Nuklear Age (19 page)

The Hero tightened his grip of the door. “Well how
else
are we going to find it?”

Rachel hung on to her seat with white-knuckled hands.

Atomik Lad grumbled to himself, flung his seat back all the way down, and grabbed Rachel’s waist. “I hope this works,” he muttered in something resembling a prayer. His crimson field enveloped both himself and his guest.

“Where we’re going,” Nuklear Man said, “we won’t need roads.” The Danger: Nukemobile ignored gravity and soared above the stagnant traffic. Nuklear Man’s fingertips dented into the door, his bicep flexed slightly from the strain of holding onto the car.

Rachel opened one eye like a rusty, reluctant hatch. She jerked slightly with surprise. “Red!”

Her movement plucked Atomik Lad from his stupor. His energy field sputtered and disappeared around them. “Hi,” he said, looking up into her face from her lap.

“My, aren’t you straightforward?” she said, putting her hands on Atomik Lad’s, still on her waist.

He jumped at her touch like a small shock of electricity had arced through him. “Eheh. Sorry.” He slid his hands from under hers and raised his seat to its more traditional and vertical position. He tugged at his collar as inconspicuously as he could. Nuklear Man was known to be more subtle.

“Now that we’ve gotten rid of those idiotic drivers, we oughta have a fairly uneventful trip,” Nuklear Man said.

“Thank every god,” Atomik Lad sighed.

“Oh gosh!” Rachel exclaimed. She leaned over the side. “We’re flying!”

“Did you see that one van run me off the road?”

“Nuke, you ran the van off the road.”

“Oh, whatever. My point
is
if these people knew how to drive in the first place, I wouldn’t have to run them off the road.”

Rachel’s eyes traced the contours of the cityscape below them and the farmlands surrounding it. “Wow, this is amazing. I can’t believe you guys get to do this every day.”

“I guess it’s fun,” Nuklear Man said, his voice taking on the tone of a police officer being interviewed on a reality cop show. “But it gets in the way of all the TV watching, so we try to wrap things up pretty quick.”

“I see,” Rachel said, admiring the view and ignoring Nuklear Man’s ramblings without tipping him off. More Waitress Fu.

“Well, that and I’m
so
good, the villains can’t help but be defeated in a rather episodic fashion,” he said.

“Y’know, we oughta land, Nuke. We could actually have one normal day.” He considered the morning thus far. “Or at least a semi-normal afternoon.”

“But we just had one!” the Hero whined.

Atomik Lad rubbed his eyes. “What planet do you live on?”

“Happy Nukieland.”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” he muttered into his hands.

“Where all I do all the livelong day is beat the hoo-ha out of villains whilst—”

“Just land the car.”

“Oh fine.” He turned to Rachel and winked. “I’ll give you a personal tour some day.”

“I can’t wait,” she answered jokingly.

“Now then, to secure an L-Z. Or ‘Landing Zone’ to you civilians,” Nuklear Man said with little air quotes. The car dipped down until he grabbed the door again.

“Thanks for the clarification,” Rachel said, paying just enough attention to Nuklear Man to not distract herself from the view.

“Time for a little reconnaissance, or ‘recon’ as we like to call it in the Corp. Sparky, hold the wheel.”

Atomik Lad gripped the wheel without thinking about it. “Er. Does it really matter?”

“...It
could.”

Atomik Lad shrugged and held firm anyway.

Nuklear Man scoured the surface below with his eyes. “Oh, what I wouldn’t do for some heat vision.”

“Wait, what?”

Nuklear Man ignored him. “Ah! That spot’ll do just fine.” He clenched his free hand into a fist. A golden orb of liquid-like energy glowed around it. “PLAZMAAA—”

“Nuke!”

“Does he
ever
get one of those off?” Rachel asked.

“What?” Nuklear Man protested. “I’ve got to clear a landing site.”

Atomik Lad looked over the side. “Those are suburbs!”

“Exactly. The way I figure it, they’re a dime a dozen. No one’ll miss a couple neighborhoods here or there. It’s a victimless crime. No jury would convict me.”

Atomik Lad tried to begin several rebuttals to Nuklear Man’s logic, but it was like trying to catch every leaf of autumn. “How about we just land along that nice straight stretch of empty road down there next to them, hm?”

“Fine, we’ll do it your wussy way.”

