"Pleasure to meet you..." he says, with all of the enthusiasm of that old terminally depressed cartoon dog, now what was his name? Droop-along?

"Yeah," I acknowledge, biting on my tongue to avoid making a joke about his bulging waistline. Weston looks like the fat guy on NYPD Blues, and he's just about as pleasant. "So I hear you got serial killers," I add, in a casual tone that's probably the same one used by an exterminator talking about roaches.

Weston lifts himself out of his chair - passing close to me, he's got the smell of someone who needs to shower twice per day and is lucky when he does it once - and leads me over to a filing cabinet.

"You ever been to a morgue, Mr. Champion?"

"I was in Ireland in the spring." I reply, meeting his challenge and upping the ante.

"Right." Weston nods, and he hands me about a half-dozen pictures of naked women with the number 18 carved repeatedly into their bodies. "Welcome back."

"So Count Von Count's become a serial killer?" I joke, though it's humor is pretty dark, that's the way virtually every cop I've met likes it. "I can't say I'm surprised. He always was a fucking creepy little muppet."

"Yeah, well now the Count's developed a taste for bad music," Weston snorts, getting his bulk back into of a chair. He opens a desk drawer, one that's on some sort of power roller that'll take out your kneecap if you're not careful, and produced a CD. It's a customized CD. "All eighteen tracks were Janis Ian's Seventeen."

"Eighteen. Now going onto seventeen. Has the FBI ever encountered a serial killer who used 'nineteen' as a motif."

Almost to my surprise, Weston nods. "Eight months ago. Portland, Oregon."

"Victim profile?"

"Caucasian females. Brunettes - not a blond or a redhead in the bunch." Weston says.

"Brunettes are awfully commonplace for a serial drama queen." I note.

"Maybe they don't have Irish or Nordic gals up in Portland." Weston answers.

"Maybe they're also secretly gay up there," I reply. "Brunettes are the most common hair color. So he, or she..." I have to correct myself - at least one of the worst killers I've ever known was female. "...is an opportunist?"

"Hardly," Weston tells me, shifting restlessly in his chair. "The victims were all successful business women. No salaries under six figures in the entire bunch."

I think for a minute, let the data settle in my head like a cup of coffee. "My best guess is the perp's a Caucasian male, and... hmmm... the 70s culture reference probably means he's in his mid-30s to mid-40s... any sign of any 'eighteen' messages on the 'nineteen' crime spree?"

"An Alice Cooper CD was found playing on one of his crime scenes." Weston says.

I'm Eighteen. Okay, I vaguely remember that song, though No More Mister Nice Guy is the Tommy Champion pick for the best of Alice's dino-rock. Fucking classic rock stations, get over yourself, you pack of goddamn Peter Pans. But enough editorials. "What about signs of sexual assault?" I ask.

"The bodies were clean. Victims were alive at the time of mutilation, but there's been never been any sign of a struggle. Not even bruising."

"So that's why you think it was a meta." I reply. "I take it the profiler's guesswork's a lot more elaborate. Did the victims have a reasonably similar height and build?" Weston shakes his head. "Did they work in similar positions: secretaries, managers, marketing?"

"Managers mostly." Weston answers. "But the physical evidence from the murders is annoyingly scanty. Nothing recorded, no red flags raised when the crime scenes were investigated."

"And you think throwing a meta into the mix will flush him out?" I ask, and my growing smile matches his frown millimeter for millimeter. "Metas like to play with their own," I add. "Everyone knows that. And if he's got an ego, going up against someone with my rep, that's a rush. And giving him that sort of adrenaline rush might make him sloppy enough to break the cycle and fuck himself up."

"Yeah, we're pretty goddamn desperate." Weston tells me. "And if you expect any future cooperation from this department...."

Okay. We were actually getting along reasonably well, and then the dude just had to go and wave his dick at me. Whatever.

"God knows, I wouldn't be able to take a shit without cooperation from this department." I snap back.

"I hadn't realized you'd lost that particular superpower, Mr. Champion." Weston retorts.

I ignore the remark. "Fine," I tell the asshat. "Basically you want me to announce I'm on the case, and we'll see if the serial killer gets a hard-on about it - in which case he might make a mistake - or he laughs his ass off, in which case I'll have made a fool out of myself for nothing."

"That's pretty much it." Weston says.

"I need to study the perp and make sure there's no chance that he's going to become so obsessed that he'll end up eating my dog or something," I tell him. "I'd kinda like to know that before I start making plans to attend my friends' funerals."

"I have two words of advice for you, Mr. Champion," Weston tells me. "First, always keep your calendar open. Second, spend as little time with nuisances as possible. Now if you'll excuse me, Officer Raible will provide you with the necessary files."

Spend as little time with nuisances... like me. Yeah, that was subtle. Raible, an attractive young Latina officer, provides me with the local intelligence on Mr. Eighteen - I'll talk to my FBI contacts later. Serial killers draw FBI agents like flies to honey, or losers to pornography. Feeling a little sexually deprived of late, I hit on her. Okay, so she's 27 and I'm barely 20 - I may not act like an adult most of the time, but I am one, and this is definitely consensual. We check into a hotel as soon as her shift's over, and it's the best time I've had in a long time. The only thing that spoils the mood is when Raible confirms that Smax! has been going around town intimating that I'm gay every chance he gets. What a fricking little punk.

******

"Holy shit." I mutter. This scene's weird even by Mikey's standards.

Exactly, a voice says in my head, referring to the substance that's burning. Great. Mikey's gone Hong Kong on me. I hear the words but the lips don't move. It's like I'm watching the world's most lifelike mannequin.

"Hiya puppet," I say as I approach the circle, and I suddenly hear what sounds like a hundred gongs being struck on all sides of me. Fucking magic wards. "Mikey! What the fuck are you up to?" I shout. His eyes are open but he's got a completely vacant expression of his face. As in No Vacancy.

I'm searching for the truth, the voice says. And when you've done as many bullshit things as I have, farmboy, the truth's becomes a real hard goddamn thing to find.

"Truth?" I wonder. "Truth to what?"

To as many questions as I can find answers, the voice tells me.

"Like why I'm so incredibly cool and you're such a dork?" I joke.

Maybe because your dad didn't mix blood in your formula when you were an infant, or force you to commit atrocities as soon as you got out of pampers.

Man, that's kind of an oddball thing to say. "Mikey, you okay? If the shit you're confronting is so painful, like remembering how long it took you to lose your virginity..."

It's a joke, but the reply's immediate. I was seven when I lost my virginity, the voice tells me. My partner was five. The Priest forced me to rape her.

"Shit!" I swallow hard enough that I nearly vomit. A rapist at seven? It's bad enough that I don't attribute the sick feeling to reinjuring my ribs at the hands of the Crime Family. "That's way more detail than I ever wanted to know, Mikey..." I stammer. I already knew that the Priest badly abused him as a kid - but this was way beyond anything I suspected.

Unfortunately farmboy. I'm in a circle of truth. Bullshit has no place here.

"No bullshit, huh?" I wonder out loud, not in as much control of my mouth as I should be. "So when you look at me in your circle of truth, what do you see?"

A War in Heaven, Mikey answers. Now what the fuck does that mean? Is it some metaphor for the bomb that the Proxy left inside my skull? Nah, sounds more mystical.

I decide to put that discussion aside for later - so far I've told no one about my clandestine meeting with the Proxy. "So let's see if I understand how this works. If I ask you a question, you have to give an honest answer? Suppose I asked which is the bigger dick, your big bronze Malibu surfboard or my fertile Nebraska cornstalk..."

I never cared enough to make a comparison. I figured they were both good enough to do the job. Now if you've had your fun...

"What's your favorite color?"

Gold. Blue. Farmboy, stop that.

"What's your favorite album?"

American Caesar by Iggy Pop. Tommy, you're really messing with some bad shit here.

"Too bad." I grin.

"You little Nebraska piece of..."

