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#4
DEC 13 |
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“With a Target Painted On My Back”
“You’ve reached the mayor’s office, Mayor Samuel Day Harrison speaking. Go.”
There was silence from the other end of the line, which clearly made the mayor upset and when he shifted to sit forward in his seat, his aides took note. Still, more silence. “Listen, I’m not sure who...,” but he stopped himself there and snapped his fingers as he gestured to the desk outside his open office door. “Margaret, who is this? Why did you patch through someone who’s not there.”
“He said it was urgent, that you knew who he was when he said ‘the one thousand’... whatever that means.
Mayor Harrison blinked and rushed to his feet, the receiver still at his ear. He snapped again but this time directed them to the aides that were cluttered about his office. “Out, out! Out! All of you, get out,” he demanded of them. They looked bewildered but complied quickly. “Shut the door behind you as you go. This is private. Out!” With the last bark they were gone, and the door shut on the way. “Okay, we’re alone,” Samuel breathed as he slumped into his chair.
“I know.”
The mayor wasn’t sure why that irked him so much. The fact that he was getting this call at all was cause to be annoyed and to be thrust into the kind of compromising position that it likely meant. However, it was the cold robot tone that had finally spoke that got to him the most. “You know, calling me at work like this puts you at jeopardy as well.”
“Impossible. There is no way anyone can trace this call. I have seen to that.”
“My superiors aren’t going to like that you are calling in this favor now,” warned Harrison.
“I care not what they like. You will do as I say, or your superiors will not get what they need from me.”
Samuel frowned there, as he knew the importance of the deal, as he was well aware of everything that was now riding on it. It wouldn’t be for months, maybe years, that what they had obtained would prove to be useful, but any weapon of a secret war, it would have to wait it’s time. “I still don’t understand why the only payment you asked for was an unconditional favor from me. In the exchange for what you’re giving us, you could have asked for diamonds equal to the size of your moon. So why just me?”
“Today, you shall find out.”
Samuel didn’t like that answer, calmed himself and tried something else. “I’m doing good work here. I’m actually liking this job. I can do a lot here.”
“We both know it won’t matter.”
Samuel slammed his hand on the desk, his desk. Nothing was going to sway his caller, he knew it, and...well…there was some truth to what he was being told. In the long run, be it now or later, he was going to be called upon for some task, be it this or from his superiors. Whatever he accomplished as mayor was unimportant as it would all be forgotten one day. “Mayor of the one of the largest cities on this planet, let alone in the United States. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
“Considering.”
“Considering,” Samuel consented with a sad chuckle. Then it was his turn to fall silent.
A rare moment of compassion came from the other end. “Before this, what were you?”
Samuel Day Harrison was quiet for a moment, thinking on a life that felt like it was lifetimes ago, and yet so vivid that he’d never forget it. He could still taste the fires, still remember the way everything he had known became smoke, and he could still feel how his fluids churned to bound to those memories.
“I did not mean to bore you.”
“No,” the mayor shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I was a butcher.”
“Then I chose well, in the deal. What I need you to do requires those skills.”
Samuel Day snorted. He knew what he was being called to do. There was no escape now, not that he wanted for one. The enemy he was being sent against was not his own, but it was a job like any other that he had been tasked to do before and likely again. He would do this one well, especially since the price of it ‘paid’ for something so useful in the war that was coming, giving him all the purpose Harrison needed. “Who do you want me to kill?”
“Seriously, don’t the two of you have somewhere else that you could be?”
“Three, sir,” corrected Skeets.
He pushed back from his desk, as clearly he wasn’t going to get any more work done at the moment. He had a whole pile of it, and more by the moment. Apparently his predecessor had died a couple of days ago, and thus there was a slight backlog to get through, but in general now running such a multi-faceted business like Kord Enterprises was no small feat. The company had a vast array of complex scientific endeavors it was chasing across a broad spectrum of all scientific fields. If Max hadn’t of had good cause to accept the offer when Ted brought it to him, he likely wouldn’t have accepted, just for the busy, busy, busy headache that it entailed. “And then there’s the two of you,” Max Lord suddenly shared aloud.
That perplexed everyone as it seemed to come from nowhere, but Blue Beetle rolled with it. “We just wanted to see how you were settling in. And I wanted to make sure the repairs were holding.”
“Yes, well, I’m fine now. See? Perfectly good and busy. Don’t I look busy to you? Busy running the company you asked me to head up, mind you, Ted,” Max reminded.
