THROWDOWN

Part II

By Desmond Reddick

The following story takes place concurrently to Amazing Fantasy #43

“RAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

It was less a scream of pain than it was a last ditch attempt at gathering a final burst of energy. But it was a fruitless attempt. Blue Diamond struggled against the massive fingers encasing his body as he screamed.

No use. He was in the clutches of Gargantua’s huge hands. To make it all worse, the big dope had just thrust him under the icy water of Niagara River.

Elton was able to suck in as much air as his body would allow being crushed between the python-like fingers of Gargantua, which wasn’t a lot.

Bird of prey that she was, Red Raven divebombed Gargantua’s neck and face, but was unable to deliver a debilitating blow. He either knocked her away by swinging his head or he was just too big to be affected by the sharp jabs of her spear in his non-fatal areas.

Thin Man teleported onto Gargantua’s shoulder, the crackling of subspace teleportation drowned out by the rushing waters of the nearby falls. With his left hand stretched thin and fingers driven to a sharpened point, he dug into Gargantua’s cheek and, pulling his arm straight back, launched his other sharpened hand forward as close to the jugular as he could.

SHUCK!

The giant lurched up and back. Gargantua clutched his neck with both hands as Red Raven dive-bombed to rescue the near-drowned Blue Diamond.

SHUCK!

Another stab from Thin Man had Gargantua crashing into the slick, barren rock face beside the falls, sending Thin Man tumbling into the icy water below.

The world shook and rocks fell loose from the hillside, splashing into the roiling water below. It wouldn’t be long before Niagara Falls had a permanent extension.

Thin Man avoided Gargantua’s swatting hand with a last second teleportation. Unfortunately, his inability to think of an immediate destination mixed with intense exhaustion put him midair twenty feet above the water. As tired as he was, Thin Man was energized by the cold water. Upon surfacing, he opened a subspace comm link with the Stratoplane.

“Thin Man to Challenger! Come back.”

The voice barked clearly through the dry atmosphere of the Stratoplane as if Thin Man was standing before the two heroes. Challenger, who felt nothing like the pinnacle of human physicality at the moment thanks to his knees being done in by a Toyota in his last battle, sat beside Mongoose, whose inexperience was worn on her sleeve. The two poles of heroism, a man who battled through time and space with only his fists and his wit-s and a super-powered example of youthful arrogance.

“This is Challenger, over.”

The line was open thanks to the Kahalian technology. Anything he said would be heard by Thin Man.

“We need air support, over.”

“We’re coming. Out.”

Challenger moved his hands directly to the planes controls and manoeuvred the Stratoplane out of hover mode and brought it to bear on Gargantua.

The elder hero thumbed the screen to select weapon systems.

“Weapon systems locked.” The voice was cold but not robotic, that of a lovely sounding disinterested young woman.

“Override!” Challenger shouted.

“Voice designation: Challenger, Waring, William. Not authorized for weapons system override.”

“Well, shoot.” Challenger muttered. “Strap in, girl!”

With the press of Challenger’s palm on the control panel, the Stratoplane lurched forward from a hover position to something approaching the speed of sound. The ship shot into the air and did a looping turn back in the direction it came from. With the nose pointed at the back of the giant, the heroes, young and old, could see Red Raven pulling Blue Diamond out of the raging waters as well as Gargantua reaching down to grab Thin Man.

Challenger accelerated.

“What are you doing?” Mongoose, clutching the armrests of her bucket seat, was legitimately terrified.

“I told you to hang on, girl!”

In a moment of breathlessness, the pointed nose of the Kahalian jet plunged between the shoulder blades of the lumbering giant. Blood spatter obscured much of the view after that, but anyone watching from shore or from any of the several major news networks or their affiliates would be able to tell you that Gargantua let loose a childlike whimper when he looked down to see blood pouring steadily off of the jets nose as it protruded from his chest.

They would tell you that he stumbled against the rocky wall, half under the falls, before completely losing his footing and slipping under the water.

They would tell you how his blood made pink foam swirl above his submerged body as the strange alien-looking jet floated back up to the top.

Thin Man teleported onto the wing and rested on his hands and knees as Dania delivered Blue Diamond to a light landing on the same wing.

“Good God, Bruce!” Blue Diamond yelled, pulling his cowl off of his soaked head. He coughed a wet cough and water left his lungs in rasping drips.

The door over the wing hissed but it was unheard with the roaring falls nearby.

