What has gone before... Tommy Champion, Nebraska farmboy, and all-round hellraiser turned superhero, arrived in Los Angeles to become Omega, the official superhero of Nike. His partner was John Wolfe, the Canadian hero Permafrost. Thanks to the villains Hack and Orchid, Permafrost has been kidnapped and delivered into the hands of Omega's arch-enemy, the Black Priest. To further add insult to injury, Orchid murdered Tommy's ex-girlfriend, Rachel Wiebe, and sent the once cocky Omega into complete despair.

This story, however, is a legacy of a happier time, when Omega and Permafrost were vying to see who would become Nike's official hero...
 

"He's finally asleep," Michael Carleton said, shutting the door as quietly as he can. "Poor bastard."

"Thank God," Steve Doerksen observed. "I've never seen him like this. Not during the whole Grade 10 'roid trouble. Not even when he got hit by lightning and we thought he might never walk again."

"Steroids?" Michael said. "He never mentioned that."

"There are a lot of things that Tommy isn't proud about," Steve added. Michael considered asking Steve about Omega's mom, a subject of many uncomfortable silences, but nobody knew the importance of silence better than he. "But I guess we all have secrets. I just wish I could help him."

"He was worried about Permafrost...," Michael said. "I suppose I could do a divination and see if I can find him."

"You can do that? You're magical?" Steve asked. Michael nodded without hesitation. "Shit!"

"I wish I knew Permafrost better," Michael thought aloud. "We need something of John's. Something that would provide a connection."

"I think Tommy mentions him in his journal." Steve was reluctant to open his friend's private thoughts, but Michael had no such compunctions. He grabbed the book out of Dorksen's hands, and scanned it.

"Found it!" he said triumphantly. "The first time Tommy and John met..."

I really hate bullshit, and two weeks of fucking bullshit, where I'm having to goddamn pretend that Permafrost and I are big fucking rivals, when we've both already secured high paying jobs (and we haven't even fucking met yet) makes me feel like a complete hypocrite. Tomorrow, they're going to finally announce the "winner," and it couldn't come soon enough for me.

Aside from the pangs of hypocrisy, it's been a good fucking two weeks. A whole fucking lot better than that first one! Michael and I have gone to the Jaguar Grill a few times, but aside from booze, I've kept clean. Frankly, with my powers, I can send a buzz directly into the human brain. Why the fuck do I need narcotics?

Baby, I'm ecstacy. And a whole fucking lot more.

It's been a wild ride, but I've enjoyed it, more than I thought I would. Life at Michael's is fine, but there's something about the place that puts me on edge. It was really bad the first couple of days, then I got used to it. But I still have a little trepidation being there. I always have the vague feeling like I'm being watched, especially when I'm alone. And when I sleep there, I occasionally have really weird dreams. I keep feeling as though something's touching me in my sleep: nothing sexual, but it's still a fucking unsettling feeling. Still, Michael's a good shit, and I like it here. When you've lived on a farm all your life, you aren't get too choosy about your living space. And Michael's place, with its glass and cedar walls and its view of the ocean in the distance, is a pretty cool place to live while the agents hunt for my perfect house.

It's eleven o'clock on a slow hazy summer evening. It's a perfect night for slow dancing, for half-intimate coupling and small talk, but tonight's selection at the Grill is pretty meager. I could do shit with Michael, but he's busy on a 'personal project' (and not telling me what the fuck it is, of course). A patrol is probably my last, best, desperate shot at killing boredom, so I pick up my costumed ass and head south, toward Long Beach. It's new territory for me, but nothing fucking special: endless flat blocks of houses and warehouses, with a few freeways interwoven into the landscape. I'm not sure what I'm going to accomplish here, but an internal voice commands me to keep going. There are times when I don't feel like I fully control my body, and that's a fucking frightening feeling.

About twenty minutes into the patrol, my vigil finally pays off. A premonition tells me there's some trouble nearby, so I scour the countryside looking for potential trouble spots.

My premonitions are hardly precise; it could be anything from the proverbial cat in a tree to a psycho supervillain eating a busload of nuns, but it's the best tool I have. Today, they lead me toward a park district, an over-irrigated nest of trees, wasp nests, and a pond inhabited by aggressive geese, nestled between Long Beach's concrete overflow ditches (like the ones in Terminator 2). As I close on the park, the premonition fades oh well, I guess the danger's over. But I'm still kinda curious about what happened -- perhaps Blur's nearby and I'll finally get to meet her -- so I decide to pursue the premonition and arrive in the artificial woodlands. On the top of a small, gently sloped hill, I discover a couple of guys trapped in a huge, solid blue ice cage. A shitload of drugs are next to them, sealed in a block of ice. The cage is guarded by about six misshapen snowman sculptures in menacing poses (I recognize the design from some old comic strip I remember reading when I was six; I'm pretty sure it was called Calvin and Hobbes).

Guess who was here? Fucking artist.

There's a trail of ice and snow leading southward, and I decide to follow it. I haven't been able to track down Blur yet for a meeting, but it'd be nice to scope out the competition.

"Man, this heat gets to me," I hear Permafrost mutter in the distance.

"So how goes the competition with Omega?" a voice says. I stop in my tracks, become invisible, and listen closely.

"It's tough. He's real, real good," Permafrost says. He's got a slightly high pitched voice, very boyish, and he sounds like he's about to break into laughter at any given moment. "He's so good that I'd better get off my butt and start fighting evil. I've got a competition to win, and it wouldn't look good for either of us not to be doing our best on the final night."

The word 'competition' does weird things to me. Yeah, this is totally meaningless bullshit, but if Frosty the Snowcape thinks he can beat me in getting the best headlines, he's got another fucking thing coming.

So I decide to head out and see if I can find some trouble. The nearest trouble is the two drug dealers, trapped in their ice cage. I really shouldn't be doing this, but sometimes you just gotta be an asshole, so I decide to pay them a visit.

"Hi guys," I say. "How y'all doing this evening?"

Marijuana Marko and Cocaine Casey don't seem all that happy to see me. "It's your lucky day," I say. "You were captured by Permafrost. When the press gets wind of what he did to you guys, Permafrost will get a shitload of good press and I stand to lose millions if that happens. So what should I do with you?"

