With a disgusted snort, Steve Doerksen turned away from the television set, shook his head, and downed a cup of coffee in a single slurp, taking care not to crush the Dixie cup. The news about his cousin had turned yesterday into an intolerably long day, and today, which was highlighted by a longer than expected flight from Omaha to Los Angeles, and worse news than anyone expected, seemed even longer, long enough to tax the patience of even a young superhuman. "This coffee bites!" the young man snarled, directing the comment at Omega's dad. Of course, everything seemed like a personal insult today, from the taste of coffee to the tailgating habits of California drivers.
Bradley Champion, who was slumped patiently on the padded hospital chair, nodded in response. "It always does," he advised, shifting his large frame just slightly in the uncomfortable seat as he craned his neck to keep a close eye on the television set, which had been placed at an uncomfortable angle in one of the upper corners of the room. "One wonders why they even build them anymore."
"Coffeemakers?"
"Research facilities," Bradley answered. "They're always getting busted into these days."
"For all I know, you could've been talking about Tommy." Steve answered. "It seems like he's always getting busted these days too." Unable to sit down or even stay still in one place for very long, Steve nervously tapped the edge of a vacant bench with his foot. "Just how long does it take to analyze a frigging CAT scan?"
"You know the answer," Bradley replied, and he suddenly pulled himself to his feet. Someone unexpected had arrived - and Bradley Champion found himself face-to-face with a glowing baby boy, who hovered in mid-air. "Hello boy," were Bradley's first matter-of-fact words to his grandson.
"Jorges!" Angelina Villanova shouted as she sprinted out of the elevator. She hadn't quite realized why her son had flown to the UCLA medical facility until she found herself a few meters away from Tommy's father. "Oh shit," she said.
"Ms. Villanova," Bradley said in acknowledgement, his scowl less friendly than his words.
"Get away from him. Now."
Bradley shook his head, smiled slightly, and sat down. "I've got other things on my mind, Ms. Villanova. But if the boy wants to see his father right now, maybe you should make a little less fuss about it."
"Why?"
"He needs him," Bradley replied.
"Don't tell me the bastard's actually dying!" Angelina said, almost knocked into a sitting position by the news.
"He's spent most of the last day in surgery," Bradley Champion answered. "We're awaiting the news now. You're welcome to stay, if you can your guns and temper holstered."
"But -" Angelina said. "He's been given up for dead before, and..."
"The boy's not as indestructible as folk believe," Bradley Champion answered, glancing between her and Jorges. He caught someone else in the corner of his eye. "Steve, stop that goddamn pacing. It does nobody any good: not Tommy, not your feet, not my nerves, and certainly not the carpet."
"Sorry, Mr. Champion." Steve said, and moved over to look at Jorges. Jorges suddenly launched himself at Steve Doerksen, pouncing like a cat, but bouncing off his chest like a bird hitting a window.
"This must be Tommy's kid," Steve remarked, smiling for the first time since he'd heard the news about his cousin. "He's already trying to beat me up."
"It's interesting that he knew where to find us." Bradley added. Which was all the more remarkable because the authorities had publicly announced that Omega was being treated at a Los Angeles military hospital - a lie meant to keep supervillains (and the press) away from UCLA. The baby had tracked down his father on his own. "Perhaps you should take it as a sign, Ms. Villanova."
"Perhaps you should mind your own damn business!"
"I think my grandson's welfare is my business." Bradley replied, delivering his response to the young woman's outburst with a devastating calm. There was something about the man that instantly reminded Angelina of the stories she'd been told about her grandfather, who was also a calm ruthless man - and who'd been executed by the great state of Texas when she was still an infant. "I'm sure I could find a lawyer who'd tell me to become much more involved in it."
Angelica hissed at the threat, and for a moment contemplated summoning her guns. "Hey!" Steve Doerksen shouted as he became aware of the danger (it wasn't that long ago that surgeons were removing the woman's bullets from Omega's body), but a new arrival calmed down a potential situation - for a few seconds. "Uh... here's the doctor."
"Good lord," Bandita said, reading unpleasant thoughts in the surgeon's face.
Dr. Ted Jaspers was UCLA's metahuman surgery specialist, and arguably the most respected man in his field on the entire field. None of that seemed to matter today. Walking from the operating theater, Jaspers had the haggard look of someone who was trying too hard to maintain a stone face. The glossy white sheen of a computer board reflected the hospital florescence as he approached, a board that was covered in dark, depressing scrawls, bad omens. Even more alarming were the stains on his surgical attire - no man had been so drenched in the blood of Omega since the hero's infamous fight with Hack. Not that Jaspers felt like a supervillain or anything except an extraordinarily tired surgeon - it had been a lousy day for him too. He turned toward Bradley Champion and allowed the rest of the entourage to swarm around him. It was hard, though not impossible, for Jaspers to ignore the flying baby, even after spending years on the periphery of the superhuman circus.
"First, the good news," the surgeon announced. "We think we've pulled Tommy through the worst of the physical injuries. He's still in critical condition, but even without his powers, his recuperative abilities are remarkable." Bradley Champion nodded knowingly - this was hardly news to anyone in who lived in Milford. "We don't think he's going to die any time soon, although his condition is still extremely fragile."
Bradley Champion took a deep breath. "What are the complications?" he asked.
Jaspers swallowed hard. "The force fields that the supervillain employed that created the bulk of Tommy's injuries were about two millimeters thick: very thin, very distinctive. However, your son also received repeated blows to the back of his cranium, resulting in two skull fractures. These fractures are consistent with blows delivered by someone with superhuman strength. Unfortunately, there's significant swelling in the brain, and no signs of higher brain function at present." He bent his head slightly forward to display both concern and irritation over the long day; his eyebrows, white with hints of charcoal, were ruffled like the feathers of an annoyed grouse.
"Tommy's brain dead?" Steve Doerksen shouted.
"It's too early to say that, or make any sort of long-term prognosis," Jaspers replied. "But his current condition is not encouraging. The longer Tommy's in a coma, the lower his chances."
"So this guy had razor thin force field blades and superhuman strength?" Steve wondered.
"I don't think so." Jaspers said. "The injuries produced by the blades were devastating, but if they'd been made using superhuman force, your cousin wouldn't have survived. My guess is that he was attacked by a second metahuman assailant, a man or woman with superhuman strength, after he'd been weakened by the serial killer."
"Fuck!" Steve Doerksen shouted, a word that was not normally part of his vocabulary. "Are you saying that whoever did this to Tommy is still out there?"
"That's beyond my area of expertise..." the surgeon said.
"Answer the damn question!" Steve insisted.
"He can't. Must be a lawyer involved somewhere," Bradley said, trying to calm Steve down while simultaneously expressing his frustration.
"I don't want to give you false information." Jaspers said. "But I've seen enough injuries caused by metahuman abilities that I'm willing to bet more than one assailant was involved. Attacks by a metahuman with a suite of paranormal abilities usually have a common element that allows us to trace them: the force fields are at uniform levels. Tommy's skull fractures were slightly bludgeoned - probably caused by a low strength defensive force field - but the injuries were produced by the sheer force of impact, so that force field was negligible. The force fields that produced the slashing injuries, on the other hand, required a much more powerful field."
"Speak English bloody please," Steve muttered, and then he immediately apologized.
"If the skull fractures were consistent with the slashing injuries, either the force field would have been spread over a wider area to more effectively bludgeon the blow, or - more likely - there'd be wedge-shaped areas, like force field brass knuckles, to produce wounds consistent with the other injuries. In my opinion, we're dealing with two separate metahuman attackers with two unrelated sets of powers."
"And since Tommy's final transmission only indicated a single enemy..." Bradley mused. The implications of the statement were obvious enough. Someone jumped him after the transmission.
Dr. Jaspers sighed and fidgeted noticeably with his electronic clipboard. Jorges smiled and grabbed it out of his hand with a telekinetic tug. Bandita, in a fit of maternal annoyance, snatched the board from her son's hand and immediately returned it to the doctor. Oddly enough, the baby seemed unconcerned at losing his toy. The doctor was both relieved and perturbed, but as the first rule of providing medicine to metahumans was "keep arguments to a minimum", he offered no protests. He put a hand on Bradley's shoulder. "Don't tell the lawyers I said this," the surgeon finally whispered, "but yes... given that we found only one body, in all likelihood, whoever did this to your son is still out there."
Steve angrily shook his head. "Not for long he's not!" the young metahuman exclaimed, and he turned and bolted for the elevator.
"Wait!" Angelina shouted, more out of instinct than actual concern (given that she hadn't even met Steve before today). "You don't know Los Angel..." But Steve Doerksen was already gone, not just a man on a proverbial mission, but a veritable 6'4" blond-haired, blue-eyed, superhuman bundle of raw Nebraska rage. Someone who could do some real damage, especially to himself.
"What else can you tell me, doctor?" Bradley asked the surgeon, ignoring Steve's outburst. He was used to letting his kids make their own mistakes - and, at the moment, had far more important concerns. "Dr. Jaspers, what's happening inside my boy's skull?"
"That's the problem, Mr. Champion." the surgeon answered glumly. "Not much of anything."
******
For some people, the road to the afterlife was primarily composed of a blinding light, a white tunnel, or a darkness filled with the sleazy voice of John "Crossing Over" Edwards. Tommy Champion, however, was being given a true Nebraska send-off - a corn stalk maze. The only more Nebraska way to kick the bucket would have been if the Cornhuskers were playing for his life against the University of Death in the Orange Bowl (or whatever they were calling it these days - Tommy hated those "fucking corporate whores who changed the name of the Bowl games so often that you couldn't tell fucking them apart anymore").
