Captain England in…

EUROPEAN DEFENSE INITIATIVE

Part II: You Stole Me Face

By Ed Ainsworth

“What the Hell?” Brian asked, getting to his feet slowly. The punch had taken him straight out of the Dome away from the other attacking members of the new European Captain Initiative. The owner of that punch was apparently a Captain Britain.

“Who the hell authorised that costume?” Brian demanded, storming towards the man. “Captain Britain” crossed his arms over his chest.

“And why the hell are you the only one who gives a damn about his identity? You wear a mask but those other idiots don’t.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Captain Britain said, pushing his hand out into Brian’s chest. The former Captain Britain felt his anger build inside him.

“Move your hand,” Brian ordered. Captain Britain didn’t, as he opened his mouth to explain. Instead, he found himself tugged by his shoulder into the ground, as Brian thrust him downwards and slammed his boot into his helmet, still gripping his wrist.

“Stop it! I’m trying to explain!”

“No, you’re not!” Brian yelled. “You punched me through a wall to make yourself look brilliant to the other weaker Captains. If you wanted to talk you’d have talked them down and not twatted me one!”

“That isn’t true! I’ve got clearance for everything!”

“What you’ve got clearance for punching me? Not bloody likely, mate.”

With another twist of his wrist, Captain Britain yelled out and slammed his fist into the dirt.

“MI:13!” he yelled.

“What about it?”

“They gave me clearance! They gave me the costume and the powers and the helmet. They want the public to think I’m you!”

That shook Brian. He released the Captain and took a step back. Rolling onto his back and smearing some of the wet mud from his costume, Captain Britain sat up.

“Bollocks,” Brian said. He stared at the man lying on his back, as Brian dropped down onto his arse in the mud.

Captain Britain removed his helmet, revealing a face that Brian recognised, but couldn’t remember, underneath.

“My name is Lieutenant Tom Suitor. I worked with you at MI:13 and WHO for a short time.”

“Bloody brilliant, that,” Brian said, resting his wrists on his kneecaps, “So I get replaced as soon as I try something a bit bloody daring, do I?”

“I don’t think you’re being replaced, I don’t. England is a wreck and we need you there, but…the EU needs a Britain here. In fact, it has two.”

“This is…Two?” Brian asked.

“Yeah. Captain UK as well,”

“Aaagghh!” Brian yelled. He balled his fists and slammed them into the dirt.

“Hey! Calm! I asked for a different title, if it makes you feel any better. Out of respect.”

“That…that doesn’t actually help all that much,” Brian replied. “I’m leaving now.” “I think that’s probably best. I have to go and explain what the hell I was thinking as well,” Tom said, looking over at the angry looking General in the hole he’d just made.

“The Dome was built by German engineering. They don’t take kindly to…personal touches.”

Brian sighed, as he looked up at the sky and back to Tom.

“I, uh, look. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I actually don’t care. I’m really pissed off. Tell Linda she can stick it.”

“Ah. Nice to meet you?”

“Shit off,” Brian said, taking to the sky.

Tom sighed as he put his helmet on tightly, and walked back towards the Dome.

“I need to work on the patter…” he paused as he walked back, looking at the hole in the Dome and the increasingly small figure of Captain England’s ascent. He did have a point. Tom stepped forwards, stumbling from the power of push from behind.

He turned quickly to see Captain UK stood in front of him, seething with anger.

“You bloody told him?!” she yelled. Tom held up his hands to defend himself.

“I told him you were a part of this, yeah,” he wondered why she would be so angry; “This is what you wanted!”

“I wanted to tell him in my own damn time, you bloody idiot!” she flicked her white hair from her face and shouldered him out of the way. “You can sleep in your own damn bed tonight, you tit. I’ll see if Umberto wants to take up that offer from the mixer.”

“Umberto’s clearly a gay,” Tom said, with a raised index. Linda raised her finger, but as Tom noted with a quick flick to the ground, it wasn’t the index.

-{Tom? Are you suited?}-

“Sir.”