"Let us go?" one of the criminals suggests.

"Hmm... let you go..." I muse in a mock-idiot voice. "Now, why would I want to do that?"

"You'd win the competition with Permafrost," one of the criminals suggests.

"That's good for lesser metahumans, but Omega's got bigger plans than that," I say. "How'd you like to join me? You see boys, I'm not really a fucking superhero, I'm actually that sneakiest, dirtiest, nastiest piece of shit supervillain you ever laid your fucking eyes on, and I could use a couple of loyal, hard-working guys to be my minions."

"Really?" Marijuana Marco questions.

"No shit, really, this is the honest fucking deal." I smile. "I'm Omega, the last person anyone would ever expect to be a traitor to humanity." Even I gotta fucking groan at that one. "Unfortunately, the Omega organization does require that its members wear really dorky costumes while we commit our crimes. Would that be a problem for you?"

"Not me. As long as you pay us good," Cocaine Casey says.

"Hey, if I'm lucky, I might be able to get you some cool futuristic weapons, and you'd also have code-names. I think I'll call you boys Omicron-One and Omicron-Two. Is that way cool with you?"

"What's the pay?" Cocaine Casey asks.

"Well, nothing, until you pass the loyalty test," I say. They look at each other apprehensively.

"Here's what you do. First, get down on your hands and knees...," I instruct, that's the cue for the shitheads to get down on their hands and knees, but these motards ain't moving; they're too busy looking like they don't know what the fuck is going on. "Get down on your hands and knees now, assholes, before Omega gets mad!" The criminals practically shit themselves in the rush to fucking genuflect. "Okay, next, you have to lift your hands above your heads and shout at the top of your fucking lungs: 'Omega is supreme, and Permafrost is a complete piece of Canadian horseshit.'"

"Omega is supreme, and Permafrost is a complete piece of Canadian horseshit!"

"That's cool. Well boys, when you're out of prison, give me a call. I could use a couple of strong backs to run errands for me: y'know, wash my car, you know, that sort of shit. I'll even pay you a few bucks over minimum wage."

"But what about the criminal organization?" Marijuana Marko asks.

"Actually, that was just bullshit, I'm really 100% superhero, and I don't give a shit if you two losers score a couple of points in Permafrost's win column, because you're fucking nothing." I love the crestfallen look on their faces. "Have fun freezing your asses off. Bye!"

Sorry, I just had to do that. Who could fucking resist a chance to really mess over a pair of drug-dealing assholes?

"How can the journal help?" Steve asked. Michael didn't really feel like explaining himself, but he was a friend of Tommy's.

"Tom and John have a really strong emotional bond," Michael says. "My spell will link telepathically into Tommy and use that bond to empower it. I just need to finish reading this journal entry. The more I understand it, the better."

"Okay." Steve Doerksen wasn't quite sure of this "Michael," but if he was a friend of Tommy's, he'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

I patrol the area around the park for about twenty minutes, traveling in a circle among the poorer, more crime-ridden areas, when I suddenly get another premonition. It's a stronger than normal premonition, which might mean there's some serious trouble, but nobody's life is in immediate danger. I head northward, into a business district, where's an alarm going off. It's coming from some computer firm. I scan the walls to see if I can overhear any conversation and get an exact bearing on the situation.

"Be careful with those crates." It's a man's voice; I'd guess it was middle aged, and with a bit of a smoker's rasp.

A younger man replies, "I didn't sign up for this operation for the...," then groans before adding, "exercise."

"With those ridiculous tights," Mr. Cautious says, "You need all the exercise you can get. Now stop whining and put those crates on the dolly."

Tights. That means one of them is a metahuman! All right! I get to kick the shit out of a shithead (or kick a shithead's head in -- you choose your favorite crude and appropriate violent metaphor).

I hone in on the conversation, come through the wall (intangibly; I'm actually pretty good at avoiding property damage), and materialize in front of three startled costumed figures. One is a woman in a tight-fitting red and cobalt blue silk skirt (despite the face mask, I'd guess she was Oriental) who's working away at a computer terminal. Another is a silver-haired gentleman, who's wearing a blue and white costume with a long red cape; he's inspecting several crates on a dolly. The third is a muscle-bound but tired man in a ridiculous black and white costume, who's carting crates.

For those without a guide to super-powered riff-raff: it's Electron, the Porter, and the Zebra. What a fucking weird alliance of convenience. All of them are criminals-for-hire. Electron's a relative newcomer, but the Zebra's been at the supervillain game since 1990, and the Porter dates back to the early 1980s. Fuck, I though he announced his "official" retirement at least six years ago.

I examine their swag. If the crates are correctly labeled, they contain semi-conductors and large quantities of computer memory. If their employer's a thug, it'll be sold on the black market for a hefty profit; if their employer is whacked, it'll probably be used to create yet another world dominating computer.

All heads turn and notice my entrance. "Hi," I say, realizing that I won't be getting a chance at a decent ambush during this fight.

"Oh shit!" Electron gulps, and she vanishes into the computer screen.

I should have anticipated that maneuver, but my attention is focused on the older man. The legendary Porter, a career criminal with twenty years of narrow escapes and bad puns under his belt. He looks at me and shakes his head. "Well, Omega. Quite the physical specimen we've got here," he says, eyeing me.

"Fucking right. You're under arrest, assholes," I say.

"Hey, watch the language!" the Zebra protests. "You want a slander suit, kid?" The Zebra has a habit of suing supers who arrest him. Usually it's for excessive use of force when people arrest him; hell, he even sued Halcyon after the old man took him down in a fight four years ago. That makes him pretty fucking pathetic.

"I don't know what's more insulting, Omega, your wagging tongue or your impudence at trying to arrest me," the Porter says.

"Can you cut the bullshit?" I snarl. "Nobody fucking uses the word 'impudence' in a real sentence."

"You should be grateful that I'm using it, Omega," the Porter says. "You should be grateful for my 'four-color' style."

"Like the Dictator?" I scoff. "I should be glad that supervillains are a pack of deluded mental patients?"

