Nuklear Age (57 page)

“Aye,” Angus said. “That’s what Ah said when that little
puke
down at the Short an’ Small shop told me they didn’t have one small enough for us to wear.”

“Unless,” Shiro interjected. “Both Angus-san and I were to was being to wear Supaa Small Child’s Size shirt, like Siamese freak who at the town of hypothetical.”

“Oh, aye, aye. That’s good, laddie. Why don’t ye just rub it in, ye hotel-cubicle-sleepin’, lower-regard-for-women-than-is-typical-of-Westernersin’, member-of-a-society-that-made-one-of-the-fastest-transitions-from-the-old-world-to-the-modern-era laddie.
Bah!”

“Um,” Atomik Lad stuttered while making for the Iron: Door. “Look, I’m sorry for barging in on you guys. I’m sure you’re busy, what with, um, I’ve-I’ve got to get out of here!” He scrambled out the door.

“Ye see there? That laddie is sufferin’ from that high altitude air poison Ah was telling’ ye about. He even forgot to wear his Superion shirt.”

Shiro nodded. “Hai. Ogre of Madness infesting brain like ants giant with hunger. Destroying away the food.”

Angus shook. “Why don’t ye make soome sense for a change!”

__________

An hour later, Atomik Lad was shooting into the air like a rocket. The Public: Library receded into the distance behind him.
That makes it official
, he thought,
Norman, Genius, Shiro, Angus, Halo, and the
entire
Minimum Wage Warrior squad. There’s no one left. There’s nothing else to do. I can’t put it off any more.. I’ve got to go to the source myself.
He hovered motionless for an instant, then tore through the air like a crimson bullet aimed at City Hall.

__________

City Hall loomed over him. It was a tower of steel and mirrored glass, angular and arrogant against the sky. He got halfway up the stairs leading to the revolving door entrance when he noticed the marble edifice that was supposed to say City Hall. It now read Superion Hall.

“Okay, that’s it.” His Field swirled into existence around him, the concrete step under him splintered from the force of it. He took off, arched slightly toward the building, and shattered the top floor panoramic window that used to be part of the Mayoral: Office. Jagged pieces of glass littered the office. The shards offered up myriad warped and cracked reflections of Atomik Lad darkened within his own shadow. Dark clouds loomed behind him.

“Superion!” he yelled as his Field dissolved. “I know you’re in here!” He walked into the office’s unlit depths as bits of glass crunched under his feet.

“Right you are, Champ.” Superion stepped through the large oak double doors that most non-Atomik people use to enter the office. The Crimson Crusader, with his arms outstretched to the doorknobs, cast a cross-like shadow into the darkened office. He took a few deliberate steps inside. His arms flexed like a bow and he shut the doors behind him with a flick of his wrists.

“I know what you’re doing,” Atomik Lad said.

“You know,” Superion said. “The décor just isn’t right in here. It doesn’t look like a Superior: Office, does it?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Superion produced a little remote control device and pushed one of the two buttons on it. A dozen vermilion tapestries with Superion’s blue “S” symbol set against a white star unfurled themselves along the office’s walls and windows. The tarp behind Atomik Lad waved slowly.

The ex-sidekick closed his eyes. “If I have to see another one of those damn Superion symbols, I’ll be sick.”

“Is there a problem, Sport?”

“Stop calling me those meaningless names!” Atomik Lad demanded. His fists clenched unconsciously.

“Meaningless? I’m just being friendly with ya. We’re partners, aren’t we? Pals.”

“No. You are an insincere, lying, back-stabbing, underhanded usurper. And I’m going to stop you.”

Superion laughed, jovial and slightly surprised. “What are you talking about? Give up this nonsense. Just join me like everyone else. C’mon, it’ll be okay.” The Aegis Against Evil approached Atomik Lad with his hand reaching out for the ex-sidekick’s shoulder.

“Get away from me!” Atomik Lad said, batting the hand away.

“If you’d only join me, we could own this city.
Together.”

“Together? What about Dr. Menace? Do you really think she plans on splitting rulership two ways, much less three?”