"Watch the language," I tell him with a grin, and sit down just outside the circle, my legs crossed Indian style. Man, Mikey's giving off a weird stench at close range. "There's always been a shitload of secrets between us, Mikey. Way too many secrets. Now it looks like I've been given a chance to figure out a few things out on a shiny silver platter."

Farmboy! Everything I do, I've got a damn good reason...

The desperation is the last sentence is palpable. Good. "Are you truly my friend, or have you been playing me for a chump the entire time we've known each other?" I finally ask the question that's gnawed at me since I first met this asshole.

Both, the voice admits. Even though you don't deserve it, I... And that's when Michael's eyes blink, and he suddenly does a somersault out of the circle of truth, and he leaps on top of me. I'm laughing, but only for a second, because his hands are on my throat and he's squeezing - and then a few seconds later he lets go, ashen-faced.

"Maybe I need to look for that serial killer closer to home," I joke. Mikey doesn't say a thing. I think he's surprised I ain't angry. Well, not nearly as surprised as I am. I position him like a big toy soldier and sit him down on a couch. He still looks stunned - maybe abruptly breaking out of the spell knocked him for a loop. "Say something man."

"Something man." Mikey replies after a couple of seconds. That's not reassuring.

"C'mon Mikey, react. Choke me out again, kick me out of the house, slap a curse on my ass, something." Mikey just looks at me with this impossible to read expression on his face. "You want me to go?"

"No." Mikey finally answers.

"You want me to apologize?"

That's the remark that seems to bring him out of his stupor. "For being smart and taking advantage of an opportunity to get at the truth?" Mikey asks, and I breathe a sigh of relief - that sentence was both long and coherent. "That was the smartest thing I've ever seen you do."

"So you aren't mad?"

"Of course I'm mad," Mikey says. "But... it's just... par for the course. The way we get along..."

"Like we're married, but without the best parts? Believe it or not, heterosexuality does have its drawbacks." I smile slightly. "But Mikey, I gave up trying to figure out the bond between us a long time ago."

Mikey looks at me hard. For a second I think he's reacting to the heterosexuality joke, then he grabs hold of my hand - Mikey, what the hell are you doing - then places it on his chest, and he places his hand on my chest, and we can feel each other's heart beating.

Our heartbeats are synchronous. We match each other beat for beat.

What the fuck?

"You wanted to know." Mikey's voice is perfunctory, punctured by short gulps - he's still coping with the truth circle. "There it is. Our bond, or one of the reasons for it." He finally takes a deep breath, as if he weren't sure whether he wanted to sigh or smile. "Magic."

What the fuck? I suddenly draw my hand away, and I'm not sure whether I should hit him or yell at him, so I'll probably do both. But he preempts me by beginning what passes for a reasonable explanation under the circumstances. "You were dying, farmboy. Back in the Celestial Keep. I was watching you fight against Autocrat, and he was immolating you, and I just couldn't take it...." Mikey explains. "So I performed a soul-link. My life force to yours. It gave you a fighting chance."

"Fighting chance?" I insist. "Fuck that noise! I was kicking Autocrat's fucking tin-plated ass!"

"Farmboy, you don't need a circle of truth to realize just what a load of crap that is."

Yeah, he's right. Sure, I had a few good moments in that fight, but not enough to count. Worst of all, I needed that asshole Harbinger to get out of that scrap without being shoveled into a body bag. "Okay, maybe I was a little overmatched against Autocrat." I admit. "But are you telling me that in order to save my life, you needed to do a "Count of Monte Crisco" job on me?"

"Count of Monte Crisco?" Mikey wonders and then he realizes what I'm talking about. "Oh, you're actually thinking of the Corsican brothers. Jesus Christ, today's kids are so dumb." Mikey retorts. "But yeah, there is a mystic link established between us."

Mystic link? Fuck! If I wanted that, I'd have gotten married at 18. Okay so that's a knee-jerk response. I liked Mikey before this shit happened. Even so... "So what are we now, blood brothers?" Mikey's pretty deep into native American magic these days.

"Nope, that's something else." My mystically linked roommate replies. "And that's something we should not do under the circumstances, or we'll never get separated. But if it seems like our friendship's gotten closer over the last year..."

"And weirder." I add.

"It was never normal," Mikey remarks. "But that's the reason."

"I just thought it was because we're able to stand each other when no one else will," I say, and he relaxes. "You know, I hate to pass up an opportunity to work out my psychosis on your tawny California ass, but joining your life force to save my life doesn't sound like 'playing me for a chump' or even an excuse to beat the shit out of you." He says nothing. "You wanna let me in on the big picture?"

"Absolutely not." Michael replies. "The less you know, the better."

"Bullshit." I snap. "You and me may have a fucking bond, but there ain't ever been a lick of trust between us, has there?"

"Lick?"

"You get my meaning," I tell him. "Trying to divert me by critiquing my vocabulary, that's just lame."

"Farmboy, I've been betrayed - or been forced to betray - people my entire life," Mikey notes. "And you - you're one of the most powerful sources of raw magic on the entire planet. If either of us trusted anyone, we'd be nuts."

"Both of us are fucking schitzes, Mikey."

"There's a big difference between that and goddamn insane."

"Okay, maybe we aren't quite there yet," I say. "But one of these days, something's gonna happen between us. Maybe you'll end up becoming like my, I dunno, my Lex Luthor."

"If I ever become a supervillain, please kill me," Mikey replies. "Just do me in quick."

I almost laugh. "And by the way, thank-you for saving my life." I tell him. "Though I wish you could've found a way for me to make Autocrat my bitch."

Mikey's jaw drops slightly and his eyes bulge slightly in a perfect "huh?" pose. I guess he wasn't expecting a show of gratitude. "You're welcome, farmboy. By the way, you look like shit. Is there anything I can do?"

"Not really." I answer.

"What happened? Did you finally go to see Brainchild?"

"No." I snap, almost panicking. "Even if that prick was in a physical condition to get into my skull and fix it, I wouldn't let that prick inside." Despite the fact that my outfit comes complete with a decent psionic negator and a force field disrupter, there are some risks you just don't take if you're sane. I don't care how docile he is, my brain's already too much like pablum - a telepath as powerful as Brainchild would just eat it up and spit it out. I'm pretty good against an average telepath, but there's three telepaths who'd be nearly as nasty to face as the Priest, and Brainchild's one of them. I still haven't forgotten how he and Harbinger mentally enslaved Avatar (with ease, and Avatar's a fucking god).

"Farmboy, you barely allowed the Ensign into your skull before you started turning green." Michael mutters, poking my head. "It's like me and needles. I've taken some of the worst torture imaginable, but give me a flu shot and I'll..."

"Maybe I don't like telepaths." I declare, cutting him off.

"Who does?" Mikey answers. "But we need to figure out what happened."

"You just don't like your spell backfiring." I accuse.

"Well - give the man a prize!" Mikey retorts sarcastically, ignoring my attempt to change the subject. "But I think getting your powers back might be in your best interests too."

"Fuck you!" I spit.

"That might be fun, but let's concentrate on your head, not your ass right now." Mikey smiles - that's the sort of thing he always says when he wants me to stop swearing. "Tommy, jokes aside, we've got to get you to sit down with a good telepath."

"But I have been to see someone else!" I protest.

"Like who?"

"I don't know his name. Some cloaked guy who refused to be identified," I say, nervously adjusting my belt. Any movement that doesn't keep my body completely stiff almost makes me howl. "But Old Glory swore he was on the level, and if I can't trust someone with a flag on his pecs, who can I trust?"

Mikey nods stupidly. I don't tell him that I saw Glory's Top Secret guy weeks ago, and that I'm too scared of accidentally triggering the bomb that the Proxy implanted in my skull to risk consulting with any other telepaths right now. Some things you just don't need to know, like the fact that your roommate could blow up if you threw him on his head while you're having a friendly wrestling match. Life would suck if he knew that.

"Okay. You saw someone else." Mikey sighs. "Did he tell you anything useful?"

