HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

Part I: Life as a Mirror

By Bren Hunter

Author’s Note: This issue takes place after the events of Moonstar #4.

The lighting was so low in that dreary pub in Bristol; Morien Weller almost couldn’t tell if it was a pub at all. When he first entered, it was too quiet, but then the familiar clinks of pint glasses gave him that homey feeling in his stomach. The lithe blond man perched himself at the bar, but a shock of platinum blonde hair, at the other end of the room, attracted his eyes away from the bartender. Staring at her face in the near dark, he couldn’t judge if she was who he hoped she was. That is, he couldn’t be sure until he examined her anatomy close-up.

“That ass. I’ll never forget that ass,” Morien complimented Kara Strong bombastically, and finished his thought, “Considering all I’ve done to it.”

“Mori,” Kara drew out every syllable, as she spun her bar stool around to face him. She continued to spin right past him, and toyed, “They told me I would find you here.”

“Who did?” Morien asked the question roughly.

“My instincts,” Kara drawled, facing Morien once again.

Sidling close to Kara, Morien leaned against the bar and asked, in a sultry tone, “What do those instincts of yours tell you I’m going to do next?”

“Buy me a drink?” Kara asked bouncily. Her back was to him, while she continued to leisurely spin.

“I do have a bar at home. You should remember that too,” Morien said, and slapped her ass to remind her. “Or has your memory been dulled by our year apart.”

“Dulled by your cheating, more likely,” Kara insisted mischievously, rather than angrily.

“I never cheated, babe,” Morien assured her with the kind of confidence that made her kiss him.

Only one window in Braddock Manor — located in a particularly rural area of Malden, England — revealed a glow to the starry night outside. The light source, residing in Excalibur’s Foresight Chamber, was a sixty-five inch widescreen monitor. In the months since Excalibur’s shattering, Brian had removed the meeting table and chairs; now he used the room for watching television. Data DVDs containing extensive intel on criminal mutants had been replaced by animated features and Jolly Farm Revue Season Two. Charts and charts of plans to educate high school students about global mutant rights had been replaced with mathematical flash cards for Jane. A treadmill resided where the Cerebro unit had been stored. The decorative sword on the wall had had its edges dulled for the sake of safety.

Side by side, Brian Braddock and Rachel Summers sat slumped low on the overstuffed charcoal-coloured sofa. Jane slept soundly on Brian’s chest, her head nestled on his shoulder. Brian absently stroked Jane’s blonde hair, without noticing that he was doing it. Rachel noticed it in her peripheral vision.

“I wish I had a bully in high school,” Brian decided, his tone pouty even though his lips weren’t. The high school dramedy on the screen was making him self-reflective, but it wasn’t quite quirky or dramatic enough to draw him in. Staring at the screen, he continued to talk over it; “No one would say I was popular, but people liked me well enough. It might have been special if someone had actually cared enough to torment me every day.”

“I wish I had a high school,” Rachel chimed in, both mirroring and mocking Brian’s pouty tone.

Brian looked over at Ray with a cocked eyebrow. He deadpanned, “I should never play this game with you. I will never win.”

“Never ever. I am the Queen of Origin stories,” she gloated wryly. “I should warn you that I am also the Queen of Red Leather, of Shrimp Fajitas and of the Uncreated.” — Catching on to Brian’s disinterest, Ray telekinetically flicked the television’s off button — “We could watch that holocard the Starjammers sent us, again. I’ll never tire of hearing about how well my performance and my holographic representations are keeping the Uncreated contained.”

“And about how a Shi’ar probe detected biosigns of newborn Uncreated?” Brian finished the thought fondly.

Rachel beamed and nodded, while flippantly expressing, “As holographic greeting cards go, I’d have to rate that one as orgasmic. Maybe Hallmark should start a whole line of ‘Congratulations for not committing metaphysical genocide’ cards.”

“You enjoy it without me,” Brian encouraged, and used a touch of his mystic flight ability to rise to his feet, without disrupting Jane’s sleep. “Whitman’s waiting on an e-mail from me. I need to let him know when to expect me tomorrow afternoon.”

“Whitman Knapp?” Rachel questioned. “Ananym’s boyfriend, the Doctor?”

“Dane Whitman. The Black Knight,” Brian clarified.

“Did you join the Avengers without telling me? Are you hiding a Quinjet in the forrest? Has Captain Marvel been in this house?” Ray asked with increasing faux-suspicion.

