II Crimsonstreak Read online

  II Crimsonstreak

  Matt Adams

  Copyright © 2018 by Matt Adams

  All rights reserved.

  Second Edition

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-940466-64-4

  Hydra Publications

  Goshen, KY 40026

  www.hydrapublications.com

  Evil Plan, Yada, Yada, Yada

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Crimsonstreak!” Wainwright bellows.

  This guy… I swear I’m gonna punch him in the face. We’re inside an old warehouse—if you haven’t noticed, villains tend to like old warehouses—where members of the Heroic Legion have tracked a few Clermont escapees.

  Yeah, three years later and we’re still rounding them up. Let’s just say the operation isn’t up to my usual speedy standards. Wainwright isn’t a particularly powerful baddie, but he likes to yell; maybe he thinks being loud makes up for the mediocre powers. He’s one of those guys who patterned himself after my father in his heyday. That means pointless experiments, foolish ransom plots for world leaders—that kind of thing.

  Except he’s an idiot. Stone-cold moron. I mean that in the nicest way possible. He and a few other Clermont targets holed themselves up in this dingy warehouse in hopes of avoiding capture while carrying out some vague plan involving the theft of… you know, I don’t even know what their plan is. I don’t care. Suffice it to say, I’m sure it’s suitably moronic. Because Wainwright is an idiot.

  “Just take him nice and easy, Griggs,” I whisper into my communicator.

  Static in my earpiece. I press a finger against it.

  “Got him in… my… taking him… down,” Griggs says, static rippling through her words. She may be a younger hero who makes me feel like a graybeard, but she packs a hell of a punch, and I like the whole no-nonsense thing. Griggs hasn’t taken a superhero name for herself, which is fine by me. Some of the other members of the Legion have taken to calling her Amazon Jane behind her back. I just hope that doesn’t get around to her. She’d tear ’em in half.

  At the moment, Wainwright has the high ground on some questionably designed scaffolding running through the center of the facility. It’s shaky, but he’s got a good view. I’ll give him a supervillain gold star for that one.

  Griggs moves into position, and I need to keep the villain’s attention while she does her thing. With a burst of Crimsonspeed, I’m in the middle of the warehouse floor, looking straight up at Wainwright, who’s now looking straight down at me; his stupid polka-dotted bowtie is a crime against good taste. We’ll tack on a few years to his sentence for that.

  He raises his arms, projecting blasts of energy in my direction. No sweat. He’s just a garden-variety mad scientist type whose only real “power” involves some ill-conceived energy gauntlets he inadvertently melded to his forearms. The purple beams tend to peter out before you even feel a tickle.

  “You’ll have to do better than that!” I taunt back, dodging a beam that cuts a sizeable rut in the cement floor. Crimsonspeed comes to a halt. First of all, Wainwright’s beams are supposed to be purple, not yellow—says so in the manual. Second of all, they’re barely powerful enough to pop a balloon.

  A metallic thump…

  Griggs is behind him.

  I keep moving to dodge the bad guy’s powerful beams. Obviously, he’s stolen someone else’s designs, because nothing Wainwright makes ever works. Ever.

  Good. I’ve got him distracted so Griggs can take him from behind. This is the part where he pees his pants and gives up.

  I can set my watch to it.

  Except he doesn’t.

  With his attention seemingly turned toward me, he elbows Griggs in the stomach, a blow that sends her flying back several feet. I’m quasi-alarmed—that’s not in the manual, either. This guy doesn’t have super-strength.

  Griggs lands with surprising grace for a supersized Amazon woman and charges at Wainwright, who unleashes twin beams of pulsating yellow energy. It’s enough to make me shield my eyes.

  When I look back up, Griggs is gone.

  “Griggs? Griggs!” I yell, tapping on my communicator.

  Static.

  “Just you and me now, Crimsonstreak,” Wainwright shouts.

  “I know you’re not that stupid,” I retort.

  The villain bows. “You know me too well.”

