"You didn't let it stop you, did you?" squeaks Floater, and Bottlenose chatters in agreement.
"But it wasn't supposed to be that way." The fire of regret wells up within me, followed by the fire of pain. "I didn't have any choice."
*****
It all started with the clinking of beer bottles, a year ago to the day. We started down this road with a toast to the future, to setting it right, my partner and I.
Make that Sunblock and I.
Neither of us was smiling as we tipped back the bottles and drank. The occasion was hopeful, the plan was worked out, we were committed...
But the price would be steep.
"Are you sure you can do this?" Sunblock raised his eyebrows. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his dark forehead, the effect of sitting across a table from me with my two-hundred degree body temperature.
"Of course not." I swigged some more beer, which was already warm from my hand. "But I'm willing to try."
"Shit." Sunblock shook his head slowly. "Are you sure you don't want to switch places?"
"And be the double-crossing mole?" I touched the big "C" on my chest; back then, I was still wearing a Castigators' uniform. "Having to hide my true purpose from America's premiere super-team while secretly manipulating them from within?"
Sunblock sighed and put down his beer. "I've gotta ask, Mike. This isn't because of the critics, right? You're over that, aren't you?"
I laughed, though it wasn't a laughing matter. "I'm not doing this because I won the Droopy Long-John." It was true. Receiving the critics' award for most useless hero was just one of the things that was motivating me, one part of a miserable life.
Sunblock reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine, which I knew made him uncomfortable. Fresh sweat popped out on his forehead and ran down his face. "What about the R-word? I hate to bring it up, but..."
"Retirement?" I bumped his hand aside. "How many times do I have to tell you, this isn't some mid-life crisis."
"I know, I'm just..."
Lunging forward out of my chair, I grabbed the front of his purple costume. "This is about the future, Joe! Making things right for everyone!"
"Except two dozen super-heroes." Sunblock hissed the words in a harsh whisper. "Tricked into a cape-and-cowl death trap."
I held on to him for a moment, locking my gaze to his ebony eyes. As always, they were full of understanding and friendship. Like any good friend on the brink of a big leap, he was simply conducting one last sanity check. He was backstopping me, as always, because he cared.
And I was holding out on him, as always, for the same reason. Holding back something he needed to know.
"Thanks." I released him and settled back into my chair. "Yes, I'm sure I can do this."
I watched as he smiled calmly and raised his beer. "Well all right then." What if he did know? What if I told him? "So we do this thing." Those questions always hung between us like a cloud of cigarette smoke.
And like always, they remained unanswered. "We start tomorrow, Sunblock." But for how much longer? Another week? Another year? "One year from now, the world as we know it will cease to exist."
*****
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. After what I did to Sunblock, I'm on my own. No cavalry to charge to the rescue.
On the other hand, I've still got an advantage. Because Freeze-Dry, Floater, and Bottlenose have no idea what's really at stake.
Or what I'm willing to do to make it happen.
"One last chance to come quietly." As he says it, Freeze-Dry's already revving up his flash-freezing powers. His twelve fingers glow bright blue and crackle with energy. "As your friend, I advise you to surrender."
He doesn't wait for me to answer. Bolts of freeze-force burst from his hands and race toward me, screaming through the air.
I thrust one hand in front of me, casting a wave of focused heat at Freeze-Dry's blast. The opposing forces crash together and swirl for a moment, heat versus cold. Then, I pump out a booster surge that breaks the clinch and fries the stream of freezing power right back to Freeze-Dry's fingers, sending him spinning.
I'm expecting an attack from the other two next, and I get it. A wave of sound plows into me from behind, a deafening, modulated roar like amplified whalesong. I know it's Bottlenose's work; I twist as it flings me forward, and I see him swimming toward me, distortion ripples pulsing from his open mouth.
