“Because… because I’m the leader,” he slurred.
Anna gripped his shoulders tightly. “You’re goddamn right you are,” she said. “In a way. Now do your thing, Butterfly King. The good citizens of Cityopolis are depending on it.”
That did it. Randy inhaled sharply through his nose. “I won’t let them down,” he said, his voice descending into its usual guttural growl.
Pressing two fingers to the side of his head, Randy raised the other hand and made a series of theatrical twisting motions in the air.
“Can we get a move on?” Sam yelped, bracing himself against the heat.
“Do my bidding, my butterfly brethren!” Randy cried, and the air was filled with the sound of flapping wings. Assuming you had exceptionally good hearing and were listening very closely.
The butterflies emerged from the shadows around the cathedral, then pootled around behind Savior until they formed a single colorful cloud. With a gesture from Randy, they forced their way inside Savior’s helmet, wedging themselves up there in their hundreds, just as Sam’s fat-shield bubbled away into nothing.
Savior twisted, grabbing for his helmet as more and more butterflies flooded inside. He tried to scream, but a particularly large and impressive Compton tortoiseshell jumped down his throat, making the ultimate sacrifice.
The helmet shifted upward. Savior scrambled to hold onto it with both hands, but was forced to bring one down again to heat-push Sam and Anna back when they started to run at him.
More butterflies forced their way inside the helmet, tickling his nose and covering his eyes. The helmet inched upward again, but he held tight, blindly sweeping arcs of fire out in front of him.
“It’s not working!” Anna yelped. “There aren’t enough of them! We need more butterflies!”
“I don’t have more butterflies!” Randy spat.
With a bang, the front doors of the cathedral were thrown wide. Sam, Ann and Randy all turned in time to see a single butterfly come fluttering through the doorway.
“Callum!” Randy whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “You son-of-a-bitch!”
They all watched, awestruck, as Callum bobbed gently along the aisle, his colorful wings flapping as fast as they could. Which, admittedly, wasn’t that fast.
They watched for a while longer.
And a while longer.
Randy hummed the theme to Superman for a while, egging the butterfly on.
“Go, Callum!” he cheered, once he’d made it all the way to the end of the main overture. “You can do this!”
One of Savior’s random blasts scorched the air ahead of the butterfly. Callum rose above it, drifted lazily on the cushion of heat for a few seconds, then resumed his slow and steady assault.
“OK, fuck this, this is taking all day,” said Anna, turning and beginning another charge at Savior. A fireball exploded at her feet, cutting short her run before it had even started.
She was just preparing to try again when Callum fluttered past her, swooping and dodging to avoid another erratic volley of fire.
Banking around, Callum lined himself up for his final attack run, then stopped in mid-air.
Randy nodded, just once. “Go get him, big guy.”
And with that, Callum fluttered up inside Savior’s helmet.
There was a muffled shout from behind the mask.
There was a pop.
And, like a cork escaping a bottle, the helmet shot up into the air, then clanked to the floor and bounced down the Sanctuary steps.
For a moment, it seemed as if Savior’s face was all the colors of the rainbow, but then the butterflies took flight and the true horror of his appearance was revealed. His skin was shriveled and blackened, his lips burned away to reveal all his teeth. He had no hair to speak of, just a shrunken raisin of a skull crusted over with scabs and burns.
“M-my h-h-helmet,” he wheezed, collapsing to his knees. He stretched a hand out for the metal mask, but the movement was slow and creaking, and twisted him up with pain.
“Oh my God,” Anna said, her hand going to her mouth. “What did they do to him?”
The air in the cathedral suddenly cooled, as the column of fire fizzled out. Sam leaned against one of the few remaining pews, his body sagging with exhaustion.
“We did it,” he said. “We actually stopped him.”
Anna’s phone buzzed in his utility belt. Sam fished it out and read the message on the screen.
HELP!!!!!