"He figured the barriers was planted when I was in the Celestial Keep." I report. Michael raises an eyebrow. "Which means it was probably Brainchild or that asshole Harbinger. When you linked with me, did you feel something else?"

Michael gives an involuntary head shake, like an agitated horse, and his eyes open a little more wide than usual, as if being asked to actually use his brains and remember something pisses him off. "There was all sorts of psychic disturbances happening. And I'm a mage, not a psionic."

"I'm a Doctor, not a bricklayer," I mock, quoting some hoary Star Trek line. Why that popped into my mind, who the fuck knows?

"Don't mock me."

"Why yes, Oh Mighty Wizard of Ass." I smile.

"I may be a mighty wizard, farmboy, but some things are better done by a specialist," Michael retorts, beginning to pace slightly. "A good telepath can figure out that crap a hell of a lot better than I can."

"That's no surprise."

Michael turns his head and looks at me, but he's not annoyed, he's too busy trying to reconstruct what happened. "Okay, let's think. Ireland. Telepaths. You were trying to save Harbinger's sister. Maybe he didn't trust you to get the job done..."

"That'd be a surprise. Man, do I hate that asshole." I admit. It's hard to cite a single instance where a supervillain didn't hate my guts from the moment he looked his gaze with my baby blues (maybe Rugged Dan, but that dude's got the temperament of a sheepdog on the edge of retirement). But there was something about Harbinger that hit me in my stomach and bowels like undercooked chicken; just the sight of him - that smug baby face, that perfect powder white skin, that superior, knowing expression and that voice that hit me like a hot poker in an exposed nerve ending - made me want to play with his teeth like a xylophone. Some people are like that, you know. I know I am.

"Don't tell me there's something personal between you two..." Michael says, and I roll my eyes. "Jesus Christ, farmboy, is there anyone on this planet you haven't pissed off?"

"Colin Powell," I shrug.

Michael just shakes his head and ignores the joke. "Well, in that case, given what he thinks of you, Harbinger probably planted some mental command that would force you to leap out and take a bullet for his sister if it came down to a life and death situation." Mikey wonders and we suddenly experience an "aha!" moment, one of those weird epiphanies when life starts to make sense, like when you realize that Justin Timberlake had his hair cut like a spaz because he wants to be a dork real bad. "That's got to be it. Harbinger." Michael says. "When I was checking your body to see if Hellblade had poisoned you, I must have inadvertently triggered whatever failsafe Harbinger had running."

"Man, I hate that asshole." I repeat, with more emphasis. But oddly enough, the Harbinger theory is the first explanation I've heard about what happened to me that actually makes sense. Weird, even though I hate the guy, I can actually understand why he did it. "So now we got a theory." I say. "I guess that's a first step." With that, I remove the lowest layer of kevlar underpadding and disconnect the life sign monitor sensors from my skin and moan like a moose in mourning. Shit, those are some pretty fucking big bruises that are marking my rib cage like a sick Dalmatian.

"I'll get the sack of healing herbs," Mikey says, not bothering to say the word Again, which would be totally appropriate. Mikey's been using them on me a lot lately.

"Let's dress them with some liniment first."

"Do you always have to come back from these patrols looking like such a walking bruise, farmboy?"

"Come on Mikey," I smile. "You know you like rubbing that crap over my body."

"And you love smelling it," Mikey replies as he heads into the bathroom. He returns a half minute later and hands me a jar of Deep Icy Cold. "So this was another Big Fight Day?"

"Nah, today was a medium at best," I report, smearing the painkilling gel on the sides of my body. "RCD, not BFD."

RCD stands for Routine Crime Day.

"Let me guess, the Chain again?" Mikey sighs. "Or don't tell me the Brickyard finally showed up."

"Nah. Right now, a fight with Bricks would be a lot more harsh than an RCD." I hate to admit it, but steroid-breath's gotten a lot stronger the last few times we fought, and he's trying to get even stronger. I guess I motivated the asshole. "Blur and I ran into Tableau and the Crime Family pulling a bankjob. We knocked Tableau for a loop - well, actually Blur did - and then I started duking it out with Rugged Dan like I would've if I still had my powers, and the son of a bitch reinjured my ribs..." I gently prod them, and wince. "They got away. Five to two odds, we're lucky we put down Tableau. Then I said something to piss off Blur..."

"Way to go."

"...and so she took off, then I had a talk with the police and they asked me to look into something."

"Like what?"

I pause, trying to find the perfect way to explain my latest assignment. "Mikey, what can you tell me about serial killers?"

"Depressingly, I can tell you a lot," Mikey answers, and what had already started out as a long conversation suddenly gets a lot longer.

******

Anyway it's way too hard to sleep when your side's throbbing uncontrollably.

In the morning I'm left groggier than hell while Mikey goes into work at Nike. God knows why he even needs to work there - I think he once said it's a good omen to work at a place whose name is a synonym for "victory". Good for the mojo. Meanwhile, I've got a trip to the city morgue. Man, do I hate that fucking place. It's way too clean for its function - it should feel like a charnel-house, not a hospital. That critique, however, gets completely left behind as I get to inspect "Eighteen's" bodies and grade his penmanship. Two seconds after the bag's unzipped, and I think I'm looking at what Mikey must've seen in his nightmares. I do keep my lunch though, I don't even dry-heave. Heh, and I'll bet they were placing bets on how long it'd take the guy in tights to hurl. Not Tommy Champion.

The visit also confirms one thing I've always suspected, no one has a darker sense of humor than morticians. Not even me.

"So what sort of a statement do you think they were making?" one mortician asks. "One isn't the loneliest number. Eighteen may be the legal drinking age in some states, but you still shouldn't drink and drive?"

"It's both a serial killing and an afterschool special!" another mortician exclaims. God, I swear Permafrost would fit right in here - and not in a dead body sort of way.

"Statement?" I wonder. "'God I'm a demented punk' comes to mind." Then I repeat the joke about Count Von Count. The joke is better received than the earlier, more serious allegation.

I decide that in all likelihood someone's "signing" the bodies, and the numbers are meant to be some sort of code. But there's nothing on a visual inspection of the body or the coroner's report that gives me a hint of who's responsible. I guess the next logical stop is to visit the fucking crime scene.

The crime scene's two days old, and I haven't a hope of finding anything that the police haven't found. It occurs to me that "18" might represent a street name, an apartment number, or an office floor number, so I spend the rest of the day going from office building to office building, contacting anyone who's in room 18 or working on the 18th floor, to see if anyone can tell me anything about the murder suspect.

You know all those detective shows where the detective gets an incredibly lucky break a few minutes into the investigation and doesn't spend an entire day wasting his time on a useless fishing expedition that makes him feel like a total idiot? Well, this ain't a detective show. The people I talk to seem happy to see me - and then they get totally befuddled when I start asking questions. I think they just want me to go away and kick someone's ass.

It's to my credit that I actually manage to keep my focus after nine hours of this crap. I'm tired, frustrated as hell, and this heavy Dark Omega kevlar costume is chafing most of my still battered body like a son of a bitch, but I survive. Oh, and about noon I get treated to a rare sight - I spotted that asshole Smax! flying overhead. I'd like to have a word with him, but my swingline won't reach that far, and he doesn't carry a communicator that's set to any of my radio frequencies. The son of a bitch has never had the guts to meet me face to face, and we've been living in the same 'burg how many months? Of course, I've never heard about him getting into a serious scrap either.

When late afternoon finally comes around, I swing around to Nike's L.A. Corporate Office. Now that the latest contract dispute between us has been settled (non-compliance, my ass), I'm persona grata at corporate HQ once again.

"Mr. Carleton went home halfway through the day," the receptionist tells me, while her co-worker is fixed to a computer monitor. I can tell, from the reflection in her glasses, that she's hooked into the NSA's supervillain location system. They always do that when I'm in the building, but it makes more sense now.