I fire a blast of heat at the water behind me, pulling up a funnel of steam that stops my flight. Pushing off with another jet of steam, I rush headlong toward Bottlenose, hands glowing cherry red like twin branding irons. He can't get out of my way in time, and I bash both fists straight into his snout, sending him reeling. So much for the ear-splitting whalesong.
It's then that I make a mistake. I figure Freeze-Dry's the bigger threat, so I turn when I hear his voice.
But what I should be doing is watching for Floater. Never underestimate someone just because they don't seem to contribute much.
It's the same lesson I've worked so hard to teach the Castigators about me.
*****
Eleven months and three weeks ago today, Concertina and Swiftboat of the Castigators went out on a routine rescue call to Point Scranton, one of the new coastal towns at the edge of the rising Atlantic Ocean. The call came in over their belt radios—something about a capsized ferry on the way to Jersey Island.
They should've been surprised when all they found at the rescue coordinates was me...but they were too busy being assholes, as usual.
Swiftboat did his patented running on water bit, moving so fast as he zipped toward me that his feet never had time to sink. "What the hell, Skillet? You make a wrong turn on the way to the weenie roast?"
Concertina chuckled on her blood-red jet ski. "Where's the ferry? Did you already set it on fire? Was that your solution to the sinking problem?"
I just floated on a curtain of steam and shook my head. The stupid jokes had been rolling for years, ever since global warming's impact had gone off the charts. Really funny stuff, right? All based on the premise that someone with heat powers is about as useful as tits on a bull in a world that's too damn hot.
"You're supposed to save the passengers, not melt them." Swiftboat kept running in circles to stay afloat. "I thought we talked about this."
I just shrugged. "Everyone's disappeared. Either that, or the rescue coordinates are wrong."
"Well gee, if you say so." Concertina smirked. "Did you scan the area with your crispy critter vision?"
I can't say I was used to the jokes, but I did get used to ignoring them. "Maybe you could run a grid search, Swiftboat. Call us in when you reach the actual site."
Swiftboat was used to ignoring me, too. "Say, 'Tina." He pretended I hadn't said a word. "I just decided to go run a grid search. I'll call when I've found the actual site, 'kay?"
"Good idea, Swifty. I'll wait here." Looking up, she made a face at me. "Would it kill you to cut back on the thermal emissions? You're just making the global warming worse, y'know."
I nodded. "Thanks for the input."
As Swiftboat dashed off across the water, Concertina patted her hair and frowned. "You're ruining my hair, too, didja know that? Frying the body right out of it."
"Sorry to hear that." I shook my head like I felt for her. "Shaving it off's always an option."
Concertina clucked her tongue and threw the jet-ski in reverse. "Talk about being part of the problem." She scowled with disgust as she backed away from me. "Might as well call my hairdresser now." As the jet-ski continued bobbing backward, she pulled a cell phone out of her barbed-wire bustier and hit speed-dial.
"Hey Trish, can you squeeze me in tomorrow morning?" At first, she was too busy talking to realize the jet-ski had stopped moving. "That's right. Yes, I know I was just in yesterday. Tell it to Captain Burnout here." She laughed. "Yes, that Captain Burnout, Trish!"
The fact that I was heating up and moving closer didn't seem to
register with Concertina. She was too busy yukking it up with her lowlife hairdresser.
Another big laugh. "The things you say, Trish!" She fixed her eyes on me so it was clear whom they were talking about. "What? What?" She let loose a big, honking hoot. "You think so? Oh my God!" And another. "No, I'm not going to ask him that!"
Suddenly, her phone stopped working. Because I melted it in her hand.
With a shriek, she flung the smoking blob into the water, then plunged her hand down after it to cool off. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"
As the initial shock wore off, she looked up at me, and understanding flowed into her eyes. Then anger. "What'd you do that for, Burnout?" With her undamaged hand, she grabbed the wire gun from its holster on her left boob. "Think you're cute or somethin'?"
As she swung the wide-bore barrel in my direction, I raised my hands. She pulled the trigger, and a gleaming length of razor-sharp concertina wire shot from the muzzle, slashing toward me.
