Joy found what seemed to be the beginning of the current story on the first Monday of the June volume. She settled in and started reading. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
Chapter 14
Shiori Rosewing, Knight Of The Caliburn
She’d hoped to get a good sense of the Red Specter character right away, but the early strips in this storyline barely featured him at all. He appeared in the first strip in flashback, as recounted by another character, the elderly Professor Zhang. And even that was just a vague glimpse, with most of the Red Specter’s form hidden in shadow—a silhouette for a head and two white circles to represent light reflecting off the goggles of his gas mask.
The Specter brought a warning, that Shiori Rosewing was Up to No Good, and had some nefarious scheme for the town of Zalandag, a small rural community just south of the Goktun Wastelands. Professor Zhang assembled his team, two other men and one woman—Joy assumed they were the regular cast of the comic—and headed out.
The next scene opened with the caption “Edge of the Goktun Wastelands, near Zalandag,” with an image of Shiori Rosewing herself, reclining on an ornate divan, and the picture was nothing like she’d expected. This “Shiori Rosewing” had black hair and red skin, and was wearing an outfit that you might describe as a “slinky black evening dress,” except most of it was missing, and she was bursting out of what was left. She used an ornate, feathery fan to cool herself and a scary-cute miniature dragon, which perched on her shoulder like a pet.
Joy goggled at the image. This was supposed to be Shiori Rosewing? Upon reflection, she realized that she’d seen images of this character before, in various spots around the city—pinup posters in the backs of various nightclubs and bars, that sort of thing. She’d never thought to connect it with Shiori Rosewing.
To be fair, there wasn’t much in the way of reliable information concerning the real Shiori. All anyone knew for sure was that she was the Caliburn Knight responsible for the gassing of Brentonsville, and all the deaths and misery that followed.
The Caliburn Order were a strange type of open secret of the old Albion Empire. Everyone knew they existed. In fact, one of the biggest annual festivals in Albion was the Trials of Caliburn, where hopeful adolescents aged nine to thirteen spent a week undergoing various tests, both physical and mental, all leading up to the final challenge, a huge obstacle course in famed Cistonia Stadium, its seats packed to bursting, with over a hundred thousand roaring people.
Thousands of children attempted the Trials each year, but a only a handful made it past all the elimination rounds to be selected as Caliburn Acolytes. Those kids then disappeared, rumors said they were whisked off to the secret island of Arianrhod, and never seen again. Presumably they became Caliburn, but no-one would ever know for sure, as Caliburn Knights swore absolute fealty to the Emperor, to the exclusion of all else. They weren’t permitted to have any contact with anyone outside their Order, including family members.
Beyond that, very little about the Caliburn Knights could be confirmed, other than the fact that they existed, and were effective to the point of being terrifying. They’d become more and more important in the years leading up to the Albion Empire’s destruction. The existence of Albion’s Dragon Knights meant that any straightforward attempt to fight the Empire army-to-army on a battlefield was doomed before it began, so rebels and insurgents frequently resorted to other methods, like taking hostages or hit-and-run banditry-style operations. The Caliburn were the Empire’s favored response to such nuisances, if they found they had some compelling reason to refrain from burning the offending city to ashes.
Thus, the Caliburn Knights became weirdly popular, even beloved among the people of the Empire, even in regions that chafed under Albion rule. By surgically targeting and eliminating the actual rebels, something they did with devastating ruthlessness and efficiency, they got credit for “saving” hundreds of thousands of lives. So the mysterious Caliburn Knights were both feared and revered all across Nokomis as the greatest and most honorable warriors in the history of the world.
Or they had, at least, until Shiori Rosewing put an ugly black stain on their honor when she’d doused Brentonsville with Hemlock Gas. So was that the idea here? To show her as a debased knight? Was that why she wasn’t wearing armor? The Caliburn Knights wore plate armor into battle—that was another thing KIB knew about them for sure—even going into stealth missions.
Apparently they had a secret method of crafting plate mail so that it didn’t impede their mobility or make any extra noise when they moved. There were plenty of artists’ renditions of Caliburn armor, stretching back centuries, but very little consistency or accuracy in those drawings, as most eyewitnesses to a Caliburn mission didn’t live to tell about it. The KIB was one of the few organizations that had actually managed to acquire a trove of Caliburn weapons and armor, as a result of the Battle of Cloudkill, but it had all been classified at a level way above Joy’s head.
