by Tom King
His wife’s hurt. She’s dying. Pen presses against the floor, trying to get up, but his sweaty fingers tangle and slide, and once again he falls.
“Nobody move!” Star-Knight shouts as he charges into the room, gun in hand; and both Pen and Ultimate move as bullets fly.
3
The Soldier of Freedom #527
Soldier lies on the ground and looks up. Above him, Runt and Prophetier face off, each holding his gun steady. Prophetier smiles, and Runt pulls back the trigger. Soldier lurches up, grabs the kid’s hand, drags it down. “It’s done,” he says.
“Dude,” Runt says, his eyes flashing between Soldier and Prophetier. “Dude!”
“He ain’t firing,” Soldier says. “You ain’t firing. It’s done.”
“Look, I have to protect you, DG said I have to protect you, that you see her, and this guy shot you, and I have the gun, your gun, she gave it to me, and I have to protect you!”
“Calm down, kid,” Soldier says. “It’s a scratch. He could’ve done worse.”
“He’s right,” Prophetier says. “I could’ve done worse. I’ll still do worse.” Prophetier laughs, points his weapon at Runt. “Let’s go. Let’s fight.”
“I came here to talk,” Soldier says. “I don’t want to goddamn fight.”
All three men palm their guns, waiting for someone else to make the move. Long seconds pass, and it all becomes as silly as it always is.
“Well, okay,” Prophetier says, lowering his weapon. “Let’s talk. This was hardly a great battle, but it’ll have to do.”
“Fine,” Soldier says. “That’s fine.”
“So come on in,” Prophetier says. “I think I have something to show you.” Prophetier turns and heads back into his house, leaving the door open behind him.
“Shouldn’t we be shooting each other?” Runt asks.
Soldier bends over and coughs hard. When he’s done, he straightens up and takes Runt’s gun out of the boy’s hand. Carolina, left behind in a field a few weeks back. Soldier holsters his weapons and follows Prophetier inside.
“I don’t get this,” Runt says, staying a few steps behind Soldier. “Shouldn’t we be fighting?” Runt looks down at his fingers as he walks, seems to count them. “Not that I get why we were fighting, really. I mean, aren’t we all like the good guys?”
“Good guys fight,” Prophetier says, sitting down on a couch in his living room. Scattered at his feet are dozens of notebooks. “We fight first. Then we talk. We explain the plot. It’s how it works. That’s the rule.”
Soldier stops, stands above Prophetier, and Runt bumps into his back. Soldier tips forward, but he gets his balance before he falls. He looks back at the boy and scowls.
“We fought,” Prophetier says. “Now I tell you how to come back.”
Soldier takes a blanket off the couch and puts the edge of it in his teeth. He rips off a strip of fabric and presses the material against his cheek, feels the blood soak in. The cut ain’t deep; it’ll heal. “There’s no way back,” he says.
“Back?” Runt asks. “Not sure I get that either.”
“We all come back,” Prophetier says as he reaches into his pocket, produces a cigarette, and lights up. “I know. I wrote it down.” Covered in new smoke, he starts to shuffle through the notebooks scattered across the floor.
Runt scrunches his face together. “Still not getting it, not that anyone cares.”
Prophetier opens a notebook and traces his finger down the page. He smiles, and he tosses the open notebook across the floor. Soldier bends down and reads:
PANEL 6: Close up on soldier’s hand holding his holstered pistol. Soldier’s finger is flicking the back of the trigger, showing he’s ready to draw.
“I don’t know what that’s about,” Soldier says.
Runt kneels down beside Soldier. “What is it? Is this supposed to be the future? Is this your power?”
Prophetier pushes some smoke into the air. “Turn the page.”
Runt flips the page and reads:
PANEL 3: Shot from above, Runt is kneeling. Prophetier sitting, surrounded by his files. Soldier standing, keeps a little more distance from the other two.
* * *
RUNT: What is it? Is this supposed to be the future? Is this your power?
Runt reels from the notebook and stands upright. “Cool,” he whispers, and he bends over again, starts to thumb through the pages.
