Blackjack Villain

by Ben Bequer

Spitfire – While he may seem like a run of the mill fire breather, Spitfire is actually Rising Force’s second in command, and reigning tactician. An old and dear friend of Captain Miraculous, the team never goes into battle without a lengthy battle plan designed by Spitfire.

  Atmosphero – Few enjoy the perks and pleasures of being a hero as much as Atmosphero. He has formidable control of wind, lightning and rain, but it’s his arresting smile and dashing good looks that has made him a rising star.

  The Suberb Seven

  Apogee – When little girls dream of acquiring powers and becoming heroines, it’s Apogee they dream of. Though barely in her late twenties, she is beloved world-wide. Though she may be primarily a speedstress, Apogee is the world’s strongest heroine and can also channel her velocity into charged blows.

  Epic – For years now, Epic has merely shown up at the scene of a crime only to have whatever villains are present surrender to him. There are few who can stand up to him, and none that can weather a blow from him.

  Superdynamic – Having no powers of his own, Superdynamic built a skin-tight suit that projects energy, protecting him from harm, amplifying his physical abilities and propelling him in flight at unearthly speeds.

  Mirage – Mirage leads a quiet life, doing what he can to help, and wanting nothing but a simple “thanks” in return. Once a regional hero, he is now a veteran of several groups, including The Revolution, who value his light-bending and healing powers.

  Gamma Demon – Only the special metal bands on his wrists contain the powerful emissions from Gamma’s body, though nothing could contain his courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

  FTL – Little is known about this super, except that he seems to fall under the traditional paradigm of “man in a powered suit”. It’s curious, though, that he can speak every known language and disappears every 12 hours to recharge.

  (and as part of the Superb Ten)

  Hotstreak – Another firebreather/speedster and rumored to be on the Superb backup list because of his close ties to Epic.

  Amethyst – She gained her powers during an experiment gone awry and now her skin is comprised of near-indestructible crystal. Amethyst can also vibrate, generating destructive soundwaves that she can amplify and direct.

  Nerfhammer – Nothing fancy about this guy. Nerfhammer is big and strong, and as unstoppable as they come.

  Diamond Magus – A thirteenth generation magus, he wields the powers if illusion, conjuration and summoning. While he may have no powers in the traditional sense, Diamond Magus is a formidable opponent.

  The Sentinels

  Brigade – A former Marine Lt. Colonel and founder of the Sentinels, Brigade is a no-nonsense hero, who “puts ‘em down first, then gives ‘em a chance to talk.” While the Sentinels have had a revolving roster, they have been led by the same man from victory to victory for twenty years.

  Paper Johnson – Classified as a “heavy” in the Sentinels’ roster, Paper is a veteran of both Desert Storms, and an artist with a rocket launcher.

  Sharpshooter – A known hero for over a decade before joining the Sentinels, Sharpshooter is more often than not the public face of the Sentinels. His presentations in schools and commencement speeches are things of YouTube legend, as are videos of his displays of his accuracy.

  Solo Heroes

  Lord Mighty – Quiet, enigmatic, and quite possibly the most powerful being on the planet.

  Paladin – In the years since Valiant’s death, Paladin has reluctantly carried much of the load left by the legendary hero. A silent guardian of the Earth as a whole, you can always count on Paladin to save the day.

  Dominus – Though largely retired, this mind-bender is the super responsible for stopping Baron Blitzkrieg’s attempt to blow up China, along with his long-time partner Damage.

  Damage – Controls one of the fundamental forces of nature, hampered by his inability to see a friend’s couch as luxury living.

  Underworld – It’s questionable whether this hero has a dark set of powers, or if he has made a pact with a dark power, where he often sends his vamquished foes for pennance.

  Battlestone – Can transform himself into any naturally existing element, though the longer he stays in elemental form, the harder it is for him to transform back.

  Dragonfly – When wings grew on her back, Dragonfly decided to lash out against her over controlling parents, and thus became a villainess. In the years since her incarceration at the hands of Paladin, she has reformed her ways and is now a renowned heroine.