-{We have a problem. Spain, Italy and France are going after Braddock. Those guys have no idea what they’re doing.}-

“Yes, sir. That’s constantly clear.”

Tom rose off the ground and shot into the air, following the tiny black dots that were France, Italy and Spain. He would catch them up eventually. Hopefully.

-[You need to stop them, Britain. They’re going to make a huge mistake.]-

“Where are they?”

“Engaged over the channel currently, but we’re tracking them. They’re…heading over main-land France.”

“Typical,” Tom said, “Can’t we get the rest of S.H.E. on this instead? I don’t really want to fight them. Or him.”

-{They’re in Germany at the moment, Tom. Got some problems of their own, this is up to you.}-

“This doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence here, Call-Sign. I don’t want to fight Brian, or the other Captains. I’m supposed to train them.”

-[You need to hurry. We need them, and you, somewhere else.]-

“Where?”

-{It’s Tunisia, Captain.}-

“Tunisa? What…surely they don’t have missiles that can reach Italy?”

-{It’s not missiles, Captain. It’s Super-Humans.}-

“What? How could they do that?” Tom was genuinely confused. Sure, the European unions had found a way to generate and homogenise powers, but they were 27 of the more powerful and developed countries the in world.

“You don’t think we’ve got an infiltrator do you? Someone bottled up the Belgian’s brain-sweat and sent it over to the highest bidder?”

-{Get real, Captain. Who in their right mind would sell brain sweat to Tunisia when places like China, Korea or Russia would pay so much more? No, this is native tech turned wrong. We think he’s gone rogue.}-

“How can you tell?”

-{Because the whole damn facility that he launched from is a crater, Captain. Everyone who ever worked there is now a trail of blood in the atmosphere, kid. Get there and smash his face out of his arse, or that’ll be you too.}-

Speedball in…

FIELD TRIP FROM HELL

Part I

By Dale Glaser

The yellow school bus idled noisily, although even its aged, rattling engine could not drown out the mid-morning traffic of the New York City street. The bus opened its door onto a sidewalk abutting the low brick wall boundary of Empire State University’s relatively pastoral campus. On the opposite side ran three lanes of traffic dense with cars, taxicabs, delivery trucks, and the occasional moped. On the far side of the street, pedestrians thronged past storefronts, oblivious to the repeated imagery of a filthy hockey mask and bloody knife in posters advertising Friday the 13th Part VIII. Businessmen in three-piece suits en route to meetings, out-of-state tourists in visors and matching t-shirts, night-shift hospital workers heading home in scrubs, and various disparate eccentric locals formed the human flow in front of a bodega, a deli, a watch-repair shop, a record shop. In the distance, a jackhammer’s metallic knocking cut through the city sounds.

Robbie Baldwin stood beside the bus, near enough to its tailpipe to smell the exhaust. Redolent of flammable chemicals, it reminded him of lighter fluid burning off charcoal in a grill, which in turn reminded him of the barbecue pool party he would have preferred to be attending with all his friends. Technically, the social gathering had not yet started and would not for a couple hours, but it nevertheless would be winding down before the bus even made it back to Connecticut. In his mind, Robbie had already missed the party altogether because instead of getting ready for it, he was desultorily counting heads of third-graders as they disembarked from the bus.

Robbie’s mother was an elementary school teacher; she and her students had begun their year two days earlier. Springdale High School would not start classes until Monday, making this the last Friday of summer vacation, an occasion being marked by his classmates at the Farewell Summer Barbecue Pool Party at Jennifer Golick’s house. Somehow, Madeline Naylor-Baldwin had come to the conclusion that her 15-year-old son needed to chaperone two dozen 8-year-olds more than he needed to play pool volleyball and eat hot dogs with his age-appropriate peers. Robbie was still trying to calculate exactly which decade would herald his forgiveness of his mother’s conclusion-drawing shortcomings.

