UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Part III: Initiative

By Desmond Reddick

Montreal, Quebec

Zodiac was good. But even the highly-trained international super-powered mercenaries were no match for Alpha Flight. They had come for Persuasion—one of their own—and if the ferocity with which they fought was any indication, Zodiac would be left wishing they hadn’t kidnapped her.

The damp warehouse was alight with electromagnetic energy wrapped around the maple leaf-clad Guardian as he hovered in the air above the melee. His team was one of the world’s most elite fighting forces, and they were making short work of the ambushed Zodiac. They were doing just fine seeing as he chose to inactively observe.

Sasquatch stood toe-to-toe with Taurus, pummeling him with merciless body shots with his right hand. In his left, he held the unconscious body of Capricorn, who he was using to bludgeon Taurus over the horned head with.

Sagittarius and Virgo took turns firing volleys of arrows—Sagittarius’ crackled yellow with energy—at Diamond Lil, who made no effort to dodge them. They bounced off of her skin as she somersaulted into the two, sending them sprawling.

Puck bounded into and around the hard-shelled body of Cancer until Puck knocked him unconscious with a good shot to the side of his head, snapping his neck to the side. He KRUNCHED onto the buckled concrete below as Puck leapt toward Diamond Lil to aid her in her attack on Leo and Aries.

Guardian narrowed his vision on Box who, in large robot form, batted away the laser blasts from Scorpio’s Zodiac Key as he stomped toward him. Even as a smaller group, they operated very smoothly. With Heather taking on the administrative role for the satellite teams, Shaman heading up Department H and Snowbird inexplicably AWOL, they were even more undermanned than usual. Guardian held his arm out and sent a single blast of electromagnetic energy at Libra and Aquarius as they snuck up behind Box.

It wasn’t being undermanned that kept Box from knowing he was being snuck up on; it was single-minded rage. Stepping forward slowly as Scorpio jogged backwards, Box wiped quickly at the air with huge robotic forearms, sending the Zodiac Key blasts into the walls of the warehouse.

“Gah!”

Box had finally landed a lucky shot. He could have fired any number of blasts to disable or kill Scorpio, but he wanted to toy with him. And he finally nailed him with a ricochet from his own weapon.

Twitching on the cement floor, Scorpio narrowly escaped losing consciousness, and that’s exactly what Box wanted.

The large chest of the bipedal robot seemed to dematerialize into a fluid mass of shifting metal pieces and Madison Jeffries burst from it like a man possessed. Before his feet touched the ground, his fist met Scorpio’s face.

“You son of a bitch!” he screamed, raining punches down the helpless mercenary.

“You’re dead! I’m going to kill you for what you did to me. Kill you!”

He continued to pound on Scorpio’s masked face. Scorpio put up no resistance.

“Maybe you don’t remember who I am,” Jeffries said as an empty oil drum, three tires and some discarded aluminum siding in the warehouse dematerialized and formed itself into a black clad man the same size as Jeffries. “The last time we talked, there were two of me!”

“Madison!” Guardian shouted.

The rest of Zodiac had been defeated, and laid unconscious and shackled in the middle of the warehouse. Alpha Flight surrounded Madison as he and his robotic Gemini duplicate beat the head of the man who tormented and brainwashed him not long ago into a wet and meaty pulp.

It was a tattoo of THAPs and CLANGs as the two-who-were-one man took turns smashing his/their fists against meat and bone.

“Madison.”

The voice was soft, and with it, a gentle hand was placed on his shoulder. Madison Jeffries looked up to see her. With tears streaming down his face, he relented.

While Lil held her lover’s head to her chest, Alpha Flight watched as Madison’s Gemini double disintegrated. Scorpio struggled to raise both of his hands; one reached for the Zodiac Key only to push it out of his own reach, and the other tapped a button on a cellphone-sized receiver clipped to his belt.

Scorpio disappeared in a flash of light.

Tsuu T’ina Nation 145, Alberta

The wind stirred the knee-high grass at the side of Range Road 40 as Beta Flight looked to the tall thin man in a tribal police uniform. Calgary, the vibrant young city sprang up from the ground out of seemingly nowhere off in the north-east, but the officer they had as their guide pointed to the wooded region to the west.

