Nuklear Age

by Clevinger, Brian

  “Uh. Okay.”

  Superion did a mid-air sidestep to reveal Mighty Metallic Magno Man, Angus, Shiro, Dr. Genius, Delivery Boy, Mail Man, Meter Maid, and the Librarian all wearing official Superion T-shirts. “Oh, the psychological torment!” Superion rejoiced. “Torn between his loyalty to the tenets of justice and his loyalty to his friends, the Hero is damned no matter the action he takes!”

  “Uh. Okay.”

  The Mindless Mob approached Nuklear Man with a collective snarl of disgust at the idea that something, anything could actually be so heinous as to attempt to impede upon the rule of Superion.

  “Face it, Nuklear Man,” Superion taunted from behind the throng. “Your Heroic heart cannot stand the thought of bringing pain against those whom you hold most dear. You can’t blast your friends.”

  Nuklear Man’s mighty shoulders slumped, his head hung in defeat. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got me right where—PLAZMAAA BEAM!!!” His fellow heroes were scattered like bowling pins by the fusion-ish bolt. The Hero’s voice was soaked in sarcasm as he mocked Superion’s mad ramblings, “I’m not gonna shoot my friends. Dur, dur, dur.”

  “Hm. I had not considered that course of action,” Superion admitted.

  “Feh, consider this. PLAZMAAA BEAM!!!” The golden stream of energy blazed to Superion.

  “SUPERIOR BEAMTM!!!” A reddish blast collided with Nuklear Man’s. Multi-colored sparks splashed from the point of impact.

  “Hey!” the Hero protested. “Stop that!”

  “You first,” Superion retorted. His beam doubled in size, pushing Nuklear Man’s out of the way and knocking the Golden Guardian down the street into a grocery store.

  The Hero leapt out of the produce section feeling a bit weird because of the odd positions his impact made possible with himself and a collection of cantaloupes. “Ahem. Yes, I have kept my dignity.” He straightened his spandex and cape. “‘Cause no one saw me.” He raced out of the shop like a beam of light aimed at Superion. The Sinister Scoundrel dodged into the heavy night air like a shaft of red-purple lightning.

  The two living lasers dueled across Metroville’s skyline. Dodging and spiraling like a light speed dance. Arcing and diving, cutting impossible angles around skyscrapers and clashing at speeds just this side of sub-light. Atomik Lad couldn’t keep track of them. First here. Then there. He couldn’t tell the difference between the flashes of natural lightning and the luminal explosions that accompanied every collision of the two titans. Was that thunder or a hypersonic punch?

  And then his entire world was filled with a golden-purple blur as they passed by, missing him by inches. Feeling more like a target than a sidekick, an ex-sidekick at that, Atomik Lad descended to street level as the melee raged above him. He mingled with some of the rubble that had been liberated when the battle was waged at low altitude. He passed by, and immediately returned, to two pairs of stubby armored legs sticking out of one ruined store front. He uncovered them and was relieved to find the rest of Shiro and Angus attached to their respective legs in very healthy and natural fashions. He set them against a somewhat intact wall and was considerably more unrelieved to find them still wearing Superion shirts. “This could be bad.”

  The Surly Scot rubbed his greasy red hair and unkempt fiery beard. His usual Scowl o’ Rage was replaced by the not so usual Scowl o’ Confusion which bore such a resemblance to the former Scowl as to make differentiating between the two an absurdly difficult task. “Aukgh!” he groaned.

  Shiro teetered slightly, his eyes focusing on something beyond the horizon. “Great Dragon of Mind is in the brainskull, heavy with pain when trees are sleeping time.”

  Angus’s Scowl made the jump from Confusion to Rage in record time, “Why cain’t ye ever make sense, ye damn bloody blasted rice-eatin’ moron!?” Angus flinched and held his head to keep the sledgehammer inside it from bursting his proud Scot skull wide open.

  “Seeing that spoken, Shiro-kun is to are correcting, hai.”

  “Um,” Atomik Lad interjected. “How are you guys?”

  “Ah’m bloody terrible, ye scrawny punk-arsed son of a—” another flinch cut Angus’s rant short.

  “Hm. Well, that sounds like the regular Angus to me,” Atomik Lad said.