Savior’s laugh started as a wheeze, rose to a hiss, then struggled all the way up to a rattle. “You… idiots,” he spat. “Y-you haven’t sssstopped m-me.”
The ground beneath their feet rumbled ominously.
“It has only j-just beg-gun!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Heat rose up from beneath the cathedral, sending cracks racing up the ancient stone walls. The whole building—no, the whole city—seemed to shake, as Savior’s column of flame exploded through the foundations.
NOW WOOD B NICE!!! flashed up on Anna’s phone, then:
*WOULD.
Sam snapped into action.
“You two go and help Calcu-Lass!” he urged, shoving the phone into Anna’s hands. “Try to get her out of here.”
“What about you?” asked Anna. “The whole place is about to come down.”
“There has to be a way to stop this,” Sam replied. “I’ll find it. Now go.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Hopeless. Desperate. But then Randy caught Anna by the arm and they both raced off for the curtained doorway that led down to the crypt below.
Sam turned on the fallen Savior. The laughter still hissed out of him, although the lack of lips made it difficult to tell if he was smiling or not.
“How do I stop this, Jim?” Sam demanded. “What do I do?”
“N-nothing,” Savior sniggered. “There’s nothing you c-can do, Sam. You… l-lost. Only G-God could sssstop it now.”
He coughed and choked on what might have been more laughter, but might equally have been sobbing. He had no eyelids, and presumably no tear ducts, so actual tears were out of the question.
“Only God could stop it now,” Sam whispered.
He reeled back a step as Kapitän Nazi’s voice rumbled around in his head.
He is… How can I put this? He is a god. Properly focused, there is nothing he cannot do.
The ground trembled. Outside, building alarms wailed. Sam’s eyes fell on the helmet lying at the bottom of the steps, the metal pinging as it cooled.
It was in his hands before he realized he’d picked it up. The empty eye sockets stared up at him as if daring him to put it on.
“N-no!” Savior spat. “It’s mine. Mine.”
Sam shook the helmet a few times, dislodging a few mangled butterflies that had been stuck to the inside. It seemed to hum in his hands as he raised it above his head, then sighed with contentment as he slipped it on.
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, exactly, but it was more than the absolutely nothing that happened. The floor continued to rumble and the walls carried on shaking. Sam looked down at his hands like he might find instructions written there, then rapped his knuckles against the side of the helmet.
“Uh, hello?” he said. “Is this thing on?”
The shape in his head wriggled briefly, then exploded. Sam screamed as his consciousness rushed outward and inward at the same time, collapsing his mind in on itself, then spitting it back out again.
Random bubbles of power appeared around him. A new lifeform burst into existence at his feet, before somehow becoming extinct again three seconds earlier. Air solidified. Smoke melted. Sam felt every part of himself become every part of everything else.
He saw himself standing in the cathedral, reality bending around him. He saw Anna and Randy dragging Calcu-Lass’s chair away from the column of fire that tore down through the crypt.
And further out he went. He saw the cathedral from above, manhole lids flipping out of the g
round around it on jets of steam. He saw the legs of the Elevated Train track wobble and shake, and the streets of Cityopolis crack.
He saw the fire, too, and recoiled from its heat. It was everywhere at once, devouring the underside of the city, chewing up through the buildings above. There was so much of it. So much.
Too much.
Kapitän Nazi’s voice came at him again.
His power borders on being unlimited. Truly unlimited. He can manipulate matter with a thought. He can create physical objects from thin air, turn people into memories, alter the very fabric of reality itself. Properly focused, there is nothing he cannot do.
Sam tried to clench his fists, but he wasn’t in his body anymore. Or rather, he was in his body, but he was simultaneously everywhere else, too, and his fists were just two of countless billions.
“Focus, Sam,” he whispered.
He saw buildings catch fire. He heard screams of panic and pain, felt the city shaking itself apart.
And then he saw the inside of a small apartment on the other side of town, and the look of terror on the face of a five-year-old boy.
His boy.