“When I was your age, Merlin sent Dane and I on a quest. It had a surreal, Lord of the Rings quality to it, only it took twice as long. Fortunately, I had amnesia through much of it, and missed an entire act and a half while I was temporarily dead. It was the kind of trauma that friendships are made from,” Brian recounted, grinning all the while.

Listening to Brian talk of heroics past, and newfound plans to revisit them, Rachel pounced to her feet. Keeping her volume at a sensible level, Ray challenged, “Oh my god. You are bored of the homebody life, aren’t you?” — She gaped at him. — “You are. And you’ve been hiding it. How long has it been?”

Unable to do anything but smirk at his reveal as a pretender, Brian admitted, “Since a month ago. Since almost exactly the day aboard the Starjammer that I convinced you to stay at home to do nothing with me and Jane.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?” Rachel riposted at a respectful whisper.

“I didn’t to be a hypocrite?” Brian tried lamely. “Really, though, I believed what I told you. You’re not going to find what you want your destiny to be, if you’re too caught up in homework and classroom drama. Doing nothing is making me restless, like I told you, and I want to do something about it, but there’s still not anything I want to do. I’m sick of all ‘things’, and so I have to try, even thought I still think you should keep doing nothing.”

“We need to learn to meditate,” Rachel realised insistently, as she listened to Brian’s impassioned tirade. That unsettling realisation made itself known both in her words and in her eyes. “We need to learn to under-analyse for a change. To be nothing, not even ‘nothing’ nothing. We could even start tomorrow morning, because I have not a thing to do. Despite your change of heart, I am just waiting for inspiration to strike, or for destiny to give me a lap dance.”

“…Destiny, the deceased precog?” Brian reluctantly asked, getting a disturbing mental image in the process.

“Destiny, a stripper with a heart of gold – or at least heart of bronze – who only shows off his six-pack to pay for his masters degree in biochemistry,” Rachel clarified.

“The periodic table of elements is like porn for you, isn’t it?” Brian teasingly asked in a tone of confidentiality.

“I like ’em brainy, lean and sinewy,” Rachel nodded and nodded some more.

The telephones in the manor began to ring, which made Jane wake up with a start, and Brian muttered, “Sounds like destiny isn’t afraid of long-distance phone tolls.”

Moira MacTaggert had once laughingly told her ward, Rahne Sinclair, that she would need enough money to fill the hole in Muir Island to be convinced to ever leave the home she’d built for herself. Since that day, the cost grew increasingly outlandish every time she repeated it. Eventually, it was agreed upon that boatloads of money and telepathic manipulation would be needed to take the Moira out of Muir.

It turned out that, after being subtly manipulated into a relationship for years, it took considerably less money to convince Moira to leave Muir Island, and never return. That currency, combined with the insurance windfall that blew her way after the time Black Air had destroyed her research centre, had all been funneled into a new home for Moira and her extended clan. The walls that had been environmentally-soundly constructed around them from reclaimed telephone poles and recycled glass had been named The Isle of Skye Research Center.

Moira had specifically chosen an awkward and unassuming name for the place. While the research silos of her home were serving as a small clinic for mutant abnormalities, the place was largely put together for the sake of creating a home for her growing collection of unofficial wards, most of whom had nowhere else to be. They included the techno-organic Douglock, the pyrokinetic Bridgit Shane who was also calling herself Sizzle, and Jamie Madrox, who had reclaimed his position as Moira’s apprentice. Even Moira’s only patient, Guido Carosella, and only employee, Neal Shaara, were welcomed into her home, like family.

And so it was with great familiarity that Moira knocked perfunctorily on Rahne’s door, before pushing it open, without waiting for response. Just as she had done so to several doors before it.

“Bridgit has prepared breakf–Och! That stench!” Moira cried out. Coughing as if she was going to tear and spit up chunks of her vocal chords, Moira complained, “Burns m’ throat.”

“It’s patchouli incense,” Rahne patronisingly elucidated, from under the heavy duvet cover pulled over her head. Her own voice was croaky from just waking up at such a ridiculously early time of morning in Scotland. “I cannae sleep with the smell of mad science in m’ nostrils. Heightened wolf senses, remember?”

MacTaggert coughed into her fist furiously. The more incensed she got by the incense, the more her Scottish accent mutilated her words; Moira snapped, “But ’tis unbearable. Have yeh no care for me? Throw it away!”

Rahne threw back the covers — her red hair sticking out in all directions, her features slackened and pillow-creased — and just heavily sighed. Stonily, she stated, “Yeh’re permitted to leave now.”

