Crossover Earth '98

by Scott Bennie

Tampa is a victim of the American dream. Too much success. Too much money. Too many people trying to improve things, trying to improve their lives, and spending a lot of money doing a piss-poor job of it. See those bulldozers over there? They’re a plague.. They demolish anything that doesn't meet with their sanguine, cowardly standards, and leave in its place generic, sanitized crap. That's the great American tragedy of the latter half of the 20th Century, the loss of character, the fear of character, the elevation of whitebread crap into perfection.

I think too much. It’s hard to control. It’s one of the problems you face when your brain is constantly drenched in customized bio-chemicals. You perceive the world in sharper tones. People fear me because of my temper and my violence, and yeah, they got a point. But anyone can kill these days, regardless of superpowers, genetic background, or rippling pectorals. Some kid in Oregon just killed a whole lot of his classmates. I suppose it's hypocritical for me to be shocked. When I was a kid, I killed two people. The first was when I was ten, in a schoolyard fight against four kids, when I broke the neck of the ringleader of a gang of bullies. The second was when I was 14, in the ring, during a boxing match. I didn't mean to kill either of them. I regret the second death: Francis Hale, a gutsy kid with a bit too much Irish swagger. I don't regret the first. He was what they used to refer to as "a bad seed", and he’d have lived a mean, hurtful life.

The sort of life that leads to someone in a cropduster dropping poison gas on Disneyland, or a kid bringing an AK-47 to school so he can send his classmates and teachers to the grave. It makes you think, turns your mind on to things that can hurt even a superman, even one who says "whatever" to the world most of the time.

You think of a lot of weird things when your homecoming turns bad, especially when you discover your favorite gym's been turned into a strip mall.

A city bus passes by, its exhaust as clean as a well mowed cemetery, followed by a pair of dirty white minivans. The sky is bright; so bright it's almost white. The heat is a humid, uncomfortable sweathouse heat, the sort that makes you horny even when the girls are wearing all their clothes instead of practically nothing. A well built Latino kid rollerblades past me, I can feel his eye on me as the skates scrape against the asphalt. Its a mixed look, a bit of a challenge, but also a lot of respect for someone who's higher than he is in the muscle club.

I'm not in my traditional digs. I'm getting a little tired of the biker look. I'm in white shorts, an open dress shirt, and I’m wearing shades. My blond hair is starting to grow beyond a brush cut, and I'm thinking about getting some of the tattoos removed. I get easily bored, even with myself.

I walk by several USA Today stands. Looks like the president gets horny too. I pass up the opportunity to buy it; it's twice the cost of a good local paper and doesn't tell you a damn thing in detail. It’s a testament to the laziness of our times, of a culture of indifference that’s misinformed by a sub-culture of indifference.

I finally find something that resembles a rundown part of town. It’s pretty heavily Hispanic, which I like; they have an energy and a lack of self-importance that appeals to me. It’s also gang turf, and that appeals to me too; more opportunities to have fun and keep it legal. A blond musclehead, as Caucasian as the Louisiana Republican party, it’s gotta be some sort of territorial challenge.

But this is Tampa, not Juarez, and even the worst places in Tampa are pretty civil. Eventually, I give up looking for trouble and find a gym in the heart of town. The nostalgia bug’s hit me as hard as last year’s Sydney flu.

It’s exclusively Hispanic, and I’m a turf poacher. Dirty looks and Spanish sneers greet me. Never learned the language that well. I sit on a bench, pull down my pants to reveal a pair of shorts, peel off my shirt, put on a pair of boxing gloves and strap them on.

A lot of eyes are on me. They probably don’t know my name; my hair’s a little longer than people are used to seeing on me, and I don’t hear my name spoken with a local accent. So I perform, anonymously, and hope one of these Cubans has enough machismo in their balls to get in my face.

Nobody does. They just look at me, hope the lion who wandered into their grazing land goes away before he starts poaching. So I shower off the sweat and leave. Nobody touches my gear.

About a few blocks from the gym, I’m finally intercepted. I recognize the shoulder pads, the mock medieval helmet and armor, and swashbuckling red cape. It’s Gallant, currently Tampa’s only costumed protector. He’s on a descent arc, leaning forward a bit too far forward - I can tell it’s not going to be a perfect landing - and his cape is overhead and billowing forward. I suppress an urge to trip him and wait to see if the cape lands over his face. He pulls it behind him at the last minute.