  Bay doors open to reveal a treasure trove of Wainwright’s B-list buddies. Looks like we’ve got Fourth-Reich Rich, Red Crush, Powerstrip, Sunbelt, and Jabberwalker. It’s an insane mix of old-school never-were’s and youthful never-gonna-be’s.

  “You’re outnumbered,” their leader taunts from his position on the scaffolding. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to take us into custody, my friend.”

  “Really? ’Cause that’s kind of the point here, Wainwright.”

  “You should consider turning the tables on the Heroic Legion. What have they ever done for you? Join a winning team.”

  Winning team? Clearly, Wainwright’s buddies have never seen him in action. The man has a laundry list of failed plans to take over the world. Or take over Detroit. None of them have ever been worth the paper they’re written on. The guy couldn’t invade an IKEA if he was already Swedish. Even if he did, he couldn’t figure out how to put together one of their end tables. As for the other guys, Fourth-Reich Rich and Red Crush aren’t exactly at the top of the “Plans that Worked List” either. Hell, they’re not even in the middle of the “Plans that Mildly Disappointed Their Mothers List.”

  A confederacy of dunces.

  And they outnumber me.

  At least they think they do.

  My hands go up.

  Stall, baby. Stall.

  “You’ve got the numbers,” I say, my eyes drifting toward that unsightly bowtie. “You’ve got the style. I can’t compete with that. But wasn’t the application deadline last month?”

  Wainwright leaps from the scaffolding and lands with a thud that shakes the building and cracks concrete. He stands and smooths out dark, immaculately parted hair before spewing something about world domination—I’m the best villain ever—yada-yada-yada.

  That’s right, I just yada-yada-yada’d the bad guy’s big plan.

  As Wainwright draws closer, his eyes give him away. They typically look intelligent, somehow masking the inferior intellect within. Today, up close, they’re clouded, vacant. When he turns his head, I spot a small something behind his right ear, a silver box with tiny LED lights that blink and flash.

  Wainwright, what have you done to yourself?

  Red Crush stands behind me, complete with his faded red sickle-and-hammer costume. He gives a sideways glance to Fourth-Reich Rich. Behind Red Crush’s right ear: another small box with flashing lights.

  It’s cute, like the villains went out to get matching tattoos.

  “Alpha Team, go!” I yell into my communicator.

  Before Wainwright and his minions can react, the rest of my team busts through the warehouse walls, bathing us all in sunlight.

  Mindbender Baron, Falcon Gray, and Exponential—the Amazing Multiplier Man who’s a literal army of one—take positions around us.

  “Where is Miss Griggs?” Falcon Gray asks. The man-bird from parts unknown flaps his arm-wings furiously. His head bobs up and down as he surveys our surroundings with dark eyes. His pale beak ends with a dark, hooked tip that you don’t want to be on the wrong end of.

  “Ask Wainwright,” I tell him. “He hit her with something.”

  Wainwright and his cronies
stand more rigid than Stonehenge.

  Effortlessly, Falcon Gray glides toward the ringleader. “Wainwright, what have you done with Miss Griggs?”

  When the villain doesn’t answer, Falcon Gray lets loose an ear-piercing war squawk.The bad guy remains stoic.

  “My advanced avian senses detect something awry.” Ah, Falcon Gray, king of the understatement. Wainwright topples with the slightest push from the man-bird’s right wing. Jabberwalker, Red Crush, Powerstrip, Fourth-Reich Rich, and Sunbelt go down, too. All it takes is a gentle push.

  I turn to Mindbender Baron. “You getting anything from them?”

  The mentalist puts two fingers up to his forehead. “Their minds are clouded. Someone’s controlling them—perhaps someone with powers far exceeding my own.”

  Wainwright spasms on the floor as a gasp erupts from his mouth. He motions toward me and I kneel next to him. He’s grimacing, but his eyes are clear, no longer hazy. A small plume of dark smoke wafts from behind his ear.

  “They’re… coming… for us… all…” he strains to say.