Robbie had not bothered to learn the third graders’ names, simply giving them handles suggested by the clothes they wore: day-glo yellow shorts and bright blue Ocean Pacific t-shirt was Opie; pink jumper with rainbow-striped belt was Cheer Bear, the misfit of the class dressed entirely in black was Siouxsie; Air Jordans and t-shirt commemorating Michael Jackson’s Bad tour was MJ; and so on. Robbie hung back from the knot of children, making sure none ran wildly into Manhattan traffic but otherwise distancing himself mentally as well as physically.

“Watchit!” Robbie heard a half-second after a hot dog cart struck him in the back, knocking him into the side of the bus. The pair of impacts with heavy, steel surfaces was not quite as powerful as a dual kick from the springloaded bootheels of Leaper Logan, yet still nearly activated his kinetic forcefield. He could feel the prickle of incipient extradimensional energies up and down his spine and all along his limbs, threatening to churn into golf-ball sized spheres of pastel light around his body. As Mrs. Naylor-Baldwin stepped off the bus and walked toward him, Robbie took several deep, calming breaths to banish the sensation; no good could come of suddenly transforming into Speedball before his mother’s eyes.

“OK, Robbie, ready to herd everyone inside?” Mrs. Naylor-Baldwin asked.

“Do I have to?” Robbie sighed. “Can’t I just stay here and … um, read? Until you get back?” A paperback of Lord of the Flies, assigned reading for English class, was in his knapsack on the bus, but so was a copied cassette of Daydream Nation. His Walkman was clipped to his waistband, the headphones resting on his collar, Nothing’s Shocking loaded in its tape deck.

His mother shook her head. “I didn’t just bring you to keep everyone in their seats on the bus,” she explained. “I need another set of eyes on these kids all day. Besides, won’t the lab be more interesting than the bus? I thought you’d find it really interesting to compare the ESU facilities to the Hammond Research Labs. Maybe you could even apply here next year!”

Robbie rolled his eyes. “Mom,” he groaned with practiced teenage bitterness. Left unspoken was the fact that he knew the field trip and his internship at Hammond were apples and oranges. Hammond Research Labs specialized in applied physical sciences such as the discovery of untapped energy sources; the third-graders were at ESU to tour the Bain Computer Science Building. The former was the domain of brave, adventurous men of science, while the latter was for doughy and antisocial nerds.

“All right, all right, no more college talk, but you still have a job to do, young man. Now let’s get the class moving,” she admonished. Robbie’s head drooped dejectedly for a moment, but soon enough he was, however truculently, going through the motions of guiding unruly 8-year-olds onto the quad. As the group approached the Bain Computer Science Building’s front doors, none of them noticed a lone figure watching them from the edge of the roof, hand poised purposefully over a holstered sidearm.

Armor in…

DECADENCE

By Hunter Lambright

Respect.

That’s what Hisako Ichiki’s parents had her told that their tradition would teach her. It would teach her respect for her elders, respect for customs, and respect for what the world expected of her. They had neglected to mention that it would also remind her how much she appreciate modern amenities and technology.

She sputtered as rain traveled down her hair and into her open mouth. Even an umbrella would be considered high technology at this point, she thought. Why was she even doing this? Her parents were thousands of miles away back home in Japan. There was no one here making her go through with this.

It was her father’s tradition. Every time he moved or visited somewhere new, he would spend a day trekking to the highest point around on his own without any outside help, just to reach the top and understand, by looking down, what was around him. When Hisako turned thirteen, her father’s tradition forcibly became her own. And now, though her parents had sent her to San Diego just to be rid of her, mutant disgrace that she was, she found herself a few hundred miles north in the San Gorgonio Mountain area climbing through the rocks and underbrush on her own account. Some traditions stayed traditions.

Hisako didn’t resent her family. She was angry because they had sent her away rather than deal with the disgrace in the family. To be a mutant meant she had done something wrong, according to her grandparents. That she existed was an affront to their own beliefs. For Hisako, it was not important that they accept her, but whether they did or not, she wouldn’t turn her back on them. It was her projected attitude and the perceived anger that resulted from it that had landed her in Southern California instead of back at home with her friends and siblings.

