Chapter 19

A Chapter by SGCool

In which things are easier than previously thought.

I looked at Meteor, a man trying to come to terms with something very hard to swallow.

“Are you alright, buddy?” I asked quietly.

“Just fine, my young ward,” Meteor said, but he was very clearly not fine.

I wasn’t sure what to say. It had never occurred to me that this all might be a lot deeper than it appeared.

“Hey look, we all make mistakes,” I said, attempting to be comforting. “Eight years was a long time ago; I’m sure you would never screw up like that now. Uh, not to say that...you know...it was a screw up, or anything...” I trailed off lamely.

Meteor didn’t say anything, but his face told me all I needed to know. An innocent person had died as a result of his actions.

Teravolt came up behind us.

“Hey guys,” she said. “I don’t really know what’s going on, and I’m super sorry to hear that Ranvier’s girl got iced and made him become even more of a psycho, but we need to get out of here while we still have the chance.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Ranvier’s going to try and lock us in here.”

Meteor stirred, his slumped silhouetted blurry in the falling water.

“Right,” he said. “There’s time for introspection later.”

He grabbed both of us around our waists, held us underneath his arms, and rocketed up the side of the pit in a mirror of Knuckle’s earlier maneuver. We hit the ground running, chasing after Ranvier, but it seemed he was already lost in the maze of hallways leading out of the arena.

“Teravolt, do you recognize any of this?” I asked.

“It all looks the same,” she said. “I was only here once.”

“I know the way out,” said Meteor. “This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve run for my life through these halls.”

“So you knew about this place all along?” I said. “And you thought the best plan was to just come here and fight Ranvier on your own?”

“Quickdraw, you are the first and only partner I’ve ever had,” Meteor replied. “If you had gotten hurt fighting my battle, I never would have forgiven myself.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man,” I said. “It’s not just your battle anymore. We’re a team. That means that we pull each other up when the other one is down. One for all and all for one; you know. Like a candy bar, nut filled with justice instead of nougat.”

Meteor sniffled loudly and wiped his eye with a massive fist.

“Come on now, you don’t have to cry,” I said.

“Tears of joy!” Meteor exclaimed. “I never should have doubted you, partner!”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” said Teravolt.

We ran on in silence for a little, and I looked over at her, waiting.

“What?” she asked, noticing me watching her.

“I was expecting you to finish that up with something sarcastic,” I explained. “You know, kind of...villainous?”

Teravolt sighed. “Yeah...but I meant it. I never had anyone to look after me like you have. DeLuge would have never come to save me if I was in Meteor’s place. I have to admit, I was wrong about you guys. You really do care.”

“Okay, you’re next on the hug list,” said Meteor.

“That might be taking it a little far,” Teravolt said.

“Too late!” Meteor said. “I already penciled you in for a three o’clock appointment!”

“You’re in for it now,” I said. “Meteor’s hugs have been known to put people into traction- ooh, wait!”

I skidded to a stop and the others followed suit, our boots squeaking on the wet floor.

We were just outside the door that Teravolt and I had passed, what seemed like ages ago. It was still blasting bassy music.

“I have to know what’s behind here,” I said.

“I don’t think we have time for that,” Teravolt said.

“I know, I know,” I reassured. “But it’s going to bother me for the rest of my life if I don’t check it out.”

“The rest of your life could be very short if we end up trapped in here,” Teravolt said.

“Five minutes,” I said. “Just five. Meteor?”

Meteor stepped forward, already charged with scarlet energy, and smashed the door down.

I took a peek inside. “It looks like a junkyard.” It was also bone dry, strangely enough. It didn’t look it even had sprinklers to begin with.

“I think it’s an office,” Teravolt said. “I can see desks underneath all that junk.”

“Or an arsenal,” Meteor poked his head in.

On second look, I could see the weapons that Meteor was talking about. Thrown into the random piles were a number of nefarious looking guns of various sizes.

“Maybe there’s a phone in here,” I said. “Actually, I see one right now.”