Clomping out of the room, Moira declared, “I will not be talked to like that by a little girl staying in m’ own house. Make yuir own breakfast!”

For the first time, Morien Weller regretted the open concept of his flat’s design. Early morning sunlight spilled into the kitchen from the bay windows in the dining room, and it only served to let him see things as they truly were. Every surface in his kitchen — table, counters, cabinets, chairs, refrigerator door — was made of transparent plastics and glass. Even his kettle and toaster were built with see-through panels. Kara was similarly dressed in only a diaphanous robe, and despite the appeal of her body, she was the source of his regret.

While Kara finished setting the table in the kitchen, she left behind a trail of egg shells, spatulas, grapes, pens, orange peels, melted cheese, and frying pans across his pristine counters. Morien hadn’t even known that the stove was capable of working, but the omelets on the table suggested that it could, in fact, heat. He breathed in deep enough for a groggy, ‘Baby, what’ve you done?’, but didn’t say it. He was too taken aback by the cutesy presentation of the fruit and omelets atop a pair of transparent plates on the table. He couldn’t approve of the mess, but he did award Kara with a smile.

That smile caused Kara’s stiffly awkward posture to melt, and she quit fidgeting with her useless robe. She draped herself across a kitchen chair, and Morien wordlessly sat down across from her. He opened the Guardian newspaper, and scanned through it. Between articles, he chewed on forkfulls of egg and cheese. Kara started her breakfast with the orange wedges and grapes, leaving her omelet untouched.

When Morien reached the horoscopes, he peeked above the paper, and admitted to Kara, “Darling, I can’t remember what your sign is.”

Kara met his gaze with a perplexed look of her own, watching his eyes, until he looked down at the newsprint in his hands again. Once his eyes were off her, the illusion of Kara faded. Cooter pressed the flat of her palm against her omelet, and finally replied, “Pavement is slippery when wet.”

“What?” Moren sniggered, as his eyes found his own horoscope, under Pisces. Instead of the newspaper typeface, his horoscope was written in by hand: I’m going to kill you.

Cooter shot Morien Weller in the face, blowing the back of his head out across the transparent kitchen cabinets behind him. Clutching the gun closer to her own face, she licked a glob of omelet off of it. She yelped at the burning sensation of her tongue touching the hot gun, and then licked it again.

With each successive clack of Rachel’s boot heels across hardwood flooring, the red-haired telepath imagined a different pair of soft-soled shoes that she wished she had worn. None of those wishes made her slow her pace any; if anything, she trod more surely. Passing down a hallway of bedrooms, Rachel approached a doorway that was literally further away from the foyer than any other room in the X-Mansion. Even during her days of living in Westchester, New York, she couldn’t remember venturing this deep into the X-Men’s home and headquarters.

Approaching the room that she was looking for, Rachel side-swept her layered bangs to the right, and then raised her hand to the door. Before she rapped at it, the door languidly swung open, and a tall blonde woman stepped out from the darkness. She had gone by many names, but now she only claimed the title of Amara Aquilla as her own. Her hair was messily pulled back, and flowed down behind her shoulders. Her cream, empire waist blouse and goldenrod, horizontally-striped bellbottoms appeared ill-fitted. Her caramel brown eyes were missing the imperial spark that Rachel had remembered; her eyes seemed entirely lightless.

Once Amara’s eyes met Rachel’s, she impassively asked the telepath, “Have you come to execute me?”

“No!” Rachel shot back, her voice distorted by surprise. “God, no. Danielle called me. She said you needed help remembering–”

“Ah,” Amara said tonelessly, and offered a slow nod. “Yes, I brought perdition to Buenos Aires. I hold no memory of the act, under telepathic thrall as I was. I must admit, I am wary to let another into my mind, but, yes, you will do.”

“I don’t have to enter–” Rachel stopped short, uncomfortable with the intrusive word. “–To examine your mind just yet. We could just talk about it for a while.”

“There is nothing to speak on. I have no memory of the event to comment upon, nor guilt to assuage;” Amara shrugged. She clasped Rachel’s wrist, and assured her, “I trust you to help me.”

“You barely know me,” Rachel chastised, sounding hardly able to trust herself. Ray swallowed hard when her mind trickled back to the moment she momentarily killed all future generations of the alien Uncreated.

“I know these X-Men even less,” Amara asserted.