And for that, maybe just a little, Hisako did resent her family. “Fuck this,” she grumbled, kicking at the pebbles lodged in the dirt.

That was when she felt it. A breeze ruffled her clothing, but something about it felt just not right enough to send her on edge. It subsided for a moment, but then it came back again. This time, she was able to put her finger on just what felt wrong. The air felt warm…moist, even.

Pulling up her energy shield, Hisako’s teeth slammed shut as her body, shield and all, was slammed into the tree by a wrecking-ball force of claws and fur. She gritted her teeth as the tree gave way, splintering in the middle as the creature slammed her backward. It bolted away to dodge the collapsing tree trunk, leaving Hisako pinned in her armored form.

Rage fired up inside her, something that she hadn’t felt in a long time. What had she done to deserve this? She cursed her ancestors, especially her father. If she hadn’t been adhering to tradition…

Her armor flickered and reappeared, lowering the tree trunk with even more pressure onto her torso. She panicked. Her powers had never faltered before, but now? This was the worst time for them to start. She could hear the wet, low growl of the wolf that had attacked her coming back. If her powers faltered again, she would be trapped under the weight of the tree, waiting to be crushed to death as the wolf picked at her extended limbs. It was a gruesome picture. Hisako cursed again.

CREEEEEEAAACCCCCKKK

The armor faltered again, this time allowing the bark to breach it even as it came back to buoy the trunk right above her chest. If it happened again, the weight of the trunk would crush her ribs, leaving her to die an excruciatingly painful death.

Don’t. She caught herself preparing to curse again, but this time she understood what had happened. Her powers, her armor—all of it was tied to the power imbued in her by her ancestors. By cursing them, she was cursing the power, causing it to fade. If she was going to get through this, she was going to need the same ancestors she was cursing.

Hisako prayed.

She prayed for forgiveness first, followed by the wisdom to do the right thing. After that, she asked for strength and power and protection.

The mutated wolf, giant and glaring, stared at Hisako with hungry eyes. In a flash of red energy, it whined as the fallen tree clipped its hip. Hisako stood with a newly energized armor form, panting from the energy the exertion had taken. “Well? Bring it on.”

The wolf whined again, turning tail and running. This was not the weak prey it had initially attacked on the mountainside. This was a creature powerful on its own. The wolf would run and live to fight another day.

Hisako stared out across the mountainside. The trek to the top would have to wait until another time, another day when she wasn’t sure there was a bloodthirsty, mutated wolf stalking her through the trees. Still, she surveyed the land around her. She had gotten close. This would do for now. She had honored her father’s wishes and her family.

It would be enough. If she did not forsake them, they would not forsake her. That was today’s lesson.

“Giant, mutated wolves now?” Dani Moonstar shook her head. On Hisako’s return, clothes torn and bloodied, she’d pulled her aside immediately to find out what happened. “Josh encountered an abnormally large and close-to-shore shark last week.”

“That’s not the worst part,” Hisako said, favoring her bandaged shoulder. “It wasn’t after just anybody. I could tell. It wanted me.” She shuddered. “Whatever’s making giant animals? It’s also making them hungry for mutants.”

The last sentence made Dani shiver. If something was enlarging animal life and giving it an appetite for mutants, she had gathered the largest menu on the West Coast at Academy X…

NEXT: Who is the boy called Sear? Find out how bright his fire burns in “Incandescence!”

Stringer in…

CLASSIFIED

Part II

By Hunter Lambright

Bullets.

Bullets had been the driving force behind Stringer’s departure from the Chicago Tribune for the New York Times after he’d outed the last remaining chunk of organized crime in the city that wasn’t superhuman, that the local police could still get their hands on without being completely out of their league. But even then, bullets had just made Stringer watch his back, not quit his journalistic nature. They hadn’t then, and they wouldn’t now.

Someone had just tried to kill him, and all that did was make Stringer want to know the truth even more.