  Flamestar – She differs from most firebreathers in that she can transform herself into living flame, using her power to suffocate her enemies.

  Matchstick – Breathes fire. Thinks tobasco sauce is for wimps. Long-time partner with Steeltoe.

  Steeltoe – His feet are made of steel, and with his amazing strength, he has the habit of kicking people in places they don’t like.

  Shaft – Archer, not as good as Blackjack.

  Bowyer Joe – Archer, also not as good as Blackjack. Retired.

  Broadhead – Archer, better than Blackjack.

  The Original Seven

  Valiant – When you think of Valiant, you think of the word Super. With a red/white/blue suit, a long flowing cape, and an ever-present smile, he was a bastion for truth and justice for three decades. Valiant died in a struggle with his nemesis, Dr. Retcon.

  Global – Most popular and beloved of the Seven, Global is now a champion for gay and minority rights, eschewing his famed red suit for a suit and tie, his new battlefield the courtrooms in his ongoing fight against injustice.

  Nostromo – A master of quantum constructs, he now sits on his great citadel on the moon, waiting for a time that his formidable powers are necessary.

  Apostle – Controls a swathing draining power that makes it impossible for him to interface with most people. In recent years, he has taken the fight to Africa, roaming the continent from the deserts of Sudan to the dusty plains of Namibia, protecting innocents the evils that may befall them.

  Lady Jayne – She’s elegant and detached, and elitist. She believes humanity has one foot out the door. A follower, she was ever attached to one megalomaniac mastermind or another while Dr. Retcon languished in jail.

  Ed Watters – Reputed to have power over molecules themselves, Ed chose a different path from the others, instead choosing a normal life.

  Dr. Retcon – A progressive, controversial figure, Dr. Retcon was forever haunted by what his discoveries unleashed on the world. So consumed was he by his drive to see the Earth protected, he became blind to the devastating consequences of his actions. Since supers arose almost four decades ago, Retcon has stood shoulders above every villain and his nefarious plans have only been stopped by the timely intervention of Valiant and the other Original Seven.

  excerpt from: Blackjack Wayward

  Chapter 1

  Now I know how Dr. Retcon felt when they took his daughter, and his dream, when he turned from a maligned man, trying to make amends for his ill deeds to a true villain, the monster. I understand him now more than ever.

  He was so close to fulfilling his lifetime goal of saving the world from the menace he himself had brought upon us. He had tinkered with space and time, and transported himself and his companions to another world, ruled by a timeless alien species so powerfully corrupt, that they collected planets. Well, not really planets, just pieces of them, sloughed off with their unlimited powers, to leave the rest of the planet to implode in world-ending cataclysm.

  Exposure to our culture had drawn their attention, and we were to be next on their proverbial list. Retcon had spent his life trying to avert the destruction of our planet, and in the end, he had succeeded, creating a Nikola Tesla-inspired device that formed a planetary shield so formidable even the aliens had to respect our civilization. We had driven off the alien scout, saved the world, and as thanks, they had killed his daughter.

  It mattered little that one of our companions had betrayed us,
turned on the whole plan at the last minute. At the very moment where he should have been celebrating the success of a lifetime’s worth of effort, all his hopes and dreams were squashed by a well-placed sniper’s bullet, by the death of his child.

  I had seen his anguish wracked face, unwilling to believe his daughter was dead. I saw the dark rage set in, the madness overwhelm him, and in an instant, he gave the world what they had always feared;

  “They want a monster, and I shall give them one!”

  And with that he reversed the device, and set upon the destruction of the world.

  It was good fortune, and impeccable timing that allowed me to save us from his madness. The last vestige of my former villainous-self lay within my pockets, an arrowhead so powerful I dubbed it “The Nuke”. I had started as an archer villain, and now it was all that was left of my original suit and gear, and the only thing that stood between Retcon and annihilation.