"Excuse me," I hear Michelle's voice. "I was wondering if you could get the custodial staff to..." Suddenly the voice takes on an irritated tone. "Oh, it's you," she says.

"Happy to see you too, Michelle." I smile. I begin to think up an obnoxious quip, but then I spot a huge rock on her finger. "Who the fuck would want to marry you?" I abruptly blurt - it's purely instinctual. Even I'm usually more diplomatic than that.

"I believe that would be me," a Latin-accented voice from behind me says, and I turn around to see the second coming of Fernando Lamas, if Fernando had access to a good weight room and plastic surgeon. He's at least two inches taller than me, and I'm now edging over 6'3". He's either a jock or a meta, because he's got the Look.

"Omega, this is Dr. Carlos Molinar," Michelle says. "Someone who saves people's lives without requiring cheap ego gratification..."

"Michelle! Please leave me out of your personal disputes," Molinar says. "Particularly as Mr. Champion has fascinated much of the nation, I would rather meet him without starting a conflict."

"Doctor Molinar, huh?" I note. "Doctor of what?"

"Veterinary sciences," Molinar tells me. So much for saving lives.

"So you like to put down stray dogs?" I say, looking at Michelle. And yeah, I could tell she knew exactly what I meant.

"That is one of my duties, but it's not something I enjoy." If Molinar understood my meaning, he's hiding it under an implacable El Latino Façado.

"Too bad," I say. "Everyone should do something they love."

"Except criminals," Molinar notes.

"And other types of sociopaths who wander the streets," Michelle adds, glowering at me.

I grin. "As always, it's been such a fucking pleasure, Michelle," I tell her. "Have fun whipping the Latino."

"And have fun raising your son," Michelle shoots back. "Ooops, I forgot, the courts won't let you anywhere near him - for some reason they think a career criminal would be a better role-model for him than you."

Okay, I admit it. The retort was crude but effective, so the point goes to Michelle. Bitch.

******

I'm riding the Omega-Cycle, "the Omega-Hawg", or whatever the marketing hacks wanna call this overgrown bike with a big horseshoe symbol that's rammed up its butt. Corporate sodomy. For some reason, I'm almost positive that one day I'm gonna get into a bike vs. bike duel against my old sparring partner Mastiff. Y'know, "Dark Omega" versus the world's nastiest biker villain.

Some things are just inevitable. The universe is a conspiracy to bring the laziest and lamest of clichés to fruition.

My bike ride takes me to an apartment in Malibu, which is (ironically) only about a mile and a spit away from my old beachhouse, or as it's now called "a thousand splinters on the beach" (thank you Spirit Shout and Dangerous - I owe you). It's distracting, but all I need to do is to think about that dead body/conversation piece I saw in the morgue, and my head goes straight back to the place where it's supposed to be. Welcome to the crime scene Tommy, a gated community where Miss Lyla Hanlon, Chief Operations Officer of Gooddata Computing Services, placed her fine ass on the swanky shores of Malibu and ruled it like a bitch princess until the day that Mr. Eighteen decided to carve his initials in her flesh and couldn't bring himself to stop practicing his penmanship. The Los Angeles CSI, who for some reason aren't mugging for the camera in pursuit of their own television series, have already gone over the place with a fine tooth comb, so I'm not looking for forensic evidence, that's not my thing.

My schtick is all about the "feel" of the crime, the headgames of the criminal. My job, (though they didn't spell it out for me) is to look at the scene from a metahuman perspective. I look at entry points: rooms where someone could handily teleport into, entrances like that skylight where a flyer could come through, just so I can imagine the sickest murder scenarios possible, like Steven King writing a 1950s horror comic with supervillains. Unfortunately, it only takes me two minutes to invent over two dozen plausible scenarios with the appropriate superpower. Screw Colonel Mustard with the wrench in the kitchen, how about:

- Invisible Ivan with a paralyzing touch catching her off guard and carving her as she watches helplessly.

- A shaman, someone like Michael but more evil, establishing a mystic link with her, mutilating himself miles away as part of some obscene rite, and having the mutilation replicate itself over her body with more lethal results?

- A sentient, teleporting dagger, the eighteenth piece in the weapon collection of Hell?

For all I know, Eighteen could be my old enemy Hellblade. They're both fucking carvers. Hell, for all I know, it could be the Priest's work - nah, I'd know if it was him - but there are so many powers that could accomplish this shit that I have no clue where to start looking.

I casually look through her personal effects. Poor Miss Lyla apparently had a compulsion for buying shoes and handbags - the latter being a female fetish beyond my masculine comprehension - and filling her apartment with furniture that looks like an Ikea sale assembled by a performance artist. What passes for art here looks like the work of a drunken, frustrated French ex-mechanic/orchestra player whose preferred medium is rusty metal and colored strings (actually it looks better than what I'm describing, it's just weird).

Bedroom. Red satin sheets, red carpeting, it's not a place to sleep, it's a defloweratorium, all in the color of blood.

Bathroom. Sunken tub, no shower. Marble as far as the eye can see, and brass fixtures brightly polished so that they can pretend to be gold. The decorator probably talked her into the tub, because this place is a little small for it. There's barely room for a toilet.

Kitchen. I don't want to look in the fridge.

Dining room. A picture of pre-human graffiti Miss Lyla. She's standing on a beach in a wonderfully skimpy bikini, complete (unfortunately) with an attachment: a tall, smiling Nordic looking, broad-shouldered hunkola, skin as white as teeth (unusual as Hell on a California beach) his physique is rather distinctive in the smoothness of its curves, he almost looks like an animation character. I wonder who this asshole is?

I pick up a cell phone and get hold of Officer Raible, who's got the dossier to go along with the donuts. It only takes her fifteen seconds to tell me that Hunkola's name is Matt Milke, and he's got an airtight alibi - he was filming a commercial at the time of the murder.

"If metahumans are involved, there are no alibis." I say. "People can be in two places at once."

"Remind me to arrange for you to talk to the DA's office about metahuman crime the next time I'm pissed off at them," Raible tells me.

"Could I get an address for this guy?" I ask. She obliges. I check my watch - eight-thirty in the evening isn't too late for a visit - so I head over to his apartment. Like most attractive Nordic wonders, I'd be willing to bet he's probably got his sweaty ass stuck to a weight bench at the nearest gym, but no, he's at home. This pad is nowhere near as opulent as the late Miss Lyla's vision of corporate grandeur - it's just a studio: small, middle-class, and masculine, a place built for comfort, like a slightly sporty mid-sized car.

"Mr. Milke?" I ask as the big blond man opens the door. Yeah, it's another guy who can actually look down on me; he's tall and broad, about 6'5" and I'll bet he tips the scales at well over 250; he's wearing a white T-Shirt that spreads over his Ready-to-Flex frame and displays it better than spandex longjohns. His baby blues blink twice in apparent disbelief at the man who's standing on his doorstep. I smile and raise the faceplate on the Dark Omega suit. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

"Uh... what are you doing here, Omega?" he says. There's a stammer in it, but I don't buy the surprise - he's sizing me up, I can tell. Not in a sexual way either, but in an alpha male way - after awhile it's not too hard to tell them apart.

"Right now, I'm staring into some strange dude's face," I say, noting just how badly my bereavement skills suck. "Sorry. The police have 'suggested' that I look into the death of your girlfriend, and I want to ask you some questions, if you're up to it. Do you mind if I come in?"

"The place... it's a mess." Milke tells me.

"I lived on a farm, dude," I smile as I walk through the doorway. "Don't sweat it."

The place is a mess, mostly strewn clothing and dishes, though it doesn't stink. The guy doesn't need either a mom or a housekeeper, just a little initiative. It's a one room studio, so I can imagine it takes no time at all for it to go from immaculate to pig sty. Kitchenet, small table, big television, a sofa bed, and a set of weights and a weight bench. With an reasonably trained eye, I examine the scenery. There's a picture of him with him and his late girlfriend, almost certainly taken at the beach. I commit it to memory.