  The gauntlets on his arms glow yellow as a high-pitched sound intensifies in volume.

  Wainwright lets out another gasp. “Trying… to… take over… can’t let them…” The villain’s head expands, a balloon filled with too much helium. His eyes bulge out of their sockets. I hear a moan behind me and glance up to see Mindbender Baron stumbling around with both hands clamped on his forehead.

  I grab him around the shoulders and yell, “We have to go!”

  The whining turns into a hiss. We dive through the opening my team blew in the warehouse wall.

  Pop!

  When we turn around, the warehouse is gone. There was no explosion, no eruption of energy.

  “Everybody okay?” I ask.

  Everyone nods except for Exponential. “I lost Personality Seven-Squared.”

  “Sorry,” I tell him.

  Exponential smiles. “That’s okay. He was always kind of a prick.”

  “I saw what they planned,” Mindbender Baron says, wincing a little. “He was helping them escape their fate.” The mind-reader taps his forehead. “He sent his thoughts to me to save us. And he left me with one more gift. We have to talk to Samson Knight.”

  Falcon Gray, Exponential, and I stare expectantly at Mindbender Baron.

  “Well, what did he say?” I ask.

  The mentalist shakes his head. A voice in my mind whispers gently…

  Kiltechs.

  Never Looking Back Again, They’re Coming to America

  Back in Washington, D.C.

  The good news: it’s the same Washington, D.C., my teachers taught me about when I was a kid. Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, White House, and Capitol Building. Check, check, check, and check.

  Government?

  Almost.

  Let’s just say it hasn’t been the easiest transition in the world to bring a democratic government back to the United States. My father’s New World Common Wealth did more than just target the superheroes. He—or actually, his evil doppelganger—also targeted the men and women who served in Congress. Many of the bootlicking politicians who acted only in their own (or special) interests are gone.

  Not such an awful thing, really, unless you’re trying to rebuild a national government from the ground up. Granted, we don’t need people who are in bed with Big Oil and Big Medical and all that nonsense. However, we sure could use a few well-known, pragmatic politicians to help give us some legitimacy as we put things back together.

  The European powers don’t have the same problems we do. Neither do the Canadians. The New World Common Wealth had pull in other countries, but the United States took the brunt of it. London got to keep its name; it didn’t get “Chaos-ized” like the USA. No Chaopolis or New Chaos City overseas.

  America, on the other hand, got a complete NWCW whitewash, with states’ identities stripped away and replaced with nebulous “regions.” Now, as the Heroic Legion tries to help rebuild, the states are haggling over borders and inane pieces of Trivial Pursuit. For instance, my home state of Indiana is now trying to stop the reconstituted Illinois from calling itself “The Land of Lincoln,” since America’s sixteenth president spent his formative years in the Hoosier State. Illinois countered by trying to annex “the Region”—the northwest corner of Indiana that some say is more Chicagoan than Hoosier.

  Take that inspired example and multiply it by forty-nine states. Actually, make that forty-seven states. Hawaii and Alaska are doing just fine. Still hard to believe California got wiped off the map.

  We’ve managed to scrap most of the NWCW’s trappings, with one exception. Many of the videoscreens that gave cute reminders like “enemies of the Common Wealth must die” and “report unregistered supers” are still up all around the country. The Provisional Authority—a collection of Heroic Legion and civilian leaders—decided the video monitors could serve the public good by providing updates about the progress being made by the new government.

  Thankfully, other adorable vestiges of my father’s totalitarian regime are gone: the Enforcer Corps has been permanently disbanded and super-powered individuals can once again claim a secret identity. Unfortunately, some of the more passionate members of the Enforcers broke off and formed their own super-powered cabal called the Champions of Justice. The group worships Colonel Chaos—both of them—and loves to vocalize its opposition to the judicial proceedings currently underway. In effect, we have a two-party system for superheroes: the Heroic Legion decides to do something, the Champions of Justice circulates TV and radio ads about how stupid an idea it is. Then they go back and forth, bickering about trivial things.

