A Once Crowded Sky
Page 28
Their lives are violence, day after day, month after month, year after year, and as another old hero leaps into the fight, Pen sees the hole in Ultimate’s chest, a small gap dug out by Jules’s gun, enlarged by Ultimate’s flailing arms fighting off the onrush of heroes, each movement cutting at the edges of the gap in his body, tearing The Man With The Metal Face a little more.
Pen’s body is broken, but it’s been broken before, and he sits up and thrusts his working hand forward into the wound, the black at the center of the metal gleam. His arm is cut as it enters the exposed edges of the metal robot; serrated teeth drag along his skin.
Ultimate looks down at the action, his metal eyes again clicking and whirling as they again focus in and out. It’s not quite a look of fear; the rest of the steel features stay placid, revealing nothing. But it’s something, a mark of realization maybe.
With a sharp jerk, Ultimate heaves upward; and Pen is taken with him, his arm now lodged inside his mentor’s body. More heroes around them fling themselves into the climbing pile and are driven away by deadly blows.
Ultimate’s feet leave the floor just as Pen’s fingers reach their goal; a beating brushes against Pen’s nails, and he pushes in farther, is sliced a little more as he wraps his hand around the throbbing point at the center of the metal man. Ultimate takes off. Both men rise, again.
With searing, searing speed Ultimate launches toward the broken ceiling of Jules’s diner, and Pen drags along with him, the metal wires in his own wrist dangling out, interweaving with Ultimate’s. The few heroes that are left struggle to hang on and then fall away as the two men fly, Ultimate clutching at Pen, crushing him against his body as Pen’s arm continues to fumble inside the hole in Ultimate’s chest.
Pen looks up and sees the metal face of his childhood, again expressionless and unchanged after all these years, all these villains and all these pains; still the lips are held together solemnly, the eyes stare out with rigid determination, the chin does not waver.
Pen thinks of The Blue, thinks of his wife, thinks of his father, thinks of the men and women beneath him. His grip tightens, and he feels a prickled tremble crawl from his fingers up his bloodied wrist, past his forearm, into his shoulder, neck, head, eyes, and the world quivers.
They breach the ceiling, drive out into a clouded, gray sky, and Pen pulls and pulls hard. The beating object in Ultimate’s chest resists, but Pen is strong, as strong as Ultimate made him, and it dislodges, and it breaks away. Wrapping his legs around his mentor to keep steady in their climb, Pen rakes his hand back through the crooked metal, grating his skin on Ultimate’s steel one last time. And Pen’s arm is free, and in his clenched fist beats the heart of The Man With The Metal Face.
The metal man and his ever-faithful ward lock eyes. Neither’s face moves. Though the atmosphere around them breeds danger, they remain calm. In that way, in their scoff at the chaos that comes, they resemble each other for an instant, looking for a time almost like father and son. The pupils in Ultimate’s eyes stop spinning, pulsing, and he dies forty feet above the earth, Pen gripped in his hard, strong arms.
Their climb ends, and for a moment their bodies hover above the world. A cloud moves; the sun blasts blue through gray; and Pen is embraced by a lovely, familiar sky, patiently waiting for him to continue his ascent. This must be the last of the fliers, the only one of her children still left who strives to escape the cumbersome below and nestle himself into her warmth. She’d thought them all gone, but one remained; and she’s delighted to see him back, and she hopes he will continue upward, and she prepares for his return, expands her arms, accepting his heavenly attempt. Pen reaches out to her, and then he falls.
Pen and Ultimate crash down to earth, bursting through the ceiling of the diner, concrete and paint chips gathering around their tumbling bodies. Pen tucks Ultimate close, positions all that metal between the ground and himself as they pummel into the diner’s floor, cracking the foundation and sinking into the dirt below. The sound of the impact booms for miles, and Pen once again goes black.
Drenched in rubble and ash, Pen’s body convulses away from the new crater at the center of the falling debris. It reacts without its owner’s knowledge, prepared for such a moment by years of training and miles of wire acquired from the metal man who now lies dead beneath it.
Pen wakes, sucks in an air of ketchup and blood as he clutches the still pulsing heart in his hand. Above, the sun hangs clear now, a solid yellow circle set against an endless plain of blue. He pulls the heart to his chest, feels it beat along with his own, feels how much stronger it is, how much more steady and consistent. Its cold metal tubes wane and swell, like the wires, like Pen’s wires, but not like Pen’s heart, not like that at all. Extending his arm, Pen pushes it toward the sky.