  “Shiro-kun are being now the pain of calamities.”

  “Okay. I guess that sounds like the old Shiro too.”

  “What in the name o’ whisakey hit us?” Angus asked as he tried to stand. “One minute Ah’m watchin’ me favorite movie an’ the next thing Ah knows Ah just gots to have me a Suuperion shirt.”

  Atomik Lad looked to the sky and grinned. “Looks like Dr. Menace’s plan is working.”

  “What?! Dr. Menace! Where?” Angus craned around far too quickly for his throbbing brain to keep up and toppled over from the exertion.

  “It’s nothing,” Atomik Lad said. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I’ve got to check on the others Nuke blasted.”

  __________

  Issue 46 – Clash of the Titans

  A Harley with a sidecar on one side and an oversized rifle-cannon-bazooka looking thing on the other roared through the empty streets of Metroville. Its engine gave off a light purple glow against the rain slicked road. The rider wore a pair of shining black wrap around sunglasses. She was cloaked in the flapping black leather of a stylin’ trench coat dotted with beads of water that streaked along its twitching contours. The cycle skid to a stop at a red light, its idling engine gave off a dimmer glow than before. She examined the empty streets. “What am I doing?” Dr. Menace asked herself. She revved the engine and took off into the night toward the Superindustrial Park without the slightest attention paid to traffic signs or signals.

  __________

  Atomik Lad had gathered the recently emancipated heroes into the also recently half-demolished grocery store. Bottles of aspirin had been distributed among them to handle the headaches that accompanied the loosing of Superion’s mental grasp. A glass bottle shattered somewhere along the liquor aisle.

  “Ah toold ye to be carefuul with the whiskey, ye blasted no-fish-cookin’ haggis-brained twit!”

  “Shiro are to being small for the job of tall. Not ready for depths of insipid height,” he moaned while sitting in a puddle of whiskey and glass.

  “Are ye sayin’ ye be too short for this job?”

  “Supaa whiskey action; Angus-san time is hai.”

  “When ye know that yer a full half inch taller than me?”

  Shiro smiled wide, “Shiro-kun is to calling them as the dragon’s eye of powaa sees from over the sun that also risen into clouds where the city of gods.”

  “Ohhh, ye shouldna said that,” Angus growled, his left eye twitched out of control.

  Meanwhile, near the busted out entrance, Dr. Genius tried to enforce some order. “Überdyne will cover the costs,” Dr. Genius said in her, non-Superion shirt. It was white and had a faded print of a kitten hanging on to a clothesline on the front of it with the phrase Hang In There printed across the bottom. “So it’s more like acquisitioning supplies than stealing.”

  The other heroes with Superion shirts began sifting through the grocery store’s assortment of ill-fitting, poorly designed T-shirts near the registers. Impulse items for the fashion inept.

  Norman rubbed his head. “Man. What hit us all?” he asked, now sporting a rainbow of colors that clashed like opposing religious ideologies. “And could these shirts be any uglier?”

  “It’s Superion. He’s got some kind of mind control power. A Superior CharmTM,” Atomik Lad answered. “And no.”

  “Why weren’t you affected?” Norman asked.

  “I don’t know, really,” he said.

  “The Field,” Dr. Genius answered. “Probably just a side-effect of its manifestation. The very fact that it exists has made our Atomik Lad rather isolated from others. He would subconsciously resist any kind of outside influence. Combine that with the anger he was no doubt feeling about the trial and, well you’ve got something of a mental b
arrier working for you.”

  “Well, that explains that.”

  “But what it doesn’t explain, is why this mind control has begun to wear off on the rest of us.”

  “Basically,” Atomik Lad said. “Superion is nothing more than a pawn in Dr. Menace’s latest ploy to take over the world which started with getting Nuke put into jail and getting the rest of us off the streets. But he, Superion that is, went a little insane, got super charged, and used his Superior CharmTM to make you all do his bidding so that he could take over the world instead. So Dr. Menace and I got together to free Nuke and—”

  “What?!” everyone else exclaimed at once. Well, except for Shiro and Angus who were still arguing elsewhere in the store.

  “Just hear me out,” Atomik Lad said. “If it weren’t for Dr. Menace, you’d all still be slaves to Superion.”