Sam felt the flames licking through the city, gobbling it up, threatening to consume everything. Everyone.
“Stop,” he said, in a voice that was felt around the world.
The flames froze, not in ice, but in time itself. With a gesture, Sam rewound them, drawing them back through the tunnels and sewers of Cityopolis, back toward the cathedral, and back up through the hole in the floor.
The column of fire returned for a moment, stretching high up into the sky. Then, with a thought from Sam, it condensed down, briefly becoming a wide round pancake of flame, then simply a wide round pancake of pancake that landed on the floor with a flomp.
“I… I did it,” Sam whispered. He saw the words emerge from his mouth as colors and shapes, and decided the time had probably come to take the helmet off.
But wait.
The voice whispered to him. Not Kapitän Nazi’s this time, but another voice, much closer in his ear.
Think what you can do, it told him. Think what we can achieve.
“W-we?” Sam stammered. The helmet felt tight against his head. He reached up to pull it off, but his arms were suddenly too heavy to move.
All this power. Sooo much power, the voice whispered. We can fix this broken world. We can put things right.
An image flashed up in Sam’s mind, unbidden. It showed Corey laughing and giggling on a swing, the chains creaking as he swung back and forth. Sam’s heart fluttered like one of Randy’s butterflies, then stopped when he saw Brian standing behind Corey, grinning as he pushed him.
Pushed his son.
That’s your boy, the voice hissed. Not his. Never his. Fix it, Sam. Fix this, then we can fix everything.
“Fix… it,” Sam said, his voice coming as a low growl. He could do it, too. He could blink Brian out of existence. Make it so he’d never existed in the first place. He could feel the power bubbling around inside him.
He could do it.
He could fix it.
He thought of all those things Brian and Corey would do together.
He thought of all those times Brian would be the one there cheering him on, not Sam.
He thought of Corey cowering in the hallway, Brian standing between him and the Magma-Mutt. Powerless, but refusing to back down. Keeping Corey safe.
“N-no,” Sam spat.
Yessssss!
With a roar, Sam jammed his hands against the underside of the helmet and pushed. It screamed inside his head as he forced it off, and as it clattered to the ground Sam’s consciousness snapped back into him like an elastic band.
The force of it knocked him off his feet and slammed him into a pew, knocking the air from his body. He recovered in time to see Savior’s fingers tighten around the helmet. The villain’s skin cracked and split as he grinned with glee.
“You f-fool!” he hissed, pulling on the mask. His eyes flared and the strength returned to his voice. “Now, you’ll pay for—”
A hole opened in the sky directly above him. A three-thousand-pound mutant bull plummeted from within it. It landed with a crunch, a splat, and a brief, agonizing scream.
For a moment, all became still. The bull’s eyes were wide and staring in a way that suggested it had seen things no bull should ever see, mutant or otherwise.
Then, a flattened black helmet rolled out from beneath the bull’s immense torso, spun a few times like a coin, and clunked onto the floor.
The bull looked at Sam.
Sam looked at the bull.
It snorted, then let out a low, slightly quizzical moo.
“Yeah, pal,” Sam wheezed. “You and me both.”
Sam, Anna, and Randy blinked in the glow of the spotlight from the helicopter hovering above the square. A thick layer of black smoke hung in the sky, blocking out the sun and turning day into near-night.
Behind them, Calcu-Lass sat astride the Beef Chief’s giant bull, wires coiling from her head like Medusa’s snakes.
“I reckon we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” said Anna, struggling to hold onto the giant inflatable penis she carried beneath one arm.
“You two, maybe,” Randy growled. “I’ll slip into the shadows like the night’s phantom.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Anna told him. She squinted up at the chopper. “What do we think? Police or press?”
“Press,” said Sam. “No way the cops would be getting this close.”
“Fair point,” Anna conceded. She looked back over her shoulder. “You OK back there, Tahira?”
Her phone bleeped.
I’m on a big bull.