On one side of the corn field, Tommy saw the path lead into a farm of exceptional splendor: well-ordered machinery, animals that were friendly without being servile, newly painted, well kept houses and fences, and a huge corn field. These corn stalks glowed, half-dawn rose, half-noon sun gold, as they were reaped by a combine with blades of brilliant silver. The late spring sun, moderated by a cool wind, shone down on the fields and kept everything in perfect health. It looked like the ideal place to remove one's shirt, celebrate the tawniness of youth, and play with straw sticks in one's teeth - a place where a person became a character in a Norman Rockwell painting but didn't even care about the stereotypes, because life was too good.
That pathway contrasted with a rival trail on the other side of the cornfield, where the corn stalks withered and died. Scanning this path, Tommy saw it transformed into a throat-choaker of an asphalt road, which wound in a hypnotic, burning course across three desert states, and finally arrived at a decrepit, ashpit of a city. This wretched sprawl reminded Tommy of Los Angeles on a really bad smog alert day - a metropolis of soot-caked structures, low lying slums and crumbling towers, a filthy mire beyond the talents of a billion chimney sweeps to scour. It was a sickly crowded land, teeming with men whose bodies stank and sweated in a climate of unremitting heat, their eyes fixed with a burning but impotent hate that could only come from an act of supreme betrayal. Imagine if someone were to take the rage and despair that one feels at the moment when he realizes he's been betrayed, and stretches it out it for an eternity? What else could it be but...
"Hell." Tommy said, contemplating the two vistas, hoping that his instinctual understanding of the situation could not be pinned on "the clarity of death". He looked away from the city of fallen hopes and shouted at the sky. "Heaven or Hell. How fucking original."
"Choose..." a woman's voice cried back from the sky.
"What?"
"Choose the path that you deserve..."
Normally a choice between Heaven and Hell wasn't a difficult one, but there was something about it that stuck in Tommy Champion's craw (which was admittedly a very easy thing to do). The decision was too obvious; so obvious that Tommy considered it an insult. The rangy Nebraskan folded his arms, dropped to the ground and sat Indian-legged in the center of the cornfield, halfway between the two metaphysical extremes, and imitated the obstinacy of a small child. The call repeated itself for hours, getting louder each time until the earth shook, but Tommy still held his ground. The wind began to gust; it picked up steam until it reached the familiar levels of a fall Nebraska storm when people fretted and watched for funnel clouds, but still Tommy did not budge. No fucking way!" he cried, managing to be heard even above the sound of earth, storm, and siren call. "I ain't making that choice! It's not my fucking call!"
"Oh really, Omega," a cold sneering voice said behind him. "Afraid to make the difficult choices?"
The storm stopped. Tommy finally picked himself from the ground, slowly turned around and beheld a slender female shape crackling with psychic energies materializing above him. There was something decidedly non-angelic about this manifestation - unless one considered mathematical precision to be divine. Tommy put his left hand on his hip, sank his right elbow into his other hip, and leaned slightly. "Read your Bible. Where I go after I die ain't my call. You think you're God, bitch?" Tommy sneered, wondering what would happen next.
"I am the World Shaper," the female shape replied with a cold clinical manner.
"World Shaper?" Tommy asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow. "Even when I'm dying, I still can't get away from this pretentious bullshit."
******
Susan Oakman had to admire the subterfuge in masking Omega's correct location, even if tracking him down to the correct hospital would be nearly impossible. But hers was an important job - perhaps even the most important one. The Agents of the Anti Meta Society were coming, and they were planning to make a mark on the world: by killing Omega before he could awake from his coma and get his powers back.
A rather auspicious event in her unexpected career as a crimefighter. Or it would be, if they let her get past the front hall.
She was watching Smax! at yet another press conference, the third that he'd held today, where he described finding Omega's fallen, bloodied body, how he'd never seen anything so horrifying, and how - if the worst happened - he was prepared to spend the rest of his life honoring the Omega legacy.
Personally, she thought he was laying it on far too thick for her tastes, but perhaps Omega's own reputation for excess warranted it.
"So who were you again?" the police detective asked.
"I'm.... um... Daze." Susan answered. "Look, as you see, I've got powers. And I can get around you any time I can choose." She became invisible, walked past him, and reappeared. "And I can do this too," she added, forming six glowing circles that began to swirl in space directly ahead of the officer's field of vision.
"Ow!" the officer winced and shielded his eyes.
"See my hypnosis abilities?" Susan asked.
"Hypnosis?" the detective said, opening and shutting his eyes as he checked to see that the lights were gone. "It's giving me a headache, that's all."
"Well, I'm learning." Susan answered, shutting off the lights. "But if I were an assassin, would I stop here and check in? No, I wouldn't now, would I? I'd be too busy assassinating."
"Lady, I have instructions."
"Oh!" Susan exclaimed, and she pulled out a note from a pocket. "This is the authorization code. I was supposed to give you to verify I was on the level. You should have received a message saying I was coming."
"We were led to believe that Knockout was on her way."
"No she's... um nevermind check it, okay?" Susan requested.
The guard briefly checked the message, and after a couple of minutes, he came back to Susan and handed her a badge. "Fine, it checks out. We'll need you to wear this."
"Just this, oh of course," Susan answered. "Otherwise I'd be flying around naked..." She immediately stopped herself when she said that, though not before the police detective started drawing a mental picture.
She proceeded into the elevator and nervously pushed the button to the fourth floor. The ascent was slower than she'd have liked, but she entertained herself by drawing a light image of Omega on the walls of the elevator. He was beyond handsome (and by all accounts, beyond conceited) and about her age too, though the media liked to link her with Knockout.
"Miss, this is a restricted area," she was told as soon as she came out of the elevator. She immediately displayed the badge like a trophy.
"I brought my hall pass," she said.
The guard nodded, consulted security, and walked cautiously over to the teenager, gun uncomfortably drawn from its holster. She flinched - she didn't like weapons. It wasn't long ago that she was shot, and the man was nervous.
"You check out... but how close you get to Omega is up to the family," he said.
"With all due respect," Susan answered. "I don't think the family wants him dead."
"Exactly."
Susan was escorted up to the room, where she was confronted by a woman scarcely older than herself, dressed in rawhide leather and carrying a pair of holstered six shooters. "Heh!" Bandita said with contempt oozing in her voice. "Who in the blue hell are you?"
"I'm here to protect Omega," she answered.
"What? They couldn't spring for Old Glory so they settled for you?" Bandita was half-amused, half-annoyed. "So what do they call you, Glow Girl?"
Susan swallowed the urge to physically confront the mother of Omega's child. "There's a cabal - I guess that's the word - of anti-meta terrorists who are targeting anyone with powers, and right now they think Omega's easy pickings. A bunch of us have decided to draw the line here."
"Ms. Villanova," a strong man's voice came from the room beyond. "If she's telling the truth, you'd better take the boy away from the line of fire."
"There's another meta coming to help out, but he's um.. reluctant, but he should be along later if that's ok." Susan called out, glancing through a crack in the doorway where she could see both Tommy's prone form and Tommy's father. Bradley Champion assumed she wasn't referring to the Black Priest and simply nodded.
Bandita wasn't concerned about fine details, though (despite doing her best to hide it) she was actually glad that her son's father was receiving metahuman protection. "Jorges!" she shouted. "Momma says get here now!" A few seconds later, Bandita's son, a glowing baby boy, flew out of the room and into her mom's arms."
"It's beautiful," Susan said, wondering whether the child had any nanotechnology.
"Ha. Sometimes beauty's the most miserable curse you can imagine," Bandita replied as she led her baby away.
******
"I think you got all the blood out," Adam Foster said, unconsciously adjusting the black and white Zebra tights yet again - he'd gained a little weight since he'd last put them on. Blame it on Jerry's Deli, he thought, even though he'd only been there twice. "His nose bled like a stuck pig."
Steve Doerksen nodded but said nothing. Adam was accompanying him as he investigated anyone who had even a weak motive in putting Omega into a coma; his gumshoe techniques involved cornering the suspects, hurling wild accusations at them, and beating them to a pulp in a short but brutal fistfight. So far, his victims totaled only one: Dangerous, one of the men (along with Spirit Shout) who had trashed Omega's apartment several months ago. After the beating, as he lay bloody and battered against the wall of his apartment, Dangerous had managed to persuade Steve that he was innocent - and had given him the name and address of another, more likely suspect.
"I need a shower," Steve Doerksen said, getting back into the car. He almost felt like slamming his fist through the dashboard. He'd hoped the fight would settle him down, but he still felt like he needed to take a year's worth of anger management courses. "And a new shirt." he added, briefly tugging at the two inch tear at his neckline.
"We can stop at my apartment." the Zebra offered, though the ulterior motives were as obvious as if he'd winked.
"Sorry Adam," Steve replied, locking his face into marbled determination. "I've gotta see this through to the end."
"You're always seeing something through to the end," Adam complained.
"Next time I'm in town," Steve promised. "No Tommy, no villains, no crises, just us, okay?"
"You've said that before," Adam noted, and he changed the subject. "You shouldn't have beaten Dangerous up in front of his woman. There are some things a man shouldn't do."
"Tough." Steve said. "If he hadn't wrecked the beach house, I wouldn't have touched him. And some of the crap he wrote about Tommy in his book..." Steve shook his head. "At least we now know where the Chain's hiding."
"You know, if the Chain had attacked your cousin, Omega would have been strangled to death," the Zebra said.
"Adam, shut up," Steve retorted, and ignored him for the rest of the trip. He was right, of course, the Zebra was an idiot, but the truth was so obvious that even an idiot could see it. But Steve wasn't interested in the truth, he just wanted to hurt things, and have an excuse that wouldn't make him feel too guilty about it when he came to his senses.