Pen opens his eyes, and the steel heart gripped in Pen’s fingers is framed in the sun’s circled light. Metal. It’s metal. Not red. Not bloody. Not real. Pen starts to laugh. It’s metal, and it’s not real. Pen laughs hard now, his ribs creaking and cracking with staccato breaths. It’s not Pen’s heart. It’s not the heart Ultimate carried in his chest. It’s metal. Not like Ultimate’s heart, Pen’s heart. More like the cat’s. The Cat With The Metal Face.
The Cat With The Metal Face. Of course, Ultimate gave it to him knowing the cat’s heart was a replica of the heart in Pen’s chest, Ultimate’s original heart. He must have known that it could be used like this, to build another robot. And he didn’t spell it out in the will because he didn’t want others to know, to figure out how to bring him back, to control him. But he trusted Pen, trusted Pen to figure out the cat, to know what to do with the cat. And Pen just gave it away. He gave it to Star-Knight, who gave it away again.
Clues. Mysteries. Puzzles. Stories. Their lives are violence. Pen laughs and laughs and laughs and waits for the man to come to him, to walk over to him from the table at the side of the room and tell him that it’s over, that Pen’s finally figured it all out. He grasps a metal heart, and he waits for Prophetier.
Adventure Team-Up #25:
The Solder of Freedom and The Prophetier
PAGE 1
* * *
PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other at the last remaining booth in Jules’s diner. They are surrounded by chaos and rubble.
* * *
PROPHETIER: It’s time, Pen. Time for the big reveal.
* * *
PEN: I don’t understand. What is this supposed to be? Me and you. Who are you?
* * *
PROPHETIER: I waited a long time for this. For you to come back.
* * *
PEN: I don’t understand.
* * *
PROPHETIER: You’re hurt.
* * *
PEN: Who are you?
* * *
PROPHETIER: But you’re already healing.
* * *
PEN: Who the hell are you?
* * *
PROPHETIER: Isn’t that amazing, PenUltimate, how soon the hurt loops back to potential?
The bullet went clean through, leaving Soldier hurt and bleeding, lying faceup on the dirty floor of Jules’s diner. In the distance, he hears their voices, another hero and another villain discussing their revelations, playing their roles. Soldier turns over, clutches his gun, and begins to crawl forward, toward Pen and Prophetier.
PAGE 2
* * *
PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
* * *
PROPHETIER: Listen to me, PenUltimate. I organized it all. I released The Blue, expanded the hole. I told Star-Knight how to fix it, how to get the heroes to surrender their powers, how to convince Ultimate to make the sacrifice. You’ve read my book. You know what’s there.
* * *
PEN: Jesus.
* * *
PROPHETIER: And then, after enough time, I brought Ultimate back, controlled him, used him to create a threat that you’d respond to, the threat from above. He creat
ed the danger, the cracks tearing into our city. And I knew, with my help, that you’d rise again. Without anyone else to respond, Pen would be the hero.
* * *
PEN: Why would—why?
* * *
PROPHETIER: I’m turning you into a better man, Pen, a better hero. One who can make a sacrifice. I’m giving you a story.
* * *
PEN: Jesus, Proph, these people’re dead.
* * *
PROPHETIER: I’m making you into the man you should be. The man you are. The field’s still ready. I can take you there now. We can go together.
* * *
PEN: I can’t even walk, you %$&head.
* * *
PROPHETIER: I’ll carry you.
One time while coming back from some war, Soldier’d been asked by a woman reporter if he’d done anything out there he was sorry for. Soldier hadn’t known what to say and instead just dished her the usual jabber-on about service and country. The woman didn’t appear to have the guts to follow up after that, but the question stayed with Soldier, longer than it should’ve maybe.
He knew regret well enough when he sailed off, but not when he returned from war, not when there was hope this might be the last one. Then he’d be all right, even as they locked him up again—froze his bones and let him wait for the next time, or if the next time never came, let him die in that cold box content in knowing as long as he slept, the wars would stop, the boys’d be home.
Soldier crawls closer to their booth, still thinking of that dead hope, of what he’d done to bring it back to life. Soldier’d decided for them all that they didn’t get to have powers no more, that the world could go on better without their ridiculous flying about, their violence, lasers shot through fists seeming to kill some bad guy only to have him rise again, same as you’d rise again, until next time. That’d run its course, and it was done with. All that eventually led to nothing, led to more of the same, and Soldier’d decided to do what he could to break the stupid pattern.
Soldier’d betrayed Pen, shot at him, tried to kill him, and in killing him to kill the final chance that the wars’d keep on like they’d been. He’d aimed, and he’d fired.
