Captain England in…

EUROPEAN DEFENSE INITIATIVE

Part III: We Three Kings

By Ed Ainsworth

“I just want to say, before we begin, that you boys really don’t know quite what you’re getting yourselves into.”

Captain England hung in the air, his arms crossed and his best death stare aimed at the gathered force of France, Spain and Italy. They glowered at him from underneath their brooding faces, bodies at their peak thanks to intensive training, and powered by a combination of the Belgian Brain’s hypothalamic sweat.

Captain Spain was first. His speed made him the fastest of the three Captains. Each blow glanced off Brian’s body, with enough impact to dent concrete. While Spain wasn’t as strong as France, or as agile as Italy, he was fast. Very fast.

Brian tried to grip the hero, as he rained blows down on his body. Almost as immediately as it had begun, the blows stopped.

Brian paused to try and look around him. Why could they have stopped?

“Whulllphn!”

Brian was tackled around the midsection by France, his entire body jerking forwards with the momentum.

“Bloody…” Brian drove his elbow down into the back of the man’s head, halting their descent with trajectory, and transforming it into a freeform with bloody noses.

“Merde!” France’s blow connected with Brian’s chest, sending him hurtling off into the distance, his ribs fractured from the blow. As Captain England tried to halt his descent, he was immediately thrust towards the ground again, this time connecting with it in a plume of dirt and sand that shot into the air as a marker to the other Captains.

Italy stood above him, his body nigh-invulnerable.

“Preparatevi a mangiare il mio pugno, bastardo arrogante,” Italy said.

“Yeah…some bloody Italian words,” Brian said, his fist smashing against Italy’s chin. The man staggered back, as Brian drove another fist into his stomach.

“Oh. Lovely. You’re the piledriver, aren’t you?”

“Che ti fanno il mazzo?” Italy said, driving his fists down into Brian’s shoulders, knocking the hero onto his knees.

“I guess we’re going to have to revert to stereotypes here aren’t we? Horrid old clichés where everyone’s seen them before and I have to do the utterly English thing in the face of such incredulous predictability.”

Brian’s had shot up, grabbing hold of Italy’s groin, and giving it a firm, tight squeeze.

“I really hope there’s irony in this,” he said, slamming his fist into the man’s crotch so hard it took him off his feet into a forwards summersault, face first into the sand, “Because otherwise I’m just gaying you up.”

“Hrmph. This is bloody daft,” Brian hurled Italy over his shoulder, into the speeding form of France. Hugo and Umberto clattered against each other, twisting past the hero as he was taken off his feet by Spain.

“THIS IS POINTLESS!” Brian yelled, as Spain arced upwards, sending Brian hurtling into the ground and bouncing into some trees. He spun in place, leaping into his knees as France’s boot took him from his position and into the air. Immediately, Spain took him off again, a sonic boom shaking and evaporating the tree leaves around them.

“For…” Brian’s fist bounced off Spain’s chin, redirecting his speed in the opposite direction, sending the hero face first into the soft ground that was the margin between the Sand and Forest. His palm flew up to redirect the first of Italy, which he caught and rammed his fist into his throat.

“Invulnerability doesn’t mean everywhere. Dick, throat, eyes, lungs.” Brian’s fist smashed into Italy’s stomach, hitting his diaphragm to remove the air from his lungs. As Italy dropped to his knees, the fist of France sent him flying backwards again. Brian landed on his back, breathing heavily. They were making a point, quite a good one at that. They were green, but they worked well as a team.

“Quite effective,” Brian said. Spain landed heavily next to France, with Italy in tow behind them.

“Mon nom est Hugo,” Captain France began. “Captain England, we do not appreciate you coming to judge us. We are not green. We are not impersonators. We are heroes.”

“Yeah,” Brian said, staring up at the first of France. It belted him across the face several times, before the hero dropped onto a knee, balanced on Brian’s chest. “I can tell.”

“You insulted us, Inghilterra,” Italy said.

“What the actual shit are you three doing?”

“Que?” Spain asked. Captain Britain landed heavily in the sand beside France, and threw the hero off Brian.