“We all come back,” Prophetier says. “It’s been written.”
“Look at this!” Runt shouts. “Me and DG get married!”
Soldier stands back up. He throws the bloody slice of blanket at the floor and touches his fingers to his cheek. “We ain’t coming back.”
“And over here he writes I’d get a C in calc. I totally got a C. Man, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have studied, not that I did, but anyway, I wouldn’t have felt, y’know, guilty about it.”
Prophetier strokes some puffs from his cigarette as he eyes Soldier. “I can’t believe I got to shoot you.” He laughs. “The Soldier of Freedom. Amazing.”
“You ain’t making much sense.”
Prophetier laughs. “Exactly. These things don’t make sense. How heroes always have to fight each other before getting their big reveal.”
“I’m like the star of a whole section here!” Runt shouts. “ ‘The Adventures of Runt’! How cool is that?”
“It’s all so wonderfully absurd,” Prophetier says.
“Wait, wait!” Runt raises his voice without looking up from the page. “You still have access to this future thing. You still actually have an actual real power?”
“I have some answers,” Prophetier says.
“And when you said ‘back’ before, you mean like get our powers back?” Runt begins flipping through page after page. “And if, I mean, if we get the powers back, that means, I mean, everyone knows once you have powers, no one dies. The villains, Survivor, my dad, my family—are they coming back?”
“There ain’t no way back,” Soldier says.
“We all come back,” Prophetier says. “Isn’t that right, Runt, isn’t that another rule?”
“There ain’t no way back,” Soldier repeats.
“There’s a way,” Prophetier says as Soldier squeezes and releases his grip on his gun.
“Well, what the fudge is it?” Runt shouts, and both men look over at him.
Prophetier takes the butt from his mouth and lights another with it. “It’s gone. He stole it, my record of it. I wrote so much, I don’t remember exactly how.”
“What?” Runt asks. “Who stole it? Who stole what?”
Prophetier looks up at Soldier, nibbles on a flake of tobacco at the edge of his tongue. “He said he’d kill me if I told. If I even tried to dig it up, he said he’d kill me. You saw how they treated me at the graves, Soldier.”
“Who’ll kill you if you don’t tell?” Runt shouts. “Hey-hey, if you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you! And if I don’t, I’ll get DG, and she really will kill you.”
Prophetier looks at Soldier and smiles.
“Who stole it!” Runt shouts.
“Star-Knight,” Prophetier says. “Star-Knight knows. The way to get the powers back. He stole the book from me. I suppose I can say it now, it’s out anyway, right, Soldier? Isn’t that the trail you’ve been following? Ain’t that right, Soldier?” Prophetier mimics Soldier’s drawl.
“Star-Knight has the way back?” Runt’s cheeks leap as he talks. “This is insane. What do we need to do?”
“What can we do?” Prophetier asks. “Star-Knight’s too powerful now, all those people protecting him. All that money he’s earned. None of us could do anything. None of us have power. Ain’t that right too, Soldier?”
Soldier starts to say something, but is interrupted by Runt’s yelp. “No, wait! Pen! Pen could do it! Pen has powers!”
“Stop with that nonsense,” Soldier says.
“No, no, it’s not nonsense. DG’s seen it. He’s good, again, not all afraid, at least not a
ll the time Pencil Dick afraid. Seriously, we could get Pen. Pen could take down Star-Knight and get Prophetier’s stolen book. And then we’d know how to get back!”
“Another fight,” Prophetier says. “Another revelation.”
“So is that it?” Runt’s voice is desperate. “Pen can get the powers back?”
Prophetier uses his lips to jiggle the cigarette in his mouth, and ash sprays from the tip. “Pen could work.”
“It ain’t coming back,” Soldier says. “I don’t care what any damn book says.”
Prophetier looks up at Soldier. “I was right about Mashallah,” Prophetier says, his voice rising. “I was right about you being too weak to stop it. I’m always right.”
“Guys, I think we need to focus here,” Runt says.
“It ain’t coming goddamn back.”