"How much you bench, dude?" I ask. For guys like us, it's a conversation-starter; like asking about the weather, which even people in Southern California talk about, even though the lack of real weather in this 'burg makes that question a complete fucking joke.

"Uh... 420." Milke tells me. That's a quite a load, but I don't think he's lying.

"Not bad." I say. "Mind if I use your equipment and give myself a bit of a workout while we talk?"

"Uh... no problem." Milke says. I peel off the kevlar layer of the top half of my costume then the padding layer, load up about three hundred and fifty on the bar, and start repeating bench presses. Not only does this play up to my jock image, if this guy's a supervillain, it'll give him a chance to jump me while I've apparently lowered my guard.

"So you think a supervillain's involved?" Milke asks me as I feign a grunt.

"No way to be sure, not yet," I tell him, trying to look casual. "It's a real possibility."

"Don't tell me it's Orchid!" Milke exclaims, his brow creasing slightly. The guy doesn't look like he's had a worry line on his face in his entire life. I gotta admit that the idea puts me off my guard for a second - any mention of that psychotic vampire with a martyr complex who murdered my ex-girlfriend Rachel and put me through Hell for the absolute shittiest month of my life tends to throw me off. But if he planned to take advantage of the distraction, he missed his window of opportunity.

"Nope. I check every day to make sure she's still in Purgatory," I respond, keeping the motion fluid. I'll start faking a strain in about ten more reps, give him a false signal. "Every day. No I think the killer's someone a little more... masculine."

"I had heard her body was mutilated."

"It was," I responded. "Sorry dude. I really didn't want to bring that up." I say, beginning to struggle. "You mentioned Orchid, so you know I understand..."

Come on pal, be the supervillain, take the bait, take your best shot. Just get this investigation over with!

"Thanks. For what it's worth, that means a lot." Milke tells me.

Shit, why won't you make your move? "Did she ever have any... uh... encounters with supervillains?" It's a standard question in this sort of case.

"I think everyone's seen them at one point or another..." Milke responds.

"Which one did she see?" I inquire.

"I think she mentioned being in a bank when it was robbed by the Masked Gentleman."

"But the Masked Gentleman bit the biscuit back in 1979!" I exclaim.

"She said she was four years old at the time," Milke says. "With her mom. And she was at the World Series game that was cancelled because of Imperious Maximus back in 1997."

"The Duct-taper." I smile, referring to Imperious Maximus's master, the Dictator. "So it doesn't sound like a villain ever got close enough to make an impact, at least in a metahuman way."

"Perhaps." Milke tells me. "Of course, some metas don't like to wear spandex," he adds with a slightly discomfiting smirk. It sounds like a "villain taunt moment" to me, but then again I'm a paranoid bastard. Milke doesn't attack me and he doesn't give me any clues, though I can't shake a bad feeling about this guy. Too bad for me. District attorneys don't prosecute people just because they make Tommy Champion's balls itch.

******

I take off my clothes, sit down and get ready to go to sleep when I hear the sound of a car horn beeping outside. No, it's not a car horn, it actually sounds like the horn that sounded during the chariot race of Ben Hur. What the fuck?

Grumbling like a bear that's been poked by a stick too many times, I roll out of bed. There's a low rumbling sound in the background which I can't identify, my skin feels sticky, and my armpits stink.

"Hurry up!" Avatar shouts as he tugs at the reins of a four-horsed bronze chariot while continuing to honk the horn. He's dressed in a Kearney High wrestling singlet, and his muscles look about twice the size they were when I fought him in Ireland. Fuck! "Tommy, the Olympics aren't going to wait for us! We've got to leave now!"

Most people I know haven't a clue when they're in a dream. Usually that includes me, but this time, I realize that I'm in one from the start. It's probably something brought on by Michael's stinking candles, the whole visionquest shit. I told Mikey I never wanted to visionquest, why can't the dude listen? I walk out of the door - naked - and head to the chariot. Brushing shoulders with him, Avatar tells me we're scheduled to wrestle each other at the ancient Olympic Games, which for some inexplicable reason are being held in the Milford Senior High School Gymnasium. We have a long conversation as we drive down the freeway. We spot a cat trapped in a tree, and end up getting into a fight to see which one of us gets to rescue the kitty. Unfortunately, while we're tussling, the cat ends up getting eaten by a cougar that popped out from behind a rock.

"It's your fault, Avatar!" I snap. He looks embarrassed.

After navigating the crowded Los Angeles freeway in our chariot and stopping for gas (good thing I keep my platinum card in my butt crack when I'm naked) we arrive in Nebraska. The crowd's positively ecstatic to see Avatar - I think I see someone sacrifice a goat - but only a few people are glad to see me. Fine. At least I get a good wrestling match out of this stupid dream. Unfortunately, when I walk onto the center of the mat to face Avatar, I notice that the referee is Autocrat. He turns to the scorer's bench and orders them to immediately throw in my towel.

"What!" I shout.

"You're disqualified!" Autocrat says. "For being unworthy to lay your hands upon royalty". He turns to the King of Uruk and raises his hand.

"I never saw that in any rulebook!" I shout and I turn to Avatar. "You gonna let this asshole get away with it?"

Avatar shrugs. "Rules are rules, Omega. Even the unfair ones. Let's go some place and talk."

I nod. And after Avatar is crowned Olympic Champion, Emissary, and Big Grand Pooh-Bah, me and the Biceps of Babylon manage to sneak away from the crowd and we have a long conversation down in the Milford locker room. Usually conversations in dreams don't mean squat - to me or to anyone - but I get the feeling this one's kinda important. Avatar paces a bit, the first time I've ever seen him look even slightly nervous, and a nervous god is something that you just don't ignore, even in a dream, where memories flow out of your fingertips like water. All dreams are liquid, though some are wetter than others, at least the good ones.

"Does your subconscious ever stop thinking about sex, Omega?" Avatar asks me; he seems both amused and annoyed.

"Only when I'm hungry." I tell him.

"Of course," Avatar replies, and stops that line of conversation to tell me that something's about happen to the Protectorate - something that will break them apart - and I'll be needed at full strength if they're gonna be put together again.

"What do I need to do?" I ask.

"The most important thing of all," Avatar tells me. "I need you to go back in time and..."

And that's when I hear Mikey's scream and it wakes me up...

"Mikey, I'll - " I shout, and immediately I notice a woman who's clutching at the top layer of blankets so she can cover her otherwise completely naked body. That scream wasn't Mikey's - it was Michelle, and she's practically lying on top of me! "Shit!" I shout.

"Shit!" she shrieks.

"Shit!" I shout again.

"Shit!" she shrieks again, even louder.

"What the hell is going on in here?" Mikey says, stomping into the room, as naked as me and Michelle. Suddenly there's the biggest, most obnoxious smile I've ever seen on his face.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Michelle's not sure which of us to blame.

"Uh.... the farmboy's been experimenting with trying to get his powers back," Mikey quickly interjects. Mikey's tone is one of those "something's going on, I'll explain later, so just play along for now asshole" voices I used so frequently on others when I was growing up back in Nebraska. I notice that Michelle's got a swollen, cut lip and marks on her neck. They don't look pretty. "You rest here. I'll find a nice place for the farmboy on the couch."

"Screw that," I snap. "It took me long enough to get you to put in this second bed."

"You're not sleeping together?" Michelle's statement is more surprised than accusatory.

"He snores," Mikey smiles. Asshole.

"Mikey and I are just friends," I reply. "Barely." I add, quickly grabbing Mikey by the arm, and half-dragging him into the bathroom, closing the door (as best I can - that door never shuts right) and hoping that we have a chance for a private conversation without some other catastrophe hitting us in our faces. It doesn't occur to me that one naked guy dragging another naked guy into a bathroom probably just undercut any credibility that my protests of heterosexuality may have carried. Once again, life is way too ironic - and homoerotic - for my own good.

"Thanks for goddamn dislocating my arm!" Mikey shouts, wrenching himself from my grip.