"Battle, what the hell you doin’ back here?"

I start walking away. "Didn’t your mom tell you to look at someone when they’re talking to you, boy!" He yells in a thick Southern drawl that fails to be as impressive as a marine corps sergeant.

I keep walking, steering toward an alley. He’s chasing me. I try to keep my posture from being erect. "I won’t have you making trouble in my city, boy!"

I enter the alley, still refusing to notice him.

"Did you hear me, boy?"

When we’re out of easy street sighting range, I pivot suddenly, and my hand goes around his throat. "Yeah, I heard you, Gal."

He’s squirming wildly. He’s pretty strong too. But I caught him off guard, and I’ve got a good force field brace. The grip holds.

"You may have beaten me when I was fourteen, but I’m six years older, five inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier, and I know how to use my powers, so if you pull the Southern white trash act on me one more time, you’re gonna need a tracheotomy. "

"I ain’t afraid of yew!" Gallant croaks.

"The last meta you fought was eight months ago, and you could barely handle a loser like the Triggerman. I’ve been fighting the toughest mothers on the planet for the last year."

"I don’t want trouble in my city," he repeats.

You got to admire an idiot who’ll pull out the old middle finger at a time like this. I let go of the hold.

He takes a deep breath. Behind his cowl, his eyes are burning. "You’re trouble, Mark Battle. You should change your name to Mark Trouble."

I suppress an urge to smirk. "This is my city too."

"You were a mean little bastard six years ago, and you haven’t changed. Tampa’s a clean city. I don’t want troublemakers here."

"Tough." I spit back. He’s getting ready to fight. Most of me wants to do this. But if there’s trouble, it’s better to avoid it. At least on home ground. It’ll keep the local media from bugging mom more than usual.

"You push it, and I’ll file a complaint, Chandler!"

Gallant holds still. It takes a few seconds for the lie center of the brain to start working when it’s caught off guard. "I - I don’t know what you’re…"

"Shove it ‘Chris’. I figured out who you were six years ago. I may be a troublemaker, but I’m a real smart troublemaker. I’m also a troublemaker who never hid my face behind a mask. Now are you going to back off?"

Gallant was obviously having a bad day. He says nothing, but gives me a world-class killer stare.

"Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna tell. If only because your dad worked his costumed butt off to protect this city for ten years, and the last thing he deserves is for some costumed scumbag to kill him while he’s in Year Seven of his coma just because his son’s secret ID’s been exposed. He is still comatose, isn’t he?"

Now Gallant can’t speak. Part shock. Part rage. I’ll just sit here, and let him take a swing at me. Should be any second now. Five, four, three…

Gallant launches a haymaker that sends me hurtling into a garbage bin. It’s not a bad punch, but I bet he’ll yell at me rather than follow it up.

"How dare you, boy! You little maggot!"

Yeah, Gallant always did have marine wash-out stamped all over him…

"Shut up…" I shake my head.

"Don’t you tell me to shut up, you son of a stinking bitch!" Man, is he ever hyperventilating. I lock eyes with him and wait a few seconds.

"Gallant, you’re wasting my time and your breath." I snap. "So either fight me, or leave me alone."

"There’s too many people around here." Gallant notes. That’s not exactly true, but probably Gallant doesn’t want to lose in public. "You know where Caledesi Island is? Winston House?"

"Yeah. When you want to do it?"

"Seven-thirty. This evening." Gallant’s temper is beginning to cool; I can already some doubt in his eyes. Not that it matters to me.

"You got a date. You bring the condoms." I say with a smile.

Gallant gives a frustrated snarl and flies away, twisting a little too much on the takeoff. I think about the fight. Maybe I’ll show up. I haven’t been doing that well in fights lately; maybe an easy victory is just what I need right now. It’s symbolic of my life right now that I need it. But that fight’s nine hours away. It’s time to go home.

Home is a house in the suburbs. A cluster of single story homes in the north part of Carrollwood, about eight miles north of downtown Tampa, away from the water, flat white roofs, a sea of stucco walls, ugly screen doors, and air conditioners sticking out of windows like a pack of mooners’ bare asses. The streets are clean, worn, and quiet at the mid-morning. It’s a middle class neighborhood, but an aging middle class. There aren’t many families here anymore. More cats than dogs in this neighborhood. It’s populated with tired people in their late 40s and 50s who made their money years ago and are still recuperating from the long hours they put in making it.