“Head out there two or three clicks ‘n you’ll probably find what you’re lookin’ for.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Major Mapleleaf asked.

The officer looked at the blond-haired, blue eyed adventurer clad in red and white with derision.

“Last three people I know gone out there, never come back. You think us Indians are so expendable that I should join them?”

“Hah. Burn on, you Dudley Do-Right,” Radius said loudly from the back of the group.

“It’s fine, officer,” Earthmover said, “we can take it from here. Thank you.”

Earthmover turned around, looked through the assembled Beta Flight directly at Radius, and glared. Radius shrugged with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Never mind him,” Murmur said jerking a thumb in Radius’s direction. “Let’s do this!”

Zuzha Yu, seemingly frustrated by the bickering or perhaps just the waiting around, took point and began to climb the embankment while the team followed her.

Things were silent until the Betans all heard a DOOT! in their communications earpieces:

“This is Vindicator! Alpha Alert, request for backup immediately. Beta, anybody! Help!”

“Omnijet! Now!” Earthmover commanded with authority.

“Should we split up?” Zuzha Yu pointed toward the mystical disturbance they had been dispatched to investigate.

“No, this is more important,” Earthmover replied. “We’ll come back.”

Beta Flight ran quickly to the Omnijet they parked just over a kilometer away.

Had they climbed the embankment and set out on the mostly flat grasslands leading to the dark forested area beyond, they may have even walked directly by the spot they came to investigate, for it was only a small indentation in the damp grass, no larger than a bowling ball in circumference.

And like a bowling ball, the ground was black. Black with rot and teeming with writhing maggots, it was a portent of the malevolent pestilence to come.

Department H

“Sit down please, Madison.”

Madison Jeffries was barely through the door of Director Twoyoungmen’s office on the top office floor of the towering Department H headquarters when the words were spoken.

Seated at the desk across the room from him was his old ally, Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen, Shaman. They had fought side-by-side for years, but in the days since Shaman’s promotion to Director of Department H amidst the scandal of the old regime, Madison hadn’t even seen him.

Sitting sideways half on the front of the desk, half standing, was Mac Hudson. Hudson, wearing the Guardian costume with the cowl off, smiled placatingly at Jeffries as he made his way across the empty floor of the large office.

“Hi, Madison. Thanks for coming so quickly. We just need to have a chat,” Hudson said motioning to the single visitor chair directly in front of the desk.

“I’ll stand, thanks,” Madison said. He looked back and forth between the smiling Hudson and the stern-looking Twoyoungmen before continuing.

“What’s this: good superhero/bad superhero?”

“Don’t be unfair, Madison. That’s not what we’re here for,” Mac said, his pleasant tone unchanging.

“You know why we’re here, Madison,” Twoyoungmen began. “We all feel bad for the circumstances you found yourself in—”

“’Circumstances?’ Ah, I guess you’re referring to the time you and Alpha let me be taken hostage, get tortured and brainwashed for a few months and get spit out to try and kill you? Those‘circumstances.’”

“We’re worried about you.”

“I’m not, Mac. I’m not worried about me at all! For the first time in a while, I feel great! Nothing felt better than hitting him, and my only regret is that he escaped and I can’t hit him more. Now I suppose I’m getting canned because I’m a superhero who punched a bad guy, which is about the most ridiculous fucking thing I’ve ever heard of!”

“We’re not firing you, Madison.”

“We are, however,” Twoyoungmen interjected, “removing you from the active duty roster indefinitely.”

“Sure took you a long time to get political. Michael. I bet ‘indefinitely’ means just until you guys round up Scorpio and put him away before I can get my hands on him again? ”

“No, Madison,” Mac stepped forward and stood up from the desktop as he spoke. “We’re re-assigning you to Prometheus Division for the sole purpose of taking apart that Zodiac Key. We want you to find Scorpio, and that’s the only way we know how.”

“Well, then,” Madison said as he began to smile, “I hope it doesn’t affect my pension.”

Thunder Bay

“Not this crap, again!”

Flex threw up his hands in disbelief and walked back to the wide entrance of the ranch’s living room.

“Please, Adrian,” Ghost Girl begged, “just listen to me. I definitely saw someone out there.”

“A ghost, right?” The derision in Flex’s voice was evident. “Just like Laura and ‘Lyn the other night.”