Surprised and comforted by the flickers of fire that came through Amara’s words, Rachel still doubted by way of, “That’s not true.”

“Did you greet any of the X-Men before seeking me out?” Amara pointedly asked. A corner of her lip creased; it wasn’t a smile, but Amara appeared to already know the forthcoming answer.

“No…” Rachel had to admit. The X-Men she knew had long been scattered, and as for her sort-of father… “They’re all strangers and… no.”

“The few X-Men I trust tell me that there are no resident telepaths as skilled as you are,” Amara stated with finality. She shut the door behind her, and began to meander away from her room.

Keeping instep alongside Amara, Rachel self-depreciatively quipped, “And you heard that I don’t have anything better to do.”

“That is distant from the truth,” Amara admitted, seemingly not noticing the touch of bitter in Ray’s tone. She added, “Ample time passed before they thought of you at all. You do not appear to be the gossip of choice.”

“Well, that’s comforting?” Rachel cringed.

“Most every time I met you, you were at your worst. I know what you are made from, without your facades,” Amara openly shared her thoughts. “I trusted you when you were burning on nothing but hate for the Hellfire Club. I trusted you then; it’s easy to trust you now. You may enter my mind, but not within these walls.”

“Anything you want,” Ray assured her, without entirely understanding Amara’s apprehension, or her own. “I always hoped I’d get to burn up the streets of New York again;” Rachel caressed the words with her tongue, and added a certain sway to her hips as she sashayed towards the staircase. Mostly to herself, she muttered, “I mean, without becoming a demon’s bride, this time.”

“You will have to do all the burning,” Amara matter-of-factly commented. “I seem to have lost my powers.”

“I still say it would be the most problematic weapon in any arsenal,” Jamie Madrox tossed off, wagging his finger for emphasis. Leaning back — way back — in his chair, Jamie sat so comfortably it was almost uncomfortable, with his legs up, and crossed at the ankle, on the desk in his research office at Skye Isle. His genomics text book was long forgotten, as he continued, “Suffocation is the only way to go, and even that’s a little sketchy.”

In direct contrast to Jamie’s compact muscular form, Guido Carosella was massively built, but solidly so, and paced back and forth on the other side of Jamie’s desk. Uncertain about his own point as he made it, Guido wondered, “Whaddabout if you punched someone with it?”

Weighing it in his head by way of a ponderous ‘hmmmm’, Madrox came to the conclusion that, “I think your fist would still be the weapon.”

“Drop four hundred pounds of it on some guy?” Guido eureka’ed. “Four hundred pounds is four hundred pounds.”

Stepping into Madrox’s office, Neal Shaara bluntly asked, “Four-hundred pounds of what?” To Guido, who was a patient of Moira’s because of his uncontrollably expansive mutant muscle mass, Neal questioned, “Just got back from an all-night buffet?”

Refusing to look at Neal, through his tiny ruby-shaded glasses, Guido glibly said to Jamie, “I’m going to go out for some air. You want any?”

“No,” was Madrox’s only reply, although his eyes said that he and Guido would prank Neal later. Once Guido made his way out of the office, and managed to do so without acknowledging Neal’s presence, Jamie said, “Cotton candy. That’s what we were talking about before you undid Guido’s last twelve therapy sessions.”

“Yeah, I found these air filters on the beach;” Neal got to the purpose of his visit, dismissing the Guido incident as not worthy of his attention. The chief of security spun a single bent ventilation filter onto Madrox’s desk.

“Did you want an award?” Madrox facetiously asked. He stomped his feet to the ground, and followed Shaara with his eyes.

Neal strolled along the edge of Madrox’s office, until he ended up behind Jamie’s chair. “I can see this interrogation will be considerably annoying if you’re going to be insolent,” Neal sighed.

“Interrogation?” Jamie inquired impatiently.

“Where are your other duplicate selves right now?” Neal asked his first question — silently asserting that he was asking the questions in this situation.

“There’s a quad of them fast tracking my degrees at the university,” Jamie replied, still impatiently. “And there’s me.”

Leaning closer to Madrox, Neal continued his line of questioning; “And the original Jamie retains your memories when he reabsorbs you?”

“That’s the idea,” Madrox affirmed. He rolled his chair forward, to get closer to his desk and farther from Neal.

Leaning closer still, until his head was over Madrox’s shoulder, Neal whispered, “Even if you were dead?”

Neck to toe in a red vinyl bodysuit, Cooter unceremoniously dropped a sponge into a bucket. Her hands free, she dialed up her Lieutenant on her cellphone. “All the DNA evidence is gone. Send over Mister Escape-Route.”