And he’d missed. Soldier didn’t kill Pen, not when he should’ve. He didn’t succeed in getting rid of the powers, not forever anyway, not while Pen was still out there, ready to make the great sacrifice and bring back the great game. Soldier didn’t succeed in getting rid of any damn thing. As always.
PAGE 3
* * *
PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
* * *
PEN: Proph. No. This whole time? I didn’t see. Even after The Blue, when you used to call me about Strength. It was more of this? Even that first time. You set me up with Sicko, set me up with Soldier.
* * *
PROPHETIER: Of course. It was me. It was all me.
* * *
PEN: I didn’t see it.
* * *
PROPHETIER: Soldier was my masterstroke. A mentor who could train you, but whom you had to overcome, defeat. He was perfect. Well, not perfect, you still ran. When you should’ve been ready, you still ran.
* * *
PEN: I didn’t see.
* * *
PROPHETIER: I thought I’d done enough. I thought you’d go into The Blue. Show you were a true hero. It was what was written, what I saw. But you didn’t. You ran.
* * *
PEN: No.
* * *
PROPHETIER: But then I realized, without any help from any stories, I realized what you really needed. You needed a final triumph. You needed to defeat Ultimate. You needed the great epiphany that comes with seeing who was behind it all. You needed to defeat the last villain. That’s what was missing.
* * *
PEN: How could you?
* * *
PROPHETIER: So here we are.
* * *
PEN: All these people.
* * *
PROPHETIER: It was a story. I told it.
* * *
PEN: I don’t want to do this anymore.
* * *
PROPHETIER: You’re better. Even better than Ultimate. You’ve even defeated The Man With The Metal Face.
* * *
PEN: Don’t talk about him. You can’t. He was the best of us.
* * *
PROPHETIER: And you killed him.
Soldier breaks from his crawl and takes a glance up. Pen is there. The one person who could bring it all back, sitting there, having himself a conversation.
After he failed at the graveyard, Soldier knew it wouldn’t be too long before he’d find himself with the boy, the two of them being led back into the next astounding adventure. So he showed up at the diner, and sure as anything, there came the game, and Ultimate began his rampaging, tossing heroes every which way.
Soldier hadn’t taken any time to consider the situation. He had a weapon and people were getting killed. His hand went to his holster, his hips rotated toward the danger, and he fired, metal crushing into metal, spraying back and out. The bullet hit him, and he went down. And by all rights he should’ve stayed down.
Soldier puts his face back into the tiles. He reaches out and crawls forward.
PAGE 4
* * *
PANELS 1–9: Pen and Prophetier sitting across from each other.
* * *
PEN: I know it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Ultimate. I know.
* * *
PROPHETIER: It was Ultimate, you defeated him.
* * *
PEN: No, I saw it. In The Blue. I know he had my heart.
* * *
PROPHETIER: It was him.
* * *
PEN: I saw the heart. In The Blue. I saw us trading hearts so he could save me. What was in that thing, that’s not mine. That’s metal. It’s got nothing to do with me.
* * *
PROPHETIER: Pen—
* * *
PEN: It’s from that %$#&ing cat.
* * *
PROPHETIER: PenUltimate—
* * *
PEN: Star-Knight said he’d given it to you. And you used it to build that thing. You used it to kill these people. Christ, man. Why the hell . . . what the hell?
* * *
PROPHETIER: Pen, you’re doing good. Better than I thought. You’re talking like a hero.
* * *
PEN: I’m not the goddamn hero!
* * *
PROPHETIER: You are now.
* * *
PEN: Shut up!
* * *
PROPHETIER: You’re my hero.
Feet from them now, belly and face sticking to the floor, Soldier brings the gun to his head, wipes the sweat from his eyes.
Like the stories, The Soldier of Freedom goes on. Maybe they thought this’d be it, that he’d finally quit. But they didn’t know him well enough then. Everything he did ended up right here, in the middle of another fight, another desperate situation.
The Soldier of Freedom is here, and he’s ready to do some killing to end some killing; crouched in that tidy damnation, he plays the game better than any other man has or will. And in the game, one bullet missed or taken don’t matter all that much. A man comes back from that. He forms a new plan, sucks in his lip one more time, and he goes on until his guns’re empty and his job’s done. Soldier has to end the game, but first he’s got to play it, win it.
Of course he hates it all: the barrel, the clip, the gun, the sniveling villain, the suffering friend, the helpless victims, the infinite echo of blows that bounce comfortably back and forth across the rock-valley between the beginning no one recalled and the ending that never came. It all makes him sick.