Jackhammer set his glass down carefully. Too carefully, actually. I'd done that a few times myself when it was a choice between exaggerated care or glass splinters breaking the sound barrier.
"I don't like it, son, not one damn bit. But this ain't my call, see? It's political," he said bitterly, making political sound like the four-letter word I wished it was. "Grid Iron had a lot of friends and a lot of the folks that pay taxes to fill our coffers liked the prick, so we put on a show and pretend we liked him, lie or not. Ain't the first time, ain't gonna be the last."
"You mean there'll be more of these fucking things you're going to drag me to?" The words flew out of my mouth like so much vomit, and with the same taste.
"No, goddamn it!" He got to his feet and stepped away from the table. His cane's rubber tip cushioned the floor as he stormed angrily towards me, otherwise he'd have put it through the oak planks. "Do you think everybody in the Guild has a halo? Over the years I'd be half of them have been alcoholics or drug fiends! Remember Yesterday's Child? She was a sex addict and she died durin' an orgy with a bunch of stoned teenagers, most of whom weren't old enough to shave. Think that hit the news? We had to cover it up and pretend she died in her fuckin' sleep, boy! It's politics! We're the Guild!" He threw the cane into a wall where it snapped in half on one of the logs as rage danced around his face. "We got to be better than everyone else, even and especially when we ain't!"
"But you're not. You're human, just like the people I was washing out of my hair yesterday." I forced calm into my voice and tried to keep myself under control. I knew he wasn't angry at me, and, despite the fact that I wanted to go to the memorial about as much as I wanted to take a power drill to my testicles, I was still in something like a good mood underneath it all. "You're not better, and some of you are a whole helluva lot worse. Grid Iron was one of them. At least the Confederation members don't try to hide behind a fake halo."
"Don't you think I know that? I hate what some of these people do to my Guild. I ain't got no way to stop it without bein' one of them, though!" He spit on the floor and cursed. I heard someone suck in a breath from the door leading to the kitchen. I didn't dare take my eyes off Jackhammer to look and see who it was. "I ain't young, son. I wasn't young when we put the Guild together. When Jessie was born I swore I'd take a step back and try to retire. Corrine and Vivian and Wildcard came with me for their own reasons. For the first time in sixty years I stopped trying to keep the world from blowin' up in my goddamn face and what did it get me? I got to see what the people who were supposed to be tellin' me what was goin' on had been hidin' from me! Years of abuse I'd put down to criminals an' liars tryin' to get outta trouble; drugs; booze; whores!" The angrier he got, the stronger his accent became. "Thieves, stealin' from the people they're supposed to be protectin'. People like Grid Iron rapin' and killin' just 'cause they got a taste for it. Folks like Yesterday's Child tryin' ta deal with their pain by screwin' anythin' with two legs rather than talkin' 'bout it and gettin' killed. Addicts, suckin' pills down to kill the pain in their limbs or their head, just to keep fightin', breakin' laws and destroyin' themselves, windin' up nothin' more than a tickin' time bomb on some street corner!"
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, Jackhammer? Who told you the noble lie? Who told them? Trusting in the whims of men to do the right thing leads only to anarchy." Frustration tinged my voice.
"What?"
I sighed. "Goddamn it! Who will guard the guards themselves? When the wolves guard the sheep do they not eat a few? Look around, this time using with your real eyes and not the ones you look at your precious Guild with. Look at the rot eating away at the core. Look how close it is to the surface. Can't you smell it? When the powerful are entrusted to guard the weak, the powerful exploit the weak. It's happened every single time it's been done in the history of the world, even when the guards were trained from birth not to, and it's happening again. It's human nature, you idiot!"
"Human nature or not, we got a responsibility to protect them that can't protect themselves, an' you know it!" If my calling him an idiot had bothered him he made no sign of it.
"Responsibility to them or not, it doesn't extend to making an appearance over the body of some asshole who tried to rape Venom's daughter and killed innocent people on a whim." I fired off the part about Jessie to see if it'd have any effect.
