Crossover Earth '98
Return of Armature? Jay Shaffstall
The sight of the Earth from space generated mixed feelings in the man.
He knew that he'd fled Earth rather than face the dangers. What dangers, he wasn't certain. But the dangers had been sufficient to provoke him into leaving Earth. And yet Earth was his home. An image of a woman sprang into his mind, a slim woman wearing a grey veil that obscured her features. His friend, the spindly alien, spoke into his mind, soothing him.
Earth is your home, the alien told him. You must return home and face the dangers you fled.
How will I know the dangers? the man thought.
I will guide you.
Charley Hopkins lifted the bale of hay into his pickup truck, grunting slightly. Charley knew the bale was heavy, but he didn't think about that. All his life, Charley'd been strong.
Charley could have gone to the city, been a wrestler, or a boxer. But Charley loved the farm. His folks were dead now, but they'd left him the farm and he'd continued to work it. He figured he'd work it until he died, and then leave it to his kids.
If I ever have any, Charley thought. Having a wife came first, and Charley had precious enough time to work the farm, let alone meet anyone. And most women nowadays wouldn't want to stay on the farm. Or at least that's what his friends said. Charley figured someone had to want to stay on the farm, otherwise there wouldn't be any farms.
Charley tossed the last bale of hay into the pickup and climbed into the cab. Starting the truck, he turned on the headlights to cut through the near-darkness of the evening. As he drove across the fields, a bright light above him caught his eye.
A shooting star! Charley'd seen shooting stars before, but this one was different. Most of 'em faded out pretty quick, but this one just kept going, right on toward Charley's barn.
The man had forgotten how strong gravity could be. The Earth pulled at him, as if eager to draw him back into its embrace. He surrendered to the pull, moving faster and faster. The air around him heated up, but he was unaffected.
He finally hit the earth and slid along the surface, plowing a furrow in the ground before crashing into a wooden building.
There, said the voice of his friend in his head. These buildings are the work of your enemies.
Charley stopped the pickup at the start of the trench in the ground. The trench starting about fifty yards from the barn, and led right into the structure. Charley knew there'd been no trench there earlier, and it was deep enough it would have taken a work crew a couple days to dig it. Charley figured the shooting star had hit and slid into his barn.
He hoped it didn't burn up the hay he'd already put in there.
As Charley sat in his pickup, wondering what to do, a man walked out of the barn along the trench. The man was big, bigger even than Charley, and dressed in a skintight outfit complete with a tattered cape.
Hot damn, Charley thought. It wasn't a shooting star, but a superhero!
The man turned back toward the barn and seemed to be studying it. Then he moved forward, his arms grasping parts of the barn wall and ripping. The barn started coming apart, and the man tore further, knocking down support beams.
Charley grabbed his radio, turned it on and thumbed the transmit switch.
"Anyone out there? This is Charley, and I got a supervillain up here tearing the place up. Anyone out there?"
"Charley? This is the sherrif. What do you mean a supervillain?"
"Some guy in a cape who's tearing my barn apart with his bare hands, sherrif."
"Okay, Charley, you just let him be and I'll have some people out there soon."
The barn was now a mass of wooden planks. The man stood for a moment as if thinking, and then headed for Charley's house.
"Now, wait a minute!" Charley dropped the radio and pulled his shotgun from behind the driver's seat. He rushed to get between the man and his house. "You just stop right there, whoever you are." Charley leveled the shotgun at the man.
The sherrif arrived ten minutes later with two other squad cars, the full complement of the police force. The barn and the house were in ruins, and Charley was laying off to one side, hog-tied with what looked to have been a double barreled shotgun. The man who must have done all this was standing near the house. At the arrival of the squad cars, he started toward them.
The police formed a line, six officers with their weapons drawn.
"Just stop right there, you," the sherrif said. The man ignored him and continued coming. "Try to wound him," the sherrif told his men and opened fire.
Minutes later, the police had been disarmed, their pistols now lumps of scrap metal, and the police cruisers tossed around like toys. The man in the cape started along the road toward town.
One of the deputies shook his head. "I don't understand it."