“He… hasn’t answered any of my calls or pages, boss…” Kellin’s voice came across nasal and tinny over the phone. “Not for the past two days.”

“Well isn’t that peachy fucking keen?” Cooter muttered, affecting annoyance. “The computer criminals whom Morien embezzled from Vixen’s — from my gang should be easily persuaded back, if I wear the right bra. The heavies in the car outside… they might pose a problem, without emotion-controlling mutant pheromones.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of there,” Kellin promised.

“Meh. Don’t bother. I can get myself out,” Cooter said, sounding quite tired of Kellin’s devotion, and licked her lower lip. “But, the next time you talk to him, tell Spoor he’s fired.”

“How sad,” Amara flatly remarked. Surrounded by the greenspace of Teardrop Park in Manhattan, Amara craned her head back, to examine the leaden statue of a General atop his horse. Unlike the other statues, whose horses were heroically leaping with one or two hooves off the ground, this horse appeared docile under the afternoon sun. All four of its hooves were planted on the ground. Firmly, Amara imparted, “No warrior should die in bed.”

“He’s not why I brought you here,” Rachel dismissively said. She gave Amara’s shoulder a squeeze, and then led her down an asphalt path, with her hands clasped behind her back. Amara followed several paces behind, her bare feet connecting with the ground, and yet she felt as if she were floating. Striping off her white leather duster to reveal purple pinstripe slacks and a saffron wraparound top, Rachel led Amara to a safely maintained sand pit, where children played. Ray swept a hand in the direction of the wooden and plastic structures on which the children breathlessly ran and delightedly squealed and recklessly laughed.

“Should I,” Amara posed, “apologise to each of them? Perhaps make reparations twice? I’m not certain, of course, but I believe I killed more children than that.” Pointing her index finger about, Amara began counting the number of children.

“No!” Rachel asserted, and it sounded like a verbal shudder. “I brought you here for this.” At ‘this’ she gave herself and Amara a slight telekinetic push towards a plank of wood that was balanced atop a metal support in the middle: a seesaw.

Keeping the cosmic fire of the Phoenix Force hidden, Ray telekinetically balanced the seesaw perfectly, and straddled the seat on one end. Once Amara mirrored the action on the other seat, Rachel released her t.k. hold, and crouched her side of the plank down to the ground, sending Amara’s end up above the blonde woman’s leg-span. The two found a synergetic pattern of pushing up and falling back down on the seesaw, and Amara never questioned the purpose of the activity.

Tentatively brushing telepathic feathers along the outskirts of Amara’s mind, Rachel explained, “I find physical exertion makes a mind more open to a psychic sharing experience. There’s less energy to expend on barriers and mental blocks. The rhythmic motion on a seesaw tends to be hypnotic, and often stimulates a person’s memory, particularly childhood memories. Even if those aren’t what I’m looking for, it’s always a handy way to get in.”

Her eyes half-lidded and her mind only half-listening to Rachel’s ramblings, Amara let her body keep with the rise-and-fall rhythm as the Phoenix effect blossomed in her mind’s eye.

With the morning sun still high in the sky in Scotland, the eastern research silo of Moira MacTaggert’s home was quiet, its equipment dark. The lighting in its central corridor flicked on automatically, when the motion sensors detected the movement of a red-haired wisp of a teenaged girl and a techno-organic Phallanx. Both were sporting clothing they’d seen on music video stations.

“Stop,” Bridgit Shane sputtered through laughter. Shaking her head and letting her five braids swing in all directions, she playfully smacked him on his yellow-and-black skinned shoulder. After another peal of laughter, Bridgit insisted, “You’re lying!”

“I am not. I sincerely wish I were,” Douglock returned, and bumped his shoulder into hers. His eyes wide and expressive, Doug repeated, “When I entered the kitchen, she was counting how many carrot sticks were in the refrigerator.”

“Stop!” Bridgit shrilled out, with a higher pitched laugh, and a harder slap to Douglock’s shoulder.

“And she wrote the number down in a notebook,” Douglock blurted out, losing his composure to a fit of giggles. “Again!”

“I. Said. Stop.” Her brow furrowed with disgust, her hand flaming with mutant fire, Bridgit slapped Douglock across the mouth. His head turned away by the blow, Douglock kept it turned away because of his shock.