"Yes, it goddamn well does!" He yelled, knocking over one of the chairs with a sweep of his arm.
"I don't fucking care! There is no fucking way in hell I'm going!" I yelled, slamming my hand into the table hard enough to make the plates and glasses bounce. I tried to tamp down on my anger but I wasn't in time and I knocked a plate flying. It was a miracle it didn't shatter when it hit something,but I could feel my fury peaking.
"Oh, hell yes, you're goin', boy! You're goin' because I'm tellin' you you're goin'. You're goin' because you owe it to me, to him, and to the whole goddamn Guild for what you did." His voice was every bit as loud as mine but he managed to keep himself in control long enough not hit anything. His next words were as icy as an arctic blast. "But most of all you're goin' to show every last member of the Guild that there ain't no hard feelin's, that killin' that bastard wasn't personal."
"Just like the fucking Mob, huh? Go to the funeral of the man you killed to show it was just business, right?" I could feel some of the anger bleeding out of me, though I couldn't say why. I glanced at the door to the kitchen to see that Venom and Wildcard were standing in the doorway, watching us.
"You're damn right! People in the Guild die, son. We put our lives on the goddamn line every day we answer a call or investigate a crime. Dyin' ain't the worst thing that can happen to us," he said, pausing long enough to glance at the duo standing in the door to the kitchen, "but we need to know that what happened was part of life. We can't name you, we can't punish you for what you did, but I'll be goddamned if you are going to walk away without lookin' everyone in the eye and saying you're sorry. Do you hear me or do I need to beat it into your thick skull?"
"Oh, I hear you," I said coldly, feeling my fingers curling into fists so tight a lump of coal trapped inside would have taken on a new life as a piece of jewelry when finally freed. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."
"Good. Showin' some sense after all. It ain't till tomorrow so you got some time to cool off. Corrine and Vivian were plannin' on gettin' you something nice since I know you ain't got cash for it yourself and some stuff besides. Can't do with someone showin' up for at the party without a costume." He smiled a chilly smile. "Yellow spandex work? Maybe with some pretty blue stripes?"
I knew I was beaten and that I was going to go along with it, wear whatever they told me to, just to get it over with. I just hoped he was joking about the spandex.
Getting press-ganged into going to the memorial service was bad enough, but if they tried to stick me into some goddamn costume I was going to kill someone. Not that I had anything against costumed heroes, considering I'd just slept with one and some of my best friends, blah blah blah, but really. No way in hell. A uniform, fine, but that was it.
Yellow spandex. Who the hell would wear that?
I walked away to cool off. It didn't take long before I realized how much I had crossed the line. An apology seemed in order, so I vowed to do so if I ran into Jackhammer later in the afternoon, but I needed longer to cool off before I could mean it.
People skills, Redgrave had said.
I reflected on the fact that Jackhammer had even used the phrase "cool off" and I hadn't quite caught it at the time.
People skills, the man had told me. People skills. Something I lacked and Jackhammer had. However good at faking them, I was still faking. Knowing the right thing and when to say it in tense situations wasn't, and never would be, the same or as good as knowing how to do it when I wasn't on familiar ground. It was a lot easier to run, hide, or just kill everyone involved. Something I needed to work on, then. The training I'd been given on how to fast-talk my way through a fir
st impression to get in the door obviously wasn't enough and playing a character just wouldn't do. I couldn't hold it together very long and if I were going to be among these people for very long they'd better get used to the real me anyway.
Steamroller and Venom had left soon after breakfast though, from the expression on Venom's face as she looked out from the window of the oversized 4x4 SUV she was piloting toward town, she wasn't angry with me. I'd gone outside to get some fresh air and to see how rusty I was with some of the katas I'd been taught by my hand-to-hand instructors back when I'd been in the army. Killing someone with your bare hands or a weapon of some sort was a lot easier than people thought. Defending yourself or disabling someone without using lethal force is a lot harder, especially when you've been trained to grab and snap first. Some of my instructors had felt that sending a bunch of raw troops on liberty with nothing but the knowledge of how and where to strike to kill was asking for trouble. Considering the fact that the first place most recruits and newly-minted soldiers headed when on liberty was a bar, usually in the worst part of town, or a whorehouse, often either on the next lot to or upstairs from the worst bar in the area, I'd always felt they'd been right.