Before she could use her metalkinetic power to bring the wire to life, wrapping it around my throat or balls or what have you, I pulsed out a wave of blistering heat. The wire turned to silver rain in midair, drizzling down on the water's surface. Then, I melted the gun, too.
And the jet-ski.
The look on Concertina's face finally changed from disgust and anger to fear. "Hey, I'm sorry, all right?" She winced up at me as she treaded water to stay afloat. "I was just kidding around, Mike!"
I shrugged. "Whatever."
Her expression shifted back to anger. "Swiftboat'll be back here any second now, you know. He isn't gonna be happy, not one bit."
"Shhh." I placed my finger against my lips. "Did you hear that?"
Just then, a sound like thunder cracked in the distance.
I smiled down at her and hiked a thumb over my shoulder. "Sonic boom. That's him."
"That's right." She tossed her head and sneered. Her running mascara had given her raccoon eyes. "Now you're gonna get it, Burnout. Just wait."
"Think so?" I pointed at a distant stretch of coastline. "Watch this."
Suddenly, a wave of blackness surged out of the distance, racing toward us over the water. It fell upon us fast, shrouding us in total darkness, as if someone had switched off the sun.
The darkness held a moment. Concertina screamed.
And then it rolled away. The mid-afternoon light reappeared all around us.
"What the hell?" Even as she said it, I knew she'd recognized the darkness effect. She'd seen it in action often enough; all the Castigators had.
Because it was the trademark of one of our own.
"S-Sunblock?" Concertina's lips quivered as she said it. "But he wasn't on the duty roster."
I shot her a wink. "Good to know you're paying attention, 'Tina."
She frowned, thinking it over...and then she tried to turn it to her advantage. "Swiftboat must've called him in to deal with you. Now you're screwed!"
I laughed at her. "Here." Super-heating the water around her, I turned it into a cushion of steam that raised her out of the sea. "I'll take you to him."
Her brown eyes widened. "To Swiftboat?"
"You betcha." I raised my eyebrows and nodded. "We got you matching stasis tubes. You'll never leave his side."
Before she could say another word, I turned up the temperature, giving her a sudden case of heatstroke. She passed out, slipping into a comatose state.
Which is where she has stayed to this day. She and all the others we've rounded up.
*****
They underestimated me, every last one of them. Just like I underestimate Floater today in the Times Square Sea.
I write him off as a minor threat and turn my back on him. Freeze-Dry's shouting something, and I focus on him instead.
Which is exactly when Floater does his deflating balloon trick and crashes into me from behind at a high rate of speed.
The impact slams me out of my supporting pillar of steam. My overheated body hisses like a hundred snakes when I hit the water face-down, casting up billowing clouds of vapor.
Before I can get my bearings, something lands on my back, knocking the breath out of me. The weight pushes me down faster than I can turn the water to steam, and my empty lungs inhale. Next thing I know, they're filling with water.
I'm drowning. Now wouldn't that be something, if I came all this way, with three Castigators left to capture, and drowned to death?
My first instinct is to thrash like a fool, trying to dislodge whatever's pushing me down...but that doesn't work. Then, in one of the last seconds I have left, I remember I'm a super-hero. I have a super power.
Time to pull out the stops.
Choking, plunging deeper under the sea, I gather my strength, reaching into my fiery core. And then, every cell tingling, I let it explode.
A shockwave of intense heat bursts out of my body in all directions, instantly boiling the water around me. The weight on my back falls away, dropping past...and it's only then I see for sure it's Bottlenose who's been trying to drown me.
Flipping around, I shoot toward the surface. My lungs ache as I race for the light, praying I won't black out before I reach the open air. Praying also that Bottlenose isn't dead, because all my hopes will die with him.
The instant I break the surface, I focus my power inward, concentrating on my lungs. I feel the heat suffusing the tissue, radiating into the sacs, turning the water into steam. When I open my mouth, it rushes out of me in a sizzling jet.