Doug took four measured steps away from Bridgit, before gingerly looking back her way. Fearful for her next act and for the state of her mind, Douglock entreated, “Bridge, what’s gotten into you to–”

A gravelly voice sing-songed, “That’s no’ how to stop him.”

A ceiling panel collapsed above Douglock’s head, and the stockily muscular Spoor came dropping down with it. His body covered in coarse brown fur, Spoor landed on Douglock, sending the Phalanx boy splaying to the floor. By the time Bridgit yelped in distress, Spoor had driven his machete clear through Douglock’s shoulder. Spoor roughly grasped Doug’s wrist, and hefted the severed arm like a baseball bat. As Bridgit stood motionless, only whimpering intensely, Spoor batted her across the side of the head with Dougie’s arm. The girl flailed into a wall without making another sound, save for a solid crack. In the time it took for Bridgit to crumple to the floor, Spoor had stabbed Douglock in the face a dozen times.

He dragged both bodies into the unoccupied Mutant X chamber.

The Davis Academy was constructed in Darkmoor, England when the population was on the rise in 1985. The community never blossomed as it was expected to, and the school was abandoned shortly after its initial commissioning. The structure and land was purchased by an organisation called RCX, and was handed over through several espionage and intelligence agencies that rose and fell in Britain. The building was only first utilized by the current Weird Happenings Organisation, which re-christened the academy as the Darkmoor Imaginaut Platform. While still closed to the public and the majority of the scientific community, the centre for research and education was an experiment in tentatively transferring the scientific knowledge base of superheroes, aliens, alternative earths and mystech to civilian scientists. At present, those scientists were limited to orange-clearance W.H.O. personnel, but there were hopes for expansion. Hopes for the people of Earth to have the capability to protect themselves from any imaginable and unimaginable threat, should their post human protectors ever be indisposed.

Located on the helipad behind the Imaginaut Platform, the Midnight Runner — Excalibur’s beefed-up hovercraft — cooled its turbofans. Meanwhile, the pilot of the ‘Runner was conversing with the Director of the Platform in Study Hall G.

While Brian Braddock appeared to be a blond aristocrat, who spent his twenties at the gym, Dane Whitman looked like the brunette pretty-boy next door, who spent his twenties fighting the Crusades. Together, they examined the read-out display on the fantastic scanning chamber, whose distant origins might have been a magnetic resonance imaging device. In the heart of this gleaming platinum technology — which looked as if it were from Star Trek if Star Trek had been designed by HR Geiger — lay Jamie Braddock. Each of the sensitive, but non-invasive, scanners took note of Jamie’s mutant reality-warping abilities, and his psychic-coma suffering brain. Once the current scan cycle completed, Dane recalibrated the sensors, and began the next sweep.

“I’m relieved that you wrote me,” Dane told Brian in a rush, as if it was the only thing he’d wanted to say all afternoon. Unable to meet Brian’s eyes, he said, “Words are just words, and this doesn’t make up for it, but I felt like a cad when I got your first e-mail. I was an ass, to vow to keep in touch at Meggan’s funeral, and then to just go back to my insular life.”

“Don’t flagellate yourself,” Brian said, by way of a pardon. He didn’t harbour any ill will towards Dane, but couldn’t go to the emotional place of teary forgiveness. In an attempt to make it easier, Brian had to admit, “I didn’t make myself entirely available to anyone.”

“You and me both,” Dane tentatively empathised. “All I’ve been able to perceive and think and express is my baby,” — he gestured to the research centre around them with a sweep of his arm — “I let the whole rest of the world fall away.”

“I think I know that feeling,” Brian said, almost sadly.

“You have spent the past few months off-world,” Dane realised, sounding slightly awed.

“Off-what?” Brian retorted inarticulately.

“I knew Merlin sent you to an alternate Earth,” Dane said.

“No, I, uh, have been, um,” Brian struggled with uncharacteristic shame for his months of inactivity. As a place-holder for an actual answer, he slid his hands into the pockets of his designer jeans, and shrugged. A new light shining across his facial expression, Brian tried, “I have been hoping that you haven’t let the entirety of the world fall away in the past months.”

Squinting in puzzlement, Dane prodded, “How do you mean?”

“I’m hoping that you’re still–” Brian stopped and restarted, “Since Heroes for Hire, that you’re still the Black Knight.”

“Verily,” Dane nodded, showing a certain amusement for Brian’s sudden discomfort. “There’s not a replacement, yet.”

“I was wondering, if you’re not doing anything else on Saturday, if you’d like to… go, as Black Knight, on patrol?”