The Danger: Nukemobile sank to the street with a short, sharp screech of its tires. It reminded Atomik Lad of an airplane landing. They rocketed through the barren road far in excess of the posted speed limit.

“What’d that sign say?” Atomik Lad asked. The roaring wind deafened Nuklear Man to his question.

“Speed Enforced By Radar,” Rachel reported.

“How fast are we going?” Atomik Lad asked, louder this time.

Nuklear Man checked the Danger: Speedometer. “I dunno. The needle only goes to one twenty.”

“Maybe we really should slow down.”

“Oh no! Old man radar’s gonna call our mommies!” Nuklear Man said in a mockingly girly voice. “Feh, I’m
so
scared of radar. Radar’s gonna come and get us, oh no, whatever shall we do? Boo hoo hoo, woe is me. Enforce
this
, radar.” Nuklear Man pushed the accelerator to the floorboard.

Atomik Lad noticed a blur of motion immediately outside his field of vision. Something just barely green or purple, too fast to properly distinguish, rushed toward them.

There was an impact and the Danger: Nukemobile catapulted off the road. It tumbled end over end into a side ditch where it landed right side up.

Rachel opened her eyes. “Red?”

Atomik Lad turned to face her. “Are you...?” He noticed she was enveloped in his field which he also just noticed actually existed in the first place. “Are you all right?”

She stretched her neck from side to side. “You do this on all your first dates, Sparky?”

“If I have another one, I’ll let you know.”

Nuklear Man shot out of the car, or rather
would
have had the seatbelt not held him in check. “That is
so
gonna leave a mark,” he whined with a painful grimace while unbuckling himself. Nuklear Man shot out of the car, for real this time, but tripped on the rearview mirror and slammed face first onto the hood. He rolled off with all the grace of a corpse and ate a face full of dirt.

“Par for the course, big guy,” Atomik Lad said. He helped Rachel from the wreck.“Lousy physics, always slowin’ me down,” Nuklear Man grumbled from under his cape.

He flipped the always majestic cape aside and did a quick scan of the area. “Hey, who’s that?” he asked, pointing across the street.

It was seven feet and four hundred pounds of purple muscle clad in green spandex and a billowing cape. He stood in a pose so confident it would’ve made Ozymandias blush. It was as if his features were chiseled in weathered stone. Uncaring and cold eyes examined the world in black and white, right and wrong. He had an otherworldly quality. Purple skin had a way of doing that.

“Radar!” the stranger announced with a flourish of his cape.

“Oh, he’s
good
,” Nuklear Man said.

“You were driving in excess of the posted limit.” Radar struck an accusatory point at Nuklear Man. “You must suffer the consequences!”

Nuklear Man stood up and glowed a golden plazma glow to cleanse himself of any dirt. “Suffer
these
consequences, purple-boy!” Nuklear Man taunted. He rushed Radar with Nuklear Speed.

Radar sneered, “Lawbreaker.” He threw a mighty uppercut that caught the Hero completely off guard. It spun Nuklear Man into the distant sky, reeling end over end from the impact.

“I can see the Silo from here!” he yelled just before fading from view.

Atomik Lad squinted and blinked as he stared uselessly into the sky. “Wow.”

Rachel tugged on his spandex. “You can handle this, right?”

“Let’s hope so.”

Radar stomped up to them. “Prepare for retribution,” he growled.

“Uh, Radar, is it? Hi, I’m Atomik Lad. I’m certain we can work something out.”

“The law must be enforced. The guilty must be punished.”

“But I wasn’t driving.”

“You were an accomplice.” His voice dripped bile. “Guilty by association.”

“Well, if you’re going to be unreasonable about it.” His Atomik Field flared to life once more with a crack of thunder. “I’ll have to—
OOF!”
Atomik Lad was pounded so mightily into the earth that only his head stuck out of the ground. His crimson field sputtered and faded around him. Radar loomed over him like a purple mountain.

Radar dusted off his hands and crossed his mighty purple arms across his wide chest. “You are next, meager woman.”

“
Meager?”

“Insignificant,” he stated.

“Is that so?” She stalked toward the creature with wrath and vengeance powering her stomping footsteps.

“Rachel, no. I can handle this.” Atomik Lad squirmed in futile attempts to release himself from his terra-cotta prison.

“Not now, Hon,” she dismissed while absently stepping on his head.