Prophetier keeps his eyes on Soldier. “I know it’s hard. I know what you did to end it. But what choice is there now?”
“Focus?” Runt asks. “Anyone?”
The cigarette reflects in Prophetier’s dark eyes, a spark of yellow on black. Prophetier smiles. “The boy’s right. Pen will save us now. Thanks to you, Soldier. You’ve shown him how to be a hero, and now he can do it.”
“I’m right?” Runt asks.
“Ignore him,” Soldier says. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“I’m right!”
“Thank you for bringing him.” Prophetier gestures toward Runt. “He’s the perfect one to pass the message. Pen responds to childish pressure. Remember Sicko getting him out to the hospital? How predictable was that?”
“It ain’t coming back,” Soldier says.
Prophetier looks at the books at his feet. “The revelation is over. Star-Knight stole it. Only Pen can retrieve it. It’ll be a mighty adventure.” Prophetier stands, stretches out his arms.
Runt smiles big. “We’re coming back!” he shouts.
“Always.” Prophetier turns to Soldier. “I’m sorry I shot you, Soldier of Freedom. But I think you see it was worth it.” Prophetier snuffs his cigarette in a nearby ashtray. “And now, I’m sure you have many things to do. Would you mind if I saw you out?”
Prophetier walks past Soldier and Runt, toward the door. Runt opens his mouth to say something and doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he winks at Soldier, gives him a thumbs-up, then follows Prophetier out.
Soldier means to object again, but he’s just tired of it all, and he follows the two of them. Not looking, he steps right on top of a detached metal cat head. Soldier doesn’t laugh at the insanity of it all, and he kicks the thing to the right and walks on.
Runt heads out, and Prophetier waits at the door, smiling. When Soldier gets up to him, Prophetier nods and then looks confused. He asks Soldier to wait there as he runs in the house and grabs a notebook. He comes back and hands the book to Soldier. “Pen may be distracted, and someone still has to save her.”
Soldier starts to say something, and Prophetier closes the door. Soldier waits a few seconds before tucking the book under his arm and walking down to the street.
When Soldier gets to his truck, Runt’s already at the curb, talking on his cell with DG, replaying the day’s events. Soldier should stop him, but he doesn’t, and Runt flips the phone closed and takes a deep breath, his face finally settling into a half-contained grin.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Soldier says. “It ain’t confirmed.”
“Oh, F that dude, I got a feeling, this could work, it could really work. Everybody comes back. That’s a rule. That’s how it works. Just like how we always fight, and then we find out what to do. That happened to me like a thousand times. And we fought Prophetier. And we got this. Now Pen fights Star-Knight. And he gets that. The real solution. And then all the powers come back. Dude, that’s how we did it!”
“I suppose.”
Runt throws his arms wide and looks at the sky. “We all come back!” he shouts. “We all come back!”
“We all come back,” Soldier says, his voice low.
His father had a destiny; his mother had a gun. All that’d happened, all those heroes home safe, all those villains dead and gone. Proph was right. He was too weak to save anyone, to even save her. Soldier’s hands go to his holsters.
Thunder sounds and rain comes. Runt laughs and runs for his bike as The Soldier of Freedom gets into his truck, putting the notebook in the passenger seat where Pen usually sits. He should look at it, but he’s got to get home soon. The flag. It’s raining again, and he’d left the flag out.
Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #578
Something happens, and Pen is saved. The bullets stop. Ultimate retreats to the sky. Sicko lies dead, his neck broken. Star-Knight shouts on his phone for someone to come and come quickly. Strength’s hand is on the small of Pen’s back, and she’s whispering that it’ll be all right.
Pen drops to his knees and cradles his wife like a child, maybe like their child. His nose presses into hers; his tears wet her cheek. He’s sorry. He’s so sorry.
Small shards of metal in Anna’s hair catch the light from a ceiling lamp. A few pieces fall onto Pen’s lap and glimmer against his black T-shirt. In the background, far off: a crowd of noises, a blare of sirens, the clatter of neighbors, the screech of a radio. Lightly, he kisses his wife.