"Not all 'supervillains' are unaware of their 'style choices,' Omega," The Porter explains. "We're actors as much as we are criminals."

"And the world is your stage?" My sarcasm is only getting more intense. "Try the world is your comic book."

"And what if it is?" The Porter shrugs. "It's simply a medium, a way to express certain ideas. You should be glad to face people who talk like they're living in a comic book. They're usually people who play the Game."

"The 'Game,' as you call it, is fucking retarded," I counter.

I quickly turn and warn the Zebra, who looks like he's thinking about sneaking up behind me and breaking a crate over the back of my head. "Don't even think about it, stripes." The Zebra gulps and puts the crate down. "Thanks," I add, involuntarily.

"Omega, you're young. When you get older, you'll find that there are two types of opponents: those who play the game, and those who don't. Those who 'play the game' respect certain behaviors. If you keep your word, if you don't attempt to do us serious bodily injury, if you don't ridicule our motifs and stylized dialogue, you may find that your life will be easier."

"How do you figure that?" I ask.

"Those who play the game respect boundaries. We won't kill you when ten of us jump you and knock you unconscious. We won't use our powers to uncover your secrets. We won't endanger your family. Some of us abhor psychotic criminals more than we do superheroes. We've been known to pass along certain pieces of useful information to you at crucial times, information you'd find difficult to obtain by other methods."

"We'll be such buddies. I can just picture us at Starbucks, sharing a latte with you and Mr. Lawsuit over here," I scoff, referring to the Zebra.

"Jeez, drag heroes into court a few times, and you get a reputation," the Zebra whines.

"Well, dear boy, he does have a point," the Porter says. "You've done it eight times, at last count. But scoff all you want, Omega. We're metahumans. We understand you in ways that the people you protect do not. We may be at cross purposes, but we don't have to be enemies."

"You want me to join your gang?" I wince.

"Of course we would. If we had a strong guy like you, I wouldn't have to lift so much," the Zebra says. Both the Porter and I shake our heads. "What I'm trying to say, Omega, is that you'd be welcome with us. We'd have a lot of fun!"

"Zebra, shut up," the Porter says, his eyebrows raised despondently. "But it should be noted that those who do not play 'the Game' will try to kill you, blackmail you, hurt your friends, destroy your property, and generally make your life a living hell. They are your true enemies. What's more, vigilantes who kill those who play 'the Game' and force people to become more desperate are also your enemies, even if they do not directly attack you."

"I smell an agenda, Porter," I say. "Let me put it this way. People who dress up in costumes and think that they have the right to be treated with kid gloves when they commit crimes are dorks. You are a dork. Normally, the law does not allow me to kick the shit out of dorks, but when you commit crimes, that gives me a really big fucking loophole. So you can take your 'game' and shove it up your ass."

"I must say that I'm greatly offended, Omega," the Porter says. "I'll just leave."

Suddenly, a gateway opens around him, and his crates, and envelopes him. I rush to stop him, but the gate closes before I can reach it. I had expected him to open a portal, of course, but I hadn't realized he could open such big fucking portals so goddamn quickly. "You fucking old man!"

In the spot where he vanished, he left behind a business card. "Porter, Inc. Reginald Porter, Esq. When it absolutely has to be stolen overnight"

"How fucking cute," I snap.

I turn around and I spot the Zebra, laughing his striped ass off. I advance on him, and he suddenly realizes the amount of shit he's in. "Hey, Omega, you know I really ain't that big a threat to you"

"Too bad. I'm fucking pissed," I say.

"I surrender...," the Zebra says. I shake my head.

"Take off the mask," I instruct. "Now! If you want to get out of here in one piece..."

The Zebra strips off the half-mask that covers his face. He looks like he's in his late 20s -- sandy brown hair and a handsome face. "Okay, Omega, here's the mask. Now, I surrender!"

I really, really feel like a fucking fight after the Porter did his vanishing act. "Surrender rejected," I say.

He's too frightened to run. "I didn't do nothing to you. And I gave you the mask!"

"Don't shit yourself Zebra," I reply. "Beating you up as Omega ain't gonna satisfy my testosterone fix, so here's how we're playing this. If I recall correctly, you're supposed to be slightly stronger and more agile than an Olympic athlete..."

"Well sure...," the Zebra says, not sure where I'm going with this.

"So we're going to fight. Only I'm going to stay normal. Instead of fighting a superhuman, all you're gonna be fighting is one tough Nebraska farmboy, with no powers. You'll have the advantage."

"You're kidding," the Zebra exclaims.

"Nope. And the good news is that if you win, you get to walk. But if I win"

"I'm your bitch?" the Zebra guesses, a little nervously. Maybe he's not as gay as the costume looks. Nah. No heterosexual male would be caught dead in that outfit.

"Wrong answer," I say. "If I win, you don't sue me, you go to prison quietly, enter a guilty plea, and stay there while you serve your sentence. In fact, you'll accept counseling and job training so we can get some way for you to make some decent bucks without having to whore your superpowers to assholes like the Porter who abandon you at the first fucking sign of trouble."

"You'll stay normal for the entire fight?" he asks.

"As normal as this piece of prime Nebraska beef can get." I smile, and make a bicep. Fuck, I'm getting cocky. "If I can't beat an idiot who dresses in a fucking zebra suit, I don't deserve to be Omega."

I get into a fighting stance. He follows my example, though it's a little too imitative; this bozo doesn't have a clue how to really fight.

"You don't like my outfit, Omega?" he asks.

"You look fucking ridiculous!"

The Zebra straightens up. "Actually that's the point," he says. "People take one look at this outfit and then they go easy on me..." I connect with a right jab to the villain's jaw. "Ow! Hey -- I was talking!" the idiot protests.

"To quote the Porter, 'shut up, Zebra!' I don't need any more fucking exposition."

"Fine. I'm fighting," the Zebra says, and he charges. I sidestep and connect with another straight right to the jaw and a left to the breadbasket when he pivots and gives me the opening. He takes a step back.

"You some kind of boxer?" he asks.

"What do you think, motard?" I snap back.

"Jeez, at least the Bronzeman didn't mind having a little conversation during a fight," Zebra complains. "Your attitude sucks."