******
Back in Omega's mind, the World Shaper (though too solemn to respond to insults) continued her explanation. Her voice had a quality that combined the condescending tone of the most arrogant school teacher with the sterile detachment of a computerized telephone operator. Omega hated it via sheer instinct.
"I have been placed here as a control measure to ensure that the plan progresses properly. Your actions are contrary to your personality profile. Your death would be contrary to the overall plan."
"Well, I'm a lifetime contrarian." Tommy answers, wondering where he'd heard that word before. "And when it comes to fitting into people's plans, I do my best to be a bigass square peg in a round fucking hole." It occurred to him that he could turn the metaphor into a phallus-vagina reference... well maybe later. "So what's it going to be? Are we going for a bad It's A Wonderful Life parody or is tonight's show a bad Heaven Can Wait parody?" He noticed that the figure was holding a set of keys. "World Shaper? Nah. Let me guess. It's either 'Keystone' or 'Gatekeeper', right?"
"No, I am the World Shaper," the manifestation repeated. "I control the shape of things within this mental plane. In doing so, I control access to the powers within your physical form."
"Mental plane?"
"Must I repeat every thing I say?" the World Shaper asked.
"You don't need to. You just told me everything I needed to know about you," Tommy replied sourly. If a psychic impression could sneer - Tommy's face would be as twisted as a vaudeville villain. "I should have known that your mental image would be that of a fucking transvestite, Harbinger. Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"You are mistaken. Harbinger is not my master. I serve another."
A sarcastic reply almost escaped Tommy's lips, but he buttoned it. The construct's power level was obvious, but Tommy didn't receive any sensation of deception. But if it's not Harbinger, he thought, them who? Only two other telepaths had the ability to create such a construct, and... "Since Brainchild is currently starring in a production of 'Babble and Drool' over in some unmarked military facility, my guess is that you must be serving... Mindslutty. So what's it like for a mental construct to have lesbo sex, and do you have pictures?"
"Your insulting comments are irrelevant," the shape said coldly. "I have been placed here to allow my mistress access to your thoughts and to regulate your powers to serve her agenda. Your death would contravene that goal. Corrections must now be implemented." Psychic energies began to crackle as the psychic construct began to rise above the landscape.
"So you're trying to save my life so I can be Bitchi-poo's slave at some point down the road." Omega scowled. "I think I'd rather be dead than play boytoy zombie in Hell."
"That is not an option."
"Bite me." Omega replied.
"If you insist," the construct said, and Omega suddenly felt the psychic energy from the construct surge. It felt like the minutes before an oncoming thunderstorm, minutes which were compressed into microseconds.
Omega braced himself as the construct gestured. Without warning, the ground beneath Omega's feet split open. Tommy scrambled for cover as the chasm erupted behind him. Inwardly, Tommy wondered whether he should take the threat as a physical challenge; we're inside my fucking mind after all, he thought. But some instincts were too difficult to ignore.
The construct smiled maliciously. Her opponent truly had no idea how to deal with threats in this environment, at least not yet. Another casual wave of her hand and the ground rippled like a set of tidal waves as the sky threatened to split apart with coruscating lightning.
Shit! Tommy cursed as the whole world thrashed insanely and the rising wind rose to the strength of a tornado and began to swirl. Armageddon had arrived on his porch and Tommy didn't realize it until he opened up the front door. Even for someone with a pugilist's heart and a wrestler's eye, running was clearly the best of all available options. Tommy Champion ran. Sprinting in the midst of the insane wind, mere steps felt like a marathon. He tried as hard as he could to keep his footing, but the world stabbed him at continuously, both tornado and lightning. His downfall inevitable, Tommy Champion toppled to the ground. He tried to turn the fall into a bounce, use the sheer momentum to regain his balance, an old flyer's trick. But here, where the laws of nature themselves danced on a cat's cradle, such tactics could not prevail, for the world itself was against him. Tommy landed on a hard slab of rock and was immediately engulfed; tons of mounds of rock and soil buried him alive. For a moment, he wondered if it was all over, but then a section of rock groaned above him, and a recess opened that exposed his head to the air. The breath, though stifling, was quite welcoming.
The construct slowed to a hover in front of Tommy and slowly gestured her fingers. Around Tommy, the tomb of earth and rock coagulated into a single solid mass. "You cannot win against me. You will comply."
"Let me guess..." Tommy sneered as he struggled under the weight of psychic mountains that congealed around him like lead weights. "Resistance is futile?" But the construct said nothing.
Tommy winced, concentrated, and finally managed to convince himself that the psychic mountain that was burying him was actually just a memory of the time he'd gone skiing in Colorado for the first time, back when he was 13 years old - he had fallen down a lot, but ended up as a reasonably adept skier by the end of the session. The mindscape became a wintery landscape, and he dug his way out of the snow with a smile on my face.
"It's my mind, bitch. And I've done the telepathy gig a few times myself."
"You are no telepath."
"And neither are you," Tommy answered, directing a blizzard at his opponent. For some reason this attack caught the projection offguard. "You're just a control, a contingency plan. You're no master telepath. You're not Mindshadow."
"No," a voice from behind him said. "But I am."
Tommy turned around, gave a shout, and projected a raw wave of telepathic force at the newcomer - his initial instinct was that this was just another deception on the part of the construct. He was wrong. Casually, contemptuously, Mindshadow reflected the bolt back at the hero and amplified it. Tommy Champion was sent flying off the mountainside, and was sent hurtling several kilometers beyond, landing on his back in the middle of a thickly wooded vale.
"Fuck!" Omega groaned as he slowly rose from the ground and wiped away the pulped remnants of several dozen fir trees, through which he had plowed during his descent. The swath of destruction he had carved was impressive, even by Tommy's standards.
"Convinced?" Mindshadow asked as she stood over him.
Tommy nodded, and wiped a trickle of blood from his psychic lip. "That was a cool introduction, but let's see what you can really do," he said.
******
Omega's words, however, were confined to the recesses of his mind; neither his lips nor the stacks of monitors that were hooked up to him betrayed them to the outside world. Thanks (once again) to Mindshadow, whose machinations were calculated to the smallest detail, the monitors still registered Tommy's mind as nearly brain dead - no one would notice the activity that was currently taking place in Tommy Champion's mind. Two people were now left to hold a lonely vigil, unaware of the battle that was now raging. But today, battles had been plentiful in the Los Angeles.
"And that's what happened," Susan concluded her tale. "These doctors - or the people who fund them - have targeted every known meta in the world with a customized plague."
"Idiots." Bradley Champion said, looking down at his son without explaining what he meant.
"They're very well armed. I was chased by these spider robots..."
"Funny how easy it is for these goddamn bastards to get their toys." Bradley remarked, his brusque comment effectively cutting off the conversation.
Susan looked down on Tommy and sighed. "Your son's a real hottie. Part Brad Pitt, part Justin Timberlake, maybe a hint of Russell Crowe."
"I think there's a little of me in there somewhere," Bradley joked. He was actually rather glad to have the company. "I wouldn't go comparing Tom to Mr. Timberlake when he wakes up; for some reason that boy's music irks him. But he does like Russell Crowe."
"Who doesn't?" Tom Black said as he entered the room, quickly displaying the badge he was given down stairs. "Hi. I'm Spirit Shout," he added.
"Bradley Champion." The big Nebraskan said as he got out of his seat - Tom was impressed by the man's size and stature - inspected the badge, and when he was satisfied it was authentic, offered a firm hand shake. "Tommy's dad," he said, and he sat down again. "Thanks for helping to watch my boy."
"So what's the latest? Is it over?" Susan said, rising from her chair to greet the masked newcomer. She managed to stop herself two steps away from a hug: even masked, with his perfect hair, athletic build and a confident posture honed by years of training in the far east, Tom Black had his own place in the gallery of young metahuman hunks. The attraction was natural and strong. But she didn't know him until very recently.
"For now," Spirit Shout said. "Tween's working with the cops and the Feds, trying to make sure we've got a lid on all the cases. The Center for Disease Control has secured the site. It looks like we've got a happy ending."
"Yeah," Susan said, and then she caught sight of Omega lying in his bed; from an angle that made it look like his white face was held in a pose that resembled a man half-gasping for air, and her brief ebullience fizzled. "Happy ending."
******
"This is a really stupid idea," Adam repeated. The fight with the Chain had been easier than the one with Dangerous, but now they were stalking deadlier prey, a man who made Adam extremely nervous. "I've heard stories," he told Steve. "They say Goose is ten times stronger than he was back when we were pulling jobs together. Ten times."
"They say a lot of things." Steve answered, clearly not in a mood to tolerate dissent. Their oversized frames struggled in the seats of the Nebraskan's rental car, a black '92 Accord whose interior absorbed heat like a sponge, while they navigated the suburbs in the No Man's Land between the city of Los Angeles proper and Orange County. It was a maze of lower middle class housing, strip malls, convenience stores, and adult video rental outlets that looked like they were designed by a committee armed with a Xerox machine and a passion to be as homogeneous as possible. "Welcome to Pico Rivera", a sign said (though it looked pretty much identical to Whittier, the city on the other side of the sign). The only good thing Steve could say about this place was that there wasn't a Starbucks in sight.
"Ten times!" the Zebra argued. "Many orders of magnitude stronger!"
Actually, ten times only equals one order of magnitude. But Steve didn't feel like bickering, not now. "That just means he'll last longer." He grunted, trying to bolster his confidence by reciting the catchphrase through grinding teeth; it made him feel slightly ridiculous. "The Brickyard was always at the top of my list of suspects. Oh, and thanks for finding the location of his underground gym..."
"Steve, I should've kept my big mouth shut."
"This is one time I'm glad you opened it."