“Dr. Menace, eh? I wouldn’t worry about her,” Superion said. He set a small chunk of metal that used to be a mini-transmitter and earpiece on the desk. “Join me and together we could rule the world.”

“I’ll never join you,” Atomik Lad growled.

“It would make everything so much easier if you did,” Superion said as he walked past Atomik Lad to the flowing tapestry behind him. The tail of Superion’s silver cape caught wisps of wind as he gently placed his hand on the tapestry. The soft fabric rippled across his palm. “I’ve already won, Champ.”

“I can’t let you get away with this.”

Superion smiled. “Why not? Resisting will only bring about your demise. But if you join me, it’s a lifetime of idle pleasures. Utter bliss.”

“I can’t do that. People depend on heroes to do the right thing.”

Superion brushed his palm across the tapestry. “People. Ordinary, spiteful, ignorant,
petty
people. You’ve spent your whole life protecting them. And for what? Believe me, there’s no pay off for the good guys. I know. They owe you this.”

“I can’t betray my friends.”

“Your friends? Your friends are under
my
control now.”

“That’s why I have to stop you.”

“You will die if you oppose me.”

Atomik Lad shrugged. “You let me worry about that. Let’s get started.”

“So you’d really die for them?”

“I couldn’t call myself a hero otherwise.”

“You have strong feelings for your friends,” Superion said. “Especially for…
Rachel.”

Atomik Lad could feel a void where his stomach used to be. “What.”

Superion turned to face Atomik Lad. “Well, if you will not turn, then perhaps
she will.”
He clicked the other button on his remote. A spotlight shone on the Superior: Desk. Rachel was sitting in a chair. She wore a blank stare and a Superion T-shirt.

“No!”
Every window in the building exploded outward. The glass glittered as it fell like rain.

Superion was launched from the top floor like a cannonball wrapped in vermillion cloth. He tumbled between Metroville’s skyscrapers. Atomik Lad lanced through the air like light and struck him with a super sonic body ram fueled by crimson flames. Shards of glass from nearby buildings flashed in their wake as they fell from heaven like dying angels.

__________

Issue 43 – The Gambit

Dr. Menace worked at her Evil: Computer. An alarm rang.

“Ah yez. Time to check in on my Superion.”

She donned a headset and adjusted a few dials on her Evil: Computer.

“Static?”

She turned more dials. Still only static.

“Superion? Superion! Can you here me?”

She tore the headset off and threw it into a dank corner. Her fingers flew across the Evil: Keyboard as she narrated what she was doing for the sake of the reading audience. “Computer. Search and record Negaflux phenomenon.”

The screen displayed a large overhead map of Metroville, the phrase, “Negaflux search: commencing,” blinked in the lower right hand corner. The map went through a series of close-ups until a single city block filled the screen.

Dr. Menace’s fingers danced madly as she spat, “Blazted computer! What good are you if you cannot even hack into a simple spy satellite?” A few seconds later the screen showed live video feed of Superion Hall. She sat motionless for a moment. “He waz suppozed to check in with me before taking control of the city.” Superion Hall’s windows exploded on her monitor. “What haz that fool done?”

__________

Superion righted himself and turned to face Superion Hall. He wanted to give a sinister grin but found that his opponent was already upon him and and delivering another attack.
I had underestimated his strength. Such speed. And that field. It’s like touching an exposed high voltage wire, and that’s
with
my Superior Powers and Negaflux augmentation. Incredible.

“Let’s end this quickly, boy!” The Crimson Crusader kicked Atomik Lad back a few feet.

“No you don’t!” Atomik Lad snarled, closing in once again.

“Yes. I do.” He punctuated this point with a double-fisted uppercut that sent Atomik Lad soaring straight up into the stratosphere. Superion shaded his eyes and watched as the ex-sidekick diminished above him, finally piercing a cloud shaped like an enormous dog’s head. “Good luck breathing up there. Soldier.”

The cloud pulsed a hellish blood red splotch in the sky and evaporated in an instant. Atomik Lad tore through the atmosphere and crashed into Superion like a fiery meteor. They careened to the street and punctured it. Great slabs of stone lay like a crumpled flower’s petals around their impact crater. The two titans grappled one another in an arena of sewage and stone, each trying to force the other into submission.