He was lucky his ex-wife had made sure to cut all ties with him, or else he figured he’d have to be worried about someone going after her, too. The near-negligible amount of time from when he found out there might be a conspiracy afoot and when he was almost killed suggested that he’d have to be worried about his loved ones, too. But then, Stringer didn’t have any loved ones. He was about as hard-boiled as they came.

Stringer emerged from the group of people he had joined and made his way into the New York Public Library. Going home to do research was less of an option, because going home meant being alone. Vulnerable. That wasn’t high on his list of things to be right now. Public was good. It was safe because it was visible. A hidden sniper in a drive-by was one thing. A security-taped library was another thing entirely.

Finding a vacant computer terminal, Stringer made himself comfortable and got to digging. An initial search for Captain Wonder turned up little, other than that he was a World War II superhero with super-strength, invulnerability, quick healing, and heightened stamina. Stumbling onto an old action photograph, Stringer cringed. Bare thighs stuck out in stark contrast to the fully-covered upper half of his body. It may have said more about his confidence than his masculinity, but Stringer found himself shaking his head at the sight.

At a tap on his shoulder, Stringer flinched away on instinct. When he turned, he saw a confused look on the librarian’s face. “I found the call number for the book you’re looking for,” she said, handing him an index card with a string of numbers on it.

“I’m sorry?”

The librarian pursed her lips. “Your friend said you were looking for this book. He told me to give the call number to you since you were so busy and he had to leave.”

Stringer’s mind began turning over the possibilities. “What did my ‘friend’ look like?”

“Normal?” the librarian suggested, annoyance tainting her tone. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention. I was doing work of my own when he asked this favor.”

“Well, thanks, you’ve been a great help,” Stringer said, clearing off his computer and heading into the stacks.

There was something uncomfortable about the stacks in one of the largest libraries in the world. He had heard stories of college kids and even coworkers getting away with sex in the stacks the further back they went in the library, but his growing paranoia lent itself to other illicit activities back where no one could see or hear anything—where librarians only ventured to shelve books that had been taken out. If he were killed here, he wondered how long it would be before they found his body.

Stringer shook his head. That kind of defeatist thinking wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He hadn’t gotten where he was today by thinking himself out of it. He was on the trail of this story. He had its scent in his nose. There wasn’t any stopping until he found the answers. Reaching the call number on the card, Stringer pulled out the flimsy softcover: The Death of the American Dream: Where Have All The Mystery Men Gone?

Before he read the back, Stringer cringed at the sight of the other books that were shelved near it. Loch Ness monster sightings and Area 51 theories were the next closest books. “If someone led me all the way here for the next Bigfoot…” he began, but it was an empty threat. This was no Bigfoot. The bullets outside had already proven that.

As he began to flip through it, a small square of paper fell out of the middle. A string of coordinates were listed out on it with the subheading of “NOW.”

“Lovely. And cryptic.” Stringer counted the numbers and found himself wandering back to the computers. When one freed up, he punched the numbers into Google Maps. “Simplistic, too,” he muttered. The numbers yielded an address nearby—specifically pinpointing the center of the building.

“Nuts. They always want to meet on the roof.”

Clambering up the fire escape in real life was nowhere near as glamorous as dashing down the fire escape after a bad guy was in movies. Reaching the top, Stringer put his hands on his hips, taking a moment to catch his breath. A few years ago, he had outrun a pair of hitmen in Chicago. Sitting safe behind a desk in New York had done wonders for his peace of mind but horrors for his body. Stringer mentally noted that it was time to give up the daily Starbucks run.

Looking around, he caught nothing unusual. It was the typical roof of a building: dirty, bare, and noisy from the ventilation units. Perhaps that was the reason he did not hear the man come up from behind him until he was mere feet away.

Stringer turned around, backing up as he did to put more distance between himself and the stranger. He wore a garish costume of blue and white with bare arms and red boots, masked at the top. “You—why couldn’t I read your mind?”

“Because I won’t let you,” the man said. “I call myself the Yankee Clipper, Stringer, and you are the best hope there is to uncover what happened to my entire generation.”

To be continued!