  A lucky throw, a bright flash of light, and the threat was over. I had saved the world. And as thanks, I was convicted of over 1,400 charges, including crimes against humanity, genocide and destruction of Japanese sovereign property (a whole island). I was the only one standing at the end, so they threw the book at me, intent on sending me off a super’s prison in the North Atlantic called Utopia for the rest of my life.

  But they had the last laugh. Their prison for me would be more creative. They didn’t want me put away, they wanted me gone. And since you can’t just kill a guy as powerful as I am, they came up with a clever alternative.

  See, the whole thing started about fifty years ago when Retcon had built a device to peer through space into Bok globule near Lambda Centauri, some 2 kilo parsecs away from Earth. Boks are basically regions of space that follow none of the rules of space, being very cold and also allowing almost no light to penetrate them. Some think they’re the precursors to stars, but Retcon had other ideas, and he proved everyone right by discovering the home of an alien species more grand and magnificent than anything anyone could have imagined. Ultimately, more dangerous and threatening than warranted the original experiment. But then again, Retcon was a guy who lived on the edge.

  In any case, the machine he built, again based on Tesla technology, was a particle accelerator, designed to create an aperture in space, a wormhole between Earth and the interior of the Bok globule. The theory being to create a telescope through space, and the raw data he could collect would revolutionize our knowledge of space and time. Little did he know that the device would transport him and his companions to the world within the Bok, to a civilization known as The Lightbringers.

  Well, it was this machine they used to banish me. I’d like to know the name of the guy that had the bright idea, who found the original Retcon device in the moon base of another hero, Nostromo, who found this machine and had the clever idea of sending me through space and time with it, of banishing me from Earth.

  They sent me back to Shard World.

  The day after the trial ended, I was flown on an AC-130 under heavy guard to a small island somewhere in the South Pacific, where, in a secret installation, they had built a replica of the Retcon portal device.

  With little ceremony, they put me inside the device and fired it up. The machine was larger, maybe by a factor of ten, than the one I had built in Shard World, so at first I had no idea what it was. There were few similarities, in fact, and one important thing that was missing altogether was the cradle to hold the focus gem. The new device had more in common with mad scientist equipment from a low-budget 1940s movie, loud and sparking with excess power. It had a small chamber with a tiny chair where they stuffed me and slammed the door closed.

  I looked around desperately as the technicians fiddled at the dials, and one of them came to a large turn knob, spinning clock-wise as the power surged and in a flash, I was gone. The memory was familiar, and only at that moment, I discovered what they had done to me.

  When blinding lights faded, I found myself atop a small strip of rock, maybe a quarter mile long and half again as wide, floating in that black/orange inky sky, surrounded by other mini-islands, torn from their host planets, all of which were like satellites to the foundering world of the Lightbringers.

  This floating shard was new to me, and guiding by where the Lightbringers citadel lay, I was far from the island where the small alien village lay, where we had defeated the Mist Army. Smaller even than our original arrival point to Shard World, my new home was a barren patch of rock, devoid of any plant or animal life. Or water. Instead of killing me outright, they had banished me to a place where I would survive only a few days before a slow and painful death by dehydration.

  But I refused to die. I refused to let them win. Maybe I’m obstinate, or maybe I’m a fool, but I wasn’t going to die on that small sliver of rock in far-away space. That wasn’t going to be my end. I had to find a way back, to stop Dr. Zundergrub, to save Apogee, and the small fact of being marooned in a distant Bok globule wasn’t going to deter me. Mr. Haha and I had built a machine to return us to Earth, and while I lacked his near-limitless abilities now, I still had everything I needed to build another. Or maybe the first one I had built was still there, waiting for me to find it floating on some distant shard. Either way, I was getting out of this shithole, and making it back.

  The first thing I had to do, though, was find my way to that village.