  “If it weren’t for Dr. Menace, none of this would be an issue!” Dr. Genius retorted.

  “Look, I know. But she’s helping us. This is all part of her plan. Nuke is out there distracting him so she can put a stop to all this madness.”

  “I don’t like it,” Genius nearly growled. “She knows nothing outside her own insane wish to lord over all of humanity. She’d only cooperate with us because it is a means to her ends, it serves her interests to rid herself of competitors like this Superion. As soon as he’s out of the picture, she’ll revert to her megalomaniac ways, back to endangering innocent lives and using people for her own mad ambitions. You said yourself that this Superion started off as one of her pawns and now look at what it’s done.”

  “This sounds a little familiar,” Atomik Lad mumbled to himself.

  “All I’m saying is that you cannot trust that woman.”

  “...Yeah. Yeah, I know,” Atomik Lad said.

  “Hey,” Norman piped up with a thought. “I just had a thought. If this mind control thing is wearing off on us, then don’t you think it’s wearing off on at least some of the populace?”

  “That stands to reason,” Dr. Genius agreed. “They’ll be terribly disoriented and in need of our help. Any idea where they are?”

  “Metroville Industrial Park,” Atomik Lad said. “Superion has them building an invasion fleet or something.”

  “All right, heroes,” Dr. Genius took charge. “We’ve got to get there and take care of the civilians, keep injuries to a minimum, and get everyone back to their homes. Norman, you’ll use your Magno Powers to float us over there. We’ll need you to do the heavy lifting once we get there. Minimum Wage Warriors, collect all the first aid kits, headache medicine, and snack foods, preferably with high concentrations of carbohydrates, that you can find in this place. Coming with us, Atomik Lad?”

  “Er, no. I don’t think my powers, I mean, probably more dangerous with all those people. Besides, Nuke might need me here for back up.”

  Genius nodded in agreement. “Especially if Menace arrives to ‘hold up her part of the bargain.’”

  “She will.”

  “Even more reason to be alert.” Dr. Genius turned to the gathered heroes and organized them into an efficient airborne medical evac unit headed for the Superindustrial Park via Magno Power, but she stayed behind.

  “You’re not going with them?” Atomik Lad asked.

  Dr. Genius ran her hands through her long tightly curled hair and sighed. “No, it’s nothing they can’t handle. As long as I get back to Überdyne anyway. Metroville may be shut down, but the rest of the world is still operational. I’ve got to make some calls, set up some relief programs for our refugee citizens, make sure they’ve got food and shelter while we get families back together and then back to their homes.”

  “Überdyne is quite a ways off, are you sure it’s safe to walk?”

  “I haven’t been collecting KI data from you boys for ten years for nothing, you know.” She tossed open her lab coat to reveal a technologically enhanced belt that gave off a silvery light.

  “Theoretically, this device should alter the KI of the air within a four foot radius of me such that I’ll be levitated along with it.”

  “Well. I guess there’s more than one way to fly.”

  She smiled. “Superpowers or superscience? Soon, there will be no difference.” And she took off with the air around her shimmering like a heat mirage.

  “That’s not quite what I meant,” he told her diminishing form.

  __________

  Superion and Nuklear Man battled in the dark skies as scarce droplets of water fell around them. The Sinister Scoundrel sneered at his opponent as they grappled and hung in the air. “I’m almost going to pity destroying you, Nuklear Man. This little bout has been entertaining and I fear this world is incapable of producing another individual of your strength.”

  “Well,” the Hero puffed up proudly. “I don’t like to brag. But yeah.”

  “So you can see the tragedy your death holds for me.”

  “My death? No, no, no. I’m the Hero, see. I win. No one dies. That’s how it goes, trust me I’ve been doing it for years. Now then, in light of this new evidence, why don’t you just give up and save us all a lot of trouble, hm?”

  Superion gave a deep and haughty laugh.

  Nuklear Man followed suit, albeit nervously since he didn’t quite know what was going on, “I sure am glad you see things my way. Woo. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not giving up, you fool!”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve already won!”

  “So...you’re not giving up then?”

  “Why should I give up? I possess powers beyond your understanding.”

  “Well, I doubt that,” Nuklear Man said with a bit of a chuckle. “I’ve got Plazma Powers, y’know. Lots of ‘em.”

