Wonder Heroes 4.0

by Ahlquist, Steve

  Silence filled the room. Junko was wide-awake now, shocked at her husband’s admission.

  Hanzo backed away a step from Susan. “Life didn’t hand me a Wonder Gauntlet, or let me inherit a multimillion dollar electronics company,” Hanzo said, pointing at Walter. “What it did do was make me the leader of the Kaiju Cult.”

  “Why do you tell them this?” asked Junko in a panic, rising from the couch and running to Hanzo’s side. Walter was not sure if he should stop Junko or not, but he found himself taking his cues from Susan, almost without realizing it, and she was doing nothing but listening.

  Hanzo took Junko’s hand, and kissed it. “Faith, my darling,” he said, “Have faith. Our guests will be leaving soon.”

  Susan crossed her arms. “I don’t think you understand how his works…”

  From the coffee table came the sound of a cell phone ring tone, from underneath a thick manga magazine with a half naked girl on the cover.

  “Text message,” said Hanzo to Susan, “You should get going.”

  Through the window that allowed the spectacular view, in the distance, Walter could just make out Narita Airport, and a rising cloud of smoke. “Susan? Something’s happening at the airport.”

  In confirmation Susan’s Wonder Gauntlet chirped, and the Wonder Computer confirmed her worst fears: the Neboukichan, all of them, had been activated.

  Wonder Heroes 4.22

  In the VIP section of a New York nightclub Theodore sat between two fashion models, a slender American redhead named Anna and a foreign girl with amazing lips and short blond hair named Di. The models were in town for one night before heading to Prague for a high end fashion show. Jay was busy nearby making out with Amber, who had a deep tan and long straight blond hair.

  “It’s a difficult position to be in girls,” said Theodore over the too loud beat of the dance music. He touched Anna’s red hair, which was drier and less full than he liked. “On the one hand, I do love natural redheads.”

  “You can tell?” asked Ana, crossing her legs and leaning in closer.

  “I’m a Wonder Hero,” said Theodore, the smile on his lips not reflected in his eyes, “I can see though your clothes.”

  Anna reflexively moved to cover her breasts with her hand, then giggled.

  “But,” continued Theodore, “Di’s accent is killing me! Lithuanian, right?”

  “Yes,” said Di breathlessly.

  “I don’t think I can decide,” said Theodore with a smile, “I have to have both of you.”

  “Yes,” repeated Di. Anna nodded.

  The holographic head of Matthew O’Dette suddenly appeared above Theodore’s gauntlet. “Sorry to interrupt guys, but we’ve got big trouble in Japan.”

  Theodore laughed as Jay stood up, his face red with frustration. “Crap!”

  “Another time, ladies,” said Theodore, excusing himself. All eyes in the nightclub turned as a flash of golden energy enveloped the Wonder Hero, encasing him in his Wonder Armor. The music stopped, and the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. An instant later Jay was also armored up, and there was more applause and cheering. Cell phones were pulled out and pictures taken.

  “I needed one more hour,” said Jay to Theodore over the communicator, “Dammit!”

  The models waved goodbye and Theodore smiled as together he and Jay vanished from the club. The applause continued for a confused moment, then died. Slowly it dawned on the patrons of the club that if the Wonder Heroes were being drawn away for some emergency, then this might be the last night of their lives. The DJ restarted the music with a renewed energy, and the party continued, now with an almost desperate sense of urgency.

  When Theodore and Jay appeared on the teleporter pad back at the Wonder Base. Kalomo was already in the room and wearing his Wonder Armor. He did not say anything to or acknowledge his friends as he joined them on the teleporter pad. There was an awkward silence and then Matt entered the room in his ultramarine Wonder Armor. Matt did not notice the tension in the room between Kalomo and Theodore as he vaulted onto the pad and said, “Computer, power up the vortex and teleport us directly to the hanger bay.”

  A second later the four Wonder Heroes found themselves inside the hanger. Taking up one wall of the hanger was a large swirling panel of energy, a vortex that could instantly transport the Wonder Heroes nearly anywhere in the universe. Ignoring the spectacular display the Wonder Heroes each quickly jogged to their respective vehicles.