"The Bronzeman retired years ago," I reply. "He probably got fucking bored talking to idiots like you."

The Zebra lifts up a crate and gets ready to throw it at me. Now would be a great time to connect with a kick in the face. Remind me to do some kickboxing training so I can get away with it.

The crate misses me by a mile. I circle around. "My brain damaged cousin is better in a fight than you," I sneer. Hey, he wanted "banter."

He advances, I hit him in the face. He recoils. He advances again. I hit him in the face again. He recoils again. Our eyes are locked.

"Damn...," the Zebra says.

He lunges at me; I do a quick go-behind, grab his arm, twist it hard into a hammerlock. He pushes forward, lifts me off the ground while I'm still on his back, then he kicks backwards, hoping to slam me when he hits the ground. I anticipate the move, do a sit-out as he's falling, and land on top of him. I hit him six times in the face in succession, breaking his nose. He throws me off, but I tumble and actually get to my feet in a single motion. Fuck, that must have been a cool looking move.

He wipes his nose, sees the blood. "You're cheating," he says. "You ain't fighting normal."

"Zebra, you're an even bigger wuss than I thought you were." I laugh.

He charges again. I connect with a beautiful right hook and knock him on his ass.

"Shit, I give up," the Zebra whines, putting his hands in the air.

"That was fucking embarrassing," I say. "How the fuck do you ever get hired for any of these jobs, Stripes?"

"I've got a good strong back, and I'm mostly bulletproof."

"And you sue people when they kick the shit out of you."

"It's the American way." Blood drips over the Zebra's idiot smile.

I mentally attune myself to the radio frequency of the LAPD. "This is Omega. I'm somewhere in Long Beach, about a mile east of highway five..." I extend my senses outside to get the address. "I have one metahuman in custody. There has been a robbery, and two metahumans have escaped. An unknown amount of merchandise has been stolen.

"Can I leave? You know I'm no threat," the Zebra says.

"Remember our deal, motard? Guilty plea, serve your sentence, get rehabilitation, no lawsuits."

"No lawsuits? But you broke my nose!" the Zebra exclaims. Fuck, he is dumber than Buck!

The police arrive, they do the whole Miranda dance with the Zebra, and then they start bombarding me with questions. Fuck, do they ever have a lot of questions. Botched operations tend to generate lots more paperwork than clean ones, and it's even worse this time because the Porter has annoyed the LAPD for close to twenty years -- they'd really like to ship the fucker up to Alaska, instead of watching him go back to his Bahamian estate and working on his tan.

"I'm surprised you're not over at the airport," one of the cops tells me while I'm taking a statement.

"I don't need a vacation," I mutter.

"Jeez, I thought you types knew everything!" the officer exclaims. "Some wackos just tried to hijack a United airliner. It came over the news ten minutes ago. But Permafrost came in and saved the day."

"Shit!" I say.

"You didn't want Permafrost to rescue the airliner?" the cop asks.

"No, that's great," I say. "But shit, I'm in direct competition with the guy. Let's compare saving an airliner to letting the Porter get away..."

"Hey, you captured me!" the Zebra protests.

"I see what you mean," the officer nods in sympathy.

"I still wish I knew what brought the Porter out of retirement," I wonder aloud, "An electronics robbery is way too penny ante for a master thief."

"Maybe he needed to replace the computers on his private Bahamian island," a cop speculates. "What do you think, Stripes?"

"Lawyer. I want my lawyer," the Zebra protests.

I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to leave or not, so I look at the computer system into which Electron had fled. In between the Zebra and the Porter, I'd almost forgotten about her. I let my senses examine the system without making physical contact; fortunately, computer training is one of the areas at which I excel. As soon as I detect what Electron had done however, my jaw drops.

"Holy shit...," I say.

"We speak eight sacred names," Michael Carelton says, and pronounces the name of God in eight ancient languges. He throws a handful of glass beads into a circle of ice water. "Open your eyes, and let us see."

"Would thinking positive thoughts help?" Steve Doerksen wonders. "Don't answer if it'll disrupt the spell."

Michael continued without acknowledging the question. Though Doerksen's spirit was surprisingly strong for a mortal -- probably a result of living so close to a Chosen all his life. Those whose lives crossed that of a Chosen were said to be far stronger than most mortals, but were also destined to be tragic, like Rachel Wiebe.

And, secretly, Michael Carelton was counting on both.

"Open your eyes. Open our eyes. Let all our senses find the lost one, the beloved one."

And then, for an instant, Michael Carleton's eyes were opened, only to behold a great and familiar darkness, a figure he knew well, and yet was darker and more evil than before. Michael Carelton did the only thing he could do.

He screamed and fell unconscious to the ground. In his final waking moments, he fled into the Chosen's mind, and received a clearer understanding of some of the more crucial events of his life...

"What was that Omega?" the cop asks.

"Things just got a lot more complicated. This system was cleared for access to some top secret Pentagon files. Electron just got through the NSA's primary firewall and downloaded some very sensitive codes."

"What kind of codes?" the cop asks.

"I think if either of us asked for that level of clearance, we'd be shot," I answer.

"Uh, Omega," the Zebra says tentatively. "I thought we were just stealing some computer parts. Honest."

"You shouldn't incriminate yourself," the cop suggests.

"Like I have much chance of that," the Zebra scoffs. "If I help you guys, can I get a lower sentence? You know, the whole plea bargain thing."

"I'll talk to the D.A.," I promise.

"Thanks," the criminal responds. For some reason, the Zebra seems to think my word may actually have some influence over the local authorities.

"Do you have any idea where they were going?" I ask the Zebra.

"He shouldn't be asking questions without a lawyer, Omega," one of the cops goes into babysitter mode. "You could blow the conviction."

"Big deal. So the Chain has to find someone else to fuck while he's in prison. You know anything that'd be useful, stripes?"

"I know that the Porter was upset that Core decided not to join him on this operation. He said something about needing somebody with his muscles to transport something really big. He said he was going to borrow heavy transport, but I don't know why. There weren't that many crates stolen."

"How many crates were you planning to steal?" I ask.