  There was little in the way of materials, just what I wore: an orange prison jumpsuit, white cotton shirt and briefs, and the metal manacles and chains that bound me. Freed from the ever-present power dampening field generators they always kept nearby, I could exert my full strength for the first time, and I was soon unencumbered. I tore the top of my jumpsuit, crumpled it into a ball, and used the twisted metal braces as flint and steel, lighting a small fire. I searched the rocky ground for minerals and found enough carbonized ores to make the bonfire pretty respectable and to keep it going for some time.

  My idea was to attract one of those whale-manta ray things and somehow subdue it as we had some of the smaller ones. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I was desperate, and in my mind, nothing was going to deter me.

  About ten minutes after, one of the bigger whale things flew near, but rolled off, uninterested. I made a huge ruckus, hoping the creature could see and hear me hopping and hollering, but the beast turned fast away, scared by something that approached.

  I turned to see what it could be, and felt a turning in my stomach by what I saw, an open decked ship, teeming with armed warriors, held aloft somehow, and soaring along wind power that billowed into its many sails.

  The Mist Army had found me.

  The sleek ship circled me twice before slowing, intending to stop alongside the rocky island. Lined along the gunwales were dozens of warriors, all formidable and bristling with weapons, eyeing me like hungry pirates staring down a fat merchantman in the age of sail. The ship was actually similar to a sailing vessel from Earth, with a wooden hull some one hundred feet in length, painted jet-black and adorned from bow to stern with brass and copper. She was three-masted and square rigged with three outrigger masts jutting from the hull to each side and below. She was a fine ship, elegant and fast, and from her open deck, she boasted half a dozen cannon on each side, and a pair of long guns jutted from the foredeck.

  As the ship came to a stop a few hundred yards from the floating shard, the crew began a terrible chant, accompanied with the banging of a hundred weapons or belaying pins on the bulwark from fore to aft-castle. It was a terrible sound, which I knew translated to “death” in the alien’s horrible languages. Like the Mist Army I had encountered almost a year ago, the crew of the ship was a motley gathering of many species, from reptilian to mammalian, from bipedal to floating beings to slithering worm-like creatures. They all slammed on the sides of the ship rhythmically, roaring in their different languages in a symphony of death. A few of the crew busied themselves, unloosing a longboat from the main deck, and bringing it alongside, where a dozen warriors boarde
d, let by the ship captain. I could tell little of the man, save he was bipedal, tall, and wore a traditional embroidered long blue coat with white facings and scarlet epaulets, blue breeches and long white socks. Atop his head he wore a tricorn hat of similar blue material, all in all giving him a very traditional Royal Navy look.

  As they boarded the small boat, I ran towards the highest point on the shard, a small rocky outcropping that would serve as my last stand. Then again, if they had ranged weapons, I was done for. But hopefully this would appeal to their warrior instincts, to their desire to defeat “Brackshock” as they had butchered my name. I watched them approach and ‘beach’ their longboat and disembarking. As they came closer, led by the formidable captain, I noticed the soldier’s garb was uneven, and no two men wore the same clothing, nor wielded similar weapons. In fact, they appeared more like slovenly pirates than a crew of Mist Army warriors. Of them all, only the captain wore full formal clothing.

  Though, as he came closer, flanked by his fearsome crew, I realized that he was in fact, a she. Humanoid in most respects, save for reversed lower legs, more like those of a satyr, and a pair of twisted horns that jutted out of the sides of her head. Her skin was lilac but her facial features were otherwise normal.

  The captain stood at the base of my rock and shouted up at me, pointing a cutlass in commanding fashion. The others rumbled their death chant, low enough to not disrupt the captain.

  I took a quick headcount. There were fifteen soldiers, four of which looked quite formidable, as well as the captain herself. The toughest fellow was a ridiculously massive, green reptilian biped, with malformed lower limbs so he basically walked with his hands. Atop his brawny shoulders was a formation of eye stalks that gazed in every direction. For weapons, he had the equivalent of a brass knuckle in each hand, which I’m sure also doubled as shoes. His arms were trunks though, as wide as I was in my shoulders, and each hand was the width of my hips.

  Taking a few steps down, I pointed at their biggest warrior, then at me.