I notice Ronny Delaney mowing her lawn as I come driving by. When I get out of the car, I nod to her, and she nods back curtly. We never got along that well, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone to know that I was never particularly popular with the neighbors. There are two cars in the driveway, one is mom’s Saturn, the other is a black sedan with Virginia plates. I scowl at it.

The door handle sticks a bit - I need to oil it - but there’s something a lot more annoying than that waiting for me inside. Mom’s here, but so is an unwanted visitor.

"Hi mom. Hi fascist." I say to the intruder. "Get the hell out of my house."

Quartz agent Reynolds is sitting back in my favorite chair, licking his lanky chops and glaring at me.

"Not this time," he says. "You’ve done it now, Battle. You were spotted in Jersey in an underground martial arts tournament."

"I was?" I feign surprise. "I don’t know who told you that crap. It was in a warehouse, above ground."

"I heard you had sex with an assassin!" Reynolds shouts.

"She said she was an alien. I figured I’d be hospitable and welcome her to the planet." I laugh.

Reynolds looks at mom. "He’s of legal age, Mr. Reynolds," she shrugs.

"Look Reynolds, I figured it was a good way to get some info on some possible targets. Trying to bust them would just drive them further underground. You want to bust me for it, go ahead. But it’d be better to leave them alone and hope they attract bigger fish next year."

Reynolds shakes his head. "Fine, you talk about what you saw, you walk, for now."

This really pisses me off. But I don’t got much of a choice. I sit down with a huff.

"What can you tell us about Kayli?"

"Man, is she hot. A tough fighter too. Able to kick your fascist butt, and probably that of your whole damn platoon, She did something - almost a ritual - that boosted her agility. She also shouted some sort of power word and generated a huge ball of energy - knocked me cold. She thinks she’s an extraterrestrial, calls herself a Saiyan. Great endurance, real aggressive, prehensile tail. And really, really great endurance."

"Keep it in your pants, Battle. What do you think she really is?" Reynolds asks.

"I haven’t a clue." I respond. "She’s awfully exotic for genetic engineering, though I suppose an engineer with a weird fetish might have designed her that way. She could also be some sort of Far Eastern monkey demon - that would explain the kiai shout blast - but she didn’t… feel… magical. And I spent a lot of time feeling…"

"Yeah right."

"She’s probably a second or third generation freak mutation. The tail could just be a random genetic spurt. Whoever supplied her with the alien delusion’s pretty good. It’s very extensive, and she believes it completely."

"Southwest Mafia hire a good hypnotist?" Reynolds suggests.

"Possibly. I’m just surprised we didn’t hear about her until six months ago. I figure anyone with those sorts of genetic features wouldn’t hide very well. There was some weird stuff that happened in the Southwest just before she was first seen. If I get a chance I’ll check it out."

"Anything else?"

"She’s arrogant. And hardened. There’s not much in the way of compassion in her. She was hanging around some big cowboy named Mark something. I suppose if there really are extraterrestrials that she could be one. But I can’t imagine anyone assuming she’s an alien on sight. I wish I’d thought about getting a sample that I could have used to analyze her DNA. I feel like an idiot for not thinking about it." I laugh. "That’s the problem about getting horny. You forget about the little things."

"She give you any sort of a contact number?"

"Nope." I explain truthfully. "She wasn’t a Rhodes scholar, but she ain’t that stupid."

"What about the tournament organizer?"

"Some kung fu guy who called himself Jackson Lee. He seemed pretty clean. He kept strict rules on combat, and wasn’t running any sideline operations. He stayed out of the gambling as far as I could tell, and wasn’t involved in drugs. Just a guy who wanted a good fight."

"Anyone else there of note?"

"Just some normals. And a guy called the Crimson Cloak. And someone else with a great pair of legs who called herself Ying Yang Woman. And there was a kid, at least I think it was a teenager, who called himself Martial Blade."

"Who were some of these normals?"

"I ain’t McCarthying for you, Reynolds. These folks were private citizens who had agreed to combat under strict rules, like a boxing club or any number of martial arts studios. They don’t deserve to be harassed."

"The difference is that a boxing match is regulated." Reynolds spits.