She leaned in nose to nose with Radar. “Who do you think you are? You ruined our car, spoiled our plans, wasted my day off, beat up the world’s greatest Hero, embarrassed my date, and then you have the
gall
to insult me. What gives you the right?”

Radar squared his shoulders and proudly announced, “I am Radar, Centurion of the Highways, Enforcer of Defensive Driving! I derive my powers from the severity of a lawbreaker’s crime. That Nuklear Man’s driving has fueled me with the strength to topple empires!” He posed and flexed to drive this last point home, but it did little to impress Rachel. “You cannot hope to quell me, I am the very personification of Highway Justice.”

Rachel leaned back with a quirky smile that would have destroyed Atomik Lad’s non-sexual thoughts had he seen it.

“What is it?” Radar demanded. “You face certain obliteration and yet you smile?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s obliteration that I face,” she said smugly.

Radar huffed. “Get on with it.”

“I was sitting in the backseat. I cannot be held accountable for the driver. I am not an accomplice. I did not break the law. You, Mr. Purple, are powerless before me.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?”

Sweat formed on Radar’s brow.

“Well?” she asked.

His face twisted with rage. He screamed a primal scream, pulled back a fist the size of a Christmas ham, and slammed it against Rachel’s skull with bone-shattering force.

There was an explosion. A strange vermillion fire unlike any natural flame had burst forth. Chunks of dirt rained as the smoke cleared. The earth had been blast away from Atomik Lad. He stood in a crater bathed in red light, his body engulfed with a wicked fire. “Rachel?” he called a little too hysterically.

Radar quivered, his mauled hands still atop Rachel’s unharmed head. Tears streamed from his face. His mouth was locked in a silent scream.

“Hm?” she answered innocently.

“Are you all right?”

“Yep.” She touched a finger to Radar’s chest. The giant teetered and fell over backwards like a toppled mannequin. A dust cloud poofed from his impact with the ground.

“But. How. You. He?” Atomik Lad stammered while trying to verbalize a thought that wouldn’t sit in his head long enough to complete itself.

“Someone had to. You boys were just playing around.”

“Playing?”

“I suspected he wasn’t a real threat for you and Nuklear Man from the start. I was certain of it when Nuklear Man started goofing around and trusted you to take care of the goon by yourself.”

“Wah?”

“But then when you just started toying with him by letting him think he nailed you into the ground, well it’s funny, don’t get me wrong, but we are running late after all.” She heaved Atomik Lad out of his crater. He was too stunned to float out by himself. “And when he went and insulted me, well then it got personal.”

“He. You. Hit. Alive.”

“Oh, that. Just shows what a little traffic school can do.” She scanned the skies. “Now we’re really going to be late. Where is that Nuklear Man?” They searched the sky in the direction he had been launched.

“I guess he’s already landed,” Atomik Lad said while rubbing the back of his neck. “He should be on his way back by now. He doesn’t like to be upstaged.”

“What’s that sound?” Rachel asked. She turned her head form side to side.

“Hm, I hear it too.” He turned completely around. “Where’s it—
duck!”

“No, it’s more like a goose—
Ah!”
Atomik Lad pulled her down with him.

A distant “Ahhhhhh!” grew into a louder and incoming “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” as a golden blur slammed into Atomik Lad’s crater and made it even bigger.

There was a lot of coughing.

“Quite a direct approach, Sparky,” Rachel said once the dust, old and new, settled.

Atomik Lad blinked and rubbed the dirt from his eyes and fell speechless yet again. “Um. I, I, I.”

“Am laying on top of me. Rather spoils the chivalry of your actions, though I think I can live with it.”

“Oh my,” he managed to utter.

Nuklear Man instantly popped out of the improved crater. “Who, what, where?!” each word got its own action pose.

Atomik Lad clumsily rolled off of Rachel and onto the ground. “What are you doing with all those stickers?” he asked Nuklear Man.

“Huh?” He looked down at himself. He was covered in international postage. “Well what’dya know? I must’ve gone all the way around the world.”

“That explains why he came from the opposite direction,” Rachel said.

“But that doesn’t explain the stamps themselves. How’d they get there?”

“Sure it does,” Nuklear Man said. “Don’t you ever watch Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-thon o’ Fun? I don’t keep it on 24 hours a day for my health, you know.”

“Nuke, those are cartoons, they’re not real.”

“Watch your mouth!” the Hero snapped.