“No!” Ghost Girl shot back. “Maybe.”

“Bad enough I used to have to worry about Goblyn scratching the couch but you and the retard are seeing ghosts, now. Looks like only me and Porky Pig over here are the only ones with our heads on our shoulders!”

Goblyn growled as tears filled Ghost Girl’s eyes.

“You’re a jerk,” Laura said. It was a pronouncement, not an emotionally charged condemnation.

There was silence but for the crackling fire.

“Oh, muh-muh,” Ouija began.

“Please, Ouija,” Flex said dismissively, “the quieter you are, the more I’m going to like you, right now.” Flex turned to walk out of the room sighing loudly and muttering under his breath about never becoming a full-fledged Alphan again.

“NO!” the precognitive Ouija leapt to his feet as he was finally able to find his words. “Shuh-she’s going to D-I-E!”

Haysboro, Alberta

Heather used the thermal vents seeping up through the small fissures in the ground that her suit made to keep her aloft. She needed the extra boost fighting seven enemies simultaneously. For now, she worried about flying circles around the pack of her attackers to keep them confined long enough for her family to escape.

It figures, she thought. First family reunion in ages and it HAS to be crashed by my former boss/psychopathic would-be husband killer!Though, attacking her dressed as past Alpha Flight villain Brass Bishop was new, he was the only one she recognized. With him, four featureless large men – two ivory white, two charcoal black – who she thought were robots of some kind, and two others.

Those assailants she believed were Hammer and Sickle, Russian criminals wielding technologically enhanced symbols of the Soviet Union. She had heard of them at one of the CSIS briefings she attended during Clarke’s reign. There was some chatter of them being in the country. Heather guessed that intel was on the level.

She swooped and dove, trying to get herself in position to fire her lava blasts at the four androids. They were launching electromagnetic blasts that her suit’s shields were able to absorb, but with all the heat her shields were generating, she expected to need the shields at full strength.

“For God’s sake! Kill her! What am I paying you for?” Brass Bishop screamed.

As long as she stayed aloft and moving quickly, Hammer and Sickle would have a difficult time getting her. She was worried that the androids would tire her into defeat if she wasn’t able to incapacitate them.

Heather banked right to dodge a blast fired from the arms of one of the white androids and ended up clipping the branches of a huge Douglas Fir in the front yard of her parents’ neighbor’s yard. She tried to correct herself without reducing speed but ended up tumbling to the ground and feeling like she’d been hit by a truck.

It was a hammer, crackling with energy that smashed her left thigh as she flew. Standing over her, its wielder, a broad-chested and bearded man leered.

“Pretty red-haired girl need to watch where she going,” Hammer said in a thick Russian accent. He stepped forward and tightened his grip on the massive hammer as it crackled with yellow energy. “If time, maybe Hammer teach her a personal lesson in where girls belong.”

“Maybe next time, Commie!” Radius shouted as his feet hit the ground.

The rest of Beta Flight followed, leaping from the Omnijet that hovered only meters above the street.

“Commie?” Murmur laughed as she touched down beside Radius.

“Whatever! Who cares about their politics? You can’t vote when you’re only a smear on someone’s front lawn!”

“He’s right for once,” Earthmover said. “Sorry we’re late, Mrs. Hudson. Mind if we help out a little?”

Vancouver, British Columbia

“It is done.”

Nemesis opened her eyes and squinted as they fought to accomodate the candelight. The church basement was soundless but for her breathing. But the heat was oppressive.

She kept her mask bunched about her forehead and stayed seated as Gorgon stood.

“You have proven yourself against my men in battle and have been honest with me with your answers,” he said as he turned his back to her. “There is still one more test for you to endure before you may gain entrance to my…circle of friends.”

“Anything, Master Gorgon,” Nemesis replied.

“This… band of adventurers you travel with who have no intention of joining me.”

“Yes?”

“Kill them.”

In the glow of candlelight, Gorgon’s teeth looked a sickly orange.

Nemesis stayed silent and swallowed before responding.

“As you wish.”

NEXT ISSUE: Wait a second? Who’s gonna D-I-E? Shit, I guess we’re all going to die some day. But next issue, things get a little bit ugly as “Unfinished Business” finishes.