“Yeah, well,” Booster cut in, and not having anything immediately on hand to say, launched into what came to mind. What was still on his mind... “Maybe there’s...bugs...in your operating system, or something.”
“There’s no ...sigh,” Max groaned and brought a hand to his forehead. “I’m fine, thank you, Ted. And still very much a robot. Yes, that happened. And Skeets, thank you too. Now seriously, I have a lot to do. While Dr. Chanel was fantastic at the growth aspects of Kord, gaining funding and personnel in moves that can only be described as amazing, what he failed to do was keep any kind of accurate inventory of everything that is happening here. Or even a solid physical inventory of items and people. Nearly overnight and then rapidly building for the last five years, Kord Enterprises has gone from obscurity to something of a financial beast worth worrying about, and why I don’t know, but I agreed to take that on.”
“Thank you,” Beetle snuck in.
“Which means,” Max sighed again, “while there’s a lot of money here, and even more to be made, there’s a great deal that needs to be properly catalogued and tracked. All stuff that would be better done without either of you here.”
“We could help,” offered Booster.
“Well, you already did by putting an end to that sorry excuse of a video game company you started. Blue and Gold? That was a nearly crippling drain on the company resources, as it didn’t produce anything of credit. Ever. You’re saving the company money by making it into the swanky little pad you have going there.”
“You’ve seen it?” Beetle perked up, curious. “If you needed your space up here redecorated...”
“I’ve seen the expense reports on what you spent renovating everything,” Max explained, which was enough to squash Ted’s enthusiasm.
“I have several programs that would allow me to be of assistance,” threw in Skeets. “I’ve mastered a number of spreadsheets, like the ones for keeping track of Booster’s ties, and then the one for his socks...”
“I didn’t mean to dump you into something more than you could handle,” Blue hopped back into the conversation there, and sought to misdirect the topic some as he noticed that particular vein throb on Max’s forehead. “You were babbling when we were putting you back together how you didn’t have anything, so I thought...”
That’s as far as Blue Beetle or Booster Gold got, as Max stood up from his desk, came around to the side that the pair were sitting at and fished out his wallet. He then produced a twenty dollar bill that he held for a moment, as he considered who was the most responsible one to give it to, including Skeets. Finally, he gave it to Beetle. “Go see a movie, on me.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” Booster ignored the bill as Max’s offer gave him cause to spring to his feet. “We’re totally going to be making one, and well, we could use a manager for it!”
“Booster, he’s already busy!”
“Sir, I’m not sure that the additional duties with what he has already would be wise at this time.”
“Ugh,” Max frowned and ground his teeth. “If I accept, will it get the two of you to leave?”
“Yes!” Booster answered before the other two could.
“Then deal,” Max sighed and dropped back into his seat. With all three of them looking at him, he howled, “Get out! Shoo! Go!”
The trio never made it to the movies.
“We’re here to see the mayor!”
“I’m happy for you,” replied the police officer stationed in the lobby without looking up from the paper that she was reading through. Lots of people milled about or went to and from the building, but she was stationed promptly at the information desk just inside the door. Judging by her squat form and sedimentary position, she hadn’t moved from her chair since her shift began. Her poorly bunned hair was indicative of how much she cared about her work, as the pair of heroes (and robot) waited on their side of the desk for further assistance that wasn’t coming.
“Euhm,” Blue Beetle cleared his throat. “We got a call on the, please don’t laugh, Bug-phone and it seemed rather urgent so we rushed right over.”
“Un-huh,” she continued without looking up or really listening.
“Yeeeeeah,” Booster scowled as he leaned on the desk. “We were on our way to a movie when the call came in. Imagine our surprise when it was the mayor himself and he said he needed to see us on a ‘Matter of great importance’ and all of that. Surely he mentioned something that we’d be showing up.”
“Nayh.”
The boys looked at each other and Booster dared to speak again. “Well, can you at least point us in the right direction?”
That caused the officer to lower her paper and meet Gold’s look with a rather cross one of her own. “Who comes to see the mayor and don’t know his office is on the sixth floor?”
What patience Booster had managed to muster evaporated, but before he could make an outburst, Beetle stepped in. “I think we can take it from here. Thanks for pointing us in the right direction. We’ll see ourse– ”
“Uh-huh,” was all she gave as she went back to her paper.
“Allow me to lead the way,” Skeets chimed in as he took point and zipped forward, which left Blue and Gold to follow.