"Goose Bailey is a fricking nutcase."
"Right now, that makes two of us."
The Zebra suddenly tugged at the shoulder of Steve's T-shirt. "You can't treat this like some bad movie where every problem goes away with bad dialogue. The guy is a psychopath. Hardcore. In a way that a nice kid from the corn patch can't possibly understand at this point in your life."
Steve casually brushed aside the hand. "Adam, you might be surprised by a few of the sons of bitches I knew growing up," he uttered, not mentioning his father by name.
"I didn't say you didn't know them. I said you didn't understand them. Will you listen already? Omega thought he was indestructible too. Now look at him."
Steve's face remained as granite as a Gary Cooper (or Al Gore) parody. "You don't have to come."
"Who'll watch your back?"
"Okay. Whatever. Do what you want." Steve answered, and he parked his car in a strip mall, in front of a slightly worn, if not rundown, ramshackle gym called the Muscle Factory. On a huge, dusty awning a big sign depicted an exaggerated bicep and a pair of colorful sheet metal gears rotating inside the muscle. A notice in the door clearly marked "membership by invitation only."
"Does this look like an invitation to you?" Steve asked, looking down at his clenched right fist.
"Maybe we should try to infiltrate them and disguise ourselves as bodybuilders." Adam said, making a bicep to prove his point.
"Adam!" Steve exclaimed. "You worked with the Brickyard six times! There's no way a disguise will fool him!"
"Maybe he'll have forgotten me." Adam smiled to himself. Normally Steve would have sighed, but he wasn't even in that good of a mood. He got out of the car without locking it, and made a beeline for the front door which (like the windows) was made from thick, dark glass that assured a measure of privacy.
A small entry hallway curled and opened into the weight room. This room, larger than it looked from the outside, had more of the feel of an old high school weight room than a modern gym; there were no exercise machines, just free weights, cluttered on racks and piled in towers beside the weight benches. Four beefy men, shirtless and wearing identical shorts, all of whose physiques would serve them well in careers as professional bodybuilders, struggled with ponderous weights while almost identical looking men spotted for them. Their barbells were heavily reinforced and with strips of a thick, glassy plastic; Steve, who had seen similar weights only a few weeks ago while being examined in the metahuman training facility at the University of Colorado, guessed that they were constructed from a much heavier metal than ordinary steel. The gym was dimly lit - one of the fluorescent tubes was burnt out and flickering like mad wasps - and any air circulation was almost non-existent, filling the room with that stifling, utterly masculine scent of uncounted liters of human sweat being allowed to run onto the floor and mark its territory like a urinating animal.
The moment Steve and Adam entered, the gym went silent. Adam grinned.
"Members only!" A burly, balding man at the front counter shouted at them. He immediately charged at Steve - who responded by driving his right arm directly into the center of his chest. The manager collapsed to the ground, coughing.
"I've got one question, boys!" Steve shouted, giving into a sudden impulse to strip off his shirt, ignoring the part of himself that wondered whether he'd gone insane because he knew he wouldn't like the answer. "Where's the Brickyard?"
The men threw down their barbells and lunged at them. A short but furious battle ensued - these musclemen were marginally superhuman, and while three of them were a match for the Zebra, Steve presented a far more formidable challenge. Thirty seconds later, with Adam gasping for breath (one of the bodybuilders had managed to clamp on a very effective choke hold) and the other patrons lying on the floor in assorted semi-conscious states, Steve stood tall and victorious in the center of the room. If he'd been in a better mood, it'd have felt like a scene from a (overtly) gay version of Adam West's Batman. "Bailey!" he shouted, renewing his challenge. "If you're here and you've got any balls, come out now!"
It was a testosterone laden challenge that was almost alien to Steve Doerksen's psyche - and it was answered. Out of a backroom door stepped a figure who was as every inch as tall as Steve who reached an impressive height of 6'4", an inch taller than his famous cousin - and much, much broader. He was a gleaming S&M nightmare who was clad in a leather mask, a spiked collar and leather harness, and a G-string on which a black plastic athletic cup dangled like a codpiece. As for his physique, well, if musculature could be compared with architecture, the Brickyard had clearly proceeded well past the Baroque period and was thoroughly ensconced in the Rococo.
"That outfit's too gay even for my tastes," the Zebra quipped as he staggered to his feet. Steve was utterly fixated on his target. The Brickyard removed his mask, revealing a handsome face locked in a slightly unpleasant expression, then peeled off the collar and harness and exalted in his near nudity like a swollen angel.
"Shouldn't you be at your cousin's bedside, Mr. Doerksen?" the villain asked with a smile fixed on his broad face. The query caught Steve Doerksen off guard - he hadn't taken the Brickyard for a man of words, but only a slightly raised eyebrow betrayed the emotion. "Yeah, I know who you are," the Brickyard continued. "A person in my business has to know all about his enemies."
"But Goose, you always told me you didn't care who you faced, so you didn't need to do any research!" Adam blurted. The Brickyard, annoyed by the sudden reminder of his former attitudes, pointedly ignored the former third string villain.
"Well?" the Brickyard asked Steve, signaling that he wanted a response.
Steve took a deep breath, not certain how he'd answer the challenge. This opponent intimidated him, and he was not expecting that - no one had intimidated him since he had gotten his powers. "What would be the point of hanging around there?" the young Nebraska native finally muttered (almost) under his breath.
"Why wouldn't you be?" the Brickyard wondered. "Don't tell me the asshole's dead?"
Steve immediately threw a roundhouse right - which the Brickyard caught in his large left hand. He smiled as he squeezed the Nebraskan's fist, and Steve grimaced in unexpected pain. "Answer the question, you little bitch. Is Omega dead?"
Steve'e eyes went wild, and he threw a left hook - which the Brickyard also caught. But any sense of self-satisfaction that the villain might have had was lost; he was nigh consumed by the need to get an immediate answer to his question. "Is Tommy Champion dead!" the Brickyard snarled.
"Why? You want to make sure that you got the job done?" Steve snarled back an accusation. To onlookers, the conversation had taken on the aural qualities of a dogfight.
With a sneer fixed on his broad face, the Brickyard saw no reason to answer his opponent's question. Stretching his arms, he pulled Steve toward him and tried to fasten a bearhug around his opponent's ribs; to his surprise the young Doerksen discovered that his own strength wasn't nearly sufficient to counter the move.
"No!" the Zebra shouted as, with a sudden spring, he leapt from a half-crouching position and interposed his body between the two combatants, attempting to separate them before the Brickyard could cinch his hold. With an angry shove, the villain impulsively shoved Steve backwards about eight meters, where the young Nebraskan smashed the back of his head against one of the gym walls, making a large dent. Satisfied, the Brickyard then grabbed the Zebra with both hands, one placed on his throat and the other tightly grabbing his crotch, pressed him high overhead, then slammed him down, spine first, onto an outstretched knee. Adam fell to the ground clutching his back.
"Damn. It didn't break," the Brickyard noted, shaking his head - he'd hoped to hear a crack. "You always were tougher than you deserved to be, Foster."
"C'mon Goose," the Zebra said, still rubbing the injury. "What'd I ever do to you?"
"'We can beat the rap, Goose!'" the Brickyard mocked in an exaggerated whining voice, quoting from when they'd been captured during an unsuccessful robbery back in 1997. "'Don't waste your money hiring an expensive lawyer Goose, I'll get us off the hook!'"
"A six year sentence wasn't that bad!" the Zebra exclaimed. "Besides, you always did well in prison." He rolled away from an angry Brickyard stomp - given that they didn't send him to Purgatory and that the Brickyard had escaped after a couple of months, he didn't understand why his former colleague was upset. "And Omega's not dead," he added. "He's just in a coma from which he'll never awaken."
"No!" Steve exclaimed as he got back to his feet. "Adam, you idiot!"
"So..." the Brickyard said, looking at Steve with a look of smug contempt. "He's pretty, strong, and blindingly stupid. Just your type, Foster." He laughed and turned to Steve. "Oh no!" he mocked. "My poor cousin's in a coma! He's never coming back!"
"I'll make you eat those words, you son of a..."
"You're doing a great job so far." the Brickyard replied sarcastically, dismissing the cliché. "Man, oh man, what a prize specimen. You have no idea what Omega is, do you bitch?"
"I've known Tommy since..."
"I don't care about what Omega looked like when he was in short pants," the Brickyard snorted. "The ol' schoolyard memories are worth jack-shit compared to what he is now. When it comes to Omega, your kissing cousin ain't the important part of the equation. He's not the package, pretty boy, he's just the driver."
"Every time you've underestimated Tommy, he's kicked your ass," Steve told the Brickyard, spreading his legs slightly, getting ready to hit a combat stance.
The Brickyard realized that his opponent was preparing for the fight - and nothing could have made him happier. "That's rich," he said, "coming from someone who won't even stay at his bedside because he's given up on him. But you're right. Omega has whupped me like a red-headed stepchild. Every single time." He began to advance on Steve, a sense of menace in his slow, confident gait. "The last time I fought Omega, do you know what he did to me? He got so pissed because I tore up that little government pardon I received after Ireland - God was he pissed - that he stripped me butt naked, grabbed my nards and crushed them in his hands..."
"As I said, he kicked your ass," Steve said, ignoring the impulse to smile.
"And you know what I did?" the Brickyard asked.
You went back to the gym, Steve wondered, but a voice in the back of his head told him that he was seriously underestimating the villain. The well-muscled criminal had closed with his rival and was now butting chests with him. "I'll bet you're thinking I bawled for revenge like a spoilt child. And after the fight, yeah, I was pissed. I wanted to rip his balls off and shove them down his throat."
"Like that'd ever happen," the Zebra said.