Anyway, the Shiori of the comic was speaking to a tribe of heavily-armed bandit outlaws, and their leader snarled at her, declaring he’d sooner die than take orders from a woman.
Shiori just smiled at him over the top of her fan. “That can be arranged.”
Bandit Leader replied to that by drawing a pistol and shooting her in the chest.
Shiori’s dragon screamed as pink smoke burst from the wound in its master’s chest. It hopped to the edge of the divan and spat a stream of fire at the bandit leader, who dived to the side as three of his subordinates were immolated and fell screaming to the floor.
Bandit leader drew a bead on Shiori’s dragon, only to have a tendril of pink smoke engulf his gun hand. The smoke coalesced into a human-shaped form atop Bandit Leader, pinning him to the ground. The form solidified into Shiori, apparently unhurt. She clicked her tongue as she pressed the barrel of the bandit leader’s own gun into his temple.
“Oh, that wasn’t nice at all. You upset poor little Pochi-kun. Any more stress and he’ll start molting early.” The baby dragon alighted on Shiori’s shoulder, wrapped its tail around her neck and rubbed up against her cheek.
“Oh, it’s okay, snookums—Mommy’s just fine,” she cooed. “Nothing to worry about, just a itty-bitty little gunshot wound. I’m right here, see? See?”
The bandit leader managed to squirm out from beneath her and point up in horror. “What are you?”
“Oh, I’m just me,” said Shiori. “But at the Battle of Cloudkill, I had a little accident while I was preparing my Hemlock Gas—and now I’ve become much more than a Caliburn knight. No need for any of that hot, uncomfortable armor anymore, either.”
Joy rolled her eyes. Oh, so that was why Shiori wore that outfit. It was totally practical because magic, Suuurrre it was. Also, Joy would expect that any “accident” with Hemlock Gas would result in a horrible death rather than super powers, but whatever. At least it explained her red skin, sort of.
“Witch!” spat the bandit leader. “You’d be nothing without your powers!”
Shiori smirked at him over the top of her fan. “Oh, you think so? It seems you Goktun barbarians are too ignorant to know what a Caliburn Knight is. Well, I guess I’ll have to teach you a lesson.”
She beckoned him with her fan. “How about this? One-on-one, you and me, no guns, no gas powers. If you can hit me even once, you win, and you can do whatever you like with me. Sound good?”
Joy raised her eyebrows at the last bit, noting the artist had drawn Shiori in an arched-back pinup-pose for that line.
Bandit Leader got to his feet and flashed a broken-toothed leer at her. “That’s the last mistake you’ll ever make, witch.” He drew his scimitar and attacked.
And Shiori Rosewing spent a whole Sunday color page’s worth of comic panels kicking the crap out of him, dancing about, batting his scimitar aside with her frilly fan like it was nothing, kicking him in the face with her stiletto heels, tossing him around like a rag doll, and just generally toying with him.
&nb
sp; The last panel was a close-up of Bandit Leader’s bloodied face, with Shiori’s stiletto heel grinding his head into the ground. Her word balloon came in from off-panel.
“Who’s the queen of the Goktun Raiders?” she asked.
“Y-you are… Ma’am,” said the bandit.
Okay, outfit aside, Joy had to admit that was bad-ass. The black-and-white Monday strip repeated the foot-on-head panel, with the rest of it dedicated to Shiori’s sinister-yet-incredibly-vague monologue about how the Raiders were only the first step, for, once her evil plan had been put into motion, she would turn all the citizens of Zalandag into her loyal minions—a new, unstoppable army that would re-conquer all of Albion’s traditional Xia territories, CRUSH the pathetic armies of the Kallistrate upstarts, and then, NOTHING could stop her. In the name of the Emperor, she would CONQUER the WORLD!! OH HO HO HO HO HO HO HOHOHO!!!
The artist paid special attention to Shiori’s maniacal laugh. The last panel was a close-up of her gleefully psychotic expression, her fan held up to her cheek, but not enough to obscure her wide-open mouth, with all the “HO’s” strewn about so they covered the entire background. Well, at least someone was enjoying their work.