“This is Captain England, you bloody idiots. Even if you did have a problem with him, you shouldn’t ever bloody hit him in the face! You shouldn’t ever fight another hero.”

“CHILDREN!” Captain UK yelled, hitting the ground behind Brian, crouching down and cupping his head. “Brian?”

“Alright, Linda? Don’t bother coming back tonight. I should have realized you’d throw in with the next lot of bloody idiots after what happened to your home.”

She let his limp head drop into the sand, and scoffed.

“We’re done here,” she said, matter of fact, “Need to get to Spain immediately. All of us.”

Spain, Italy and France said nothing, simply shooting into the sky without so much as a word. Linda and Britain stared down at Brian, who lay in the dirt.

“This’ll teach you not to be arrogant, I suppose?” Britain said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Probably teach you lot that Captain England is a lot easier to beat away from his power source.”

“What?”

“You idiot, Britain. I’m only as strong as my proximity to England. The longer I’m away from it, the harder it is for me to maintain my powers. I’ve been running on gnat’s piss and bloody mindedness.”

“Then…”

“Yeah, then you’re guys just beat up a guy who wouldn’t punch out a granny. Good job.”

“Brian, I…”

“We don’t have time for this, Britain.” Linda grabbed hold of Tom’s arm and yanked him into the air. “We’re needed to stop those idiots dying.”

Speedball in…

FIELD TRIP FROM HELL

Part II

By Dale Glaser

As Madeline Naylor-Baldwin, her son, and her third grade class crossed the manicured lawn fronting the Bain Computer Science Building, an Empire State University security guard observed their progress from the roof.  Wearing a bulletproof vest over dark fatigues, and carrying an M1911 on his hip, Joe Tillman appeared fully prepared for full-bore urban combat, but the task at hand was simple surveillance and monitoring.  Vigilant awareness was an important element of security duties at the university, due to ESU’s cutting-edge scientific endeavors and their tendency to attract unwanted attention in the form of criminal elements.  A would-be thief or disgruntled former researcher turned supervillain might have the misfortune of encountering Spider-Man or Daredevil on campus, but timely appearances by gaudy heroes were never guaranteed.  Tillman, like any other security guard at ESU, took his responsibility to deter such opportunistic raiders seriously.

On the front steps below, a young woman, dark-haired, caramel-skinned, bespectacled and wearing a white lab coat over her blouse and slacks, emerged from the glass doors of the Bain Building and approached Mrs. Naylor-Baldwin, extending her hand.  “Good morning!  I’m Sridevi Patel and I’ve been asked to conduct your tour of the building,” she introduced herself while shaking Mrs. Naylor-Baldwin’s hand.  “Shall we begin?”

Robbie Baldwin was riveted in spite of himself.  Behind the large, round lenses and dark frames of her glasses, Sridevi was exotically gorgeous, and being a college woman five years older than Robbie only increased her allure.  Granted, she was attired much more conservatively than the doubtless bikini-clad cheerleaders like Cathy Starnes and Victoria Berrigan would be at Jennifer Golick’s barbecue pool party back home, but Robbie felt a momentary uplift nonetheless as he followed the field trip into the computer science department.  He even managed to keep two of the third-grade boys from falling behind as they excitedly discussed the upcoming debut of American Gladiators that had been advertised all summer.

Tillman noted the elementary school class passing through the doors as a matter of course while he scanned the entire area surrounding the building.  With nothing out of the ordinary to report, he was about to re-enter the stairwell via the rooftop access door when the heavy sound of flapping wings caught his attention.  He looked to his right and saw a black-feathered bird settling on the handrails of a fire escape ladder, the largest crow that Tillman had ever seen.  The security guard took a step closer, expecting the crow to fly away in a startle, but it stared back at him, unperturbed.  Tillman took another step, and another, until he was close enough to extend his hand toward the bird’s head.