“Why would you need a phone now?” Teravolt was exasperated. “We’re trying to escape!”

“I don’t have any cell service down here,” I replied. “But more importantly, it means I can get a police pick up for the Syndicate. It would also reveal this place’s location to the cops. This has gotta be Ranvier’s main hideout; maybe even his only one.”

“Is that really important?” Teravolt asked.

“Well, the Syndicate will die too if they’re trapped here.”

Teravolt looked around shiftily. “...Is that such a bad thing?”

“We’re the good guys,” I said. “We can’t kill people.”

“We can also look for clues to see what Ranvier’s plan is,” said Meteor. “If we find that out, we can head him off at the pass!”

“Okay, okay!” Teravolt said. “But I don’t want to die down here, so make it quick.”

I gave her an exaggerated wink. “Quick is my middle name.”

She rolled her eyes. Meteor looked thoughtful.

“But it’s your first name,” he said. “At least, the first part of your hero name…”

“Just let me make this call,” I said.

I crossed to the phone, an older kind with a recharging base, and dug it out from the crap piled up around it. I punched in the non-emergency number for the police department.

“Nova city police department,” said a nasal female voice on the other end.

“Yes, I’d like to request a remote pick up,” I said.

“Please hold.” there was a click and muzak started playing over the phone. I sighed and tapped absentmindedly on the desk. This went on for a minute or so, and then there was the sound of the phone being picked back up. “Nova city police department, superhero acquisitions.”

“I would like to request a remote pick up,” I said, ninety percent certain that it was the same woman I had just spoken to.

“Give me your registered code name and your ident number, please.”

“Quickdraw, I.D. number five five three two five.”

“Hold please.” there was another click, followed by muzak.

“Come on,” I said. I messed with some of the junk on the desk and shuffled my feet.

The phone was picked up. “Mr. Draw, the system is showing that your license is expired.”

“That can’t be right,” I said. “I was just in a couple of days ago to renew it.”

“I’ll check again,” she said. “Hold please.”

“Wait-” I started, but the muzak was already playing. I sighed, frustrated. I was going to be hearing this music in my sleep tonight.

She picked up again. “I’m afraid that your renewal hasn’t been entered into the system yet.”

“Well, I need that remote pick up pronto,” I said, perhaps a little sharply.

“There’s no reason to be rude, Mr. Draw,” she droned. “Would you like to speak with someone in registration?”

“Yes please.” This was ridiculous. I mimed her saying ‘hold please’, and braced myself for more muzak.

It went on for much longer this time. I picked up a piece of scrap shaped vaguely like a gun and pretended to shoot things with it. Pew pew, bullseye.

The phone was picked up, dropped on the floor, fumbled for, and retrieved. “Nova city police department, hero license division.”

“Aren’t you the same woman I just spoke to?” I asked, suspicious that I was being messed with.

“No sir. If you have an existing license and would like to renew it, press one. To apply for a hero license, press two. For all other questions and concerns, press three.”

“Are...are you serious?”

“Always, sir.”

I sighed again, and pressed the ‘three’ key. This was not good for my blood pressure. The phone rang, which sounded exactly like a woman with a nasal Brooklyn accent doing a poor imitation of a phone ringing.

“Nova city police department, hero license division help desk. What is the nature of your query?”

“I don’t believe this,” I muttered. “I was in a short while ago to renew my license, but the system is showing that it’s expired and I need to have a remote pick up as soon as possible. And if you tell me to ‘hold, please’ I will come up there and be extremely unpleasant.”

“There’s no call for threats, Mr. Draw. Let me look into the matter.”

“I knew it! You are the same woman!”

“No sir, I’m not. May I please have your registered code name and license number?”

I slammed the phone down on the receiver, where it shattered into a million plastic fragments. I’m not normally one to take out anger on inanimate objects, but it had been a very long day.

Priorities. Concentrate.