"What happened?" I ask. "Did I do that? Did I teleport her here?"

Mikey shakes his head. "Shit no. That was me."

"What a surprise." I say, with a pissed off smile on my face.

"Yeah!" Mikey almost sticks out his chest in ape fashion. "I try to help people, and what do I get?"

"Hey I'm a superhero, asshole." I retort. "I don't care if someone stole your Nobel Peace Prize, I've got you so badly beat in the 'everyone's an ingrate' sweepstakes it ain't funny. Now tell me what happened."

"Orchid happened!" Mikey snaps, immediately getting my attention. As I've said before, I ain't ever gonna forget that bitch. "When Michelle was being your PR flack during that whole business in Philadelphia, it looked like she was setting herself up to become Orchid's next target, so I cast an enchantment on her. Whenever someone tried to kill her, she'd automatically teleport back into my safe room. Mind you, I didn't expect you to be sleeping there when she teleports."

"Wait a minute. Somebody tried to kill her?" I wonder. "She seemed more interested in seeing me than by the fact someone had tried to killing her. You don't suppose this is more of that Eighteen bullshit?" No. That's way too big of a coincidence.

"Supervillains attract superheroes like magnets, farmboy." Michael says, clapping me on the back.

"Yeah right," I reply skeptically. "Even so, I need to find out where she was and who was with her."

"Sounds good." Mikey replies. "Just... make sure you don't mention the magic to her. She doesn't know I'm a sorcerer."

"Dude, you've got a ton of mystic shit lying over your living room," I smile. "Michelle's a Grade A bitch, but she's a smart Grade A bitch, especially when she has a chance to calm down. One look at that pentagram dude, and you're busted."

"I'll take care of that, you take care of the rest." Mikey suggests, and I wonder just how he's expecting to get it done. Of course he doesn't explain his reasons. He never does, but just stands there in the middle of the bathroom thinking thoughts that are beyond my human comprehension because he's a mystic and I'm not, even though he's too lazy to replace two of the burnt out bathroom lights and he's always using my fucking mouthwash.

So I head back and talk with Michelle, who's draped herself in several layers of blankets and sheets. I sit down on the bed and stare at her, not hiding the nudity of the glorious Tommy Champion body. "Where were you before you got teleported?" I ask.

"Go to hell, Champion."

"Sure. But wait until I get my powers back first, okay?" I smile. "Look Michelle, I've got good reasons to believe someone was about to kill you before you came here."

Michelle's eyes widen. "And you wanted to watch!" she snapped. But just like the "go to hell" remark that preceded it, it's just random bitch noise - like a wolf marking her territory, she's telling me she doesn't want me to make any attempt at bonding. At a certain point in one's life, people become simple creatures, easy to figure out.

And as boring as hell.

"Michelle... when that whole thing with Orchid went down, I used my powers to make sure she wouldn't get you."

"Without telling me?"

"God forbid someone should violate your sense of control even if it saves your fucking life!" I snarl back. God, I hate this woman. "You were going to die, Michelle. Do you want to die? I've always known you were a bitch, but I never thought you were a stupid bitch. Jesus Fucking Christ." Michelle just sits there and gives me a graveyard stare that even the Black Priest would approve of it. "So fine. Don't tell me where you were, what happened. Allow some son of a bitch to kill you next time."

Michelle doesn't even seem to take a breath. "It was private."

"Those are finger marks on your neck..."

"Private!"

"I don't give a damn what shit you're into..." I snarl, guessing at how she got them. "But I am not ignoring a crime, not even when it's against you, so tell me!" We glower for a minute at each other. "Every second you delay, you could be letting some psycho off the hook and putting someone else in danger. Now stop being fucking embarrassed and TELL ME!"

"You think I want you going into my apartment and..." she says, and that's when I smile. "Shit!"

"Goddamn it, woman, I am not your enemy here. This is bigger than you! Bigger than us! Whatever guy who tried to kill you might decide to target someone else. They could be killing someone even as we speak. I'm investigating a serial killer, Michelle..."

"Carlos is no serial killer." Michelle declares.

Hmm... Now I begin to wonder about Mikey's little speculation about Michelle and Eighteen, which I'd completely thrown into my bullshit file only a few minutes ago. Could Dr. Molinar be Eighteen? Mind you, the killer's never left any marks before, but Michelle certainly fits the victim's profile, especially if the killer's trying to attract public attention by going after someone close to me. And the last victim's - Hanlon's - boyfriend was about the same height and build as Molinar. Six-foot-five athletic types may be commonplace in the meta world, but in the real world, they stand out like a contestant from Leprosia at the Miss Universe beauty pageant.

I immediately reach for my cell phone and hit Raible on the speed dial. "Hiya, it's Omega. I need an estimated height and weight on all of the known boyfriends of the victims." Raible gives me three other descriptions, all of them which are around 6'5" (though they were dismissed for their airtight alibis). "Thanks, officer. You've been a pal. I've got a lead."

"Do you need an APB or a warrant?" Raible asks.

"Don't have enough evidence for either, yet. Unless you know a judge who works at 'Warrants 'R Us'," I joke. She doesn't, of course. And any evidence I find breaking into his apartment without probable cause will be tossed by even a halfwit judge - the good ol' fruits of the poisoned tree.

(Yeah, it's amazing how much you can learn about the law watching reruns of Picket Fences and The Practice. Legally, I may not be an officer of the court, but I do want whatever I find to stick.)

"Do you need backup?" Raible asks.

"Backup, no. Back massage maybe," I smile. "Seriously, we're dealing with a potential metahuman here. I don't want to put any non-meta in the line of fire." Or cold, lightning, acid, a stream of plasma teleported from the interior of the sun...

"Good luck, Omega," she tells me, and with a flick of my thumb, I turn off the phone and turn around to face Michelle.

"Okay Michelle." I've allowed the conversation to sink in, although the expression on her face reminds me more of shock than anything. "If Carlos is the bastard who's been killing those women and you're protecting him, you do realize you'll be up for obstruction of justice when we finally put the collar on the boy. And felony murder, if he kills again, and your silence helped enable him..." The latter claim's an exaggeration, at least in this state, but hopefully this will make some dent on her.

"Go to hell..."

"Oh, get original, Michelle," I say, stone-faced. "Or at least don't repeat the same insult three times in one night. You can do better. Now, if your macho man ain't responsible, I'll see if we can clear him quick so you two can go back to playing reindeer games."

"Fine!" Michelle gasps, and she lets everything slip. Either I finally got under her skin, or she wanted me to know where her boyfriend was and what he had done all the time, Passive-aggressive bullshit, though I don't mind it. I'm not sure why, given my absolute sick history with women, I'm not the most misogynistic bastard that's strolled his way across America since Frank Sinatra.

But I've had enough introspection for one night. Enough puzzle solving, and goddammit, enough whining. I just want to hit something with my fist and feel the meat of a serial killer's body scrunch like beaten leather as my fists test the strength of assorted portions of his skeleton.

So I get back into my suit (which still reeks from the previous day's sweat), get back on the bike, and arrive at Michelle's apartment in reasonably short order. I'm familiar with its location - I used to come here a lot back in the days when I first arrived in Los Angeles and stalking women like Michelle and Leona Blade while invisible seemed cool. God, I was such a fucking dork back then, wasn't I? The apartment is locked but not bolted, so it's pretty easy to use a little skeleton key gizmo to open the door. Unfortunately, Dr. Molinar's flown the coop. It's a three bedroom apartment that's barely big enough to hold both Michelle and her ego, pitch dark except for lines of illumination from the outside street lamp that's coming through the shutters. Michelle who is such a creature of habit and severe tastes that it'll probably be impossible for her to move out of this place until she's found the right man and tied the knot (Profile: Caucasian, 35-40, seven figure income and an astonishing resemblance to George Clooney), normally keeps this place as immaculate as the Boston Catholic Parish's records of child abuse. Not today. After Michelle vanished, Dr. Molinar did a nice job of ransacking it. Michelle's the only low-six figure wage slave I know who actually has a wall safe - but it's been ripped open. The evenness of the cut is interesting, but what's inside is more interesting.