  “Where’s Susan?” asked Kalomo as the door to the Skull opened for him.

  “She’s already in Tokyo,” answered Matt, “She was following up a lead when this all went down about seventy-seconds ago.” Matt flipped a series of switches that allowed him to intuitively take control of the Ultra Fist. His armor patched in, he could sense Jay in the Onyx Torso, Kalomo in the Ghost Skull, and Theodore in the Golden Kick grouping around him. Lastly the Crimson Fist rose and moved into a rear position, remotely summoned by Susan in Tokyo.

  The Wonder Vehicles moved towards the swirling vortex, the destination locked onto coordinates that were merely half a world away, in Japan. At this distance, due to some vagaries of time and space mechanics, the Wonder Vehicles would arrive a few seconds before they left. The Wonder Computer was already receiving reports from the team further along in the timeline, filtering the information flow to prevent catastrophic paradoxes.

  The five ships punched through the vortex and vanished, leaving behind the vast empty cavern of the hanger deck echoing with the sound of departed spaceships, and a lone Wonder Vehicle, the inoperable Kick-Blade, behind.

  From Hanzo Ueda’s apartment Susan watched as the plume of smoke rose in the distance. The situation demanded Susan’s immediate attention. She summoned her Wonder Armor more on instinct than actual thought. She turned to Walter, the words coming out of her mouth seemed to take an eternity to say, and two eternities for Walter to understand. She was operating in Wonder Hero time now, and the rest of the world moved at a crawl.

  “I’ve got to deal with this,” she said, then indicating Hanzo and Junko, added, “Get these two to the authorities, they might have information we can use.”

  Hanzo laughed, but Susan was already gone. She burst through the window and streaked towards the emergency, seeming to ride on a beam of solid red light that took its sweet time to fade from existence. The glass was pulverized into powder and twinkled behind her in the sunlight like sparkling magic.

  Walter ignored Hanzo, the Kaiju Cult leader. Thinking fast, he flipped the face up on his watch dial and pressed the purple button there. Two miles away, from a hanger on the top floor of Watanabe Tower a double thick security door rumbled open, and the twin rockets that propelled his personal jet, the Violet Wing, started their powerful engines. It would take two minutes for the Wing to arrive, and two more for Walter to put on his armor and join the fight.

  In Walter’s mind there was a good chance the fight would be all over, won by the Wonder Heroes long before he got there. His battle suit, Domaru, was the greatest technological creation on Earth, yet compared to the Cassiopeian tech of the Wonder Heroes, he might as well be using wooden bows and flint head arrows.

  Hanzo smiled at Walter benignly. “Where are my manners, Mr. Watanabe? Would you like something to drink as we wait and watch the world end?”

  Walter scowled, and did not return the smile.

  Susan left a dozen sonic booms in her wake as she made the six-mile trip back to Narita Airport in under a half second. Data was coming in fast, but she knew things were bad because all six of the Neboukichan were climbing to their feet. Her armor identified the Neboukichan called Reflex crawling onto a runway, and Susan realized that she would have to prevent the gigantic robot from colliding with a passenger jet responding too slowly to the imminent disaster. Susan channeled all her energy into her shields, and aimed for Reflex’s chest, hoping to stagger it backwards and away from the landing jetliner. The last time she had fought these creature
s it had not been difficult to destroy them, and she had no reason to believe it would go any differently this time.

  At the last possible instant before impact Susan received data that startled her only slightly less than the monster’s sudden counterattack. Another Neboukichan, named Dream, moved to intercept Susan’s attack at a speed that blurred her enhanced systems, and Susan was backhanded by the robot as one might swat a fly. There was a moment of unconsciousness upon contact. Susan’s Wonder Armor struggled to keep itself intact and its operator alive. Susan had the briefest flash of the airplane she had sought to rescue disintegrating around her as she passed bodily through it, then she was in space, having been literally knocked into orbit.