Anna frowned. “I don’t know if you’re saying that like it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
The phone bleeped again. This time, instead of text, it showed an animated GIF of a man dancing. Anna vaguely recognized it as the actor, Tobey Maguire, in one of the Spider-Man movies.
“I’ll take it as a good thing,” she said, slipping the phone back into her pocket.
A voice crackled from the helicopter. “Well, well, well. You actually did it.”
“Chuck!” cried Sam. “That’s Chuck!”
“Yay!” said Anna. “Wait. Hold on.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Have we had a helicopter this whole fucking time?”
“We can talk about that later,” Chuck replied. “But first…”
The spotlight swept across the blackened grass until it found a small but growing crowd of people. Men. Women. Even some children. Sam didn’t recognize them individually, but as a group, there was no mistaking them.
“The good citizens of Cityopolis,” he said.
A cheer rang out. Just one at first, but it was followed quickly by another. One by one, the citizens began to applaud and stamp their feet in celebration.
“Superhero poses, guys,” Randy instructed, lowering himself into a dramatic squat. “Come on. Let’s give them what they want.”
Sam and Anna exchanged looks. Even the bull got in on it, ejecting a derisory snort through both nostrils.
“Yeah, we’re not going to do that,” Anna said. She waved and smiled at the crowd. “Thank you! Thanks! Appreciate it,” she called. “Much obliged. Donations of alcohol gladly accepted.”
Sam laughed at that, then slapped himself on the forehead. “Aw… no,” he said.
“What?” Anna asked. “What’s wrong?”
“We forgot the witty quip.”
“Damn it!” Anna spat. “I had one prepared, and everything. I was going to say, ‘Feel this burn, bitch!’ then probably kick him in the dick.”
“That’s good,” said Sam. He began to walk, and the others followed. “That’s really strong. I was working on something about feeling the heat, maybe. Or, like, just… ‘Savior. You’re fired.’”
“God, I’d have loved to have seen that,” Anna said. “Imagine his face.”
“Fire burning
,” said Randy. “Wait, no. Burning fire guy. Guy fire. Guy on fire.”
Anna sighed and put her arm around the Butterfly King’s shoulder. “Randy, my friend,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
“Hot man!” Randy said.
Sore, tired, and with a three-thousand-pound mutant bull called Russel plodding along behind them, the sidekicks limped on into Cityopolis, and into the welcoming cheers of its good citizens.
THE END
EXTRACT FROM THE DEATH RECORDS OF JOHN HITLER (AKA KAPITAN NAZI)
Included here is an abbreviated extract from the death records of John Hitler, detailing the names and causes of death of just some of those killed by his ‘Kapitän Nazi’ persona.
NAME AND CAUSE OF DEATH
John Carswell - Crushed by falling tank
Bobby Kennedy - Impaled on rusty spike
Jason Phillips - Impaled on rusty spikes (multiple)
AnnMarie Phillips - Eaten by Nazi wolves
Shane Phillips - Molested by Nazi wolves. Then eaten
Harrison Kyng - Steamroller
Chuck Daniel - Parasite (facial)
Tommy Donbavand - Parasite (rectal)
Alan Donoghue - Exploding duck
James Farler - Sandpapered
Jessica Farler - Beheaded (twice)
Bryce Crux - Punched through hedge
Eli Picker - Choked on own feet
Danny Peters - Launched into space
David Whitworth - Catapulted into wall
Dan Williams - Force-fed until exploded
Stephanie Fraser - Erased from time
John ‘Mojo’ Morrison - Cut down by arrows
Andrew Dobell - Drowned in paint
Dan Robinson - Cleaved into eighths
Roibeard Padraig Gelms - Choked on own name
Chris Treise - Trapped in slowly contracting cube
Izzy Treise - Trapped in slowly contracting cube
Maisie Treise - Trapped in slowly contracting cube
Bob Brews - Locked in freezer
Christopher Smith - Vaporized
The Sidekicks Initiative Page 33