"No, the difference is that it isn’t regulated by a government agency. I knew there was something I liked about it." I pause. "Kayli was the only criminal suspect I recognized there. Oh yeah, and that one guy who got fingered in the Wayward case until his perfect alibi showed up. Marquand."

Reynolds nods and makes a mental note of the name.

"There was some talk about a tourney next year." I conclude. "That’s pretty much it.

"You ever hear from Cronos?" Reynolds asks.

"You know I haven’t, I know you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that I hadn’t." I snort. "You’re here as mom’s guest, and not a welcome one. Bother her again, and somebody’s gonna have to put me in jail."

"Mark…" Mom has been watching the exchange closely, taking everything in, commenting on nothing.

"I’ll be getting back to you." Reynolds says, getting up. "Count on it, Battle. You’re a criminal. You associate with criminals. And one day, I’m gonna collar you all, drag your asses into jail and throw away the key. Or perhaps we can arrange for you to take a ride on Old Sparky."

"Go screw a sheep." I go to the front door and open it. "Five seconds. Start running."

Reynolds takes his weasely little neo-Gestapo face and strides out the door. From the smile he’s wearing, he thinks he won something. But I didn’t tell him nothing he didn’t know already.

"I need to take a shower. A long shower." I tell mom.

Mom stops me with a glance. I bend over slightly, and receive a kiss on the cheek. "Welcome home."

"They been bothering you a lot, ma?" I ask.

"Mostly the press. I’ve learned a lot about property law in the last six months. It’d be easier if you’d come back a little more often and busted them now and again. How’s that lawsuit?"

"It’s been dropped. I talked to an OmegaCorp exec last night. They actually want me to freelance for them. Either it’s a trap or they think I’m hired muscle. But they paid a kill fee to the lawyers - I think Mastiff’s last attack is making the public a bit more sympathetic to anyone who’s trying to take him out - so I’m off the hook there."

"What d’you mean, trap?"

"There’s a lot going on out there. OmegaCorp made Mastiff. Some guy named Dr. Freund is using his attacks as a way to test his creations’ effectiveness."

"So you’re trying to find out how deep it goes?" I nod. "You’re putting yourself in the line of fire." Mom was analyzing the situation, "Have you talked to Luis? You could use a backup."

"Luis isn’t the sort of guy who’d do well in this situation. I need someone sneakier."

"That’s an excuse. You’re just trying to avoid talking to him." Mom accuses.

"When he needs me, I’ll be there." I reply. It’s odd how uncomfortable it gets when I have to talk about Chariot. I remember seeing him lying on the ground, shredded by our fight against Skein. It’s not something I care to remember.

"He’s been in a wheelchair for months. His home’s been burned down. You don’t think he needs you now?"

Picturing Chariot’s current situation is painful. I stare into space for seconds. "No." I finally say. "He’s better off winning this fight on his own. I know him, ma. I could help him and make it easier for him. But it’d take him a lot longer to get on his feet, and I’d have to do things for which he’d never forgive me."

"Stupid pride, the both of you." Mom shakes her head and turns on the television set.

Mom turned past CNN, which was probably a mistake. The "Live" sign is flashing, and there were ambulances and police cars milling around a building.

"Apocalypse Now, again?" Mom mutters. "Why in God’s name doesn’t somebody do something about them!"

Mom’s remark hits deep in me - there’s a lot to worry about in the world, once you start getting proactive - but I’m too busy watching the crisis. It’s happening in Atlanta. Some kid named Porcupain had killed his parents yesterday, and holed himself at a high school. A SWAT team had put the school under siege; apparently, Porcupain had just killed a couple of teachers and the school’s police liason, a Richard Westlake.

"Oh, it’s that Porcupain boy." Mom reassesses the situation.

I listen to the commentators explain what they know about him, Porcupain is a thirteen year old male Caucasian, Raphael "Rafe" Jones. Three weeks ago, he developed a Class II mutation, quills grew all over his body. Apparently he learned how to throw them around, and first started using them to settle old scores. When his parents tried to talk sense into him, he completely lost it and killed them.

"Sounds like child abuse?" I wonder.

Mom’s been following this case longer than me. "Well, everyone who knew the parents said no. His father was a minister."

"That don’t mean nothing." I say.

"The neighbors said the house was pretty quiet. The school counselor said that he never showed any signs of abuse."