The next comic featured Professor Zhang’s team arriving in Zalandag, only to face resistance and outright hostility from most of the Zalandag villagers, who were used to being subjects of the old Albion Empire. They treated the new Kallistrate “upstarts” with suspicion, dismissing their warnings about Shiori and hinting that they should take their business elsewhere.
Joy tapped at the latest page in irritation. The story wasn’t terrible—at least, as far as pulp fare went, but she wasn’t reading for fun. This was supposed to be a Red Specter story, but so far, the title character had only appeared for a few panels, and most of him had been in shadow. She needed to get some sense of his personality if she was going to fake-interview him, and so far, she’d gotten nothing useful for that.
Joy tried to speed up by skimming, but reading at normal speed was already tricky enough, what with having to flip past pages and pages of trash Gazette articles. She did her best anyway. No way was she letting some trash comics defeat her.
Chapter 15
Terror Of The Gas-Men
Shiori sent some of the bandits to the village in disguise, pushing a merchant’s cart—but Baz, one of the men on Dr. Zhang’s team, saw through it and attacked them. Baz was a big, muscular man, with dark skin, a shaved head, and a handlebar mustache. He boasted that petty bandits like them were no match for an ex-Jagdkommando like himself. The strip used a lot of clunky expository dialogue in weird places, like during a fight.
Though, as Joy thought about it, she had to admit it did make sense for something that had to run in serial, where every single chopped-up story bit might be a jumping-on point for a new reader who knew nothing about the characters. So, during the fight, Joy learned that Baz was a seasoned veteran who’d been through a rough patch after leaving the military. He mentioned “crawlin’ into a bottle” while punching out one of bandits, but he was feeling “back to his old self” after Prof. Zhang had “cleaned him up.”
Meanwhile, Kolton, the other man on Team Zhang, struggled in his fight with another bandit. Red-haired and freckled, Kolton was much younger than Baz—he’d tried to enlist at the end of the war, only to wash out during basic because he’d tried to hide his chronic asthma from the army doctors. He managed to knock out his opponent, noting how well Zhang’s “miracle concoction” worked—referring to a traditional Xia herbal remedy, modified to work with an inhaler. But Kolton failed to stop another bandit from grabbing at a small black urn from the cart.
In the following tussle, the bandit managed to shove Kolton away, but broke the urn in the process. Brackish liquid spilled all over the bandit, who screamed as the goo began to vaporize his body. The unfortunate bandit staggered about in a half-solid, half-gaseous state. He lunged at one of his own comrades, seemingly for support, only to have the strange gas-infection spread, so now both of them howled while the thick smoke engulfed their bodies.
“Yehyeh, we have to help them,” said Lilla to Dr. Zhang, who held her back. Lilla, the last member of the team, was a pretty blonde woman, so Joy was a bit surprised to hear her call Dr. Zhang “Yehyeh,” making him her paternal grandfather. Maybe Lilla got her blonde hair from her mother.
“No! Stay back! It is too late for them,” said Dr. Zhang. “They have been infected by Shiori’s poison—the same poison they would dump into the well of this village. They have earned the terrible fate they sought for others—trapped forever between life and death!”
As Dr. Zhang spoke, the comic panels showed images of the bandits being consumed by the gas, but instead of collapsing to the ground, they ceased their screaming and began to shamble about.
“It is just as the Specter warned,” said Dr. Zhang. “This is Shiori’s new weapon. This is the fate she would have for us all—a world of nightmares for her to rule! These bandits are men no more. They’ve been transformed… into GAS MEN!”
Right on cue, dark patches appeared in the hazy blobs where the bandits’ heads used to be, resolving into sunken pits for eyes, and wide slashes for mouths. They were crude mockeries of human faces, like clay dolls fashioned by a child. Darker smoke boiled out these holes, along with a ghostly moan that crawled across the comic page in warped, wavery text: “AaaoOOooOOoooOOOooo!!!”
“Thanks for the lesson, Doc,” said Baz, backing away from the lurching monstrosities. “So let’s skip to the part where you tell us how to fight these things.”“Stay away,” said Dr. Zhang. “Whatever you do—you can’t let them them touch you!”