“Patrol?”

“You know. You do know? Patrol: scour the streets of London for wrongdoers.”

“…Sure. Count on it. We’ll get out of our heads a little, we’ll get some exercise, and it’ll be a laugh, if nothing else. I’ll need you to show me how to do it properly, though. Are we supposed to prowl on rooftops or soar overhead? I’ve never been that proactive on my own.”

“Honestly, I, heh, I ask because I don’t know how it’s done either. I always knew that I was a pawn, throughout my career as a vigilante, and yet I miss that career. Mind you, I don’t know if I’m missing the criminal fighting and the clarity of purpose or just the interaction with super human compatriots. Either way, I’d rather learn to be a Knight, than be shuffled around as Merlin’s Pawn again.”

“I’ve been vacationing from the Knight, myself. Showering in science for six months has seriously reminded me how much I don’t miss the ambiguities of a vigilante’s life. The older I get, the harder I find it to make moral judgements against people, unless there is an imminent harm to prevent. I know you’ve felt it too. That’s why you took a vacation as well.”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh! Oh, I didn’t mean–”

“The Supreme Guardians of the Multiverse have catalogued the moral beliefs of every lifeform in the ‘verse. As a result, they have determined a composite moral code for every world in the Earth series. My connection to the omniversal energy matrix taps me into the absolute moral compass of Earth 616.”

“You know what is Right? What is absolutely Right?”

“…No. …Not really. I’ve never actually… felt it. I don’t know where it lives. But it’s… supposed to be there. Inside me.”

The Omniversal Majestrix, Opal Luna Saturnyne, sat primly upon her casual Thursday throne, in one of the Starlight Citadel’s halls of infinite chambers. This particular chamber existed in a corner of Earth 309, and this Earth’s newest guardian was genuflecting on the floor in front of the Majestrix. Archly, Saturnyne asked, “Would you prefer I return you to a life of slavery?”

Formally clothed in the colours of a Captain Britain, Alysande Stuart immediately snapped back at her, “Roma would no’ allow it!” At the mere mention of slavery, Caledonia returned to her feet and regained her strong posture.

“Roma would also frown upon her new pet project spitting upon all of the advantages we have gifted to her,” Saturnyne sunnily threatened. She crossed her legs, and smoothed out the silken skirt of her crystal white robes. In that moment, she faintly taunted, “Especially after the glorious disaster she made of her own Earth.”

Clenching and unclenching her jaw, Caledonia stated, “Assigning m’ to protect Earth 309 is no’ an advantage.”

Laughing with the warmth of icicles, Saturnyne posited, “I can be certain that the Captain Britain who was native to 309 would much prefer to be in your boots than in his ownvaporised loafers.”

“I envy him,” Caledonia said, defiantly jutting out her chin. Wistfully, she pronounced, “His mettle was proven, I am not even allowed to perform m’ job.”

“It is as calling,” Saturnyne admonished. “Not a job.”

“To Earth 309, it is a job,” Caledonia contradicted. “They fought a war using post-humans as weapons, and now their world is devastated and afraid. I need a license t’ use my gifts and fight tyranny. I… failed t’ be approved for such a license. I only want to prove what is in m’ blood, but if I do so without a license, I will be branded a villain, and will ne’er be allowed to fight as a hero.”

“Well, hero, I will instruct my Avant Guard to rescue you,” Saturnyne declared sardonically. “They’re champions at bureaucracy; they shall get you that license, no matter how devastated and afraid the natives might be.”

The hardness in her expression softening to curiosity, Caledonia put forth, “Pardon m’ asking, your whyness, but why is such a world allowed to tarnish the Earth series?”

“Weren’t you paying attention to your studies in the Training Corps? The Dimensional Development Court was adjourned during the massacre here on Otherworld. All the worlds in the Multiverse must fend for themselves, while the Supreme Guardians shore up Otherworld’s defenses and I am left with the onus of reconstructing a Corps that must be stronger than the last,” Saturnyne haughtily explained, and then gestured to Caledonia. “But with much shoddier construction materials.”

“Are you positive that Moira said she would be sending you Jamie’s files this morning?” Brian asked of Dane Whitman. A growing edge of concern to each of his words, he stated, “Moira doesn’t tolerate lateness. Something must be wrong.”

“I am so positive, I should have a higher electric potential than you,” Dane ranted nervously, with a phone receiver to his ear. “Oh Hell. Her phone line has been disconnected.”