  Regaining some use of her senses Susan used her Wonder Boots on instinct, and stopped her flight into deep space. As nanobots struggled to repair damage to her body and armor, her mind struggled to understand what had just happened. The robot, Dream, had just hit her with a blow at least thirty-six times more powerful than her previous encounter with these creatures had prepared her for. Susan had been knocked back and through the airplane she had tried to save. So great was the impact that the plane and passengers had been atomized, transformed into so much energy and dust.

  She did not feel the passenger and crew’s deaths, not yet. That would come later, after the battle was over and won. She had failed those people, but there were more deaths to come if she did not move fast enough. Readings were still coming in. All the remaining Neboukichan were showing power levels much higher than they had during her first battle with them. Each of the six monsters was registering power levels thirty-six times that of their fallen brothers. Susan did not need the Wonder Computer to explain the math: the robots’ power was geometric. One was one, but two were four times as powerful and three were nine. The activation of six made each Neboukichan thirty-six times more powerful than any one could hope to be.

  “Susan?” It was Matt, over the communicators, “I’ve lost you on sensors. Are you all right?”

  “I’m in space,” said Susan with annoyance. She had been grievously injured from the Neboukichan strike, but her armor was blocking the pain and holding her damaged body together. She was operating at twelve percent capacity. “The Neboo-what-evers are off the charts more powerful than last time.”

  Susan scanned the immediate area of space around her, and despite everything, smiled. “I’m going to find something bigger to hit them with.”

  “We’re less than fifteen-seconds away,” said Matt.

  “Good. You guys can get the Wonder Vehicles in place to contain the blast.”

  Susan approached the Zeitsink Peace Platform, a space station abandoned years ago when the Nauseal Plasmoids infested low Earth orbit. Susan positioned herself behind the space station, aimed her boots away from the Earth and pushed. Her Wonder Armor automatically worked with the Wonder Computer to feed her exactly the information she needed to aim her gigantic bullet at the exact right spot. As Susan pushed the disused space station into the atmosphere the Station began to heat up, and small pieces began to peel off and burn away. She gave the ten ton hunk of glowing metal a slight rotation, and then let gravity do the rest, using the thrust from her Wonder Boots to arc around her bullet and zip towards the Earth ahead of it.

  Susan called up satellite images of the Neboukichan and saw that they were arranged in a circle around the bodies of Innocence and Modesty, arms raised, humming that incredibly loud, bass sound that seemed to vibrate the very reality of the world around them. The tone worked as a way to repair and rebuild their fallen comrades. Innocence was already almost entirely rebuilt, and was unsteadily rising to its feet. Modesty was undergoing some sort of reversal of the shattering that destroyed it. Cracks were disappearing and pieces of rubble literally rolled back into place, filling in the gaps in its body.

  The Wonder Computer updated Susan with alarming news. If all eight Neboukichan were to be fully activated, their power would be beyond the ability of any power on Earth to contain.

  Suddenly a hole ripped opened in time and space, and through it shot the five Wonder Vehicles, but the Neboukichan paid the arriving Wonder Heroes no heed, instead concentrating their attention on their fallen comrades.

  From on high Susan dropped into the open cockpit of the Crimson Fist with impossible dexterity. “Thanks for coming guys,” she said, taking intuitive control of the Crimson Fist.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Suzy,” said Jay, with a trace of disappointment only Theodore picked up on.

  “What’s the plan here?” asked Kalomo, “And how did these things get so powerful?”

  “Their power systems are geometrically fed back,” said Theodore, “These things look like granite, but inside they’re crystalline, and when grouped together the crystals resonate and channel the power recursively. The more of them there are, the more powerful each one becomes.”

  Susan led the Wonder Vehicles into a circle around the Neboukichan. Together they created a containment field, literally weaving a pattern of force that would encircle the monsters like an invisible, impenetrable fence. The Neboukichan ignored the efforts of the Wonder Heroes. With the repair and activation of their fallen brothers completed the creatures would each achieve power far beyond the ability of any force in the universe to contain them. Yet, from on high, the red hot debris of a multi-ton space station barreled towards the monsters.

  Susan hoped that the forcefield would be enough to both confuse the senses of the Neboukichan and to contain the coming blast.

