“I found another cache that used to belong to the Evil Overlord. Now, they’re mine.” I can still lie to her, but it isn’t as easy as it used to be. Technically, this is more of a half-truth. All this hanging around with heroes has made me soft.
“Well, I’m glad you’re on your way to making a new suit of armor. It might even make what I’m about to say easier.”
Several things cross my mind in that instant. “At least give me my last two weeks pay. It’s been fun being a Guardian and I’ll miss you most of all.”
She laughs at my humor. “Stop. It’s not that.”
“Well as long as you’re not carrying my kid, whatever it is can’t be that bad.”
There’s a very, shall we say, pregnant pause. If Mather wasn’t already dead, I’d dig him back up and finish him for good.
“I’m sorry, Cal. Forget I mentioned it.”
Fix this Cal! Fix it quick! I stop her before she gets out the door. “C’mon Wendy. I was joking. I didn’t know that was your news. Do your parents know?”
“Mom does. She’s already planning my leave of absence. When Dad finds out, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
“Here I thought I was finally going to get that pardon. Guess not.”
Wendy brushes that aside. “No, it won’t be you. He’s not very happy at how things are being run these days in our world. There’re too many loose cannons out there. There’s talk of increased regulation on the community.”
I consider asking her if she’s going to keep it, but I don’t really feel like getting slapped this evening and assume she does.
“Would you like me down on one knee?” I could do much worse than a girl who is filthy rich, pretty, and is one of the A List superheroes. Not too bad for a scrub from the bush leagues like me.
“No! God! No!” The speed of her response is disheartening.
“Gee thanks!”
She punches me in the shoulder. “That’s not it. We’re not in love. Most days we’re barely in like. You get under my skin, Cal, damn near every day! I have to leave the room sometimes because of it. That wouldn’t work in a marriage. I want to wake up next to a man I love. Besides, I still think that Aphrodite will come to her senses.”
“Most would say that she already has. So I’m thinking Rufus if it’s a boy and Geraldine if it’s a girl. What do you think?”
“I think you should stick to making powered battle suits and leave the other decisions to people who have a clue about the magic of life.”
“Yeah, I suppose you can’t mix magic and science. It’s never pretty is it?”
She manages a smile. It looks like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. “Thanks for not throwing some kind of tantrum or being an asshole, Cal. I’m not sure how things will work when the baby is born, but if you want involvement, you’ll have it. If you don’t, I won’t force you. I don’t need an answer for a long time either, so think it over and get back to me when you’re sure.”
She leaves me with feelings of inadequacy. I’m not exactly good boyfriend material! What kind of father could I possibly make? It’s not like I’ve got a helluva role model to draw on. Sorry Dad. I’m just calling it the way I see it.
Conflicting themes in my life, just like trying to mix science and magic. That’s never a good idea. Then again, who knows?
• • •
“I know you worry about your new armor, but don’t you think you should, I don’t know get out of it every so often? It probably smells awful in there.” Sheila comments. As I turn away, she makes the “cuckoo” motion with her index finger and points at me. Anemone laughs.
“I’m fine. Trust me on that. Never been better.” Things are actually pretty good right now. I’m back to being the second most powerful person on this team and the couple of battles we’d been in since then helped me justify my decision to accept some, for lack of better words, outside assistance in making this new suit.
“If you say so,” she replies. Further comments are interrupted by the monitor screen activating and switching to the emergency circuit. Bolt Action’s frame fills it.
“Stringel, Dozier! Where’s La Guardia?”
“In her room.”
“Get her, now!” He’s barking like he’s still in the Corps.
“Something going down?” She-Dozer asks.
“Yeah. It must be your birthday come early, Stringel.”
“What?”
“Patterson’s going down. Jade Lyoness just escaped from an attack by Ultraweapon. She found something really big and sent it to me.”
“How big?”
“Life imprisonment kind of big. He’s got a new robot prototype that runs off of a nuclear core. I’m not even certain how many treaties that violates, but I’ve already contacted the Olympians and the Oval Office and everyone is onboard. Are you interested?”
I whistle. Type D Warbots are the largest bots that can run off of current powercell technology and only for a limited duration. For some reason, putting a reactor in a robot and letting it wander around is universally frowned on by diplomats.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” And here I thought this was going to be a slow day.
“Good. Get airborne and we’ll coordinate things in the sky. I doubt he’s going to just surrender and we expect heavy resistance.”
• • •
Patterson is waiting for us. Promethia’s main headquarters is an armored fortress. Some of his security force wants no part of this battle and flees, but others don’t care or are programmed to do their master’s bidding. As one of the “heavy hitters” my job is to clear out the bigger robots. I also have a “special mission” from Bolt Action - lure Patterson out and engage him.
I’m just the man for the job. Strafing the Type D Warbots on the perimeter, I vent my figurative spleen. “Can’t you feel it, Ultrafailure? Your whole little empire is crumbling. You brought this on yourself, you know?”
Nothing yet. I guess I’ll keep poking him in the eye with a stick until I get a reaction.