And then, when my lungs are clear, I suck in what feels like the deepest breath of my life. The best breath of my life.
I enjoy the feeling for exactly ten seconds.
"Noooo!" Then, Floater's anguished cry kills my buzz. "Bottlenose, noooo!"
Looking around, I catch sight of it. The glistening gray body bobbing on the waves thirty feet away...skin blistered from boiling sea water. Half man, half dolphin...
All dead.
And so, too, is the plan I've so carefully nurtured for the past year. Because I don't need just some of the Castigators to succeed.
I need all of them.
*****
Two years ago, my buddy Brain Fart laid it out for me over a steak dinner.
His big blue eyes were wide with excitement as he spun his theory. "So you see, the amalgamated essences of all those heroes, concentrated in a single beam, should..." A shadow swept over his face, and he frowned. His big bald head shrank as if someone had let the air out of it. "Uh...duh..." It was gone, all of his genius, just like that. He was reduced to a moron...but not for long.
That was his power: bursts of brilliance alternating with bursts of stupidity. Hence the name. "Oh, dear." He cleared his throat and picked up where he'd left off. "The amalgamated essences, concentrated in a single beam, properly directed, should destroy the excess carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, returning it to a pristine state."
"Seriously?" Halfway through my ribeye, I'd stopped eating. Brain Fart was considered a twelfth-rate hero, but he'd always been a friend of mine...and he had my undivided attention. "You could do that?"
"Oh, yes." Brain Fart grinned and nodded. "We could turn back the clock to before the Industrial Revolution. Give the world a clean...a clean..." His head deflated, and his eyes crossed. "Duh..." He raised his fork and stared at it like it had suddenly grown wings and a face. "This for eating?" He put it in his mouth and gnawed on it a moment, gazing blankly into space.
A waiter paused at our table, looking concerned, and I waved him away. Brain Fart pulled the fork from his mouth and tossed it after him.
Then, the change occurred once more. The head inflated, the blue eyes brightened. "Slate. We could give the world a clean slate." He lifted his glass and swirled the ruby red wine, then sipped it. "Sadly, this hypothesis can never be tested."
"Why not?" I liked the sound of that clean slate he was offering. I loved it.
"Because they'll never go along with it, my dear fellow. The Castigators."
"You don't think so?" I scowled. "But saving the world is their job, isn't it?" Already, I was talking about the Castigators as if I wasn't one of them. I still wore the purple uniform under my red flannel shirt and jeans, but in my heart, I'd moved on long ago from that fraternity of abusive assholes.
Brain Fart seemed to understand, because he didn't mention it. "Do you really think they're prepared for the level of sacrifice that will be required? Not to mention...not to..." His face blanked, his head dwindled, and his jaw fell slack. "Duh...doy..." And then, a moment later, he was back. "Not to mention, this would be an experimental process with no guarantee of success."
"What level of sacrifice, Tony?" I leaned forward, wholly focused on his every word. "Would this deplete their powers? Would it drain them permanently?"
"Most certainly." He faded, mindlessly played with himself a little, then returned. "Because, you see, it would drain their lives."
This time, it was my jaw that fell open. I gaped at him as the meaning of what he'd said took hold.
"What I'm proposing here is quite more extensive than a power drain. What we're really talking about...uh..." Deflation. "Duh..." Inflation. "...is the murder of twenty-four super-heroes."
Instinctively, I cast a furtive glance around the restaurant. "Murder?" I hushed my voice.
"Come now." Brain Fart cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. "Would it really be such a bad thing? Would it really be such a loss?"
I slumped back in my chair. My head was spinning.
"Seriously, Mike. You can't tell me you love those people. The way they treat you." Brain Fart raised his glass again and looked at me through the shimmering wine. "The things they say to you."
I sat there, reeling...and then a thought clicked into place. The mental math had finished running in the back of my mind.
Six Superhero Stories Page 3