I sped up in order to search the room. It was Ranvier’s office; it had to contain some kind of clue as to where he was going. Meteor and Teravolt were still standing in the doorway, surprised expressions frozen on their faces. I searched the room as fast as I could, digging through scrap metal, throwing aside wacky inventions and evil looking devices, searching through cabinets and rifling through drawers, until I finally found something that may have been useful.

It was an invoice billed to Ranvier from Eagle Scientific, a company that I had never heard of but had a very official looking emblem of a robot eagle with a test tube in one claw and a raygun in the other. Included in the invoice was a mission statement, which read:

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Eagle Scientific, L.L.C. for all your mad science needs! As you are no doubt well aware, Eagle Scientific is rapidly becoming the west coast’s leading provider of all ambiguously legal scientific and engineering endeavors. We specialize in weaponized, combat ready robotics and horrible biological abominations. If you need indestructible robots armed with weapons that defy the Geneva Convention or genetic monstrosities that laugh in the face of mother nature and/or the deity of your choice, we have what it takes to make your schemes a reality. No matter what your needs, Eagle Scientific has the expertise to cater to your most specific of whims, and our dedicated team of scientists and engineers will work with you around the clock to provide you with a product that fulfills your desires to the utmost. We sincerely hope that you not only derive intense satisfaction from your own personal arsenal, menagerie, or deadly armageddon virus, but also that we can add that certain something to make your evil desires really come alive. Thank you, and we hope that you look to Eagle Scientific for all of your future mad science needs.

Sincerely,

Dr. Amon Herscher der Finsternis M.D., CEO of Eagle Scientific LLC

I zipped to the doorway, paper in hand.

“Check it out,” I said.

Teravolt took it and the both read it silently, Meteor silently mouthing the words as he read.

“That’s a really well written mission statement,” said Teravolt.

“Yes,” I said. “But check the date on the invoice. It was sent two weeks ago.”

“Then that must be where Ranvier is headed,” said Meteor, slamming a fist into his palm.

“Look, you’ve had your five minutes, now can we please get out of here?” Teravolt said. “I’m allergic to being trapped in nefarious underground lairs.”

We ran as fast as we could back to the entrance. Well, not as fast as I could, but I felt that it was hardly fair to leave my teammates behind. When we reached the very last giant metal door standing between us and the hatchway leading to the docks, we found that it was locked very, very solidly. We had a brief moment of terrified panic until Meteor smashed the door off of its hinges, and then we nonverbally agreed that the last minute or two leading up to that had never happened, and would never be discussed.

We threw open the door of the shipping crate and emerged into the salty seaside air to find that night had fallen. It was ten p.m., so we had been down there for about nine hours.

I hurriedly searched for Eagle Scientific on my cellphone, and to my great relief was provided with a local address.

I showed the other two. “If we hurry, we can catch Ranvier there and take him out once and for all.”

“Let’s do it!” Meteor said. “Naught shall stand in the way of the three headed chimera of flaming justice!”

“Hang on,” said Teravolt. “I said I would help you rescue Meteor, Jake, and I did. I never signed on for fighting a real supervillain.”

I looked at her, flabbergasted. “You can’t just back out now!”

“Jake, this isn’t just going into the lair of the beast, this is walking right up to it and poking it in the eye with a stick! You know what Ranvier is capable of, and none of has a clue what he’s been up to since he broke out of prison!”

I took a long moment to look into her eyes, then I looked away and sighed. “Alright.”

“A-alright?” she repeated. I think she had been expecting more of a fight.

“Yeah,” I said. “You did everything that you agreed to do, and this is a lot more dangerous than just springing Meteor. I respect you, and I can’t in good conscience ask you to so something that you aren’t okay with. So if you want to go home right now, I won’t hold it against you.”

She said nothing, just bit her lip and looked a little concerned.

“But you should know this,” I continued. “Meteor and I are still going after Ranvier, with or without you. Someone has to, and what kind of heroes would we be if we didn’t at least try to stop him? And if we go to Eagle Scientific and get killed, well...better dead than a coward.”

Meteor placed a hand on my shoulder and patted it gently.