"Six, maybe eight," the Zebra answers.

"Why would the Porter need a guy as strong as Core as his transportation system, when, even if he couldn't transport them him with his portals, he could fit eight crates of that size into an average SUV?" I wonder.

"Well, gas prices are outrageous," the Zebra offers his worldly opinion. He looks at our pissed off reaction and sighs. "Nobody appreciates my jokes."

"I ain't in the mood for camp," I say.

"I'll check to see if I can find something around here that would require a lot more heavy lifting," one of the officers informs me. "Maybe a mainframe system."

I'm examining the best data we have on the situation; Electron's hacking. "She transmitted a signal into a nearby computer. Could they have had a computer in the crates, Zebby?"

The Zebra pauses for a few moments. "Zebby?" he questions.

"Yeah, Zebby. I can't stand pronouncing your fucking name -- it's so stupid." He gives me a bewildered look. "Computer in the crates?"

"I dunno. Sounds good to me," he says.

I sigh, hard.

"We're near LAX and there are plenty of heavy trucks around here." My brain goes into hypothesis mode. "Not to mention planes. Suppose they transferred national secrets into a mainframe and were going to transport them by plane to a foreign country..."

"They could have done that," the Zebra says. He's just background noise right now.

"But why wouldn't Electron have just transferred the data electronically?" I wonder aloud.

"They could have been worried about someone else intercepting the data," a policeman answers. But that's unlikely.

Shit, there was a lot I didn't know about, and it could take hours for someone to arrive on the scene with the right answers, even if they decided to be forthcoming.

"Well, I've talked to all the proper authorities," one of the cops says. "They'll have someone out here in the morning."

"Morning? Morning's way too late. We've got to track down the Porter, now." I snap and turn to the Zebra. "Is there anything else you can tell me that could help us on this case."

"Maybe, but it'll cost you."

"How much?"

"One punch. I'm gonna break your nose," the Zebra says. "You busted my nose, I get to do the same thing to you. That way we're even."

I shake my head, walk over to the Zebra, lower my hands and get into a stance. "You couldn't bust me on your best day if you had the Black Priest boosting your powers by a factor of twenty."

"Yeah, well..." he struggles for a few seconds to find the right comeback line. "I can to!" he finally says.

"If you hit me in the face, I'll just end up prettier." I smirk.

The Zebra bends over, laughing. "This is great!" he says. "Man, where do you get these lines? Now this is the way guys should fight."

"Spouting high camp dialogue?" I say. "Shut up and hit me, you fucking retard."

The Zebra leans back, counts to three, takes a swing, and connects with my face. He winces.

I grab the Zebra by the throat and gently squeeze -- I don't want to bruise him. "Now tell me what I need to know."

"Please don't kill me," the Zebra begs.

"Just don't try my fucking patience. Tell me everything about the Porter... how you met him... where you met him... what he was wearing... how his aftershave smelled..."

"Okay, okay!" the Zebra relents.

The Zebra goes into a long and tedious story: following plastic surgery and the acquisition of a new civilian ID, the Zebra was working as a bouncer in a West Hollywood gay bar (despite his earlier claim that he was heterosexual). From what I could determine from his narrative, he was not particularly a shining success at that job. The Porter, having lost a chance to acquire a primo musclehead like Core for his operation, needed to go local in a hurry and hired the Zebra. The Zebra had no idea what Electron was doing there.

The villains met in a Long Beach motel to plot their strategy; the Zebra had the hotel room number written down on the Porter's business card. The operation was supposed to involve eight boxes of semi-conductors, computer memory and a "special component" (which for some reason the Zebra didn't remember until I actually walked him through the conversation).

Once I extracted all of the appropriate information, my next stop was the Porter's motel room. It's surprisingly grungy; even in more or less desperate circumstances, I hadn't imagined the Porter would abandon the high life. Unfortunately, the Porter had checked out and the maid had already cleaned out the room. As a result, Omega, the world's newest and hottest young superhero, had to spend a twenty minutes sorting through garbage at a cheap motel.

Fortunately, when you grow up on a farm, you get used to working with shit.

I'm saved when I find the packaging from the Porter's cigars; I doubt the cheating husbands and other lowlife at the motel are likely to smoke Santiago Specials. That allows me to narrow down the garbage that surrounds the box and safely speculate that it belongs to our terrible trio. By far, the most interesting item is a cargo airline schedule, with several times circled.

I have a new destination. I clean off my costume (I may have grown up on a farm, but I hate looking like a fucking pig in public!), and make a quick flight to LAX.

I use my powers to contact the tower and inform them of my approach; since I don't know air traffic controller lingo, we go through a five-minute communications nightmare to ensure I don't cross into anyone's flight path. There's another skill I never thought I needed to acquire; how to fly near busy airports without endangering or panicking people. I finally land near the main terminal; I need to consult with the airport manager to find the freight line, since the Porter's stupid schedule didn't even have a mini-map and I can't make sense of these fucking airport addresses. But as soon as I'm spotted, several members of the press begin to swarm me.

"Omega what about your competition with Permafrost?" one reporter shouts.

"Out of my way, asshole. I'm trying to save your fucking country," I shout back.

The attention of the press -- and mine -- are further distracted when an albino kid in an ice blue costume comes sliding in. Despite showing signs of fatigue, he has a huge fucking happy grin on his face; the only way he could look more like a boy band member would be if he were wearing an open silk shirt and was in the middle of a goddamn monsoon and spreading his arms wide so the rain can run down his chest. Of course it's fucking Permafrost.

"Yo, Canuck!" I shout. "You're with me. We've got a job to do."

Permafrost immediately slides over to my side. I should be glad I'm not getting an argument. "So you're Omega," he says with a toothy smile.

"You read Greek. Fucking excellent," I reply.

"Call me John," he says.

"Tommy," I snap back.

"Cool. And not in a punny way," Permafrost says. "I always have to add that."

"Yeah, puns suck," I respond. "Now cut the banter, and listen."

"You're going after the Porter," Permafrost interrupts me. "I got to your crime scene. The Zebra tried to run."

"You stopped him?"