A pitchfork stabbed upwards, impaling Tillman’s hand on the wickedly sharp iron curve of its central tine.  Tillman staggered backwards, dragging the long wooden handle across the roof as it hung from his bloody palm, while a man wearing green coveralls and a brown burlap hood clambered up the fire escape ladder.  Half-blind with pain, Tillman was unable to see how the man was able to move so fast, barely registering that he was being tied up with stout rope until he was propped against the ladder with his arms tightly knotted.

The face of Tillman’s captor was only inches away from his own, albeit covered with a loose mask that featured two small slits for eyeholes and a mouth cut in the jagged pattern of jack-o-lantern fangs.  Ragged stitches crisscrossed the burlap visage, matched by similar rough seams zigzagging through the coveralls, which were belted with a rough hemp rope.  Tufts of scraggly hay emerged from gaps in the coveralls at the shoulders and wrists.

“I’ll take this,” the hooded Scarecrow said, yanking the pitchfork free of the meat of Tillman’s hand.  “Stay right here.  Don’t follow me.  Don’t call for help.  Do anything besides sit quietly, Edgar here will peck your eyes out.”  On cue, the massive black crow fluttered and alighted directly in front of Tillman, staring at him intently with one eye.  Satisfied, Ebenezer Laughton crossed the roof to the access door.  He palmed the doorknob, which responded to his attempts to turn it with a rattling tik-tik-tik.

“Locked.  Of course,” Scarecrow growled.  He turned to look back over his shoulder at Tillman.  “And I bet you’ve got the keys.  Maybe you’re even thinking of puttin’ up a fight about them.  But I don’t need ‘em.”  In a flash the pitchfork was leveled in Tillman’s direction, its tines pointing ominously at the security guard’s eyes.  “Wanna know why?”

Tillman said nothing.  His breathing, already hitching thanks to the bright lance of pain in his violated hand, became even faster and more labored, which Scarecrow took as answer enough.  “Experimental surgical implants.  Couldn’t tell you how they work, something to do with neurotransmitters and fear pheromones, sending them out and picking them back up.  Can’t argue with the results, though.  I make you scared,” – he jabbed the pitchfork abruptly toward Tillman – “and your terror lets me do this.”  He tightened his grip on the doorknob and twisted hard, pulling it free of the metal door with an accompanying clatter of broken fragments falling to the rooftop, stripped bolts and snapped tumblers.  The access door swung open, and Scarecrow stepped across its threshold.

Tillman watched the costumed villain depart as the feeling of icy needles twisting into his spine slowly receded.  He could almost believe that the entire rooftop encounter had been some kind of dream if not for two things: the bleeding wound in his palm, and Edgar the crow perched nearby, fixing him with an unblinking jet black eye.

Sear in…

INCANDESCENCE

By Hunter Lambright

Germaine threw himself awake from the nightmare in time to see the flames fade away. His stiff blanket had been tossed aside in his thrashing, its flame-retardant nature useless piled up over the edge of his bed. His deeply tanned feet hit the still-cold floor. He gasped and pulled them up, gingerly putting them back on the floor.

“Force field, ¡retírese!” he ordered. The energy field around his bed disengaged. With it, he didn’t scorch the room every time the nightmares came back. He picked up his clothes from outside the force field and dressed. Like the fire that raged just under his skin, he needed to get some air.

“Where you going?”

Germaine looked back to see his roommate groggily pushing himself up on one arm. Googly eyes poked out of a containment suit that kept Rain Boy corporeal. He was nearly transparent otherwise, the water only changing tones with his mood. They said that the room assignments were random, but Germaine guessed it had more to do with Rain Boy being the only one who could survive one of Germaine’s nightmares if the force field failed.

“Just for a walk. Go back to sleep, amigo.”

“Sure you don’t need to talk to somebody?” Rain Boy asked. The crude mouth formed a frown.

Germaine shrugged. “Nothing different than normal. Está bien.” He caught himself. “Sorry. All is well.”

Rain Boy shrugged. “Okay. S’just that you were talking about being sorry a lot in your sleep. You know what I mean? You were apologizing. That hasn’t happened before.”