  “Perhaps, but what you don’t know is that my Negaflux powers can cancel yours and use them against you, even multiplying them until you are crushed into a pathetic cinder by your own alleged might!”

  “Oh yeah? Well, what you don’t...know...um, about my. Er, can you really do all that? Use my own powers to defeat me?”

  Superion nodded.

  “Oh. Wow. Man, that’s just. Wow. That’s so awesome! I mean, yowza. That’s got real style, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, I just fly around and punch and zap things. I can’t compete with that kind of stuff.”

  “No, you can’t.” Superion raised his mighty fists.

  “Hey. Are you gonna—” and he brought them down on the Hero’s skull with a thunderous boom that had a slight echoing quality to it “—hit me?” Nuklear Man weakly uttered just before smashing through the roof of a pharmaceutical firm. The whole structure crumpled in upon itself like a giant had sat on it. In the middle of the massive pile of rubble, Nuklear Man coughed a cloud of dust. “Okay. It’s time to drop the hammer!”

  __________

  Dr. Menace idled through the Superindustrial Park. Random red-shirted civilians were already wandering the streets, stumbling and holding their heads, like an epidemic of drunkenness and hangovers had assaulted the area. “Hm, the Nuklear Oaf haz been more effective than I thought he would be. I loathe to admit it, but he continually zurprizez me.” She wound the cycle through the meandering foot traffic, all the while following the prompts given to her by the Evil: Heads Up Display super-imposed on her vision through her wrap around goggles. She took a sharp turn into the employee parking lot of a metal working factory and nearly ran over, “Rachel!”

  Rachel stumbled back a few steps and shielded her eyes from the cycle’s headlight. “Watch where you’re...wait. How do you know my name?”

  “Rachel, come with me. It iz vitally important.”

  “What? I’m not going anywhere. Who are you? How did I get here?” Rachel kept one hand in front of her eyes and her gaze cast down on herself. “And where did I get this damn idiotic T-shirt?”

  Dr. Menace let out an annoyed huff. “Lizten, girl. I, we do not have the time for thiz converzation. Pleaze, juzt get into the sidecar and I will expla
in on the way.”

  Rachel was silent for a moment. “Wait. I know you. That voice, your accent. You were on TV. You were demanding we relinquish control of all the world’s governments or you’d use the Earth’s magnetic field to freeze the planet’s rotation and hurl us all into space.”

  “Yez, and it would have worked too if not for the accurzed meddling of that incompetent Nuklear Dolt!” Menace cursed.

  “You’re Dr. Menace. There’s no way I’m coming with you,” Rachel spat.

  Dr. Menace stifled her reflex reaction and went with the exact opposite: niceness. “Rachel, dear. You are going to have to truzt me. Atomik Lad needz you. You muzt come with me. We are working together, for the time being, in order to rid ourzelves of a greater evil. Superion.”

  “Superion? Yes, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? I can’t remember exactly, this damn headache makes it hard to concentrate.”

  “Yez, it’z a side effect of Superion’z mind control.” She dug in her pockets and pulled out two tiny pills. “I had anticipated it. Now, pleaze. I promize no harm will come to you while you are with me.”

  Rachel hesitated. “How can I trust you?”

  Dr. Menace’s goggles warned her that a pack of humanoids were flying to her general location. “There iz nothing that I can say to convince you,” she said plainly. “You simply muzt come with me.”

  Rachel took the pills and climbed into the sidecar. “Honesty is the last resort of desperation. Let’s roll.”

  The Menacycle squealed into the night. Dr. Menace’s goggles guided them to Superion. His Negaflux field was like a massive beacon for her sensors. The Venomous Villainess watched from the corner of her eye as Rachel dropped the two pills into her mouth. Dr. Menace’s face melted into a cunning and satisfied smile.

  Yez, all part of the plan.

  __________

  “It’s time...to drop, gaaaasp...the hammer,” Nuklear Man panted as he stumbled up to Superion.

  The Sinister Scoundrel wore an aggravated sneer. “Yes, so you keep saying.” Red-purple energy swirled around Superion’s fists. He delivered a karate-style open palm strike to Nuklear Man’s chest, breaking the sound barrier at the moment of impact.