"Quiet retard," the Brickyard snapped back, and then he turned his attention to Steve again. "I realized that every time he beat me before, I'd gotten just as angry, and it had gotten me nowhere. I realized I had a truckload of superpowers and didn't really understand them - where they came from, what they mean."
And how to use them to give people a helping hand? Steve didn't say it, though he wanted to. After all, that might get in the way of your obsession with my cousin.
"You can't beat someone like Omega just by pushing yourself harder - the whole Rocky training bullshit - because I pushed myself in the past and he still kicked my ass. So I consulted the experts: occultists, spirits, demons, went on visionquests, the works. And I finally figured things out."
"You figured out you'll never beat Tommy?" Steve was unable to hide his contempt. But the Brickyard smiled.
"Without understanding myself better, no I won't. They told me to pay any price that was asked of me to gain that understanding, so I paid it." The remark sounded ominous, but he didn't elaborate. "And you know what I finally learned?"
"What?" Steve wondered.
The Brickyard, smiling broadly, briefly groped Steve's biceps. Steve brushed his hand aside. "I'm not just a man anymore, I'm a god, and a powerful one. I'm Strength Incarnate. I am The Power." Steve fought back an urge to choke. "And you know what else I discovered?"
That you're psychotic? Steve thought, but he kept the remark to himself. "What else did you discover, Brickyard?" he finally asked.
"That your cousin's a god too. A very powerful god."
Steve didn't blink. Not that Tommy's ego could get any bigger, a part of him thought. He almost smiled.
"And we share a destiny. We're destined to fight each other - and fight, and fight - in battles so savage and so primal they'll be remembered for the rest of time," the Brickyard boasted, and then noted the skepticism in Steve's eyes. "And most importantly, our war's not over. We're destined to keep fighting each other. Power on the scale that Omega and I possess ain't going to allow itself to be stopped, not if our bodies get broken, not even if our brains get scrambled..."
Any impulse toward sarcasm immediately stopped. Steve was listening intently now.
"Not only that, even if you ignore Omega's power and destiny, there are beings with an interest in your cousin and what he does with that power. He's their investment." The Brickyard added, tittering slightly. "So either Tommy's power - or one of the magical entities pulling his strings - is going to make sure he wakes up, little bitch."
"Don't call me that." Steve snapped.
"Omega's going to wake up and he'll be a god again." The Brickyard took a step back. "And in no time, we'll be fighting each other again: god against god, no rules, no restraint - which is as it should be - until we settle our differences, or until there's an apocalypse."
"If you want an apocalypse, Brickyard, let's go for one now," Steve said.
"Not bad." The Brickyard smiled. "You do a pretty good Omega impression after all." He took a step back and quickly analyzed his opponent. "Okay, let's talk about us, bitch."
******
Within ten seconds of launching a mental attack against Mindshadow, Tommy Champion sated whatever appetite he had acquired toward hopeless combat for at least the next ten years. Within the confines of someone's mind, he was like a sloth trying to capture a hummingbird. None of his attacks even came close to striking its target.
Then Tommy tried to warp the environment, as he'd done against the World Shaper, so his mind would swallow Mindshadow like a black hole sucking on a burnt out companion star. Mindshadow snuffed the effect like a lit match between her fingertips.
"Boring," she declared. "Would you like to see what I can do?"
She didn't wait for Omega's response. The hero suddenly found himself hanging upside down in the world, then sideways, then the chaffs of wheat suddenly grew to impossible size like overgrown grass in a giant's pasture, then everything became turned into gelatin, and Omega found himself alone in Jello-land.
"Hey!" he shouted. "These ass clowns aren't my sponsors!" It was a joke, but a poorly timed one, as Mindshadow decided to make Nike sneakers fall from the sky like rain - followed by a dance number of gigantic running shoes trying to stomp him.
"Very funny - Hey!" Omega exclaimed, as a giant hand suddenly grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and he felt himself turned from solid into a liquid. He was poured into jello molds, and left, like a cheap fruit salad at a picnic, to wobble helplessly under the hot Nebraska sun.
"Tired of the cornfield?" Mindshadow smiled. "Let's try the beach..." she said, and Tommy suddenly found himself buried in sand to his neck in white sand that was so pure that it practically glowed. He struggled with as much strength as he could muster - he even transformed himself into a dust storm, but was not able to pull himself out of the sand.
"Great. All I need now is a fucking 98 pound bully," Omega muttered.
"At least you have a view," Mindshadow stated, displaying the magnificent vista of a huge fortress cut into the side of a lush, tropical volcano to the dying hero. Intricate white stone work, laced with pumice and telekinetically wrapped into magnificent forms, some classical, some primitive, all verdant shrouded beauty. If the trees of paradise were ivy, then Mindshadow's fortress was an Ivy League college from heaven. "This is one of my smaller fortresses," she explained. "While you sweated in your hovel in California - and called it luxury - I enjoyed this place, when I wanted something... intimate."
"Well golly, Princess Mindfucker. I'm simply unworthy to be in your presence." Omega mocked. "You're going to have take at least a five hour shower to get the stink of plebian out of your skin. Can I watch?"
"Watch this," Mindshadow said with a contemptuous smile, as she dug her left boot heel into the bridge of Omega's head and began to peel his head. "Now what have we got in here? There's a bomb..." she said, plucking it out and casually tossing it away.
"Am I supposed to thank you for that?"
"If you're even capable of gratitude, yes. Though that's not the only thing you owe me," Mindshadow said. "If I hadn't commanded your brain to overload its production of endorphins, you would have gone into shock halfway during your battle against Autocrat. Since then... I've been your guardian angel. If it weren't for me, for example, Hack and Orchid would have escaped from Purgatory and attacked your family months ago."
"Suuure...." Omega was clearly unconvinced.
"And since you've lost your abilities... thanks to that foolish sorcerer... I've had to keep an extra close watch on you. Why do you think Major Barnes didn't kill you? Why didn't the Chain strangle you? Why did Halcyon interrupt Smax! before he could finish killing you?"
"You?" Omega mocked. "It must have been taxing."
"No, taxing is listening to your sarcasm," Mindshadow said. "Or it would be, if it wasn't so obvious what you're trying to cover with so much bravado." She pulled out pieces of Omega's brain, stretched them like harp strings, and began to play a tune.
"Yeah, I know you're playing me." Omega moaned. "Do you have to be so literal about it?"
"Frightening, isn't it?" Mindshadow said. "You're beaten, you're dying, and you're defenseless. These alleged 'jokes' are almost the only thing you have left."
"And so I have you to keep me company on my way out to the corporate headquarters in the sky, Great." Omega sighed. "If my death is so imminent, why don't you just leave me the fuck alone? You're one of the few assholes I haven't gone out of my way to piss off, so why rub my face in it now? Now if Orchid tormented me at the moment of death, that I could relate to..."
Mindshadow almost laughed. "My motives are entirely practical," she said.
"You're above vendettas?" Tommy asked.
"Mostly," Mindshadow admitted.
"And tormenting my final moments serves a practical purpose?"
"Very," Mindshadow said. "I've spent months establishing my hold on your mind. If I'm going to lose my investment, I intend to get at least one good thing out of you before you perish."
"Yeah, but I'm not in a condition to have sex when I'm buried up to my neck," Omega replied. "Though I gotta admit I'm not fucking used to women being interested in my mind."
"Joke as much as you want. Laugh as you enter Heaven or Hell. I don't care. But the moments before you die..."
"You want to see if there's a tunnel of blinding light?" Omega replied, trying to hide the fact that he was squirming furiously beneath the sand.
"In a manner of speaking, yes." Mindshadow replied. "Omega, you're almost as strongly connected to primal forces of magic as I am to the power of the human mind - not that you appreciate it." She paused, and decided to tell him everything. "Birth and death, Omega. They're very special times, the two times in a person's lifetime when they establish their strongest connections with the metaphysical. If I look into your mind as you make that connection...."
"It'd be better than John Fucking Edwards," Omega said. "By the way, if I do kick the bucket, can you mind-fry that fucking parasite?"
"He's on my list," Mindshadow replied. Omega wasn't sure whether she was joking or not. He'd read an NSC report documenting the deaths of twenty terrorists in early September 2001 from cerebral hemorrhaging. They suspected this was Mindshadow's doing - the woman may be a self-centered bitch, but she had some moral streak. "Now if you don't mind..." she said, mounting a boat that formed from the sands, "I think it's time to explore." And then she and the boat entered Omega's head and vanished into his subconscious and beyond.
Into the wellspring of the arcane on Earth.
******
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Los Angeles basin, Steve Doerksen listened stoically to the Brickyard's invitation to "talk". Back home Steve had a reputation for naïveté, but here he completely understood the meaning of the conversation in its brutal subtlety.
"Fine," he told the Brickyard with a smile. "Let's talk."
The Brickyard nodded, took a step backward, nodded to his opponent and threw a punch, Steve grabbed it, closed in to grappling range, only to discover he was trying to tackle a human brick wall. They wrestled for a few seconds, then the Brickyard clamped on a headlock, threw Steve onto his back, and let him loose only so he could mount him and clamp on a body scissors. The young metahuman gasped in pain. He'd been warned about the Brickyard's recently escalating strength levels, but some things needed to be experienced first hand.
What followed was an eight minute lesson in both machismo and humility. When Steve threw punches, and the Brickyard closed and wrestled. When Steve tried to wrestle, and the Brickyard shoved him back and delivered a massive, well-placed fist to his ribs - or between his legs. When he managed to grab him in what would be considered a submission hold, the Brickyard muscled out almost immediately and reversed it. There was no talking, just grunting, groaning and the occasional yelp of pain. Adam, who was being held down by five Brickhouses, (one latched onto each of his limbs, and a fifth sitting on his chest) was forced to watch in dismay.