His skin grew hot as his mind flashed to a memory of cinders and smoke, with him huddled in the flickering embers of his home, his tears evaporating as they touched his flaming skin. Smoke filled his nose and Germaine realized his clothes were smoking. “No, nothing different than normal,” he said, letting himself into the hallway before he could be pressed further.

The halls were kept cool. Germaine’s room was perpetually in need of better air conditioning, and it was his fault. Rain Boy never complained, but that was one of the benefits of having a body composed entirely of sentient water. Germaine slid down the hall, taking care to step only on the places he’d already determined would not make a sound. The doors to the outside were unlocked and would only be triggered if an entity unknown to its genetic reading system entered or exited. As long as he stayed on the grounds of the Damocles Foundation, no one would bother him anyway. Being monitored was not only an inconvenience; it was his penance.

As he walked the grounds, Germaine traced the stucco walls that sequestered them with his hands. Southern California felt a little like Spain in some ways, echoing pieces of its culture while taking on a much more Mexican-American slant. If the price for living in Spain was speaking the language, his mother had been allowed to choose all of her children’s names. He carried his name and his culture with him, even if his roots had been burnt to ash.

He pondered the dangers of walking into the wooded area inside the fence, but the dew that coated the plant life made him bold.

A sharp crack of a footstep on underbrush halted Germaine in his tracks. Nothing came, and he continued his walk, his thoughts instead on his surroundings. The noise came again, and Germaine turned around only for what he saw to cause him to stagger backwards several steps. In front of him stood a walking corpse, charred flesh flaking away at the joints to reveal the decaying meat underneath. It reached out with an arm that had tendons so heavily burned that Germaine thought they might snap at any moment.

He ran down the path, further from the Damocles Foundation. The burnt zombie blocked his way back. If he could get into the woods around the path, Germaine knew he could get back to the building without any issues. He could tell them there was an attack. He could—

Germaine threw himself off the path as another, shorter corpse stumbled into view from behind a cluster of tree trunks. Its hair was mostly gone, the rest matted together with dried blood. The skull poked out from under the peeling skin in stark contrast to the blackened flesh that covered the rest of the body. It reached for him as the other had, moaning something incomprehensible as if it had swallowed the broken charcoal that had once been its tongue. Germaine didn’t stick around to translate.

He clenched his fist and bit the inside of his lower lip so hard that tears clouded his eyes, fighting back the intense fire that raged inside his body. Fight-or-flight instincts began to take over, and his body’s best idea for self-preservation was scorched earth. He would not let that happen. He would not lose control, not after the last time.

The last time… Germaine gasped, halting in the middle of the woods. They advanced on him, five of the fire-ravaged zombies, leaving him no gap, no room for escape. “No…” he whispered to himself. “Es imposible.”

All of the walking corpses reached out for him with both arms in a deadly embrace, steadily shuffling forward, but still Germaine could not bring himself to set them on fire. He recognized them.

The moaning grew stronger, and it was all he could do to wonder how they could have gotten here, how everything came down to this moment in the woods in California when it had all ended months ago in Spain. He wondered if this was death come back to reclaim him for a full set when it had gotten all but one the last time they had met.

The guttural noise finally formed words. “Why?”

“Why, Germaine?” his long-dead family asked, their haunting voices coalescing into one. “Why did you kill us with fire? Why did you let us burn?”

Stringer in…

CLASSIFIED

Part III

By Hunter Lambright

“Yankee Clipper, huh? Never heard of you.”

It was hard for Stringer to take the man seriously with his outdated costume and codename. Bare arms stuck out of a blue-and-white jumpsuit. He wore red gloves and boots, and his hair stuck out of the top of the suit in short waves.

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t have, would you?” the Clipper said. “On my last outing with the First Line, one of Nocturne’s energy constructs damaged my time belt. I was shot forward in time, stuck here for better or for worse.”

Stringer nodded. “Great. Time travel. So the Fantastic Four weren’t available, Mister Yankee Clipper?”

The Yankee Clipper’s face grew grim. “The Fantastic Four, the Avengers…no one believes me. There’s no evidence that the First Line even existed in your time period. And please, call me Patrick.”