"Actually, a few officers on the scene tackled him and beat him up," Permafrost informs me. "But he's not the threat. The Porter and Electron found a leak in your country's national security, involving your country's nuclear codes."

"Nuclear codes?" I gasp. Fuck, no one gave me that information. "How did you"

"The company they robbed is owned by a Canadian corporation." Permafrost explains. "And one of the senior engineers is from Saskatchewan. I asked him to trace the stolen components and he had a high enough clearance to find out what the bad guys were after."

"They gave a Canadian that level of security clearance?"

"Even an American understands that it's usually a good idea to tell engineers what project they're working on," Permafrost says. "One of the crates contained special hardware designed to foil hacker supervillains who might attempt to access America's nuclear arsenal. Sort of a code key module."

"So the semi-conductors were just a diversion," I speculate.

"Bingo," Permafrost says. "They're after the nukes. You would need to have one of these computer keys and physically connect them to a launch system in order to access any nuclear weapon's launch sequence."

"The Porter's just a thief. What would he want with nuclear codes?"

"Well, the CIA believes that the Porter has been recruited with Terra Pax, a radical anti-nuclear group that believes humanity is forgetting about the dangers of nuclear war."

"Wait a fucking minute," I say. "The CIA talked to you?" And not me?

"Apparently when word got out about where the Porter struck, things went ballistic down in Washington." Permafrost explains. "You'd left the scene about ten minutes before the firestorm hit. By the time I showed up, the CIA was willing to talk to anyone who was willing to go after Terra Pax." He pauses and his grin gets bigger. "Wait until mom and dad find out I'm an American secret agent!"

"I've never even heard of Terra Pax." I shake my head. "You get a heads up on them?"

"They're foreign -- the CIA thinks they're based in Australia."

"I knew we couldn't trust those guys. Fucking foreigners."

"You Americans can't even trust yourselves," Permafrost says. "Your whole country needs to be medicated for paranoia."

"Oh yeah?" I say. "When someone steals your fucking nukes, you've got every right to be paranoid!"

"They wouldn't have been stolen if somebody hadn't been so paranoid that they built them in the first place!" Permafrost says, and then he laughs. "Anyway, the CIA thinks Terra Pax plans to take control of a couple of nuclear weapons and detonate them out in the wilderness, and hope that gives humanity a wake-up call to stop taking nukes for granted."

"They better not set them off anywhere near Nebraska," I growl.

"Or Alberta," Permafrost says, and adds, "well, maybe over Calgary."

I get in touch with someone who can direct me to the cargo airline, and then John and I sprint for the terminal. John is really fast. He creates instant ice under his feet, uses it to skate at incredible velocity, then dissolves the ice as soon as he passes over it, providing him with a little jet propulsion that makes his land speed comparable to my combat speed. It also keeps the surrounding landscape neat and ice-free.

The cargo terminal's on the other side of LAX, but it doesn't take us too long to find it. We spot a baggage handler who's stuck walking a continuous loop between two glowing energy portals. Cute trick. I use my powers to dispel the portals, and then use telepathy to get the necessary information from the baggage handler. The plane's filled with supercomputer parts.

"It's in take off. Runway six," the handler informs us. John's ready to pursue it, but I don't have a clue where Runway six is, so I take a few seconds to get additional instructions.

That's when the sprint starts. It's a good twenty seconds to the runway, even at our speed. I have to shout several times to get freight handlers out of our path, and I inform the control tower that it'd be a good idea to stop all takeoffs and landings for a few minutes. We arrive at the runway and spot a larger than expected jet plane starting to take off. "Damn," Permafrost says. "Too late. Maybe we can find some way to track it?"

I grab Permafrost and head skyward. "Does this work?"

"No. I said track it, not catch it." Permafrost says, mocking me, and himself. "I hate it when people trump my ideas with good ones. Why can't people just be satisfied with mediocrity?"

"Don't worry. There's plenty of mediocrity in this country to go around," I say.

"But I want some now," Permafrost says in a mock whine.

"Let's hope there's some waiting for us on the plane," I remark. Fuck, I'm starting to feel like his straight man.

"Set me down on the landing gear," Permafrost instructs.

"I can probably phase through the hull."

"Good for you. I'll just transform into a cold mist and work myself through the superstructure until I reach the hold. Then I'll go transparent until you make your move," Permafrost says.

"Hold your action until I say the word 'buttercup,'" I say. "Then make your move."

"Buttercup?" Permafrost says. "Well, if you say so... sugarlips."

"Fuck you," I reply with a huge-ass smile. Permafrost gives a hyena-like laugh. We continue flying until we reach the plane. Permafrost gets on the landing gear (just as they're being raised), transforms himself into cold mist, and insinuates himself into the craft. I just fly through the bulkhead.

The plane is packed full of computers. They're working too, thanks to Electron, who's using her powers as a conduit and an energy source.

"Calculating pi to the last digit?" I quip. Fuck, that was stupid. What a stupid thing to say. The Porter's four-color bullshit must be getting contagious.

Electron gulps, and vanishes into a computer again. That's one way to avoid a shit-kicking.

I get ready to smash the nearest computer (taking careful note which computer Electron used - I don't want to kill her by accident) when the Porter emerges from the cockpit with a frightened pilot, roughly grabbed, in tow, his arm around the peon's neck. "Omega!" he shouts in a James Bond villain voice. "I see you're one of the persistent ones."

"Porter!" I gasp. "I see you're one of the goddamn stupid ones!" I quip back. "So any chance you'd fill in the holes in your masterplan and tell me what the fuck is going on?"

"Why I'd be glad to!" the Porter exclaims. At least he's honestly dumb. "That's the best part of the Game. What do you need to know?"

"I know about the codes, and the unlocking mechanisms you stole, but why all this hardware? And why'd you need Core?"

"The mechanisms have a failsafe code that needs to be entered before we can initialize the key devices. Unfortunately, all codes are safe in a vault somewhere at the Pentagon; they're not even stored in a computer. We can calculate the failsafes and get around this impediment."

"A failsafe for a failsafe device," I remark. "Interesting."

"Once in a blue moon, the American military does take sensible precautions," the Porter remarks. "Irritating buggers."