“Are you going to go out like a man with your self-destruct, or do I get to see you brought into court like the craven mongrel you are? Word of advice Lazarus - don’t bother saying you’re sorry to the judge. It never works.”
“I will make sure you die, Stringel!”
“You’re not man enough,” I launch a steady stream of grenades into a Warbot until the shields drop and the explosions blow it to the ground. “Is it me or are your playthings getting easier to destroy? Where’s your newest creation, Laz? Is it just as flawed as the rest of your stuff?”
“Just keep running your mouth, you little shit! You’ll get yours.”
Maybe I’m having too much fun, but I can’t stop myself. “Listen, we all know you ran out of good ideas after synth-muscle. Never could come close after that, could you? Your engineers are the ones that did the real work. You just like to dress up and play superhero.”
There he is. “About time you came out to play, Ultraflaw. Let’s dance!”
My shielding is upgraded. My weaponry is better than ever and I have dozens of superheroes on my side. For once, I have the upper hand. On my back, I slide the powercell bazooka into position and knife through the sky right at him.
From the mini-gun, plasma darts cross the distance and spatter on his shielding. His force blasters knock me off course as our dance goes freestyle. We circle and I almost bracket him, micro seconds from firing my big stick, but Bolt Action comes from nowhere and smashes into Patterson knocking my target out of the weapon’s firing arc.
I keep after him, but am limited to plasma, grenades, and force blasters. The effing heroes keep getting in the way. Apollo this time, spewing volcanic magma from his chariot. Zeus seconds later, blazing with electrical power. My life has been leading up to this, but even my finest moment is being thwarted by these idiots.
“Get out of my damn way!” I shout over the open channel. “Patterson is mine!”
They won’t listen. Th
ey keep interfering. I can’t get a lock. His shields are down to the point that this weapon has a better than fifty percent chance of killing him. I like those odds.
“Cal! I need your help,” Wendy’s voice reaches out to me. I ignore her.
“Stringel!” she won’t be deterred. “Get your sorry ass over here now! We’ve got a major problem.”
“I’m busy. Try again later.”
“If you’re not right next to me in thirty seconds I will beat the living shit out of you!”
Okay, she’s pissed about something. I’d better find out what. Damn it to hell!
Breaking off, I look for her. Whatever she wants, it better be important! Oh, so that’s Patterson’s new toy. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m impressed by what the engineers here dreamed up.
It stands nearly fifty feet tall and has the X arms like the Type C and the hammer like head, but it’s friggin’ huge! The lasers are arrays, spinning like my mini-gun and spitting out an endless stream of red death. I find Wendy, at the base of a building.
“You’ve still got that launcher? Good. I’ll try to knock it off balance. You hit it in the back or a knee and the others will try and finish it.”
“But Patterson?”
“He’s almost down. Let it go and quit being an idiot! That thing can kill us all.”
She’s right. I know she is. It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. Brave young woman. She goes flying off into danger while pregnant with my kid. That’s right, Cal. Get your damn priorities straight! She sways it with the power of an F-4 and Bolt Action hits one of the knees unbalancing the robot. Ares hurls a tank at it as I dodge streams of energy and circle behind it. I line up my bazooka and look for something that might be important. Finding nothing, I aim for where it should do enough damage to knock it over and fire. Weapon discharge. Brace for impact.
The overloaded powercell hits it like a sledgehammer, releasing megajoules of stored energy and wrecking the entire hip assembly. The prototype topples to the ground. Heroes swarm it. I join in with my energy weapons.
My taunts come back to me with an ominous message of impending doom. “We’ve got to get the core out in case he tries to detonate it. Move! Move!”
I use my mini-gun like a surgeon’s scalpel. Armor and the internal structure fall to the side. There! Surrounded by heat exchangers and shining like a small star. It’s not as big as I thought it would be. This isn’t a case of Blue Wire/Red Wire. This is a case of rip the damn thing out before he kills us all.
Pull! I yank the assembly free and toss it aside. A minute or two later, they drag Patterson in his battered suit over.
“Bravo, Stringel. You’re right, I could have detonated it and killed us all. You’ve saved me the trouble.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tell me one thing, idiot, what do you think is going to happen now that it is no longer tied to any heat exchangers?”
Shit! He’s right. I whip my head around and engage thermals. The thing is white hot. “We need to get it out of here or Los Angeles is a goner!” I look for a savior. Bolt Action can’t stand after being pulled out from under the prototype. None of the other flyers have the strength except for Wendy using cyclones. She’s already trying to use her wind powers to air cool the core. It’s only delaying the inevitable.
I meet her gaze and she steps forward, just like a real hero would. I stop her.
“No. My mess. I’ll fly it out into the Pacific and go underwater. You have to push back the jet stream and keep anything from coming ashore.”
“Cal! I’m not that strong.”
“Whatever,” I brush aside her complaint, “Just do it, Wendy!”