Teravolt looked conflicted. I could practically see her struggling with herself over what to do.

“Okay!” she said at last. “I’ll do it...but on one condition.”

“Anything,” I said, relieved.

“You have to promise me that I won’t have to go to jail if we live through this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No offense, but I hardly know you, Jake, and I don’t know Meteor at all. Hell, you told me that you barely even know him. Before I’m willing to take another step, I need to know that I can trust Meteor not to turn me in to the police as soon as we’re done.”

“There’s no way we would do that!” I protested.

“I need to hear it from Meteor.” Teravolt crossed her arms.

“Oh, come on-” I said, but Meteor cut in.

“It’s alright, Quickdraw. She just needs a little reassurance.” He crossed his arms as well, his suit straining against his enormous muscles. “I wasn’t always the valiant warrior of justice that you see before you,” he said, gazing dreamily off into the distance. “When I was a kid I didn’t have any powers. I was also...I was less than kosher, as they say.”

“Who says that?” Teravolt whispered to me.

“No one. That’s just the way that he talks,” I whispered back.

“I was a troubled youth,” Meteor continued. “A violent teen! A malign pubescent rebel without a cause, and a pocket full of aggression!”

“Meteor, focus,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Anyway, my mother died when I was a baby, leaving my father to raise me. If I recall correctly, he wasn’t exactly fit for the job. He was frequently between jobs, which made him bitter and angry, and that’s a bad formula when you have an eighteen month old son! Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in child rearing, but I think throwing beer bottles at your kids and locking them out of the house for days at a time is generally discouraged.”

“Meteor, why didn’t you ever tell me this before?” I asked, incredulous.

“It’s water under the bridge, chum!” Meteor exclaimed, his usual good natured self. “But it set me on a course of action that made me who I am today! I survived childhood and grew into an angry teenager. I was the kid who smashed mailboxes and threw rocks at windows. Underage drinking and partying, truancy, drugs, sex, rock and roll! Not that there’s anything wrong with sex and rock and roll, mind you,” he nudged me with his elbow. “But I’m trying to set the scene. One day, when I was eighteen, two friends and I decided to knock over an electronics store. We wanted a television, you see. We broke the store window with a baseball bat and stepped inside. We knew it would set off an alarm, but we thought we could hotfoot it away before the police showed up. Little did we know that there was a police cruiser parked not two streets away! Now, we only wanted one television and I was the strongest guy there, so we agreed that I would carry it. I was actually stepping out onto the sidewalk, television in hands, when the Nova City PD drove up. My friends, being unencumbered, managed to get away, but I only made it about half a block before they tackled me. Later, at the trial, I guess the judge took pity on me because she offered me an ultimatum. I could do a year or two of prison time for petty theft and have a mark on my record, or I could walk if I enrolled in the military with the promise that I would pay for the damage I had done to the store and for the tv. And it was an expensive tv!” he laughed at that, fists on his hips. “So naturally, I took the second option. I thought I could spend some time in boot camp and then escape and make a life somewhere else. Unbeknownst to me, this was on the eve of our invasion of Kuravia, better known as Operation Glass Beetle!”

I raised my eyebrows. Kuravia was a relatively small nation somewhere in the vicinity of Egypt. Around twenty years ago, the Kuravian military leader and political despot Sil Narraam decided it was time to make a name for himself by talking about his stockpile of weaponry, and mentioning what a shame it would if some of that weaponry were to be delivered at high velocity to Kuravia’s neighboring countries. The word ‘assimilation’ was thrown around a couple of times, and the words ‘pay tribute’ even more. It was like a large scale protection racket. Naturally, the U.N. wasn’t exactly thrilled. Peace talks failed, negotiation failed even harder. Kuravia’s leader was adamant; payment, or destruction. A secret task force was put together, the origin of whom no country would take responsibility for, to give Narraam the axe. Literally. This was only made public because they failed. Narraam was craftier than anyone figured. Some of the task force were killed outright, and the rest were taken hostage. Thus began Operation Glass Beetle: aka Operation Invade Kuravia And Take Back The Hostages No Matter The Cost. And of course, the fact that Kuravia was smack on top of one of the world’s biggest known oil deposits had absolutely nothing to do with it; at least nothing a little friendly occupation couldn’t fix.