Booster was quick to follow, crossing the floor to follow his robot friend. “You sound ... tense. You okay, little buddy?” He looked back to make sure Beetle was okay and saw that Ted had wandered off a little to examine one of the four reliefs, each with its own granite sculpture. “I didn’t think anything about it before now, but being in here, seeing this place...there’s something familiar about it.”
“There is...something familiar about this location, from the fragments that were sent to me.”
Booster swallowed, and spared a quick glance back to Beetle, to see that he had moved on to check out one of the other sculptures. Each represented one of the principal city concerns and, with parks down, Ted had moved on to look at the one for schools. That meant Michael only had playgrounds and water supply to occupy his pal while he tried to sneak in a quick, very private conversation with his robotic friend. “You mean from the cryptic message that was sent to you from a temporal rift, with the jumbled images?”
Skeets bobbed in place and turned to study more of the central lobby. “The ones that depicted the demise of...” but he stopped as he turned to look in Ted’s direction.
Beetle noticed that both Booster and Skeets was looking in his direction and so came to join them. “What are you two talking about?”
Before either could reply there was a call from behind them. “Gentlemen, you made it!” Mayor Harrison descended the marble stairwell towards the lobby, and flanked on either side by a collection of his aides. He was a tall man, dark-haired and ruggedly handsome. The descendant of a former Chicago mayor, the first native-born mayor at that, he had swept the city off its feet and governed well. His approval rating was in the high eighties. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I have an offer to make the two of you that you’d just die for.”
As Booster Gold and Blue Beetle moved forward to meet the mayor at the bottom of the stairs, Skeets remained in place and processed a great many things. This is something that he and Michael hadn’t shared with Ted yet, for obvious reasons, and concerning the odd nature of the transmission he had been fed it had been something easy to dismiss. Yet, there was something about being in this place and now and with...Skeets looked up in time to see Mayor Harrison smile and reach to share Beetle’s hand first.
“WARNING! WARNING!” Skeets didn’t even realize he was doing it before he zipped forward in a sudden panic as something overtook his senses (and programming). He charged in even as Blue and Gold turned to look at him, clearly alarmed themselves and then even more so as numerous armaments extended from Skeet’s hull. “DANGER! ALERT! WARNING!”
“Just what is the meaning of this?!” Mayor Harrison wanted to know.
That’s when Skeets shot him in the face.
There was a sudden panic with people scattering in all directions and most of them ran for the closest exit, including the stationed office by the main entrance. Several of the aides remained and were ready to charge forward but as the smoke cleared, they stood still as they realized the mayor also still stood. Where Samuel Harrison’s attractive face had been now was a sickly green, boney, alien-looking skullface with an elongated back of the head, with jagged fanged teeth and a flat pitted nose. Deep wells with hard pupil-less red eyes were above the more angular, normally-seated red eyes that now narrowed to very angry slits. “So much,” the exposed mayor rasped, “for the element of surprise.”
“Skeets, what did...what are...” Beetle stammered.
“No time for that now! Skeets, blast him again!”
“On it, sir,” Skeets answered Booster and powered up to fire on the mayor again.
“Enough of that,” snarled Harrison as he reached out towards Skeets. As he did, the clothing and skin cracked, peeled and shred to expose more of the same thick green alien hide, complete with talon-like clawed fingers. Skeets made a gurgled noise and then a scrunched one as his shell crinkled. “I am unsure how you knew, little machine, but I do not care to find out.” Skeets made a sickening sound and then sparkled as he collapsed as though he was a soda can that had just been crushed. Skeets then fell to the floor with a churning and what now stood for mayor Harrison’s face almost seemed to smile.
“Skeets!” Booster dashed forward to his downed buddy, but Harrison kicked outward and caught Gold before he got there. “Ack,” he muttered as he went flying from the force of that blow, and Booster tumbled through the air until he smacked into the granite sculpture to represent schools.
“Who, or what, are you?” Beetle had to ask as he leaped back when the mayor-thing took a downward swing at him. Blue narrowly avoided the strike which splintered the flooring he had been standing on, which let him get a sense of just how physically strong his sudden opponent was. “And what have you done with the Samuel Harrison?!”
“I am the mayor,” the creature shot back as it slashed for Beetle’s chest with the other hand. Like the one before it, as it extended the shell of cloth and skin broke way to the more sinister clawed arm underneath. Blue managed to backpedal away from those claws and when the mayor then rushed him, he leapt up to vault over the thing. “Or I was,” it spat out bitterly and turned to square off with Beetle as he landed. “I guess after this, once more I shall be only known as Carver.”