I drop the mini-gun and shed whatever weight I can. Grabbing the core, I take off heading west. By the time I see the ocean, my shields are buckling and God only knows how much radiation is around. It’s interfering with the instruments, but my suit can make it. The temp in the suit is rising and the core I’m holding is already spot welded to my arms. We’re going to have to go into the water together. The core will split open and then … it’s boom-boom time.
My suit can’t survive the beating much longer. This is the end and I know it. Hopefully there’s enough time for some final loose ends. I cut off the garbled receiver and the noise of people trying to say things to me.
Cutting on the transmitter, I know what I need to do.
“Alright everyone, this is the end of the line for Mechani-Cal, but I’m not going quietly. I’m releasing my memoirs right this second. They’re being updated with my final words. Dad, you tried. Thanks I guess. Mom, maybe this will finally get you back in good standing with your friends. Wendy, thanks for everything. I mean it. I always liked Gabrielle for a girl and James for a boy, serious this time. All the proceeds from sales of my book are to go into a trust for that kid. I can’t really say I’m in my right mind because I’m holding a god damn fusion reactor core in my hands! Read my words people and hold the powers that be accountable. They might be super powerful, but they aren’t super human! Remember that. Stacy, sorry we couldn’t make it work. Patterson … if they have any stones, they’ll fry you. Overlord, this squares us in my books, sorry if I just let the world know you’re still out there. My bad. Tough shit. What else? What else? Hey, do I finally get that pardon? I’ve been working my ass …”
Transmission Ends
Epilogue the First
A San Francisco Fiasco
The cool breeze off the bay keeps blowing my hair across my face as we look down through the clear bottom of Apollo’s chariot at the convoy leaving the federal courthouse in San Francisco. Despite long months of legal maneuvering and testimony, Lazarus is going to the SuperMax in North Dakota for a life sentence with no chance of parole and legal experts were saying that the Supreme Court were unlikely to even hear any appeal his high-priced legal team could come up with. When the sentence was read, Lazarus didn’t have a meltdown like I expected.
As they led him away in chains, he mouthed the words, “You will regret this.”
The Olympians and many of the Guardians are here to make sure there are no problems and help improve our image which has taken a beating in the public eye as of late.
“You’re pretty quiet, Stacy. I’m just glad it’s finally over. Aren’t you?” Holly says to me.
“Yeah,” I say feeling tired. There is no sensation of a weight being lifted off my shoulders – no feeling of closure.
“I thought he was going to get away with a shorter sentence when they started trying to pin the blame for the detonation on Stringel.”
If Holly is trying to get me to open up, bringing up Cal won’t help things. I am still conflicted about his death and with the release of his “tell all,” things hadn’t really gotten much better. Cal acquired something of a cult hero status because of his book and I’m told that it doesn’t paint a very favorable image of me or most of the heroes in general.
Truthfully, I still hadn’t mustered up the courage to read more than a couple of pages. Family, friends, and even casual acquaintances that had were more than willing to chime in with their two cents. The ones who hated him, most notably Holly, were quick to point out that the beginning of our relationship had all the classic indicators of Stockholm syndrome. At the same time others, like the Bugler and the rest of the Gulf Coast Guardians painted Cal in a kinder light.
• • •
Still on crutches the Bugler had approached me after the empty casket funeral and said, “Miss? I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
I responded, “I am too. I’m just sorry that I never got my memories back.”
What I didn’t tell him was that I’d been erecting my own mental blocks and walling those memories off. Part of me said I was better off not remembering all the details of my relationship with Cal. The less charitable part of me said I was being a coward and running away from something that might end up causing me pain.
The Bugler smiled, “If you ever d
o get them back and need a person to talk to, feel free to call. I met him when he was just a petty criminal taking out his frustrations on the rest of the world, but when the world needed him the most, he turned himself around. I know he’d just make some kind of crass comment along the lines that all he was looking for was a paycheck and a pardon, but I’m pretty sure the real reason was you.”
“Thank you, but I think you’re giving me too much credit,” I said, looking for a way to graciously exit this conversation before it got more awkward than it was already.
“You’re welcome,” he replied with his southern drawl. “No. I usually don’t tangle with the uber villain types, just the everyday sort. But that helps me know how they think. Before you, he didn’t really care about anything or anyone. You gave him a reason to start caring and it stuck with him even after the two of you broke up. That’s what really loving someone can do for you and as my wife would say, that’s more powerful than any sonic bugle or superpower out there.”
I managed to stammer a few more things to him before begging off. His comments had cracked the emotional shell I’d carefully maintained concerning the late Calvin Stringel.
Ever since I’d gotten my powers, people would say how guys would do “anything” to be with me and Cal seemingly did. Wendy and I were never really close and never talked much. Despite the press and most everyone else wanting to ask her about Cal and the revelations from the book, she rarely ever spoke about him except in general terms. That said, in a moment of candidness about a week after the explosion off the coast of Los Angeles, I ran into her in the Senate waiting room where we were called to testify before her father’s committee. She said that she thought, half the reason Cal killed Mather was for what he’d done to the two of them and the other half was that he didn’t think I’d ever take him back because of it.
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain Page 17