Everyone knew it would be no easy task: the Kuravian military were famous for the brutal methods and tactical adeptness, not to mention their zealotry to the cause. That wasn’t even beginning to mention the fact that obtaining a gun in Kuravia was as easy as buying a pack of gum at the local supermarket, so naturally everyone and their granny had a few, and another few saved for a rainy day.

“Even less beknownst to me than that famous military skirmish,” Meteor was just hitting his storytelling stride. He was known to talk for hours when he got like this but I didn’t care, I was fascinated. “Was how difficult it would be to escape an army boot camp. Namely, it was impossible! Especially with an indestructible GPS anklet locked onto my person! So I had barely completed my training and was just starting to make my payments when the sergeant shows up at my unit’s living quarters, number 38, with an important message. ‘Congratulations, lads and lassies!’, he said, his shaved head gleaming like a shiny new quarter, ‘You’ve been selected for deployment! Pack your bags and grab your rifles, because you’re going to Kuravia!’. So fast forward a few weeks and there we find ourselves, in a camp a few miles from Sil Narraam’s personal citadel. We were full of bravado; all talking about how many baddies we were going to bag, how many notches on our rifles we would get, how much honor and glory awaited us. We were so inexperienced, though, that if you had cut us open we would have been nothing but green inside. And of course, none of us expected a night raid.” Here Meteor’s tone grew serious, and his jolly expression turned to one of solemnitude. “We woke up to shouting and gunfire. ‘Battle stations! Regroup! Don’t let them surround you!’. I was terrified, to say the least, but I hadn’t come this far just to hide under my cot. I grabbed my rifle and ran outside, and my eyes beheld nothing less than pure madness! Everywhere I looked, there were people fighting. Ducking behind rocks and shooting at each other, running and shooting at each other, trying to disembowel each other...why, I’m sure I even saw one guy shooting with a knife! Sheer madness. I heard a shriek particularly close to me and looked over to my right, and there was a big guy with an even bigger knife. One of those ones with an angle in the middle, like a kukri. He was coming right at me. I steeled my nerves, raised my rifle, and froze completely. I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I had never actually hurt another person, you know, not really. Thinking back on it, I probably didn’t even take the safety off. So this guy’s getting closer with every second, and he’s got that knife raised, and I’m stuck to the spot. I couldn’t even make a noise as he threw the knife, and I felt it in slow motion as it buried itself in the side of my stomach. It was the worst pain I had ever felt; even worse than one day when my dad got a lucky shot and pegged me in the head with a bottle of whiskey. I fell backwards onto the sand and was convinced that the curtain was about to draw to a close on the short, unpleasant drama of my life. Right as I made peace with anything that happened to be out there in the universe, there was a blinding flash of red light and the muffled thump of something heavy hitting the sand. I looked up, and there he was.” There were stars in Meteor’s eyes; his face a picture of stoicness.

“Who?” Teravolt asked.

“Powercore,” said Meteor.

For the third time since Meteor started talking, I was astonished. “THE Powercore?”

“The very same,” Meteor said.