I look back at mom. There had been a lot of times in my life when I had lost it, when my temper had gone completely out of control. I can’t tell you how much furniture I broke. But I’d never hurt mom, and I’d always, even when I was angry and physical, held back that part of myself that could have injured her. We’d argued so many times, but I’d never taken a swing at her. Not once.

I take a deep breath and reach for my cellphone. "Should be able to catch a quick tram back to Atlanta. I’ll see if the bounty on this brat’ll pay for the trip."

"Just go, Mark."

I pause for a moment. Mom looks at me hard. "It needs to be done. So do it. Screw the money."

"I can’t screw the money." I say.

"Mark, there’s more to life than dollar signs."

"You’re nuts, you know that?" I shake my head with a smile.

"That explains a lot about you." Mom shoots back. "Except why you never come home."

"Maybe I don’t want to spend my time around nutcases." I laugh and turn serious. "I’ve been busy saving the world, ma. It’s hard to find time to come back."

"That’s an excuse and you know it, Mark. Can the bull." Mom takes the cell phone from my hand. I get to my feet and start pacing.

"I just get caught up in things. Coming here means that I have to settle down and think. It’s a lot easier to just keep pressing ahead and do stuff than to take a step back and realize just what’s been happening to you."

"Like ‘I slept with an alien’?" Mom’s question is pretty blunt.

"God, that makes my life sound like Jerry Springer."

"That’s because your life is something for Jerry Springer." Mom responds. "And mine too. It always has been. First, it was ‘I slept with a supersoldier’. Then it was ‘I raised a psychotic mutant kid’. And then it was ‘the government took my psychotic mutant kid away from me and gave him to a superhero’."

"And now?"

"Now it’s ‘I’m damn proud of my psychotic supersoldier mutant kid’." Mom shakes her head. "But it isn’t over Mark. We’ve both hurt each other and we’ve both hurt other people, and we’re going to have to live with it."

"Everybody’s like that." I say.

Mom nods. "You know Mark, we’re all Jerry Springer material somewhere. More than we think we are. But I don’t care. What I care about is whether you try to do the right things for the right reasons. If you do that, then you can spend as much time away from me as you want."

"The right thing." I spit and start to rant. "I watch Chariot get turned into a vegetable in front of my face. Then I learn there’s a conspiracy of genetic engineers breeding psychotics, and there’s also another conspiracy of right wing nutcases who want to kill anyone who’s ever been genetically engineered, That’s not to mention Apocalypse Now killing women and children, or that new nutcase called the Goblin King’s holding massacres, or Dr. Cronos out there doing God knows what, and I’m getting visions of the end of the whole damn world. And then Mastiff kicks my butt, along with a would-be alien warrior princess and a guy who’s more effeminate than Leonardo DiCaprio!"

Mom’s watching me thoughtfully, but says nothing. Probably having trouble keeping up.

"And then I have to read crap in the media about the few supers who are trying to do their job, getting ragged on like some slime like Mike Alfil and people like him who wouldn’t care if the world lives or dies, as long as they get their moment of self-importance! And the hard part is that they’re almost right. The supers aren’t doing their job right now. Do you think I want to risk my life against Skein or Mastiff if I didn’t have to? Do you think it’s only the money? I don’t want to be a superhero, ma!"

I can’t take it. A lamp goes flying into a wall.

"And now I come home! First, I have Gallant doing a bad impersonation of a cop shakedown on me, and then I arrive home to find the government’s arch-fascist trying to put the squeeze on my mother! And you want to talk about the ‘right thing’? I don’t know if think there is any such thing as the ‘right thing’ anymore. Just a list of wrong things in descending order of wrongness."

Mom shakes her head. "You ever look at a sunrise over Tampa Bay when there’s a thin line of low clouds, and the sky’s the color of a soft rose?

"Yeah." I say.

"What in hell is wrong about that?"

The response cuts me dead in my tracks.

"Mark." Mom says. "You’re already a damn good superhero. The clothes are different, the attitude’s a little off, but there isn’t a lot of difference between you and Luis and deep down you know it."

"More difference than you might think." I mutter.

"Sometimes it takes a long time for the things we tell you to sink in, and sometimes we don’t notice when it does. I wish I could say something that would make you happier, but that’s not my job anymore. It’s yours. You spent most of your life trying to figure out who and what you are. Stop figuring out what you are, and just be it."