"But it takes a lot of computing power to find the failsafe code?" I say.

"That's an understatement, my boy," the Porter says in a patronizing tone. "You need to process all possible combinations for a sixteen digit code, input them, and verify them. However, the combination of the supercomputer parts and Electron's abilities provide that power."

"Why not just take the crate, bring it to a supercomputer at your base, and process the data when you've arrive?" I ask. "That'd be a lot safer."

"It would indeed, but we're on a timetable, boy," the Porter says. "It won't take long for the army to adjust their systems so that these keys are useless, even after we've cracked the failsafes. We need to get these devices primed and into the hands of our agents as quickly as possible. It would have been better if Core had been available; then we could simply put everything in a huge trailer, and Core could have used his powers to transport the trailer underground and dig us a tunnel directly to our destination. But Core disagrees with the goals of the Terra Pax, so he declined to accept our mission. The transport airplane -- and the Zebra -- was the best we could do on short notice."

Things seem to be falling into place; fortunately, the Porter was able to get through his exposition without too much self-serving ranting. "So how much was Terra Pax paying you for this operation?" I ask.

"It's unseemly to talk numbers, but in this case there's nothing to talk about. Humanity has a short attention span. I owe it to my grandchildren to give the world a wake-up call." He pauses. "I am normally an opportunist, but today, I am an activist. I did it for nothing. For the children."

How many fucking atrocities have been committed in the name of kids? I shake my head in disgust. "Well, anyhow, it's over," I say. "Give yourself up."

"I agree that the plan is over," the Porter says. "But I hardly see the need to give myself up, given that I can teleport away from you any time I feel like it." He tips his hat at me. "I don't think we'll be meeting again, and please try not to take this failure personally."

"I won't." I promise. "It's all part of the Game, isn't it?"

"Of course," the Porter says confidently.

"Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you couldn't teleport away?" I ask.

"I don't know," the Porter says. "I don't like to think about such things."

"Why don't you try using your powers now... asshole." I smile. His eyebrow lifts up in surprise and he attempts to use his powers. A portal begins to form, and then abruptly fizzles as I concentrate on it. All the smugness disappears from the Porter's face. I wish I'd thought of this trick earlier. Just a simple use of my mojo to disrupt any teleportation in the area.

The Porter sighs, then a gun appears in his hand -- guess he could still teleport little shit, although a .357 ain't exactly petite. He holds it against the pilot's head, whose eyes are bulging like he's already been shot.

"I guess you've answered that question," I tell the Porter.

"I really regret this..."

"Spare me the bullshit, Porter," I snarl. "You've been shitting on the world for twenty years, and now finally have to stick around and smell what you've being doing. The only fucking reason you've been willing to play your precious 'Game' is because you're playing with a stacked deck. Take that away from you, and you're just another thug -- buttercup."

"Buttercup?" the Porter says. "That's so sweet."

"Yeah, 'Sugarlips' is like that." Permafrost says, congealing from mist into a man, appearing out of mid-air. Fuck, I wish he'd attempted an ambush. I was really hoping he could sneak up on the Porter from behind and strip the gun away, or turn it into a 'gunsicle,' or do something cool with his powers to it. (No pun intended on n my end, either.)

"Two young bucks!" the Porter exclaims. "I am deeply honored."

"The honor's all ours," Permafrost says. "How'd you like to put down the gun and sign some autographs?"

"I don't think so," the Porter says.

"Darn!" Permafrost mocks himself in a really whiny voice. "None of the villains ever fall for my tricks. Is it because I'm too obvious?"

"It's because you're Canadian," I say. "Your whole fucking country sucks when it comes to subtlety."

"Oh dammit, you're right," Permafrost admits. "Of course we're pretty good at other things." His posture straightens, and he signals that he's not playing around anymore. He makes direct eye contact with the Porter. "Like knowing when a villain is bluffing."

"Do tell?" the Porter says.

"You've had a twenty year career as a supervillain, and you've never shot anyone. Why would you start now?" Permafrost says, coldly.

"He's also gone twenty years without being captured," I say. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, John?"

"Absolutely, Tombo," Permafrost says. Tombo? Whatever. "I'd be willing to bet that Mr. 'Night and Day' here doesn't have the guts to pull the trigger. He's all talk, no action."

"Don't be so sure," the Porter warns.

"But I am. C'mon, Porter, blow your hostage away," Permafrost goads. "Do it!"

"Uh, I really wish he wouldn't," the pilot remarks.

John and I exchange glances, and there's something reassuring about the look on my partner's face. I decide to take the lead. "You know, I've never seen a man's brains explode out of his skull before," I say. "It would take a very special man to pull the trigger at such a close range. You'd have a ringside seat for the show, watching the grey matter make interesting patterns on that far wall."

"Ew!" Permafrost says, almost holding his nose.

"That's not all," I smile like the complete son of a bitch that I am. "You'd be feeling the warmth of his blood as it sprays out the remains of his skull and onto your fingers. You've looked down on all those violent supervillains over the years -- but now you'll finally understand how they feel. All their insane urges will become crystal clear..."

The Porter looks absolutely disgusted, but before I can really gross him out, the pilot (who may be a Terra Pax stooge or just some poor son of a bitch who's been caught in the middle of this fuck-up; you can never tell who's who when somebody's playing the hostage game), decides to choose the worst fucking moment possible to panic. I'd say he screamed like a woman, except most women who I know are pretty brave, not cowards with shriveled gonads and an irritating nasal squeak. The pilot struggles out of the Porter's grip, and the startled villain responds by repeatedly pulling the trigger.

Nothing happens.

"You know, it requires a lot of heat to get a bullet to leave the chamber of a gun." John says. "All it'd take would be a really small field of intense cold to stop a gun from discharging. Of course, since I come from a country where you don't have a constitutional right to bear arms..."

"You mean they don't let you guys do that north of the border?" I interrupt, barely able to keep myself from laughing, but doing my best to play it straight.

"No. No bear arms. Or moose arms. Everyone's a fascist up there," John says.

"I thought you were socialists," I reply.