“I came in the Midnight Runner,” Brian reminded Black Knight. To Dane’s lab assistant, Sharon, Brian asked, “Can you watch over to Jamie, while we jaunt over to Skye Isle?”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Dane verbalized his first thought.

“Are you serious?” Brian snapped, the rights and wrongs of vigilantism seeming moot. “She’s received death threats from the prejudiced locals.”

Dane Whitman squeezed on the amulet chained around his neck. “Avalon,” he said sternly, and elvish black, white and navy armour coalesced around his lab coat. In a voice exuding confidence, Black Knight asserted, “Then I guess there won’t be much of a moral judgement.”

“Not much of a rational judgement, either,” Sharon taunted, while holding up her PDA. “Doctor MacTaggert is scheduled to be disconnecting all of her telecommunications lines tomorrow for an upgrade.”

“Oh,” Brian deflated.

“Oh,” Dane echoed. Returning his armour to the ether, he sheepishly said, “Sorry to rev you up without release.”

“It’s okay. I should be heading home to Jane, anyway,” Brian waved it off.

“You should stay for supper,” Dane suggested. “We have something else to talk about.”

“What about?”

“The job I want to offer you.”

Presently converted into a hypersonic hovercraft, Brian’s crimson BMW convertible arced across the early evening sky, affording its passengers a view of the organic farm on the Braddock Estate. Continuing south, Rachel began the vehicle’s decent, as she quickly approached the Manor. From the air, Braddock Manor was generally shaped like an “E”. The southern length of the structure was capped with a sloped roof, while the three northernly wings were more obviously baroque-inspired in their architecture. Landing the convertible outside of Meggan’s overgrown garden behind the Manor, Rachel hopped out of the car, and helped Amara Aquilla retrieve her bags from the trunk.

Padding across the checkerboard patio that led to the back entrance, Amara hesitantly asked, “For how long will I be permitted to stay with you here?”

“For however long parole officer Moonstar allows,” Rachel supposed, with a playful shrug. “Brian won’t mind, and I do hope you’ll be here long enough for me to find somethinguseful in your memory.”

“Do not be disheartened by your failure,” Amara told her warmly. “I was not expecting instant success. It would be hubris for you to think that it would only take you mere hours to unlock the secrets of who altered my mind, and why. Comprehending what has been done to me can wait. I was much more anxious to get out from under the suspicious and disdainful eye of the X-Mansion.”

“I think I know that feeling,” Rachel said, almost sadly. Following Amara through the sliding glass doorway, Ray shut the door behind them. Before the convertible’s turbofans fully cooled, the east wing of Braddock Manor erupted, spewing forth billowing plumes of fire.

Clutching a stack of papers and a thumb-sized USB drive, Moira MacTaggert stomped down a residential corridor of her research centre, her lab coat billowing behind her. Noticing soft light spilling out from under Wolfsbane’s door, Moira screeched, “Rahne? Are yeh there?”

Poking her head out from her bedroom, Rahne’s youthful appearance was marred by a sneer. She spat, “And what do yeh want?”

“I cannae find anyone,” Moira bellowed with absolute frustration. She stridently hollered on, “Where are they all? Am I the only responsible one in this house?”

“Donnae take a sparey,” Rahne hissed. “They must be hidin’ from yeh after yesterday. Yeh called Bridgit a sheltr belter and Neal a bufty!”

“Aye,” Moira agreed, and shrugged it off, not seeing the harm. “And yeh said Douglock was a soul-stealin’ monstrosity.”

“I was wrong before,” Rahne said cooly, as Moira approached. “Dougie deserved better than to have his consciousness cloned by a walking techno-organic virus.”

“Didnae stop yeh from peltin’ with him,” Moira snidely accused, once she was face to face with Rahne. With a snarl, Rahne’s form took on significantly lupine features, while MacTaggert coughed in Rahne’s face. Gripping at her glasses to keep them from sliding off her nose, Moira cried out, “Och! That cursed incense. Thow it away!”

Wolfsbane raked her claws across Moira’s throat, without hesitation. Bright red blood spurting across Wolfsbane’s face, she asked, “Does your throat burn now?”

NEXT ISSUE: Can Brian, the stay-at-home dad, be the kind of champion he was as Captain Britain without the armour and the legacy?

Author’s Notes

Many thanks to George Cameron, who inspired Amara’s presence in this story, and to Mark Waid, who coined the shiny word “Imaginaut” (as far as I can tell).