not even hungry.” Door opens. White walls instead of blue sky. Darker here and cooler, but the kitchen is warm with new food. Clamp is tight but lets go of me here near my chair.
Eating. Chicken, the way I like it. Mashed potatoes, that’s okay though. Poke, poke and roll around the peas.
“Don’t play with your food.”
“I hate peas.”
“They’re good for you.”
“They’re terrible. And cold.”
“They wouldn’t be cold if you didn’t put them off to last.”
“But I hate peas.”
“Do what your mother says and eat them. She worked hard all day and then she made this dinner for us. You need your peas, you’re a growing boy.”
“I hate peas. She could’ve just stopped at Burger Hutt.”
“That’s it.”
“Honey, don’t.”
“The boy has to learn the importance of a damn meal, Heather.”
“Just don’t buy peas anymore.”
“Eat those peas!”
“Robert!”
“Eat them!” Voice of god. Angry. Face red from yelling. Don’t yell Dad, don’t yell. Angry eyes like fire. The fireplace, too hot to touch. Don’t touch. “Eat them!” Red and angry. Like fire. Don’t touch, don’t. “Eat the peas!” Giant han
d shaking my shoulder. Red and angry—don’t touch, don’t touch the fire—so angry.
and
red.
Warm kitchen smells like chicken, warm walls, wet and warm. And red.
Always red in my dreams.
No…no, I did it. I did it. I killed them. It’s my fault. Killed them.
Don’t touch.
Don’t touch the fire.
It’s red, always red. And angry. Always, always angry.
“John, are you okay?” Rachel. If beauty had a voice, it would be yours. “What’s wrong, Sparky?”
Sparky?
“Sparky!” Nuklear Man. Resonate, booming, thunder, lightning, so bright, like the sun. Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Don’t touch. Rachel, don’t. Too close, don’t touch!
Red. All over. Everything drenched in it, soaked to the core with…
Red flames, blood. Blood red world. Rachel, don’t You can’t.
But I want her to.
Red. Red Rachel. Rachel in red…red, everyone is red. Blood? Tastes like copper.
Copper. Iron (Scotsman). Tungsten (Titan). Gold (en Guardian). Silver. Silver.
Red and, and silver, laughter. Red and Rachel—“NO!”
Atomik Lad awoke. Steel towers reached out to a stormy heaven like the arms of a giant. One lone wisp of a cloud moved just slow enough to defy motion under the looming blanket of darkness. Breathing. The sound of breathing and sky. He closed his eyes and his vision was bathed in the orange of blood and flesh from what little sunlight came through the clouds. He tried to stand but found his joints stiff and unresponsive. His body buzzed with the warmth of dull, unfocused pain.
“Ugh. I feel like every nerve has been torn out and reattached. Backwards.” He groaned and wiped at his face. “Where?” The past few minutes flashed through his mind. “Aww damn. Rachel.” His Field burst forth and Atomik Lad took to the skies. He oriented himself to find Superion Hall. It wasn’t far, especially at his speed. Approaching it, he could see what was left of the window he’d crashed into and punched Superion out of. He flew through it again and stood in the dismal office casting half of Rachel in shadow.
Nuklear Age Page 46