"We're both," Permafrost replies. "But as I was saying, since I'm only a Canadian, and you big, bad Americans know a lot more about firearms than I do, maybe I'm wrong and your gun actually will fire." He holds his ear, pretending to listen for the sound. "Well, I'm waiting..." he says in a tone that practically screams Jim Carrey.

The Porter bristles at the insult. "By the way, Porter, you're under arrest," I say. "The Game is over."

A tear slowly etches down the Porter's cheek, and he seems to age twenty years in just a few seconds. I've never seen a more unhappy look on a person's face in my life.

The pilot (who turned out to be just an innocent stooge) manages to land the plane back at LAX. The press get so close to us on arrival that I'm surprised they don't fuck us. John is pretty happy. There's no mention of the potential nuclear nightmare, but there doesn't need to be -- just capturing the Porter, and ending his twenty year uncaptured streak, is enough to get us a banner headline in the Los Angeles Times, and smaller headlines on the front page of every other major paper in the country.

It also gave Nike the perfect excuse to hire both of us, rather than break up such "an obvious winning combination." Man, did the press ever suck their corporate cock, praising them for such a fucking "wise decision."

After the announcement, John and I fly over to Griffiths' Park, one of the few stretches of green in Southern California. John likes the green. He wants to go some place where we can get together in private and have a talk. So we go on top of a large hill and discuss our powers, our "origins," and a whole bunch of other shit. John's a nut, but he's a fucking funny nut. He was 14 and working as a gofer at some Alberta oil field, a summer job, when he was chosen by an Eskimo god as their bridge to the modern world.

"Innu. Inuit. Not 'Eskimo.' That's debased French," John says.

According to John, there are a dozen or so "Innu" spirits crawling inside his head, giving him a lot of power, especially over the cold. We spend about an hour or so demonstrating what we could do to each other. We talk about girls (John has two sorta girlfriends back home, no one as close to him as Rachel and I used to be) and sports (he loves hockey, likes football, and also played a little rugby and curling; he's not into wrestling). We compare our families (he has two older sisters and his parents work at a penitentiary; his dad's a "corrections officer", and his mom's a nurse). We talk about the superhero experience (John is the biggest name in Northern Canada and most of Western Canada, and unlike me, the press fucking loves him). I get the impression there's a bit of an unhealthy ego under that mocking façade, but not a fucking hint of jealousy. He says he was first impressed with me when he saw me lift the fucking giant robot.

In short, we do a lot of male bonding almost immediately. Although I warn him that I'll kick the shit out of him if he fucking says "this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

"You know, Tombo," John says. "There's one superhero tradition we haven't done yet."

"Fuck that," I boast. "I shit on superhero tradition."

"No way, Tombo. We gotta do it," John smirks. "Whenever two superheroes meet for the first time..."

"Oh shit, you aren't talking about The Obligatory Fight?" I protest. John nods evilly. I sigh. He takes a few steps back, spreads his arms, and the sky fucking opens up and dumps about six inches of snow all around us in a few seconds. Fuck!

"Show off." I scowl.

"Hey, we need ammo," John says. Then he bends over, grabs a cluster of snow, rolls it into a ball, and hurls it straight into my face.

It stings. It's also my fucking cue. Grinning just as wide as John and twice as nasty, I bend down, grab my own chunk of snow shot, and turn it into the nastiest snowball that the city of Los Angeles has ever seen in summer. And the fight's on.

The snowball fight lasts five minutes. John cheats a little by reinforcing his side with animated snowmen; I counter by telekinetically transforming his snow fort into an explosion of snowballs that pretty much wipes out everything at ground zero. Fuck, did I ever laugh my ass off. This is almost definitely the best fight of my entire superhero life: no villains, no hostages, no fucking banter, just a pair of overgrown kids playing a game, a real game. I wish all my fights were like that.

"You okay?" Steve says, in a quiet, troubled voice. After thirty anxious seconds, Michael Carleton regained consciousness. It took all of his concentration to avoid shaking. The Black Priest. Holy fucking shit, the Black Priest...

"I dunno," Michael said. "I think Tommy was subconsciously resisting. I couldn't make any progress."

"Everything went black for a second, and I thought I saw something," Steve Doerksen observed. "A figure in black. Everything was shadow, but I thought I saw..."

"That's just a trick of the spell. It's real common when someone experiences a divination for the first time. The subconscious mind makes you want to see something, even when it isn't there."

"I was just hoping I could help..." Steve sighs. "We could help. What about Tom?"

"He'll be fine. This guy isn't just resistant to magic -- it toughens him. He was built to take it."

"Tom's about the toughest guy I know, but sometimes I worry about what goes on in his head," Steve says.

"His closest colleague was kidnapped, he's been framed for multiple murders, his ex-girlfriend has been killed, and he's lost his job. I'd be real fucked up too if all that happened to me in just a few hours," Michael says.

"I know. It's so nuts. Why him?" Steve says. "He can be a pain, but that's no reason for somebody doing this amount of crap to you."

"I know. God, I fear for the morning." Michael sighs. "Why don't you have a rest? You had a long flight and a longer day."

"I'm not tired."

"Kids," Michael says with a laugh. "He'll need you tomorrow. Get some rest."

Michael patted Steve on the back and watched him as he retired to a guest room. Handsome kid, a lot like his friend. Fuck, those farmboys are so cookie cutter it's scary - like inbreeding without the horrible Appalachian side effects. Doerksen did admit to Michael (after several beers) that he and Tommy were distant cousins, Steve's grandfather eloped with Tommy's great-aunt after getting her pregnant out of wedlock, which sparked a really nasty family feud between the Doerksens and the Champions that hasn't ended yet. Local history is so much fun.

But Michael had other things to think about. Why in the name of fucking God did it have to be the Priest? Why did that miserable asshole have to come back into his life, before he was ready to face him again? He'd never be able to tell Tommy, of course. Way too many questions, Way too many wounds to be reopened. Way too many ways it could screw up his plans.

"Farmboy, I'm really, really sorry," he said in a whisper, looking down on the sleeping Omega from whom he'd borrowed the power for the spell -- let's hope the Priest detected only the power and not the hand that guided it. "But you are so shit out of luck it isn't funny."
 

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