The sherrif looked at him. "What is it, Parkins?"
"You know how my nephew is into superheroes?" The sherrif nodded. "Well, unless I'm wrong, that man was Armature."
"Holy hell," the sherrif muttered. "Parkins, I hope to God you're wrong. If Armature's back and turned bad, who are we going to get to stop him?"
The news spread quickly, despite the attempts of Quartz to keep it quiet. In San Francisco, a private investigator named Dirk Morgan heard it when the Metahuman Network preempted normal programming for an emergency announcement.
"The return of Armature to Earth is heralded by some as the beginning of the end, and by others as the return of a saint. Armature's departure was shrouded in mystery, and his return promises to be no less mysterious. As suddenly as he left, Armature is back and apparently on a rampage in Kansas."
In Washington D.C., a reporter named Joshua Kane heard the news from a Quartz press release.
"There is no reason to believe at this time that this is actually Armature, despite physical resemblences. Armature certainly would not have gone on a destructive rampage. Quartz believes this to be the work of a villain, perhaps Cronos himself."
Dirk Morgan started a sigh, and Joshua Kane completed it. The man known as Zephyr stopped maintaining multiple presences and headed for Kansas.
The trip to Kansas took practically no time at all. Zephyr knew that his speed flagrantly violated the laws of physics, but he wasn't worried. His speed worked, and physics worked, so there must be some grounds for a compromise. He could circle the Earth in a split second, maintain multiple presences by moving too quickly between them for anyone to see, and he could construct a shelter for the homeless between blinks.
And for the longest time, Zephyr had been bored.
He'd given up the career of a traditional superhero long since. He still helped out on occasion, and had found that he enjoyed helping Blur to grow into a hero, helping her to push the limits of her powers. For the most part, though, he did what he could to mitigate human suffering. He couldn't do it all, couldn't even do a miniscule fraction of it, but he made what impact he could. Dirk Morgan never took a case the client could pay for, and Joshua Kane looked for areas where Zephyr could help. He held other identities across the world, looking to help where he could.
Zephyr had started out just like Blur, little more than a fast runner with fast reflexes. He and Armature had teamed up more times than he could remember, back when Armature could only bend steel bars in his bare hands, shrug off shotgun shells, and jump really high. They'd faced the likes of the Zombie Master and the Grey Veil. The Veil had given Armature fits, because he fell in love with her, a criminal. And she'd used that to escape time after time.
How they'd both changed over the years. Zephyr became faster and faster, and Armature became stronger, more invulnerable, and somehow learned to fly. Finally, Armature felt uneasy about his strength, worried about controlling it. The thought of harming, much less killing, a single life was too much for Armature to bear. So he'd flew off into space, leaving the Earth to the next generation of heroes and villains. The Grey Veil had dropped out of sight immediately after, as if the absence of her old nemesis made the game dull.
Once in Kansas, Zephyr found a man in costume and a tattered cape tearing through a small town, seemingly determined to not leave a building standing. Zephyr was driven by a need to confront the man, but he had other responsibilities. Ten seconds was enough to evacuate the town, turn off the gas at the main pipeline, and cut the electricity at the local substation. Zephyr chafed at the delay, but the preservation of innocent life came first.
Finally, Zephyr came to halt in front of the caped man, and found himself struck speechless for a moment. The man was older, but the resemblence to Armature was unmistakable. Granted, there was that time the Duplication Queen had created an evil Armature, so a resemblence was no guarantee this was the real Armature.
"Are you Armature? Can you hear me?"
The man tore through the town, gratified to finally be able to strike back at the threat he'd been running from for so long. Abruptly, a man in a silver costume appeared in front of him. The man spoke, but Armature heard only gibberish.
That man is one of your enemies, his friend mentally told him. He will try to destroy you.
The caped man seemed to be thinking, so Zephyr moved closer.
"Armature? Do you remember me?"
Abruptly, the caped man's fist lashed out with blinding speed, catching Zephyr off guard. The force of the blow knocked Zephyr backward into a wall, knocking him out.
The man continued with the destruction of the town, gratified that he had his friend to guide him through the dangers of Earth.