Finally, after eight minutes of fighting, Steve sank to his knees, no longer able to defend himself. The Brickyard got behind him, applied a rear chinlock, held him steady, and taunted him. "Not as easy as it looks in the comics, is it?" he whispered into the Nebraskan's ear. "You've got all the tools, little bitch, but I've been involved in serious fights for years." Steve had no reply, aside from a mounting feeling of helplessness and panic. "I didn't hurt your cousin. If I had, there'd be no doubt - there'd have been DNA evidence." That remark brought on a moment of struggle from Steve - but only a moment. "You come into my place full of righteous anger, well, that only takes you so far. Now what am I going to do with you?"
******
"So this is the Omega." Spirit Shout's first impression of Omega was something of a disappointment. "He doesn't look that tough."
It had been a long hard day of fighting for all of them, Tom Black included. But it took some time after the fight was over for the adrenaline high to go away, so he was glad when Tween suggested that he should help Susan guard Omega - he'd finally meet the guy, and maybe even see a little action. You never know when a supervillain might show up out of nowhere. Unfortunately there wasn't a supervillain in sight, and watching a comatose guy lying in bed and cradled by a nursery of beeping monitors wasn't the young San Francisco crimefighter's idea of a good time.
"Nobody's tough when they're in a coma," Susan said, glancing at Tommy's father. Bradley Champion, still slumped in his chair, didn't see a reason to respond.
"Hey, Omega!" Spirit Shout shouted. "I wrecked your house. Wake up and do something about it." He turned around and saw Susan and Omega's father giving him an odd look. "Psychology," he explained. "I figured since he was such a kickass fighter..."
Bradley shook his head. "If Tommy wakes up with his powers back but his head's not working right, it'd be best not to rile him."
"I didn't think of that," Spirit Shout admitted.
"The thought does count..." Susan answered.
Tom Black looked down on his namesake and sighed. "We just busted our butts for this guy, it just doesn't seem fair that he's still lying there. Maybe Tween should give him a shot of nanites to fix him up." He glanced back at Tommy's dad, wondering if he said too much.
"He's still busy with the CDC, I guess. Maybe when things quiet down..." Susan said quietly to Spirit Shout.
"Yeah I suppose, it still doesn't seem right though," Tom said, staring at Omega.
"It's not. But thanks to you folk, he's not going to die with a bullet in his head," Bradley Champion answered, and watched in approval as Spirit Shout gave a sigh of relief. Back when the elder Champion served in the marines during the Gulf War. an Iraqi supervillain teleported a Scud into his camp an hour before the cease fire was called. More than most people, he understood exactly why fighting men and women despaired when their efforts, sweat, and spilled blood didn't immediately bear fruit.
******
Mindshadow wasn't sure what awaited her. Her makeshift telepathic boat was racing down a river of white water, blood and screams... the river of history, the things touched by magic within the lifetime of man. The boat was now almost beyond her ability to control, and as it raced, a cascade of images that passed by her so quickly that even her peerless intellect couldn't fully comprehend them: images of death, a war in heaven, angels hurling burning spears, a relentless drumbeat, a blood-red rain... Was this a glimpse of things to come, or visions of an imagined apocalypse inspired by Tommy spending too many of his boyhood hours addling his brain in a Nebraska Sunday School - or a combination of the two?
She beheld a panoply of figures of mythical beasts and ancient sorcerers, prophets and angels whose forms became more terrifying as she peered further back into the antiquity of the mythic subconscious. She became connected to the age of things, when even the most minor of individuals seemed mythic, and the smallest wonder was a monolith. A person with less than an absolute sense of their self-worth would have crumbled during the journey, but Mindshadow endured it with only a hint of trepidation.
Then she came to the end of her journey, and she saw the Priest's face, covering the final portal like the face in the mirror from Snow White, a childhood memory of terror. It was appropriate, she thought, for the Priest always struck her as a child's supervillain, a simple bogeyman who would be easy to ignore if he wasn't so powerful. The image laughed at her. The Priest called her a thousand insulting names in a hundred tongues: weakling, wanton, vixen, trollop, amateur. He boasted of the centuries he had spent girding himself with spells, establishing pacts with powers beyond human ken to increase his power. "And I made myself invincible in mind and spirit, for the powers that coddled me could accept nothing other," the Priest boasted. Mindshadow wondered how much of it was true. It was all too reminiscent of the lies she liked to tell about herself.
Then she saw a vision of Omega - an older, wiser Omega, dressed in a black and white variant on the Nike costume - stepping into battle against the Priest. The Priest withstood every attack that Omega launched against him, just as easily as she had done earlier, and Mindshadow sighed and thought to herself that Omega's consistency was beginning to irritate her. That's when an unfamiliar voice behind the Priest said: "Here's a kiss for you, father.", and a magical effect struck the Priest from behind. His chest swelled to grotesque proportions, and the world was filled with the sound of a gargantuan heartbeat. The Black Priest, for the first time in millennia, screamed.
"This is for my family, asshole," Omega snarled, and he plunged his hand deep into the Priest's chest and drew forth his black, still beating heart. The death-force of the Priest withered Omega's hand, but with its final strength, he crushed it, and a beautiful sword of angels, swung from behind the Priest, struck through his neck, breaking into shards even as it decapitated him. And then the Priest was no more, but whatever was beyond the now-vacant portal where the Priest had once stood was also unclear, for Tommy's connection to the fates beyond had been severed, and she was returning to the forefront of Tommy Champion's thoughts. But she was smiling.
******
"Let him go, Brickman!" a new voice shouted. A wave of concussive light exploded in the middle of the well-muscled spectators, causing them to do a remarkable impression of bowling pins toppling without leaving a spare. The Zebra, who was less affected by the attack than his captors, crawled back to his feet, kicking one of the bodybuilders for good measure. Halcyon hovered in mid-air, his force field ward shining more brightly than it had in many years.
"So much for having a secret hideaway." The Brickyard said, rolling his eyes in disgust as he let go the hold. Steve collapsed to the ground and gasped. "And it's Brickyard, not Brickman. Jeez, get the name right, retard."
"Leave them alone!" Halcyon warned.
"I wouldn't have killed him. The kid's working through some grief with a little badly chosen violence." The Brickyard said. "Believe it or not, I actually understand it. I even respect it. It's how boys become men. But the fight's over, for now." Steve slowly got back to his feet. The Brickyard took a business card from the counter, grabbed the front of Steve's blue jeans, and slid the card down into his crotch.
"What the hell was that?" Steve managed to ask, even though he was puffing so hard he could barely get the words out.
"This is L.A. Even mortal enemies trade business cards here," the Brickyard replied. "It's an Internet address where you can reach me. And it's untraceable."
"Now why the hell would I want to do that?" Steve asked.
"It depends on whether you've got the balls to ask me for a rematch," the Brickyard said. "Or anything else."
"Wait a minute." Steve wondered. "We just nearly killed each other, and now you're acting like we're friends?"
"Nah. Friends are a dime a dozen for someone with your looks. I'm a lot more than just some Joe who'll break bread with you and trade jokes." the Brickyard said, as he wiped the sweat from his chest and wiped it on his opponent's lips. "For men like us, this is wine. We just got drunk together. It felt good didn't it?"
"I'd rather have Gatorade."
The Brickyard ignored the joke. "I know they've told you to be a good little bitch all your life: stay in your place, keep smiling as they screw you, play at being the All-American boy. But I know in my balls - and so does your cousin - that's it's a load of bullshit. This country was founded because people would not allow themselves to be someone's bitch. People like Omega - and me - are a helluva lot more all-American than the peach-assed boy scout you pretend to be."
"Are you trying to lure me over to your side?" Steve asked - realizing at the moment it escaped his lips just what an asinine question he'd asked.
"My side?" The Brickyard smirked in response. "The 'dark side'? Nah! This ain't Star Wars, I ain't Vader, and he..." he pointed at the Zebra, who was wondering where this conversation would end. "...ain't Jar Jar despite the supporting evidence. There ain't no such thing as a light side and a dark side, there's only nature."
"Nature says we should get out of here, Steve," the Zebra interjected.
"I ain't stopping him," the Brickyard replied and he turned back to Steve. "You can play with your striped bitch, that's your business. You can find out who busted your cousin and kick his ass. I'll be on the sidelines cheering. Omega's mine, and only mine."
"If he comes back, he'll kick your ass..." Steve says.
The Brickyard chuckled. "Maybe. But every time we fight, I get stronger."
"How Nietzschean," Steve replied.
"Now let's talk about you. These last ten minutes, I taught you things about yourself you never knew before. If you ever question the type of man you are - the type of god you are - and everyone else is trying to feed you the same old "you're okay, just believe in yourself" crap, come see me. We'll get drunk again. We'll take the part of you that's still a child, and kill it together."
"Don't bet on it," Steve muttered, and he, Adam, and Halcyon cautiously backed out of the gym. The smile that had grafted itself on Brickyard's face was almost as obnoxious as his offer, but that wasn't on Steve's mind. As soon as he got into the car, the young Nebraskan clutched his ribs and moaned. Nothing felt broken.
"My God. Goose is really gone off the deep end," the Zebra said. "Whoever gave him his Fight Club DVD deserves a swift kick in the teeth."
"Forget him. He's not our man," Steve snapped. But that remark, despite its terse emphasis, hid other emotions. He toyed with me, Steve thought to himself, trying unsuccessfully to turn his attention to more deserving matters. "By the way, sir, I owe you some thanks," he told Halcyon. "I suppose we're lucky you showed up when you did."
"Luck had nothing to do with it," Halcyon said. "I was told to keep an eye on you."