“The weapons systems were offline. I had to improvise.” Challenger said stepping out onto the wing.

“You murdered him!” Elton screamed while pointing at Challenger.

“In case you didn’t notice,” Dania stepped in between the men, “he was going to murder you first!”

“That doesn’t make it right, young lady.” Elton said, calming down. “He had the brain of a child, for God’s sake!”

“You guys really cocked this one up, didn’t you?”

The Liberty Legion, including Mongoose who stood in the threshold of the door over the wing, looked up at the squadron of V-Cruisers hovering not thirty feet away. In the lead vehicle, Fin stood on the front end and dove off into the water below.

He was barely under the water for a second until he surfaced on the other side of the wing, stepping onto solid ground with his crackling magical cutlass drawn.

“Just what the hell is this?” Thin Man said, on shaky feet, as he pointed to the small army Fin had brought with him.

“Bruce, this is getting ridiculous. You and your team are a going concern. What with what happened at Roxxon and Time’s Tower and now this, the world is watching you guys screw the pooch on an almost daily basis!”

“Yeah!” the man who wore the Patriot costume said, hovering down on the same V-Cruiser Fin had leapt from. “You creepy old men and the little girls you’re hanging around should probably call it quits before you turn the whole country against the rest of us good superheroes.”

Thin Man snarled at Patriot before what Fin said finally set in.

“Wait a minute!” He paused and attempted to establish a comm link through subspace.

“What?”

There was nothing on the other end but static.

“Time’s Tower?! What happened at Time’s Tower?”

Patriot laughed while Fin looked down.

“What didn’t happen at Time’s Tower, you mean!” Patriot chuckled as he motioned for the other V-Cruiser to level with him.

“Bruce,” Fin said sheepishly, “there was an attack. The girl in Helmut’s armor…”

“Oh God!”

“Is she okay?” Challenger butted in.

“She’s alive,” Fin continued, “but it doesn’t look good.”

“We’ve got to get to her!” Blue Diamond said charging into the Stratoplane.

“Not so fast, Grampaw!” Patriot said leaping onto the fuselage above the wing. “You’re under arrest!”

“What?!” Thin Man looked to Fin.

“With what happened here today, and the loss of civilian life and a rescue squad at Time’s Tower on top of the Roxxon incident, you’re all being charged with reckless endangerment. I’ve also been told that other charges related to Roxxon are being laid.”

“What charges?” Challenger asked, trying to keep cool for everyone’s sake.

“I suggest you speak to your lawyer,” Fin said motioning to the V-Cruisers.

“We’ll do that. Dania! Now!” Bruce screamed as he turned and stretched his arm to deliver a punch square in the solar plexus of Patriot, knocking him off of the Stratoplane and into the water below.

Red Raven lifted her golden anti-gravity gun to the V-Cruisers and blasted them. The Avian weapon disrupted the flight systems of the flying cars, sending them tumbling end over end up into the air. It wouldn’t hurt anyone wearing their seatbelt and offered enough time to get away.

In seconds, the team was on the Stratoplane and far out of sight.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Roger Aubrey said as he watched the scene play out before him on the liquid gel screen of the Abyss Bridge.

The observation and command deck was virtually devoid of life except for a small crew manning the communication systems. They were between shifts on the Vanguard II and anyone working on power or navigation was more likely to be in the engineering room. It was Roger’s favourite time on the Abyss Bridge. Though there was nothing enjoyable about watching what he’d just watched.

“What doesn’t, Roger?” Fred Davis said walking up behind him.

Roger turned to him, both men adorned in the white and red robes worn by the Penance Council.

“I fought alongside most of them. They’re good heroes, great men. More noble than I ever was.”

“I did too,” Davis said, recalling his short stint as Bucky after World War II.

“The Time’s Tower thing and Niagara are the kinds of things that happen in our line of work, but this is just…it doesn’t add up.”

The screen in front of them played the most damning evidence the superhero community had faced since its inception. The two men watching it had both thought that the worst was behind them with the Niagara Falls incident that had just happened this morning, but this was the nail in the coffin.

Roger looked down at a dark haired communications engineer and blinked for a second thinking of his name.

“De Silva,” Aubrey began, “prepare a specialized APB for delivery to the Commission, SHIELD and the Hulkbusters specifically. Have it on hand for delivery to MI-13 and Department H if necessary.”

“Yes sir,” De Silva said already cuing up the commands on screen.