“Need a bit more than that, Doc!” said Baz, dodging aside as one of the wraiths swiped at him.
“FIGHTING MONSTERS IS NOT YOUR JOB, BAZ MANKARI,” came a voice from off-panel. “FOR THAT, YOU NEED A GHOST.”
“That voice,” said Kolton, “Is that who I think it is?”
“It is!” said Lilla. “Red Specter, where are you?”
“WHEREVER TYRANNY REIGNS. WHEREVER EVIL STRIKES. LOOK TO THE SHADOWS, AND I’LL BE THERE.”
And indeed, the next panel showed the Specter’s silhouette emerging from the shadowy darkness on a nearby balcony. The Red Specter leapt from the balcony and seemed to float through the twilight sky. He landed right in front of the gas-men, brandishing an odd-looking short spear, and struck a dramatic pose.
“FOR NO INJUSTICE WILL ESCAPE THE WRATH… OF THE RED SPECTER!”
The Red Specter reversed his grip on his spear, the business end of which consisted of a straight single-edged blade about three feet long mounted on top of a fork-like steel tine aligned along the bottom quarter of the blade. And the middle of the spear had a small circular plate for some reason. Joy noted that the Specter wore heavy gloves and had no issue with grabbing the blade of his own weapon. With a click, another set of long blades slid out from the butt end of the spear, only these spread out to form a giant fan, which the Specter used to drive the gas-men back, keeping them pinned against their cart.
Joy couldn’t help but giggle a little. She supposed it made sense, but it was just so goofy.
“Uh, that’s great and all, Specter,” said Baz. “But now what? You just gonna keep them there like—”
“STAY BACK,” the Red Specter intoned. “EVERYONE, STAY BACK AND TAKE COVER.”
The Red Specter reached into his trench-coat and pulled out a standard-issue Kallistrate Army cigarette lighter. He flicked it on and tossed it at the gas-men, still pinned against the cart by the gust from the Specter’s fan. The cart went up in a massive explosion, leaving nothing but a smoking crater behind. The Red Specter had disappeared as well, though Lilla managed to catch a brief glimpse of a figure in a trench-coat ducking into an alleyway. She chased after him, but when she reached the alleyway, she found it to be empty.
“He always does that,” said Kolton.
“Yeah,” grunted Baz. “Real conversationalist, that one.”
Well, count your blessings, Baz, thought Joy. It’s not like you have to interview the guy, or anything. Joy sighed and tried to skim faster. She meant to stay focused on just the Red Specter sections, but the rest of the story kept sucking her in. Well, she really did need to pay attention to the general plot, just so she could put any of the Specter’s eventual dialogue into context.
Let’s see, the heroes on Dr. Zhang’s team talk to village elders some more, but still get resistance. Some of the elders accuse the heroes of being the ones to bring this conflict to Zalandag—everything had been peaceful before they showed up. A few more villagers listen to the heroes, they set a perimeter guard around the town, etc., etc. Joy skipped over a couple more strips depicting the night watch and full panels of an empty starry sky and suddenly the Red Specter was attacking a blimp.
Wait, what?
Joy flipped back, and realized that the panels of empty sky hadn’t been empty. The blimp had been painted in camouflage to resemble the starry sky, but she could see it now that she knew what to look for. Likewise, other seemingly empty panels actually showed the silhouette of the Red Specter materializing in the middle of the sky. The Specter careened into the side of the blimp’s gas envelope, punctured it with his spear, and rode the spear down so it tore a huge gash in the blimp’s side. The escaping gas propelled the airship sideways, even as it plummeted, so it veered off-course and crashed just outside Zalandag. More broken urns, more transformed bandits surrounding the Red Specter, who was somehow totally unhurt after an airship crash. The Specter pulls out his lighter again, and… wait, was that supposed to be a hydrogen blimp? Because if it was….
The next panel was just one huge, fiery WHOOOOOSH! Nothing left but burnt airship debris, but Zhang’s heroes were certain that the Specter must’ve survived somehow. The whole sequence was ridiculous. Where would desert bandits, or Shiori, for that matter, get a blimp? An airship, even a small one, required maintenance and supplies that….
The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1) Page 7