She remains still. He wants to help her. He wants to make it better. He wants to hear her voice. Instead of all this. Just her voice.
But nothing comes. And Pen starts to babble on, just to combat the silence, as if it were an enemy, something that ought to be punched or kicked. What comes out is nonsense, but it’s better than before, better than not hearing anything at all. Not knowing what exactly he should say, he finds himself telling her stories, mumbling on about the men and women he’d known before her, the towering figures who defended the innocent against the forces of whatever.
There’s the time Broadsword was fighting the Crooked Crusader, sword to sword, swashbuckling their way across the surface of the Moon, and each time one would leap toward the other, they’d fly fifty feet, clashing in midair, blades crossing against a background of a blue, clouded Earth.
Once, during the war, Freedom Fighter and The Soldier of Freedom were hiking across the Russian front when they encountered an entire company of Nazi ninjas, who immediately began bombarding the two heroes with swastika throwing stars, not understanding that they were facing good men with good guns.
He tugs her in, swaddling himself around her, tracing his lips over her shoulders. On her body, running up and down her limbs, he sees the damage he couldn’t stop, dark blue circles spotting her pale skin.
There’s shame in it, in the stories. If he could, Pen’d go on and on about their time together, their love, how when he touches that one place on her back, she quivers. That’s what he should say. But instead he finds himself spinning tales of battles and heroes, a time of men great and petty.
One of his favorites was when Sicko decided to take out the entire CrimeBoss organization in a single night, climbing up from a drug dealer on the street through a midlevel pusher to that guy’s boss to that guy’s boss, until finally Sicko busted into CrimeBoss’s office, raging and bragging about what he’d done, showing absolutely no respect for a man that asked for only that, a man who was willing to kill and be killed to maintain it.
She liked to hear the stories, but he never much liked to tell them. It embarrassed him. His best friends, the only people he knew, secretly snuck out at night wearing leotards in order to punch other people who’d made that same peculiar choice that day. They were all freaks, weirdos who’d improbably decided, each for his or her own reason, to save the world or destroy it.
But she didn’t seem to care about that. Her father was a cop, and she respected people who chose to do something with what’d been provided to them, who worked through whatever means to make the world a little safer.
But what about him? If she had it in her to admire all these heroes, what could she think of th
e man who walked away, of her husband, who ran away?
That was different, she’d say. That was completely different. The heroes belong to the world; they rise above and fall below, carrying the weight of all of us. Pen, you belong to me. The rest of them can have their glorious causes, and you can have me and only me. It’s not fair; it’s selfish. But it’s the way things turned out, and she liked the way things had turned out.
The ambulances’ horned beat grows louder, and Star-Knight again shouts that help’s coming. Did you hear me? Help is coming, Star-Knight says, or something like that. Pen’s not really paying that much attention. Shut up, Pen says, I need to talk. I have stories to tell. At least Strength’s quiet, at least she lets him go on without interrupting.
Wingnut loved to fly over the city, night after night, every night—no matter if there was a great-hero crossover or some date he’d have to get to, he’d always make time to rake the sky, swooping between the molded-glass buildings of Arcadia City.
Night was the greatest of the hand-to-hand fighters—better than Soldier, better than Pen, certainly; and when she and Day were at their apex, one acting as the other’s eyes as one acted as the other’s body, they became a bladed whirlwind into which the likes of Black Plague and Liarliar would throw themselves only to be unmercifully expelled.
Pen tucks her into his chest, lets his heart beat against her ear. Through tears, he searches the room, remembering for some reason where they got each piece of furniture, how they’d decided to place the bed against the back wall and prop up a bookshelf nearer to the bathroom. His mind trots around aimlessly, but he keeps talking, babbling on about inconsequential stories she might like to hear, that he’s pretty sure she’s heard before.
Beside Pen, Sicko’s body rests heavy on their wood floor. Another hero who tried to play the game after The Blue and was brought crashing down. How pathetic they all were at being normal. The rest of the world managed to go on each day without the ability to burrow into a mountain and toss it into a lake; but these heroes, they couldn’t do it. They just kept dying.