I pick up the cell phone and let speed dial work its special brand of magic. "Raible?"

"Omega?"

"Yep, it's little old me," I say. "I've met the enemy, and he is... well, he's gone. But Eighteen was here only a few minutes ago."

"Oh God," Raible moans. "Where do we send the coroner?"

"Nowhere. I extracted the victim before he could do his damage." I look at the safe. It's completely empty, except for three dice, all with 'sixes' facing up. "He's taunting me, Raible. He's showboating. And if I read the perfect evenness of the cut he used to open this wall safe correctly, well either he lugs a diamond saw with him on his sexual conquests, or he's a meta who projects a telekinetic or teleportation field." The cut wasn't even warm.

"Do you know who he is?"

"I need the home address of a veterinarian named Dr. Carlos Molinar." I tell her. "And send a CSI team to the following address," I add, barking out directions to Michelle's home. Hopefully, they'll make a mess. Raible responds by giving me an address. Shock of all shocks, it's the same apartment complex as Milke's.

"We'll send back up..." Raible informs me, and I immediately tell her not to do that. Policemen against metas often end up getting real ugly, especially when we've got a serial killer on the loose.

"If you can get me back-up that wears spandex, great. Otherwise, pull back." Your average cop against a meta is like confronting someone holding a machine gun with a pocket knife.

Raible agrees to the suggestion, and I bolt over to the motorcycle and head toward Molinar's apartment. He's in Westwood - at Milke's complex, what a surprise.

When I arrive at the scene, I spot a pair of cop cars, their lights blazing. Unfortunately, their bodies, slashed to ribbons, are slumping out of the car. The word "eighteen" is cut in their faces in smooth, perfect slashes. Shit! He's decided to go public. No more hiding the secret identity. To say this is going to be ugly threatens to be an understatement of obscene proportions.

I walk toward the pair of glass doors that serve as the main entrance to the apartment. A dead woman, her groceries dropped and scattered around the lobby, is slumped on her knees against the front door, she left a bloody smear as she slid against its surface. "Eighteen" is also inscribed on her face. Shit!

I pass three more bodies in the hallway, I report them to Raible, and again warn the cops to stay away until the area's been secured. She can't believe that I'm being as matter-of-fact about them as I am. Frankly, neither am I.

I arrive at Molinar's apartment, and I don't even bother to knock, unless you consider attaching a small explosive to the lock and detonating it to be the equivalent of knocking.

I break into the apartment and suddenly I'm sick. It takes a lot to make this Nebraska stomach queasy, but Molinar's managed it. I've got the low-light filter going, so the scene plays in a ghastly green and white, the color of a film negative in Hell. Hanging from the ceiling of an otherwise yuppie looking apartment are dead bodies, lots of dead bodies, ranging from kids who are scarcely in their teens to old women. Although it's hard to see fine details, I get the impression that the number "18"'s been carved all over their skin.

And I catch something out of the peripheral vision - it's a good thing I had the fish-eye lens working and not the low-light, because there's no depth perception with this thing - and I instinctively fall to the side, tumble, and tuck and roll into a combat stance. The bastard, who I didn't even see in the shadows, flicks a wall switch to illuminate the apartment.

"I'm so going to enjoy this, you fucking psychotic dogshit son of a bitch." I say. If I wasn't so bent on killing him, I might have laughed at just how over the top that must have sounded.

"I don't think so, Mr. Champion." Molinar's Latino accent is starting to grate on me, like dialogue from a very bad movie.

"There's no way I'm letting you have my number... Aaaai!" I shout. There's a slash in the fabric of my costume - fucking razor sharp force field - and the number '17' is carved into my skin.

"I sent you your number, Omega, the number seventeen, on the CD, remember? With your death, I'll have attained the number seventeen spot on the all time greatest bodycounts," Molinar says. "A very special victim to mark the transition. I'm so glad the plan worked so perfectly."

Fine. "Plan this, asshole", I say, and I trigger the force field disrupter and level it at Molinar. He suddenly screams, and then his body does a complete ripple, as if he were made of water and had been exposed to a standing wave. Shit! I wasn't expecting this. The guy is a force field. No wonder each of these maniacs were six-foot-five and had unusually sleek physiques. They all came from a cookie cutter; someone's generating them like cheap Korean imports. The Eighteens are a band of automatons, shaped out of force fields, and imprinted with their creator's intellect (either that or their creator was good at multitasking).

Then Milke comes through the door, accompanied by three other guys who have an identical height and build. The once-chatty Nordic puppet has absolutely nothing to say to me now; he lashes out with a force field knife that rips through a costume and tears a deep wound in my left side. It's a bleeder.

"Looks like the gang's all here," I smile, ignoring the fact that I'll probably be dead in fifteen seconds. I feint with the force field disrupter, then train it at Milke and fire. The handsome blond suddenly ripples, like a big California wave swallowing a surfer, and vanishes. One down. My foes, unfortunately, launch a counterstrike; one of the ones that had come in with Milke, a big red haired guy who looked like a blander version of my old friend Red Lion, raises his right hand and stretches it out like a claw. I pivot to avoid his stroke, but I'm about a step too slow, and he rakes the side of my face from cheekbone to collarbone with a single motion. Shit that hurts. Yelping, I drop the disrupter, and two of the other homicidal hunks interpose themselves between me and my weapon. Whatever slim edge I may have possessed in this fight has been as thoroughly shitcanned as a person's job after a rich American asshole decides he can become even richer by exploiting some poor sod down in Mexico. I'm fucked.

"Wait," one of them says, and the automatons suddenly stand still as statues. I take a few deep breaths, surveying the situation, looking for my opening. I suppose the old "jump directly between them and let them impale each other" gambit is out - I'll bet there's no way you can hurt a force field construct with another force field. It's hard to analyze such an inhuman posture, but I'd be willing to be that they're planning to synchronize their attacks (and maybe make me sweat a little). "Get ready..."

I tense, awaiting the killing stroke, but it doesn't come. Instead one of the automatons suddenly shifts in front of a door frame, becomes translucent, and then another guy walks behind him with a satisfied smirk on his pudgy face. He's not one of the cookie cutter crowd; no, this guy's much shorter, a five-foot-seven inch smirking chump whose black hair juts out of his balding scalp like loose wire. The demented cherub is wearing one of the most hideous outfits I've ever seen, clothing that looks like old furniture coverings from his mommy's basement (where he's probably lived for the last thirty years). My initial instinct is to yell at him to go away, but the look of satisfaction on his face - like he's about to titter in uncontrollable joy - tells me that he's not about to leave. No, this guy's the asshole who's behind this whole mess. Death by Nerd, what a way to go.

"So you're Eighteen." I tersely announce, the urge to talk is fading as my body struggles to cope with its wounds, and my left side is soaking in more blood than you'll find in your average horror movie. The statement's meant to be both an accusation and a curse.

Eighteen rights himself and adds another air of annoying self-satisfaction to his face. "I bet I can guess what you're asking yourself." Despite the serial killer ambience, Eighteen's voice is slightly squeaky. "Why did he do it? What terrible tragedy could lurk behind such a horrific act?"

"Oh tell it to the fucking press, motard!" I snap. "Tragedy? Who gives a shit? You're just another socially impaired, emotionally damaged dork! The world's overflowing with your type of bullshit." I snarl at him. How many guys live worse lives than you do who don't take up serial killer as a hobby? Even Orchid had a demon inside her. "You're late to the party asshole, because guys like you haven't been special in decades. "

"Then I'll make myself special by killing you," Eighteen smiles.

"Ha!" I reply. "That's soooo special."

"Oh yeah." Eighteen says. "To kill without consequences turns you into the ultimate predator."