"Since when did you turn into Yoda?" I can almost laugh again.

"About time you noticed." Mom replies sardonically.

Mom picks up pieces of dead lamp without comment, then hands me the cellphone again. She sits down to watch television as I start to dial the number.

It’s a two and half hour car and hypertram ride to Atlanta. I take my laptop with me, keeping an eye on CNN and local station news coverage through the tram’s satellite link, though at $35/hour uplink cost, it’s something I wish I didn’t need. I take care of paperwork along the way. I downlink the info into the laptop, sign it, and it’s done. A fax comes through a few minutes later - amazing some of the features these trams have, trying to compete for business traffic. The bounty’s at $5000 on the kid, not bad for one-time trouble - he really pissed off the locals quick. But there’s been a fair bit of press about teenage supervillains in the last year, and the hysteria levels are probably higher than they should be. It makes for a better payday, so I can’t complain.

The news is dead, so I turn to the police psych profile. The shrinks state the obvious: he’s on a power rush. He’s decided to throw away his morals and see how far it gets him. He was never a popular kid with his class - no surprise there - and he’s suddenly realized that he can get back at everyone who’s hurt him except himself. I can almost sympathize.

I arrive in Atlanta with a valet waiting with a rental car. It’s a showy and expensive arrangement, but I want to get on the road ASAP. It’s a more modern car than I’m used to, a ‘98 Impala, and there are too many computers for my taste. I don’t want to feel like I’m a damn shuttlecraft pilot. But the computer navigation is especially useful at a time like this.

Porcupain’s not a hard kid to find. The police have tracked him to a liquor store on the east side of Atlanta. There’s another SWAT team starting to assemble around the place, and a dead liquor store clerk inside. The kid isn’t talking. The captain, a twelve year veteran named Buzz Jenkins, looks real pissed. Nobody’s ever too happy to see me, especially guys who think I’m taking over their job. Because, of course, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’d like to get into the thick of this problem quick. The hypertram ride and the preparations just built up the rush. I walk straight through the police line.

"What do you think you’re doing?" Jenkins shouts.

I throw him my paperwork. "Read it. Then widen the perimeter. Keep out of my way."

Jenkins’s eyes almost burst out of their sockets. SWAT Captains, you gotta love ‘em.

The store is a mess. Broken bottles of beer and rum, shattered spirits. It’s an alcoholic’s nightmare, Me, I don’t care. My force field’s glowing bright, I figure I’d advertise myself as the angel of bad ass justice, come to take this two-bit homicidal brat and carry him away to judgment.

That’s when the shooting starts. Three quills come flying at me. I don’t try to dodge. I figure they’ll bounce off the force field, the way bullets do.

They don’t. I have a big gash in my shoulder, and a smaller one in my chest.

"Hey, I told you guys not to mess with Porcupain!" the kid has gotten off the floor, where he’d been gulping Jack Daniels. He’s referring to himself in the third person, his costumed name. That’s so comic book it makes me want to puke.

I pry out the quills with my force field, then decide to take a gamble. "Lucky shot." I snort.

"Lucky shot, my ass." Porcupain smilesd.

I put my hands on my vest, expose my chest, and stand still. "Try it again, retard." I taunt him.

He doesn’t like that insult. I figured he wouldn’t. I eye his move carefully; one mistake, and I’ll be a pincushion. He gives a battle cry - I think he’s shouting his name - and he lets loose a volley of about twenty sharp quills at me. I create a force field stream to intercept the bolts, and then guide them downwards sharply so they impale into the ground, quivering about a foot away from my feet. I laugh.

"Loser." I sneer.

The expression on Porcupain’s face is a mix of a shock and fury. He lets loose another volley. This time I send them into the ceiling.

"Nice move, Porky. Ugly little pinhead."

The kid’s close to completely losing it. Another volley gets launched. He doesn’t learn. If he was smart, he’d get close and not give me time to calculate the trajectory. Instead, he’s intimidated, taking a few steps back, actually helping me. This time, just to practice the force field control trick, I send them in a jetstream motion, around my body, and then let them resume their original course.

"I’m giving you one chance, Porkball." I tell him. "Get on your stomach and don’t move. You’re under arrest."

I knew Porky wouldn’t take it. He sends out another volley. This time, I try something different. This time, I catch them in midstream, whirl them around me, and send them right back at Porky.