  I cannot wait until the Republicans and Democrats get back in power.

  Really.

  I stand at the steps to the U.S. Capitol, where two distinct activist groups have coalesced. On one side stand various members of the Champions of Justice. They hold signs saying “Free Chaos” and “He united, you divided.” On the other side, average-joe protesters hold their own banners and poster boards proclaiming, “Human majority, super minority” and “Real power is the people’s.” They form a nice little aisle at the base of the steps that makes me feel like I’m moving through a politically charged tunnel at a homecoming football game.

  The Capitol temporarily houses the Heroic Legion tribunal responsible for punishing my father and his alternate-universe self for perpetrating various crimes against humanity. The process, like any other governmental undertaking, has dragged on and on with appeals and motions and bickering over which Colonel Chaos was responsible for the whole New World Common Wealth mess.

  Thanks to Crimsonspeed, I’m here before the fireworks really start. Time to talk to Samson Knight.

  “Kiltechs? We drove them away. They won’t be coming back here,” Samson Knight says, adjusting his gauntlets and making sure his cape is TV-ready. The leader of the Heroic Legion has to look good, you know. “You shouldn’t waste my time, Fairborne.”

  I didn’t know it was possible to turn my last name into a swear word. Bravo, Samson Knight. Bravo.

  “Have you been listening to the chatter from our Clermont teams?” I ask. “They’ve been having too much trouble corralling a few outmoded supervillains.”

  “Perhaps I should have looked more closely at the duty rosters,” Samson Knight says. He uses a thin cloth to polish his white ceramic chestpiece. “I should’ve known the younger heroes weren’t ready for such a task.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “No, you don’t think, Fairborne,” the hero snaps. “That’s the problem with you and the younger, more inexperienced heroes. If only we were able to have more veterans in the field. Too many fell during the Kiltech Incursion. Many more fell at the hands of your father and his Enforcers.” He removes the armored covering over his mouth and begins to polish it. “Our most dedicated, field-tested members have been relegated to cleaning up the political mess your father made. That was where I thought their
experience was best suited. But perhaps I should reconsider, especially if you’re the one in charge of the strike teams.”

  “Don’t let your prejudice against my father cloud what I’m trying to tell you,” I say, struggling to stay civil. “We took down Wainwright and an entire building turned to ash. The Kiltechs are back.”

  “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at your proof. You do have proof, don’t you?” he asks, smiling as he replaces the armored mouth plate.

  “Mindbender Baron grabbed a mental snapshot from Wainwright. There was nothing left behind.”

  “Ah, yes. Mindbender Baron. Wasn’t he imprisoned within the Clermont Institution for the Criminally Insane? I believe he was a guest there for some time.”

  “He’s on our side, Sammy. I trust him.”

  “You trust too readily, Fairborne. I think it’s more likely that Baron is sowing the seeds of division. Just when we were getting this nation back together…”

  “I don’t think we should ignore this, sir,” I say, trying a more formal tone. “Even if it’s a ruse, any whisper about the Kiltechs shouldn’t be taken lightly, sir.”

  “When you need me to pay attention, you finally address me as ‘sir.’ Typical. I will have you know that our advance scouts have detected no sign of Kiltech activity in five years.”

  “But—”

  “Five years. Once we bounced them out of the galaxy, they left with their tails tucked between their extraterrestrial legs. Now, if you’ll drop this nonsense, I have a tribunal to oversee.”

  “You contend that Colonel Chaos was acting in the best interests of humanity when he established the New World Common Wealth?” Samson Knight asks. “Do you care to explain yourself, Counselor Graves?”

  Jaci stands on the right side of the room behind a long table. Seated next to her is the Crusading Comet. Warren Kensington III was originally supposed to lead the defense for my father, but the dual strains of getting the government back on its feet and serving as lead counsel wore him down. So Jaci—who’s certainly more camera-friendly, and no less determined—took over. She’s a little young for the part, and I get the sense Samson Knight thinks he’ll be able to trample all over her.