"Huh?" Steve wondered. "Who asked you to do that?"
"Never you mind," Halcyon replied, and then his expression changed. "Michael wants you to stay out of trouble while Tommy recuperates."
"What's Michael got to do with it?" Steve wondered. "And I thought you hated Tommy."
"One question at a time!" Halcyon snapped, not quite realizing that only one of Steve's statements was a question. "No, I still hate Omega. But I like money, and Michael's been paying me to do jobs for him. It's a nifty arrangement - he magically keeps my powers going at peak levels, and I do jobs for him."
"What kind of jobs?" Steve asked.
"Important ones. Like keeping the bad guys away from Omega while he doesn't have his powers and is playing vigilante, completely oblivious to the fact that the town's crawling with supervillains who'd love any chance to kill him before he can get his powers back."
"You did that?" Adam exclaimed, a smile indicating he was as pleased as he was surprised. "Man, Omega hates having back up on a patrol. I can't wait to tell him."
"You've got a long wait. He's in a coma." Steve snapped. "Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but where were you when the bad guy caved in Tommy's skull?"
"Hey!" Halcyon shouted. "It's not my fault! I was told to keep the bad guys away and I did. It wasn't a bad guy who put Omega in a coma, it was a superhero!"
"Say what?" Steve exclaimed.
"Mind control," the Zebra said. "There's a lot of that going around these days. Damn mentalists are everywhere."
Steve ignored his friend, again. "Just tell me exactly what happened..." he demanded. "Exactly."
"Okay, exactly!" Halcyon sounded like he was offended by the request. "Well, I was following Omega, bending light around me so no one could see me - I wish I knew I could pull that trick in the old days - and I followed him up to this big apartment building. Anyway he got into a fight, and I managed to keep a dozen or so bad guys away from Tommy by putting up a big force field. Well, I had to toughen the field because they started to crawl through it, but I did my job. Then the bad guys all disappeared and I said 'Great! Omega must have won!'."
"Tommy's last report to the police mentioned force fields and constructs." Steve noted.
"That must have been them. Then I heard this woman's voice - Michael's guide, I guess - in my head, telling me that Tommy needed my help now. I've heard it a few times over the last few months. Very seductive."
"Okay, Michael sent you a telepathic guide," Steve said, though if he'd been aware of the conversation playing in Omega's mind at the moment, he'd reach a much different conclusion. "But you said it was a hero."
"Yeah. I looked through the open apartment door, and I saw Smax!, the kid from Minnesota, standing over a bloody Omega. And I said to myself, 'great! I don't have to get involved, he's already got help'. But that's when the punk grabbed Omega, and he said something like 'they'll think the villains killed you' and then he pounded Omega in the back of the skull. It was sick, a real sick sound. After the second punch, I realized what was happening, so I went in. Then the guy in the band suit threw Omega's body to the ground, and he looked at me and said something like 'If you say one word to anyone, old man, you'll wish the Priest got you...' and he vanished."
"So you took Omega back to the hospital?" Steve wondered.
"Are you crazy?" Halcyon said. "I'm no medic. Moving him might have killed him. Anyway I... I heard the guide voice telling me to pour as much of my magic power back into Omega as possible, and..."
"You ran." Steve said.
"No, I couldn't run, so I used my power to bolster him. There was so much blood, I thought he was dead, but I kept pouring on the juice. After awhile I got weak, so I staggered into an apartment and passed out. Can you believe no one's thought to ask where I've been since Omega died?"
"He's not dead," Steve corrected.
"You told Michael about Smax!?" Adam wondered.
"I tried to. But he was real upset that I had allowed Omega to get hurt - as if it were my fault that the idiot put himself in danger in the first place - and he told me to do something "useful" and keep Omega's cousin from killing himself."
"Fine." Steve said. "So now we know."
"Know what?" Adam asked.
"We know the name of the bastard who's going to need the best plastic surgeon in the entire US prison system." Steve said. It was not, of course, an observation. It was a vow.
******
"So where'd you go?" Tommy asked when Mindshadow reappeared out of his head. Psychic journeys were normally tiring, but this time Mindshadow felt reinvigorated. Victory will do that.
"To the place where you're most afraid of going: the future, with your powers intact," she answered.
"Really?" Omega scoffed.
"You can't hide your secrets from me, Thomas," Mindshadow said. "I can eat them like candy. For example...." And Mindshadow reached inside Omega's heads and began to devour his secrets like a box of sweets. "Oh...you caught your father having an affair with your cousin Steve's mother when you were five years old... how mundane...." She pulled another secret and began to chomp on it like a porn star with a cherry. "Ah, that explains a lot. That tastes like degradation and betrayal...you were thirteen, beaten to a bloody pulp, and your cousin Buck treated you like his..."
"Stop it." Omega objected.
"Of course, you blamed a woman for that. That's such a common theme in your life."
"Welcome to the Orchid School of Blame and Shame."
"Shouldn't that be the 'Orchid School of Blame and Shame for Bitches'?" Mindshadow replied. "Face it Omega, has there ever been a problem in your life that you didn't blame on a woman? Need I even recite the list: your mother, your cousin Cynthia, your girlfriend Rachel, that vacuous little thing Sarah, Bandita, Michelle Jude, Leona Blade, Orchid, Macha, every female teacher who didn't find your remarks amusing... it just goes on and on." Mindshadow smiled. "No wonder you prefer the company of men."
"Not always!" Tommy protested.
"Sex doesn't count!"
"Sex always counts!" Tommy shouted back. "Hell, if I didn't suspect those perfect looks of yours were some sort of psionic boob-job, I'd want to have sex with you."
"What makes you think that you meet my standards?"
"Whatever," Omega replied.
"Ah, 'whatever'. The most common word in the lexicon of cowardice, Omega," Mindshadow told him. "But hardly a surprise. I've observed you at close range - the closest range a person can get - and you're positively oozing cowardice."
"Is that so?" Omega asked. "Then why are you holding me down?"
"Because I can - whenever I choose to." Mindshadow replied. "As you can see Omega, my wealth is far beyond your piffling dreams, my power is far greater than yours even at your peak, and I know your inner self. Not only can I restore your powers, I can find new ways for you to develop them." She smiled, and the fantasy mindscape sunlight glinted on an eager reflection of teeth. "Deep within you in a reservoir of hatred for the Black Priest and his kind. You have been unwilling to tap into it."
"I thought I was doing very good job of opposing that bastard until someone short-circuited my powers," Omega said.
"Then you're lying to yourself," Mindshadow replied sharply. "You haven't made a serious move against him since Dr. Wight told you about your great grandfather. And why? Motherhood issues? Guilt over what you did to your cousins? Fear that you're shaming the family name? Regret over killing a serial killer? For someone who's the pinnacle of arrogance, the number of neuroses you possess is staggering."
"I deal with them," Omega said tersely.
"How? By shutting yourself down?"
"That was you, lady." Tommy protested.
"I had help." Mindshadow answered, with such force of certainty that it caught even Omega off-guard. "From you. From your subconscious fears. The construct would have been destroyed weeks ago if it weren't for them."
"Are you saying that I gave up my powers - the strength, the flight - because deep down I'm a chickenshit?" Tommy snapped. "You're fucking crazy, bitch!"
"You may love your powers, but you fear them more. You're afraid of losing your humanity. So instead of embracing your powers like I have, you wallow in food, sleep and sex."
"Yeah. Like living in the Tahiti Hilton ain't wallowing," Omega scoffed. "You know Mindy, not that you're not pretty, though it all could be an illusion..."
"If I weren't a telepath, I'd wonder if you'd noticed," Mindshadow answered. Of all the voices in Omega's mind (a good telepath can discern not just a single voice from the brain but a chorus - and Mindshadow's telepathy was well above "good") his libido was easily the loudest.
"But if you were a dude, I'd be wondering just how small your dick would have to be to force you to reach these levels of overcompensation. It'd have to be as tiny as Bill Gates'!"
"Omega. How you fail to make me laugh," Mindshadow said, waving dismissively. "This base, these luxuries, and my limitless wealth are simply an expression of my total embrace of my powers. Unlike you, my wealth serves to further my powers, not the other way around."
"Fuck," Tommy said. "I've finally met the one person in the world who'd suck worse as a Buddhist than me."
"Is that so? Then consider your karmic debt, Omega," Mindshadow said, effortlessly turning the joke against him. "If I can neutralize your powers so easily, just think of what the Black Priest will do to you, your child, your loved ones, your friends or the world you claim to serve. Would you like to see your father or your cousin become the Priest's puppet, just like he did to Permafrost? Or Old Glory become his soldier in the same way that Avatar was transformed by the Royal Elite? Perhaps Knockout can join Macha and Misfit in his brothel of the damned - Her all-American wholesomeness looks so much more pleasing in leather. She might even remind you of Orchid."
"Stop that!" Tommy snapped, and then inwardly moaned. That was the worst thing you could have possibly said, Tommy, you asshole...
"The Priest is your destiny. It's time to embrace it - or die." She lifted Omega out of the sand by the chin with her finger. The sand fells away from his body in layers, like a peeling orange, revealing that his body was weighted and chained from neck to foot. She whisked him over the open ocean, stuck a key in his mouth and let him drop. As she hovered in the air above him, she whistled - Tommy recognized it as the theme from "Jaws", and looked down to see a swarm of sharks circling in the water.
"Fucking cute," Tommy moaned.
"It's your choice Omega," Mindshadow replied. "You're no good to me if you refuse to do what has to be done. So take the easy way out and let the sharks have you, or....well, even you should be able to figure out the alternative."
Tommy took a deep breath and felt a cold rush as he hit the water - with the key in his hand.