__________

“Hm,” Dr. Menace said while watching her renegade and her sworn enemy’s ex-sidekick face-off. “Superion’z Negaflux Field integrity iz ztill at 97 perzent. Quite imprezzive conzidering the forze Atomik Lad haz shown thuz far.

__________

“Do you know why I adopted the name Superion?” he grunted.

“No,” Atomik Lad said. “And I don’t care. Geez, is the gene for evil linked to the gene that impels you guys to tell us your master plans?”

“It is in homage of my father. The only man to survive Project: Superion.”

Atomik Lad slipped a fraction of an inch. “What are you talking about? The only man to survive that was Captain Liberty.”

“That’s right. Dear old dad was a superhero. And he. Was never.
There!”
Superion yelled. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up without a father!”

Atomik Lad’s Field shook with an angry intensity. “You have no idea how much I am the last person you should be trying to justify your actions to with that bullshit. Don’t blame your father’s sense of duty for your own feelings of inadequacy.” Locked hand in hand, the ex-sidekick flew them to street level. They broke off and circled each other like wolves ready to attack.

“No! You don’t understand! My father didn’t have a name! They took it away from him, they took everything from him so he could do their dirty work and call it justice. The one thing that made it tolerable was that everyone respected him, everyone knew him, even if they didn’t know his son.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Atomik Lad asked.

“And then, after he’d given them everything else, his past, his identity, his family, he gave them his
life!
And for what!
For what!
So they could forget him and worship that Nuklear Man
freak!
My father died for them and they don’t even remember!”

“Yeah, other than the statues, movies, toys, comics—”

“Shut up! Even in his death they use him to protect their economic philosophy.”

“So all of this is supposed to be some kind of revenge against Nuklear Man because he’s so much more popular than your dad now, right?”

“No, you narrow-minded fool. It’s not his fault he’s got superpowers. Taking him out of the picture was just a necessary part of the overall plan, you see. Part of my revenge against
them!”

“Them?”

“The government! The people! The world! They forgot him but I’ll make sure they never forget
me!”

“Ohh. I see. So you’re taking over the world for attention.”

“You don’t understand. But I don’t expect you to. Everyone loves Atomik Lad. Or should I say loved? They don’t know you anymore. They don’t know anything anymore unless I tell it to them first. Their whole world consists of nothing but me! Even your pretty, pretty Rachel.”

“If you’re trying to cloud my judgment by getting me angry by using her as emotional bait, it’s not going to work. All I have to do is defeat you and the strangle hold you have on the minds of my friends will disappear. It’s how these things work. You should know that, being in the family business and all.”

“Right again, Atomik Loser. Let’s just hope there’s enough left of their minds to matter should you defeat me. After all, if you take away that upon which their world revolves, well, it could be terribly dangerous to their mental health. It sure would be a shame if that pretty Rachel of yours ended up a vegetable.”

“It’s still not working.”

“Of course, she really doesn’t need a mind for what I’ve got planned for her.”

“I’m going to attack you now, but I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m doing so only to stop your blather from turning this into some kind of male adolescent fantasy of woman domination and not because of your ploy to anger me into taking rash actions.”

Superion shrugged. “Either way.”

Atomik Lad charged and was repelled by a mighty punch. He came to a spontaneous halt mere inches from a store front. The glass rattled in its frame. He blast back at his aggressor. The backlash of force crumpled the store like a house of cards. Superion sidestepped at the last second, grabbed hold of the ex-sidekick’s field and slammed him into the pavement, holding him there.

“And the name Superion works on another level too,” The Aegis Against Evil began.

“Do you
ever
shut up! We’re not even talking about this any more,” Atomik Lad spat while struggling to free himself and his Field.

“Like I said, it’s an homage to how my father gained his powers. And it’s true that I too had to go through the Superion Process in order to temper my body so it could endure the ravages of Negaflux Augmentation.”

“You done yet?”

“My body has been infused with raw Negaflux energy.” He shook Atomik Lad by his Field. “How else do you think I’m able to hold onto this damned Field of yours? My own Negaflux power counteracts it.”