Porcupain screams as three of his quills lodge themselves deeply into his flesh. I can see blood, and the look of shock that even his drunken stupor can’t help but acknowledge.

"I gave you a chance. More than you deserve." I snap. I advance, grab Porcupain in a force field, and abruptly, he starts flying around the room, banging hard into each wall, finally thudding on the floor. He shoots out quills, wildly, while he’s flying - I still haven’t taken the fight out of the kid - but he’s not even close to hitting me.

I bang him on the floor again. The look of disorientation on his face is the best thing I’ve seen all day. "So you got powers. You think you’re tough. Let’s see how tough you really are."

Porcupain gets to his feet, wobbly but defiant. I smile. This is going to be fun. I saturate his body with a force field. I want it to soak into every pour of his skin. Then, slowly, painfully as I can make it, I pull out all his quills at once with a single motion.

The kid’s now naked - barely out of puberty - and is writhing on the floor, screaming in agony. He’s bleeding, though probably not too bad. He’s no longer a threat. But that’s not enough for me, not today. Five people are dead because of this little puke. Some sort of justice needs to be served. And I don’t want this kid becoming the next teenage supervillain, the next Vivian.

I grab him by the head, and drag him outside. The SWAT team’s beginning to move - they think it’s over. But it ain’t. I wave them back. I move over to a fire hydrant, and kick it open. Water starts pouring out. I grab his head, dunk it into the stream.

Porcupain’s struggling, completely in my control. I pull him out after five seconds. "Still think having powers is fun?" I sneer, and I push him back in.

Five seconds later, I pull him out. "P-please!" he finally begins to stammer.

"Please? What the Hell’d your parents say? Did they say please?" I snap. I focus on a mental image of my mom, imagine if she’d been impaled and killed. For all the problems we had growing up, for all the chemicals in my system that make me go nuts… Never. And this kid was probably going to get some lawyer who’d use his powers as an excuse to justify what he did.

I dunk the head back in, put a force field around it to contain the water, and seal it.

I count to six and let it loose. The water splashes on the ground. The kid coughs and stammers. "Please…"

"Say, ‘I’m sorry mom’." I shout.

"I’m s-sorry mom."

"Not loud enough." I snap, putting the head back in. There’s a bit of struggle, and when he starts to go limp, I pull him out. "Say it!"

"I’m sorry, Mom!" he shouts, loudly.

I dunk him back in again, pull him out after a count of four. "I’m sorry, Dad. Say it!"

"I’m sorry, Dad!" he shouts.

I dunk him again. This was fun. I count to four again, then pull him free.

"I’m sorry, Officer Westlake." I tell him.

"I’m sorry, Officer Westlake! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!"

He’s breaking down completely. Good. I grab him, lift him up by his neck, the Darth Vader force field. "Kid, your prickly little ass is going to a real unpleasant place, but some people actually learn things there. Try."

The kid says nothing, but his eyes are focused. There’s still a bit of defiance in him.

"If you don’t learn anything there, remember this. I’ve got my eye on you. If I have to bother with you after you turn eighteen, this spanking’s gonna seem like a pat on the shoulder."

I throw him at Jenkins. "He’s yours."

The SWAT team recites the Miranda mantra, cuffs him and puts him in the security vehicle.

Jenkins takes a deep breath. "You know the social worker types aren’t going to like what you did to the kid."

"They can kiss my ass." I shake my head. "What’d you think?"

"Next time, come to me before you piss on my turf."

"Yeah." I ain’t in a mood for an argument.

"But at least you didn’t screw up." Jenkins notes.

"Nice to know." I smile. "You owe me a drink."

"The hell I do." Jenkins snarls.

"Fine. I’ll pay. Name the cop bar, and I’ll meet you… oh screw it, I’ve got an appointment in Tampa tonight."

Jenkins eyes roll. "You need a doc?"

"I can keep low level force fields over the wounds. Acts like stitches." I explain and I take a deep breath. This is the denouement, and the post-adrenaline emptiness. It’s often when I do my best thinking, but it’s also when I’m most depressed. "Maybe I should’ve stopped and talked to you."

"Is that an apology?"

"Yeah, I guess it is." I say. "I will come back for that drink. That’s a promise."