For those of you listening in at home, let me fill you in here. I’ve talked often enough about ‘big league’ superheroes, and I’m sure you know what I mean by that. World class men and women who take on world class problems. Some guy in the jungles of Colombia has an actual death ray and is going to vaporize France unless he gets ten billion euros in a swiss bank account? That’s big league. An army of fish people emerge from the depths of the ocean and demand that the nations of the world bow down to them and stop eating sushi? Big league. A disgruntled half woman half science experiment is going to blow up the moon because THAT will show the U.N. she means business? You guessed it: big league. Now, there are various teams composed of the world’s most powerful metahumans, like the Edge Wizards, and the Apocalypse Patrol, and Vulcan Might, but none of them are more famous or more powerful than the Hyperion Champions; the top of the top when it comes to sheer stopping power. They solve the problems that literally no one else in the world can handle, and are so instrumental in keeping the global peace that they have a battle station on the moon that they use to monitor the world. The Hyperion Champions are composed of the ultimate good guys, guys like Radion and the Atomic Mollusc and Cortex, who is actually not a guy but a woman, even if she is totally bald with a head the size of a beach ball. The leader of the Champions is the big guy himself, Powercore. He’s the epitome of incorruptibility and hard hitting justice, with all the standard powers that you would expect to come with that. Flight, eye beams, and a punch that shatters concrete and vaporizes steel. On top of that, he can take a hit from an anti-aircraft missile and keep on ticking. All in all, a guy that you never, ever want to piss off.

“What was Powercore doing in Kuravia?” I asked, having picked my jaw up off of the floor.

“I’m not entirely certain, but I think he wanted to resolve the conflict,” Meteor said. “I’m sure he was well aware of how badly things were going and wanted to keep the peace. What I do know for sure is that if he hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. The man himself picked me up, flew me to a safe place away from the fighting, and put me down sound as a baby in its crib. I don’t remember much about it, because internal hemorrhaging will do that to you, but when I woke up three days later in the hospital, I felt like a million bucks. Suddenly, I was tough as nails, and I had this thing with the red energy. I’ll never forget how when I emptied my bladder after waking up, I nearly blew up the toilet!” He laughed a deep belly laugh. “I’m sure you didn’t need to know that. The point is, suddenly I was powerful. I could punch through walls like paper, and fight like a demon, and jump like one of those whatdoyacallems, the African thing with antlers that can jump really high.”

“Springbok?” I volunteered.

“That’s the one,” said Meteor. “Cute little things, too! But back to the story. I was discharged from the hospital and immediately left the army. They wanted to keep me, to train me as part of a special unit, but I realized something.”

“What?” Teravolt said.

“I realized, finally, that I had been wasting my life,” Meteor expounded. “I had been rebelling against nothing as a kid, and the military only wanted to use me as a weapon. I had to be somewhere that really needed me, somewhere I could do good on my own terms. So I came here. Nova city, population of twenty five million and growing by the minute! I thought, if I can’t make a name for myself here, then I can’t do it anywhere. And that’s pretty much the end of it, my partner and partnerette. I’ve spent every day since the moment I arrived here crafting myself into a hammer of righteousness! And I’ll be darned if the forces of evil are going to triumph over the three of us, the monkey wrench of freedom and the power drill of might! We’re gonna march right up to society’s front door and say hey, buster brown, your house is in a pretty sorry state of affairs, and people are starting to complain! They even wrote snide letters to the HOA! And there’s no better people to fix it than us, your friendly neighborhood handymen! We’re gonna trim your lawn, and re-shingle your roof, and fix that front door, and we’re even going to mend that one faucet in the bathroom that makes an irritating squeaky noise when you turn the hot water on even though you just had a new fixture installed last year! And by god, we’re gonna do such a good job that by the time we’re done, no one will even know it was the same house! Now who’s with me?!”

“One question,” said Teravolt, raising her hand.

“Yes?” Meteor asked.

“Can I be the power drill of might?” asked Teravolt.

“Yes!” Meteor exclaimed.

“Then I’m in,” Teravolt said.

“Wait a minute,” I protested. “You’ve never even told me that story. All it took is for her to ask firmly?”

“Needs must, my indignant ally!” Meteor said. “But now, we’ve got big fish to fry...a particularly dandy fish in a red suit!”

I grumbled, but dropped it. Meteor and I were going to have a long talk about trust.

“Ooh!” said Teravolt excitedly. “We should have a cool team name!”

I looked at her. “I don’t think this is really the time-”

“Yeah, like the Mighty Titans, or the Unstoppables!” she went on.

“That’s…” I rubbed my sore ribs. “That’s actually not bad. But I don’t think that we need a team name.”