Fights in most of those bars were short, bloody, and frequent. Usually with a dead body or two needing to be identified and an arrest or three being made.
The cops had learned to arrive late and in large numbers.
After an hour I ached in ways that I remembered from my first days of boot camp, I felt sweaty and smelly, and I had realized that being able to throw someone across a room without resorting to enhanced musculature or an ability to control momentum and movement was a lot harder than I'd remembered.
I'd also twisted my ankle a few times, over-extended my left arm so my shoulder throbbed, and found that three of my vertebrae were out of place.
I needed a shower, a pain pill, and maybe a rubdown. I felt old.
I toweled my hair quickly and not very carefully, there not really being that much to dry. A quick couple of swipes with a brush or comb would set it right. The bathrobe was white, a sensible color that could bleach easily, and made of an expensive fabric that I barely felt against my skin. I wasn't going to say it was cotton, but it wasn't silk, and there's no way a bathrobe would be made out of a dry-clean-only material.
My mind was busying itself with trivial things so I didn't obsess over the memorial service or the clusterfuck I'd made out of breakfast. Yeah, I'd really stuck my dick in it there.
I stared at the pilfered uniform laying on the bed where I'd tossed it before getting in the shower. It needed washing but it was the only thing in the place that would fit other than a succession of terrycloth robes I wasn't in a hurry to be dangling out of.
"Those were some fancy moves I saw you doin' outside. Looked pretty difficult."
"They were. Took me years to get good at them." I didn't turn around to look at Jackhammer. If he was going to be offended by that he shouldn't have let himself into Venom's room to wait for me. True, it was his house, but still.
"If you don't mind my sayin' so, you looked a little rusty."
"You could say that. So would my ankle. You don't get much chance to practice katas living on the street."
"True enough. Hopefully you won't have to worry about it again." I heard his cane, had to be a new one, tap on the floor three times. "So tell me, boy, even as rusty as you are, y'all think you can go a couple of rounds with an ol' fart like me?"
I felt the corners of my mouth quirk up. I turned around to see him sitting in the chair nearest the door. "Under what rules?"
He smiled back, bone-white teeth looking even whiter against his dark face. "No kickin', no bitin', no low-blows, the gloves stay on the whole time," he licked his lips. "No super powers."
"Two rounds or three?"
"None. Knockout, forfeit, or disqualification ends it. Draw only if we both say so. What do you say?"
My lips moved before my brain kicked into gear. "Oh, hell yes."
"Good!" He got to his feet and reached for the door. "Wildcard will be by to show you where to go in a few minutes. I'll send a pair of shorts along with him for you to wear. See you then."
"I didn't think you were much of a berry picker, son. I can see I was right." He chuckled. "I also figured you'd need to burn off some of that steam from this mornin'. Guess I was right about that too, huh?"
Jackhammer's home gym was big. If I'd priced out the exercise equipment I'd probably have been able to buy a full-sized sedan, even at Detroit's insane prices, at least twenty of which I could have parked without having to worry about scratching a door getting in or out. At that I wasn't removing the regulation-sized boxing ring in the center of the floor or pulling down the walled-off steam room in the corner.
"Never know till you try, that's what I always say," I said loudly enough to carry to him. "But I think this might be a little more fun for both of us. Besides, the berries'll wait till we get back tomorrow, right?"
"Or the next day." He was stripped to the waist, shiny boxer shorts covering him halfway to the knees. His gloves were laced and taped and looked brand new. "Or the day after that, if needs be. It's a little early anyway." He cleared his throat. "I just thought it might be nice to steal some before the birds do."
"Tomorrow, then, since I doubt either of us will be feeling up to it tonight."
"We'll see." He slapped his gloves together loudly. "Now get in here so we can get this mess sorted out."