"Sure." Jenkins doubts I’ll keep it. I don’t care. I like to bust people’s chops - and I’m never going to stop busting them - but I do admire people with iron balls, especially if they’re on the right side of the law.

I really should have rested in Atlanta, loosened up, talked with the media, practiced my social skills. But something’s bringing me back home. The hypertram rattles at three-fifty hundred miles an hour, and I can barely think. My brain’s empty, in a very tired, non-Zen like way. But I really want this fight. Maybe it will end something.

It gets to seven-thirty, and I’m flying over the bay. A pretty sight. It’s still daylight on Caledesi Island. Caledesi’s one of the few islands out there with minimal development; this is almost the wrong place to have a fight. As long as we’re being destructive, we should take out some ugly low rises and do some long-term good.

I see Gallant flying low, only about thirty feet off the ground. Maybe he’s worried about being seen on radar; the FAA periodically sends warnings about heroes who fly too high. He two-foots the landing, and almost falls over. I give him a mock salute. We’re on a nice white beach, completely deserted except for some kid’s sand castle.

"So you were running around Atlanta."

"Just a bit of business. Are you gonna give me grief for beating up a kid?"

"No." Chandler’s pretty subdued. "Wonder if you now know how I felt when I brought you in."

"What the - " Man, that remark really pisses me off. "I was a confused kid who had just accidentally killed someone in the ring and lost everything I had. That brat was a murderer."

"You just don’t get it." Gallant says.

"Fine." I shake my head. Gallant’s a jerk, but he’s still a hero. "Explain it."

"You were one of the first ones, the first…"

He stops. He can’t talk anymore. This is weird. I’d rather have done the fight.

"Please don’t tell me that you can’t look at me without thinking of your dad." I say.

Gallant turns around, and starts to fly away. I drape a force field down on him and throw him on his ass.

"You’re pathetic." I say. "But you’ve been through a lot. Spending all of your life trying to live up to a man who can’t even tell you what he thinks about you’re doing. To make it worse, Tampa’s pretty clean these days, so about the best you can do as a superhero is come up with an archenemy called the Elk who hasn’t even been able to break out of prison in two years."

Gallant’s just staring at me.

"Do you even want to be a superhero, Chandler?"

There’s a long silence. "Why are you saying this, Battle?"

"Maybe it’s a way of thanking you." I shrug. "You’re a loser, Chandler, but I’m actually glad you put a stop to me after I ran away. My life would have been a lot more screwed up if you hadn’t. Maybe I’d have even gotten as bad as Porcupain."

Gallant chokes for a moment. I really hope he doesn’t have a breakdown. I couldn’t take it.

"It’s easier to give advice than to take it, so I’m not even going to bother offering it. My life’s screwed up enough as it is, but it could be a lot worse, and I have you, mom, and Chariot to thank that it isn’t."

"Then why are you such a mouthy little foul-mouthed prick on the television?" Chandler snorts. I’m beginning to wonder about this guy’s brain. Long term effects of flying and oxygen deprivation? He wouldn’t be the first super that’s happened to…

"This is the nineties, Chandler." I explain. "Your dad’s sort of big lug, soft-spoken kindliness went out even when your dad was around, he just carried himself well enough that people still respected him."

"He’s a good man."

"Never said he wasn’t." I reply. "I met him once, when I was eleven. Mom and I had just moved from Shrevesport into Tampa, and I decided to go swimming. Waters were getting rough, a sudden swell, and a boat was foundering. Gallant got the boat to safety, then he flew over the bay and told each person that they should get out of the water. He called me ‘sir’. I thought it was condescending, but it was also pretty cool. Not many people treated me with respect back then."

"Dad really liked kids." Chandler was staring into space.

I sigh. "Chandler, this is my home. I got a lot of memories here. Yeah, I killed Francis Hale in the ring when I was 14. Yeah, I ran away when it looked like they’d lock me away, and you stopped me. And yeah, I’m the bad boy of the meta scene, with the manners of a flatulent baboon. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to be here. You owe me an apology."

"Fine." Gallant says. "I’m sorry I rousted you."

"Good. Though I was looking forward to the fight."

Chandler gives a really goofy sort of laugh that almost makes him sound like a cross between Eddie Murphy and Don Knotts. "You want to still do it?"

I look at him hard. "Not today. There’s more to life than fighting. One of these days I may even find out what it is."

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