“While he’s doing that,” Davis said, “I have a phone call to make.”

Roger turned to make eye contact with Fred and nodded his assent. For a long time, he’d thought that things were beginning to fall down around him. And, if what he believed was true, it was going to get a whole lot worse.

They would need all the help they could get.

“Thank you. Keep me updated on the quarter hour.” Senator Robert Ralston had been trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. It was all happening exactly as he was told it would.

Ralston turned toward the large oaken doors. They were stained a dark cherry, and imposingly large. He stepped toward the two armed guards. Beside the one on his right was a clear plastic cube. Before the Shocktrooper could motion toward it, Ralston dropped his smartphone into it.

The phone never hit the bottom. As it entered the cube, the device hummed to life and a blindingly bright light flashed while the phone hovered in the centre of the shape. The Shocktrooper nodded to Ralston, giving him consent to get his phone back.

The hairs on his hand bristled as Ralston reached into the cube to grab his phone. The thing was the world’s most sophisticated phone-scrubber. Any call made to or from his phone from the hour before he arrived at the headquarters to the hour after he left would look as though it was made or received in his office.

The days of “radio silence” during clandestine meetings were over. If men with high political and corporate clout were all found to be incommunicado for the same period of time, suspicions would be aroused and reporters would have to be killed in mysterious car crashes or faulty gas line explosions. It was an added danger to what they were doing. Besides, who didn’t text their secretaries during meetings these days?

The doors led to a vast open hallway of dark cherry finished oak and vermillion carpet. It smelled of bourbon and cigar smoke, the spoils of upper class middle-aged men. On each wall was a small closet, a locker really, with doors so similarly stained and unassuming, one could pass by without noticing them. But to do so was a cardinal sin, here. If one paid attention, he would see that each little door has a black Roman numeral burned into it.

Ralston walked to the “I” and opened it. He slipped on the vermillion robe and hood and walked into the grand war room of the Secret Empire.

“Number One!” a man lighting a large Cuban cigar bellowed. Others followed suit.

Ralston waved to the room as he was honoured on his entrance and took a seat at the table reserved for him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “my time is limited this evenin’. I’m sure you all know why by this point.”

There was a round of chuckling and hushed gossiping at the table.

“But rest assured that everythin’ is goin’ as planned. Liberty Legion has been sullied in the public and will surely be driven underground. Any other super team allied with them will suffer the same fate. Not if, but, indeed, when they resurface, we have taken measures to meet them head-on. We’ll proceed in the normal fashion. And until next time, I have to defer to Number Two to carry the rest of the agenda of today’s meetin’. Thank you.”

Ralston rose to a raucous applause and left through the meeting room’s back door.

“What?!” Thin Man screamed through his subspace communications technology. “Send it to me!”

Thin Man hit the control panel for autopilot and walked to the passenger hold of the Stratoplane. He stepped between the bucket seats occupied by Challenger and Mongoose and held on to Mongoose’s head rest as he stood.

“Pay attention, Legion. I’d thought that the Niagara Falls fight would be raked over the coals on every news channel but it has something else struggling for top story.”

He looked straight ahead and said aloud: “Amadeus, patch it through.”

The midair screen opened in front of them and buzzed to life, showing a solemn looking well-kept brunette.

“-ew video evidence released today from the Justice Department of Tuesday’s Roxxon Building attack implicates a member of the superhero vigilante team, Liberty Legion.”

The image cut to a much clearer picture of the battle between Blue Diamond and Quasimodo and slowed down to show a lithe young girl placing plastic explosive on cement columns around the lobby only a second before Quasimodo blasted Blue Diamond with his eye and an explosion rocked the building. The screen went black.

“What?! No, I –“ Mongoose began, but before she could elaborate, Thin Man’s fingers had wrapped around her body, tying her to the bucket seat. The ten fingertips sharpened to a point all around her neck. She couldn’t so much as move her head, without causing a major bleed out.

“Don’t worry,” Thin Man said gravely in her ear, “we’ll have lots of time to talk.”

NEXT ISSUE: I know, right? I’ve put these guys through a whole lot of hell over the past five issues. They won’t be getting much of a break, either. We’ll pick up where we left off in the next major update, but, in the meantime, I just wanted to take the time to show you what kind of hell some other heroes are going through as building blocks are laid for a bold new direction and “Liberty Worldwide” begins! Stay tuned!