  “They’re ignoring the forcefield,” said Matt, “They probably figure it isn’t strong enough to contain them.”

  “Then what’s the field for?” asked Kalomo. Then he noticed the sensors. “Oh.”

  The Neboukichan realized what was happening at the same instant as Kalomo, because as one the six fully operational stone creatures ceased repairs on their fallen comrades and looked to the sky. Instantly they began a more powerful version of their deep tone, in the hopes of destroying or diverting the molten space bullet, but it was to late. The space station, glowing white hot from the air friction, hit the earth directly in the center of the group of giant stone robots, annihilating Modesty and Innocence, and filling the force field erected by the Wonder Heroes with light so blinding that the Wonder Armor visors could barely compensate and prevent blindness. The concussive force, muted by the force field, shook the entire island of Honshu and beyond, registering 7.5 on the Richter scale. In downtown Tokyo a thirty story tall office building collapsed.

  A full minute passed before it became safe to drop the forcefield. Slowly the cloud of vaporized Earth dispersed in the light breeze, revealing the Neboukichan, or rather what was left of them, in complete disarray. Pieces were scattered everywhere, and it was difficult to tell where one giant robot ended and another began, all but four of the Neboukichan, Ice, Reflex Anger and Happiness, were annihilated.

  Warnings blared in the cockpits of the Wonder Vehicles as the four surviving monsters hurled bits and pieces of their fallen brothers from out of the crater. Theodore rotated his Golden Kick deftly around a piece of hurtling debris but was caught unawares as Ice, moving faster than Theodore could react, suddenly bounded out of the crater and brought two mighty fists down in an overhead blow onto the side of the Golden Kick. Theodore fought unsuccessfully to regain control as the vehicle turned over and hit the ground, bouncing once before tearing through a recently evacuated airplane hanger.

  Theodore shook his head to clear it. Over the communicators came the voices of his teammates, shouting some warning, but they talked over each other and Theodore would have been crushed dead by the still advancing form of Ice had he not ejected from his fallen craft at the last moment. Theodore’s ejection seat launched him into the sky as Ice smashed its fist into the Golden Kick, caving in the cockpit area.

  Jay, in the Onyx Torso, shot over the area where Theodore’s Golden Kick had crashed. The ejection seat had fired Theodore high over t
he battle, and he could watch Jay fly by in the Onyx Torso as Jay asked, “You okay there, Teddy?”

  “I’m fine,” said Theodore, as he allowed himself to fall back to Earth. Theodore summoned an energy sword and shield as he fell, and landing on the shoulder of Ice, proceeded to hack at the creature’s neck. “Nothing hurt but my pride!”

  In the Ultra Fist, Matt felt a shiver down his spine. Watching Theodore hack away at the monster’s neck Matt was reminded of Harlan. Nothing hurt but my pride, Theodore had said. Matt thought, Harlan used to say that.

  Still, for all of Theodore’s efforts, his sword was doing little more than scratching the surface of the Neboukichan’s granitoid exterior.

  Kalomo brought the Skull around on an intercept course and launched a barrage of missiles into the chest of the Neboukichan Reflex. Reflex staggered backwards slightly, but as the smoke cleared, not only was the robot essentially unharmed, but sensors showed evidence that it was already slowly repairing itself back to full power.

  Matt did not like the readings his sensors on board the Ultra Fist were giving him. “This is bad, Heroes. If the Wonder Computer projections are correct, then these things can repair themselves faster than we can hurt them.”

  “We could drop another satellite on them,” offered Kalomo, as he watched Ice reach onto its shoulder and rip Theodore from his perch. Kalomo launched a missile into the back of Ice’s hand, releasing Theodore before the monster squeezed the golden Wonder Hero into pulp.

  “That’s probably the only plan we’ve got,” offered Susan, “I’ll scan for what’s in orbit…”

  “No!” came a new voice on the communications system. It was Walter Watanabe.

  Matt reacted angrily. “Walter? How are you on a secure Wonder Hero signal?”

  “That’s not important right now,” said Walter, “Tokyo might not survive another satellite impact. The one Susan dropped collapsed a building downtown. There are hundreds dead.”