"Mess?" I shrugged my robe off and climbed the steps to the ring. I ducked between the ropes and approached the center. "What mess?"
"Oh, I jus' figured you an' me'd sort out who has the bigger dick." He stretched the muscles in his back, the surprisingly good-looking ones in his torso straining like they wanted to break free. Yes, there was some loose skin, but for a super-strong super he had a good build. Most super-strong supers didn't bother to maintain muscle tone. What norms didn't realize is that to use super strength you had to actually use it; it was, for most of us, a conscious decision and usually took some form of effort. Still, it was a lot less work to use it than to exercise the regular musculature. The mind/body connection, however, was still an important one. Exercise would keep you alive and healthy. Your heart didn't care if you could benchpress a small building without raising a sweat. If you didn't make yourself sweat regularly it would give out on you a lot sooner.
So, basically, I guess what I was saying was that for a man in his late seventies he looked fucking fantastic.
My gut wasn't that tight.
"Is it true what they say about black men?" Wildcard reached into the ring with a pair of boxing gloves, slipped them over my hands and started lacing them up. "Because if it is..."
"Oh, shush. You know what I mean or you're a damn fool." He worked his jaw to stretch the muscles. "Either you question my ability to lead or you will soon. It's natural for folks like us. So let's get it worked out in the only way both of us will respect in the mornin'."
I watched carefully as tape was applied to hold the gloves down. I had no idea how Wildcard could see to do it, but he wasn't missing a beat.
"Are you sure you're not doing this just to beat some sense into my fool head?"
"Maybe a touch." He grinned widely. "And maybe a lot."
"You're pretty sure you'll win, aren't you?"
"Damn straight." He hopped a few times and then started to shuffle his feet around quickly. Even though he'd been going with the cane earlier he moved like he had no pains or problems. Hell, he moved better than some boxers I'd seen on TV. "But I promise I won't hurt you much."
"Oh, please, don't hurt me," I chuckled.
If confidence could ooze out of me like that annoying residue whenever I used my powers, and smelled the same, an electrical engineer would have run from the room rather than watch the fight. I would have smelled like an megawatt circuit arcing into an aluminum plate.
"At the bell, then?"
"At the bell."
&nbs
p; Jackhammer nodded to Wildcard and a bell rang. I wasn't expecting it and instinctively turned my head to look for the source of the sound. I realized my mistake almost instantly, but in that instant Jackhammer stepped forward and drove his fist into my face with what felt like the same amount of force as a medium-large pile driver. The shock of the blow, because the pain hadn't kicked in yet, disoriented me and let him land a succession of quick jabs to my breadbasket. The wind flew out of me in one big gust and I doubled over. Pain fought for overriding control when his left caught the side of my head and sent me down. My mind tried to take a vacation but I held on grimly.
My vision was blurred, I couldn't breathe and had to sip air through my lips like I was trying to sample good booze from a thimble, and pain ran from my nose to my gut to my ear without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars.
So that's why they called him Jackhammer.
"I thought. You said. No super. Powers." I gasped.
"I did."
Damn the man. There was no way any norm could hit that hard and he knew it. There was no way I could call him on it without accusing him of lying or cheating, and if he denied it I'd lose face.
I also knew that if I wasn't as close to 100% as I could be when I got back up again I'd be going back down, probably a lot harder.
The pain was making me angry. Angry wasn't good for thinking.
I forced myself to breathe; painful gasps of air that belied any pretense of my being in good shape. Alright, if he wanted to hit me like a freight train I'd return the favor.
I made myself straighten, keeping my torso at an angle so he couldn't approach without my seeing and while keeping my arm between me and him. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, set my nose for me, as it were. I'd had no idea he could move that fast, but now that I knew I could prepare myself.
He circled me for a few seconds, both of us warily eyeing the other, waiting to see who'd be first to move. I brought my fists up in a classic guard position, my weight carefully balanced a little more on the rear foot than on the one closest to him. One of us was about to strike and I wanted it to be him.
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