“Sure. Patrick.” Stringer digested the information. If the Fantastic Four and Avengers hadn’t taken the man seriously, how could he? It was likely that they had dismissed him as crazy—and how sure was Stringer that he wasn’t? His reporting instincts took over. “Okay, fine. Tell me what you think happened.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I came to you. You find people, don’t you? That’s what the newspaper said!”

Stringer nodded. “I dig up the trails other people choose not to look for. But there has to be a trail, Patrick. You get that? You gave me a lot of information when you called, but—”

“Called? I didn’t call you,” the Clipper said. “Someone called you?”

“Yes! Someone called me and gave me information on—something like the Weird—no, the Crazy Sues. What was your team called?”

“First Line, that’s not us. We were the premiere superhero team of the 1970s!” the Clipper said with pride.

Stringer nodded, perplexed. “The caller talked about World War II. But if you aren’t the caller…?” He let the question hang in the air.

The silence was broken as gas hissed out of a canister. The metal contraption rolled over toward Yankee Clipper. “Watch out! It could be an explosive!” Clipper yelled. He dove and rolled, picking the canister up on his way down and launching it skyward as he came back to his feet.

“Clipper?” Stringer asked, toeing forward as the Yankee Clipper disappeared into the amassing white fog. The gas had spread across the rooftop and showed no sign of thinning. “Patrick?”

Hit the threat first, then the target.

Stringer closed his eyes as the thoughts brought on a new wave of nausea. They were close and new. He had expected to see a source on the rooftop and had been prepared for the presence of the Yankee Clipper’s surface thoughts. These were fresh and raw and mechanical. Their presence brought tears to his eyes.

“Someone else is here!” Stringer warned, but the only response he heard was a grunt of pain as the Clipper had the air knocked out of him.

Stringer went to his hands and knees on instinct, wincing as the gravel on the rooftop bit into his hands and knees. He could hear the sounds of the Yankee Clipper getting the worst side of the beating, although the thoughts kept pouring in from the assailant that suggested that the Clipper was getting in a few good licks of his own.

Half the thick smoke disappeared in a heavy rush of air, and Stringer realized only his and the assailant’s thoughts remained on the rooftop. “Bastard teleported,” Stringer muttered, shaking his head.

One kick should do it, make sure it breaks the neck.

Stringer threw himself back, feeling a leg slice through the space his head had occupied.

Pounce. Decoy punch, follow-up chop.

Again, Stringer threw himself to the side, this time rolling instead of dodging as the first punch came through so that he avoided the karate chop that was meant for his neck. If he could keep this up long enough to get to the edge of the roof, Stringer hoped he could find the fire escape he had climbed up on. At least then he would have a chance.

Fake punch, drop for swinging kick.

Stringer’s heart raced as he felt the rush of the punch go past his head, jumping only to have his feet swept from under him. He groaned as the wind rushed from his lungs.

The warp sound of Yankee Clipper’s teleportation returned, bringing with it a burst of fresh, clear air from wherever he had gone, scattering what remained of the gas. Stringer saw his assailant just inches away. He was cloaked in a hooded white outfit, a stark contrast to his dark skin. The man’s eyes opened in surprise as his cover disappeared in the wind.

The assailant began to run, but the Clipper teleported again, this time directly in his path. A thick, taut forearm made contact with the assailant’s nose with a crunch, bringing the man to the ground. Stringer walked over to survey his attacker.

“Wait…is he?” Patrick studied their attacker, snapping as a name came to mind. “The Revenant. Dad always talked about him when I was a kid. He saved Dad from getting robbed coming home from a friend’s house. His papa smacked him when he heard him saying it was a black man.” He scratched the back of his head. “But…that would have been the mid-1930s, at least.”

Stringer held up three fingers. “A mysterious caller asking about World War II, you asking about the First Line from the ‘70s, right?” Patrick nodded. “And now this Revenant from the 1930s—if it’s the original guy.”

He gulped. “Tie him up and search him for whatever utility belt he pulled the gas canister from. I know a guy, but I have a feeling this is going to get a lot weirder before we know everything…”