"Oh what a load of festering crap!" Sorry, but I've never been able to hold back my contempt for this quasi-Darwin crap. Survival of the fittest my hairy pink ass. "My dad served in Desert Storm, and do you know what he told me about killing people? He said that 'Killing someone doesn't make a man special. It only makes him a killer.'"

"Well..." Eighteen tells me, rubbing his hands. "I'll settle for that."

And that's the moment when the constructs launch their attack.

The next few seconds play out too quickly for me to provide an accurate play-by-play, but I'll try to give one anyway. The first thing that happens is that one of the constructs destroys the force field disrupter. Gee, that's a real surprise, right? Eighteen giggles slightly. I suppose he actually thought I was expecting to use that device again.

Two other constructs hit me with force field bolts that lance right through my body, drawing blood sprays that travel... well, let's not go there. I don't like telling gross out stories when they're about me. Fortunately, while I may not be superhuman anymore, my ability to ignore pain has always bordered on the meta level, so I put it aside. I roll towards Eighteen. He erects a force field barrier between us - I guess he requires time to generate constructs, and the force barrier's a necessary improvisation. Somehow, (perhaps because every ounce of my will wants to pound this little shit to death), I execute a sudden spring and do a standing flip to get over the barrier, and now I'm standing next to Eighteen. His face suddenly contorts into an expression of blind panic. Eyes don't get that wide, not even in Japanese cartoons. My hands reach for his throat, but I catch a glimpse of a third construct pointing an outstretched hand at me, so I suddenly grab the serial killer and pull him into the path of the impaling missile. The force field catches Nerd Boy in the throat, and makes a rather large and gruesome two inch hole where his Adam's apple would normally be, shearing right through to the other side of his neck. The constructs instantly vanish (I guess the horseshoes are up my ass, for once) and he falls to the ground and dies gurgling.

Sorry if it sounds anti-climactic, folks, but yes, it was that quick. It takes me about five seconds of staring down at Eighteen's body to realize this was a landmark event. Months ago, the Outsider predicted I'd eventually kill someone, and the prophecy's come true. I guess I've killed my first honest-to-god human being.

And shit, I don't even feel bad about it. Either I knew without any doubt that this asshole deserved to receive a tracheotomy from hell, or my options to defend myself were zero... or maybe I'm so busy clutching my guts to keep them from falling out that I just don't give a shit.

I prop myself against a wall and struggle to call 911. They promise to be there in a few minutes. I contact Raible and calmly tell her what's happened - the perp's dead, the constructs are gone, and I've been cut to shreds by force fields... and then the suit's built-in cell phone gives up the ghost. "Fuck." I repeat my favorite word, again coughing blood. But no, the situation's not that bad; the police will be here soon, they're bound to show up. I won't bleed to death, I won't.

So I try to become as rigid as possible, standing so firm and stoic that I can barely stand it. I suppose the next thing that will happen to me is that I'll hear a voice that tells me that if I'm going to die, it'll be standing on my feet. You know, dying with my boots on, carried on my shield; the voice of pride that says that a person's death should embody every piece of macho bullshit that's ever been told to a dying kid throughout the history of mankind? I could so fucking laugh right now. Here stands Omega, the farmboy superman, the rural kid who came to the big city, and who brought those rural values to a big city death. Now that'd be rich, don't you think, that so much worn out bullshit can be embodied by one single human being?

But perhaps the fates have woven some other twisted skein with my name on it. Outside the apartment, there's a weird, scintillating glow that I initially take for faltering eyesight, until it takes on human form and walks into the room. At first I think it's Halcyon (wouldn't that be ironic, given our history), but no, it's someone else. Someone who's even more of a walking bowel disease than that useless old burnout.

"Hiya, Smax!" I tell the munchkin from Minneapolis. "So you came here to see what a real man in spandex looks like?"

Finally. After all these months, we're face to face at last. And shit. his face had better not be the last one I ever see, because if it is, I'll probably puke on God as soon as I wake up. Okay, I did ask for "back-up that wears spandex". But this asshole sure as hell wasn't what I had in mind.

"It's a good thing I showed up, Mr. Chumpion, because you look like you could stand a little lifesaving." Smax! says. I'd swear he was chewing gum, and his posture is screaming 'juvenile deliquent' with such force that I almost feel like asking him for a smoke. "I guess you'll have to hand the victory over to Roebuck," he adds, referring to our sponsorship rivalry.

I can see the gears working inside that boyish head, calculating how many inches of Page One copy he'll get for saving me from the big bad serial killer. I haven't even met this guy before, but I've met a lot of parasites in Los Angeles, and they all look the same. "Drop dead, you little puke," I say, clutching my wounds. "You think I'd forget what you did to me? Thanks for being so quick to go to the press and telling everyone I was powerless. Why didn't you give the supervillains my address while you were at it?"

"Why you ungrateful little shit," Smax! replies, no longer hiding his hatred. "The great Omega! You'd rather bleed to death than share the limelight for two seconds, won't you?"

My sides are burning, and I'm tasting my own blood, and I'm too pissed to care. "Limelight?" I snap. "All you have to do is beat a few villains and maybe you'll get some limelight. I've fought Autocrat, Avatar, Echelon, and the Black Priest, the list goes fucking on." I spit out a lump of blood, and smear some of it in the palm of my hand. Though my arm's quivering, I hold it up. "I've paid my dues with this. What have you ever done to earn a place in the limelight? My gay cousin's beaten up more supervillains than you have, asshole!" I cough up some more blood. "I'd say it's because you back in Minnesota but - come to think about it - I've met some of the people who wear spandex there, and they're embarrassed by you too." Even Jesse Ventura gets more respect in Minnesota.

"Big deal. We all know what happens to Mighty's sidekicks." Smax! answers. (Of course I like Mighty, he's one of the few superheroes I've encountered who doesn't talk too much). "Oh you're a real piece of work, Champion. It's not about the stupid fights, you maniac. It's about the money. And the chicks. And the press. You can get into all of the fights you want, I don't give a crap. But the money, press, and chicks..."

"So it's my fault you're still a virgin?" I mock him, smiling despite the fact that it feels like someone's holding a welding torch to my ribcage and the pain's the only thing keeping me conscious.

He glowers at me, and the force field that surrounds his body flares in intensity. But he doesn't directly answer the insult. "Every time I've tried to get a piece of the pie, you're in my face. Omega-this and Omega-that."

"How sad." I mock back. "We'd better call Tennessee Williams right away, because we got ourselves a great American tragedy here."

"Well it's over." Smax! smiles. "You ain't superhuman anymore. You're bleeding to death. And as you slump over and die, I hope you stop to consider that I could have saved your life, if only you'd shown me an ounce of respect."

"You fucking loser," I spit, ignoring the fact that I'm about to choke to death on my own blood. He's gonna leave me here to die. It's a good thing I don't obsess over dying, or I'd be pissed to die such a shallow, meaningless demise.

But then something comes over the Minnesotan's face, and Smax! shakes his head. "No." he says, and he advances on me with rage in his step, He grabs me and knocks my helmet off. "Bleeding to death is just too frigging slow," he snarls as he yanks me with superhuman strength, forcing me to turn around. I'm his puppet. He grabs me by the back of my neck, using more strength than I can resist, then he bends me over as easily as Steve's dad did when he caught me snapping chicken necks in his coops when I was a kid.

"Why don't you - Aaagh! - yourself!" I manage to shout.

"Whatever, O-Me-Gay." Smax! replies. "They'll think the villains did this," he adds, and then he clubs me in the back of the head with a perfect rabbit punch, one that'd be hard enough to dent a steel plate, if I actually had one in the back of my skull. "Have a nice funeral, faggot."

Then he rabbit punches me again, and that's all that registers before I lose consciousness. You think that one's final moments of life would be a little more visceral; being sent to your grave with the voice of a jealous asshole lording his "triumph" over you with banal dialogue is pretty fucking pathetic.

But life is rarely that romantic, and death... well, that almost never is.
 

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