******
Tommy Champion awoke and suddenly sat up in his hospital bed. The entire room jumped. "Shit!" he said - the first thing he saw through his blurred vision was Susan, surrounded in a pale halo of light. "I didn't think it was my time yet."
Bradley Champion immediately pressed the button and summoned the doctors.
"Nice to know there's still action in Heaven," Omega added, and then his vision completely cleared and he realized where he was. "Shit."
Bradley Champion rose from the side of the bed. "You're lucky to be here," he said.
Tommy Champion glanced over at Susan. "Who are you?" he asked. "And the fuck decided to play the 1812 Overture in my fucking head?" he added, before Susan could even consider her response. "And who's this guy?" he asked, pointing at Spirit Shout.
"I'm the homewrecker," the blond martial artist said, his smile concealed by his face mask. If you're going to meet Omega, you may as well go all the way, he thought.
"The Homewrecker? That's a fucking stupid superhero name."
"That's not my name!" Spirit Shout admitted. "I'm the guy who wrecked your house!"
Tommy's body tensed, and a glowing force field girded his body like knight's armor. Bradley Champion, who had been ensconced in the smells of chicken manure and youthful testosterone from his earliest childhood days, sighed and quickly rose from his chair. "He also just saved your life. At least wait until you're out of the hospital before you two boys start duking it out."
"Dad's no fun," Tommy grumbled, shooting Spirit Shout a wolfish grin. He got out of the bed far more quickly than any sane doctor would have allowed and began to unwrap the bandages from his head. "Don't tell me they fucking shaved my skull."
"They didn't have much choice," his father replied.
"Yeah, I know, but - shit!" Tommy exclaimed. "There's no fucking way I want to be Captain Skinhead." He mentally allowed some hair to grow on his scalp, and changed into the Omega costume. He noticed Susan's eyes all over him during the change. "Man, that feels good," he said.
"Good." Bradley answered. He knew Tommy wouldn't wait for the doctors to examine him - and there was no point trying to stop him now.
"So there was a fight?" Tommy turned to Spirit Shout and Susan. "Which loser was it this time?"
"Anti-meta assassins," Susan answered.
"I hope you beat the crap out of them," Tommy stated.
"We did," Spirit Shout said. "Big weapons, small brains."
"Anyone left to bash?" Tommy asked, unconsciously cracking his neck muscles.
"Sorry. It wrapped up about an hour ago." Susan informed him.
"You missed a good one," Spirit Shout said, fingering parts of his costume that had been frayed during the battle. "Your timing sucks." Despite the look on the hero's face, he got the distinct impression - even if he hadn't seen Omega's press clippings - that Omega thoroughly enjoyed the insults.
"Jeez, what a fucking disappointment." Tommy said. "I thought when a superhero came out of a coma, it's supposed to because he's needed somewhere as cavalry."
"You read too many comic books growing up, Tommy." Bradley said.
"Research, dad." Tommy grinned. "Besides back in Junior High, Mr. Wallace thought comics were more relevant to Civics than anything that was showing on CNN."
"He was probably right," Bradley nodded - he had never cared much for Ted Turner, but he felt that CNN had turned into a network of jingoistic fluff after he left (an opinion which, like most of Bradley Champion's views, required at least six beers to extract). "Well, it's not a world-shattering crisis, but your cousin Steve's real upset. When the doctors told us what happened, well I've never seen the boy go that ballistic before. His friend Adam's with him, but I got the distinct impression he was going to do something foolish like 'take on the world'."
"Fuck!" Tommy shouted. "Is there anyone in our family who isn't a goddamn drama queen?"
"Can't think of any," Bradley said. Especially in this room, he might have added, but didn't.
"I'll have to go find him." Tommy sighed. "And yes, I'll be careful."
"Tommy..." Bradley scolded. "We both know that's not in your nature."
"Yeah, but I'll give it a try," Omega said.
"You need a hand?" Spirit Shout asked, interposing himself between Omega and the door. "Look, you just got out of a coma. I know you're Omega, but even for you, walking into a fight without someone watching your back..." Susan moved to Spirit Shout's side, ready to back him up.
"Thanks, but this is family business." Omega said. "And dude, you'd better get yourself ready for when I get back. Because you saved my life, I've downgraded the beating I owe you from 'kicking the living shit' down to a 'plain old fashioned ass-kicking', but I still owe you, and we Nebraskans always pay our debts."
"You also talk too much," Spirit Shout criticized.
"I have to bring up the state average for him," Omega explained, pointing at his father (whose laconic delivery was legend), but he put his hands on Susan's and Tom's shoulders. "I appreciate what you've done. And if anyone else was fighting alongside you, please give them my thanks. Provided my cousin hasn't gotten himself killed, I'll try to get back to you guys in a couple hours, because I'd like to know more about the assholes you took down." Then Tommy became intangible and flew through the hospital walls.
"Should I go after him?" Susan asked.
"Nah. If he says it's personal - let him be." Spirit Shout opined.
******
Now aloft over the eastern Los Angeles basin, Tommy Champion began to mentally scan for his cousin. The truth was that he was anxious to escape the hospital - and the accusations that Mindshadow had leveled against him when they'd wrestled in his mind. Could he have subconsciously refused to take back his powers because he was scared of the Priest? Sure she was a manipulative bitch, but that didn't mean she wasn't right. Nothing disgusted Tommy more than cowardice, and the telepath's accusation of his own cowardice rang as true as a cathedral's carillon at Christmas.
He had been scared shitless of the Priest ever since he'd learned of the part that the villain had played in the creation of the Champion family line. But denying his nature - and whatever part the Chosen had to play in future events - was far more dangerous.
And Mindshadow herself was even more dangerous - more than even Tommy expected - he'd have to proceed a little more carefully than usual with her. Hopefully, she was someone else's problem - he had more than enough on his plate, and a bad feeling that his enemies hadn't been idle while he was in his coma.
Finding Steve Doerksen was harder than he expected, even though his headache had vanished once he got a chance to breathe fresh air. He discovered Steve's mind in a Santa Monica apartment, a lavish penthouse in a place not known for having such structures, with plenty of green space and a great view of the sea. High tide was approaching, and the waters were hitting the sand in hard constant waves, like a thick brush scouring the beach. Not the best surfing weather, he thought, reminding himself how much he missed the view from above.
There were definitely advantages to being a god.
Tommy landed on the penthouse balcony, took a moment to become intangible before entering the apartment, then surveyed the grisly scene with a surprising degree of dispassion. The apartment, normally an ugly conglomeration of various styles of bad furniture, garish panels and carpeting, was in shambles. Couches were shorn in two, artwork (representations of its owner - the apartment was as much of a scrapbook as it was a home) was burned and tattered, vases and other pieces of porcelain had been blasted to powder, and the walls were covered in blood splatters. Halcyon and the Zebra were lying in various corners, beaten into unconsciousness. Steve, conscious but in shock, stood numbly in the center of the room, his fingers convulsively wrenched around a Roebuck "Employee of the Month" trophy that was nearly welded to his right hand. The trophy was dented like a car accident of the sort that could stop traffic for miles on the 405 (though admittedly it did not take much of an accident to bring traffic to a halt anywhere in Southern California). It was also covered in blood; the stylized antelope's head seemed to be lapping it up. Steve, tall, battered and numb, was standing over the prone form of a man, the back of whose skull had been caved in.
"He laughed, Tommy," Steve said.
Tommy nodded, set a reassuring hand on Steve's shoulder, and smiled grimly. "A damn annoying laugh, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Steve said.
Tommy, remembering an old suggestion that the Outsider had made to him months ago regarding the disposal of corpses, took Smax!'s dead body, concentrated, then teleported it several miles beneath them into the bedrock, setting it a slight angle on the off-chance that someone would be able to scan the earth below the apartment. Then he used his powers to scour the apartment for any forensic evidence and eliminate it. Then he scanned the bedroom for fingerprints and hair droppings, then used his powers to fabricate a state of "normal" usage, He repaired the damaged furniture and, lastly, replaced the apartment's security tapes with evidence of normal life. He kept the tape where Smax! had confessed about his crime to Steve as an insurance against future disaster - he'd find a secure safe to put it in.
"It's alright, folks." Tommy told the others. "The only thing we have to do right now is to shut the fuck up." Looking at Halcyon and the Zebra, he wondered if it was even possible. And - of course - he figured that at least one other person was still watching him.
******
Mindshadow smiled coldly as Tommy's accusing expression and outburst was captured perfectly on the giant screens of her new surveillance satellites in her base. She could sense his anger and ironic sense of resignation in her mind. "Tommy..." she sighed as a robo-servant brought her a rich mixture of Arabica expresso and Cognac. So much power, and yet so little awareness. Wallowing with his meaningless dealings with Nike and the Los Angeles society pages all the while his true destiny lay fallow inside his mind.
The real irony was that she of all people would have been the one to find the truth and give him that all-important push. That deep inside Tommy's subconscious, a powerful, primal, magical power also drove Omega's destiny to confront the Priest - to destroy him once and for all.
A quick mental command saved the data for future reference as she reviewed her manipulations for the past few days. Things didn't turn out quite as she had planned. Originally, she had planned to enslave Omega, much as how the Elite did the same to Avatar. However, the mark of a true conqueror was the ability to adapt to changing situations, she reminded herself. While Tommy's enslavement would have been fun, it would have also weakened him against the Black Priest, which would have had catastrophic consequences, both to her plans of conquest and the world in general. By letting him loose to complete his destined purpose, he would serve her goals as well.
Yes, she thought; this would do nicely. Having forced Tommy's eyes open to his true purpose, all she had to do was to wait and let destiny play itself out. With any luck, this would be the beginning of the end for her most dangerous rival. The Black Priest would find a whole new Omega to deal with now.
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