Once more the former mayor came at him in a rush, far quicker than a man should move which caught Beetle off guard. Carver grabbed Blue and spun to both slam and then pin the hero uncomfortably to the marble stairs, and then drew back his other arm. Those claws extended and the once-mayor prepared to strike.
“Wait!” Blue struggled, but the thing overpowered him easily. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Actually, I do,” hissed Carver. “I am bound to slay you and your companion. You see, you are the price to be paid. Your deaths will seal the contract that will herald the deaths of the enemies of our people. When your blood has been spilled, the Daemonites will possess the means to our retribution. Begging for your life will gain you no sympathy, no reprise, as you cannot comprehend the machinations at play. Your death will be painful, delightful (for me), but not without purpose.” With that, Carver drew back his free hand again and...
“NOOOOOOO!”
Booster Gold threw himself into the fray as he tackled Carver from behind and wrapped his arms around the things face. “No,” Booster growled as he struggled to hold on, as Carver thrashed. This released Beetle, but the alien clutched for the golden hero on his back. “Run Beetle,” Gold shouted and reached to cover Carver’s red eyes with his hands. Then there was a brilliant flash as Booster fired his energy bolts directly into his foe’s eyes, and while Carver howled in pain Booster yelled louder, “Now, go! Save yourself!” When Blue didn’t immediately take off, Gold yelled louder. “RUN!”
Beetle scrambled to his feet and dashed up the stairs, as he reasoned that Booster’s forcefield would spare his pal from harm and, besides, with some distance he would be able to think of something. He reached the top and spared a quick glance down to see how Booster was fairing, which wasn’t well. In fact, Carver had his hands around Gold’s throat and was squeezing strong enough that he choked even inside his forcefield. Blue had to do something. “Hey, ugly!” He took aim with BB gun and shot two blasts of his air pellets, taking Carver right in the nose.
The alien howled and shook as the shots took its breath away. Carver raged, shook and extended, stretching to his full form as what remained of his clothing and skin shred away. What was revealed was a full green, thick alien hide, one marred with a crisscross of well-earned scars. “Wow, you really are ugly,” Beetle gasped.
Carver turned and howled again while he threw Booster at Beetle, who proved to be unprepared to catch his friend as they went down in a heap. Gold grumbled and quickly scrambled to his feet and grabbed Blue along the way. “I think we both should run for it!”
“I don’t think this running away thing is working out for us,” huffed Blue Beetle, as he was out-of-breath, which was beginning to correspond to the lack of space they had left to run. Since the attack in the lobby, Blue and Gold had battled throughout City Hall with Carver always right behind them, constantly threatening death. The heroes had given back as good as they had gotten, which meant a good number of broken walls and smashed collateral damage across all eleven floors of the Chicago City Hall. More than once, whole sections or a block of offices were left trashed after the battling had passed through, and there were still fires going on floors two, three and eight.
Blue and Gold had thought that maybe Carver had some kind of secret stashed in the mayor’s office and so had made a beeline there, well, as best they could with the alien killer right behind them. The office was on the sixth floor, with was being the key word, as most of the fighting had taken place there. Nothing had been discovered there that could help the duo with their menace, other than the extensive butt-kicking they had received. Now, at least, they had a pretty good idea of all of Carver’s numerous abilities.
They had given Carver the slip on the eighth floor and now were crammed into an elevator as they rode it up to the rooftop. They were almost to the top. “Why are these things so small,” complained Booster. He shifted comfortably. “What was that he hit me with? My head is still ringing.”
Beetle checked his smashed BB gun, but it was still as useless now as it was when it had been broken in the mayor’s office. “Best guess? A mix of speed and chronokinetics, where he slowed you down and then burst in to wallop you multiple times before your field could adjust, since he slowed it down...but did you see when I went to kick him in the back?”
“Yeah, you passed right through. So, phasing too. It’s like we’re fraking fighting the Martian Manhunter.”
“You felt it too? That strange creeping in the back of your mind when we were fighting?”
“Yeah,” frowned Gold as he looked up to see that they were almost to the roof. “Telepathy, and telekinesis when he crushed Skeets.” That made Booster mad and he clenched his hands tight. That’s when the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. “Who knows what other crazy powers this day-mon-whatsit has.”
“Cerebral tracking,” rasped Carver, who stood on the open side of the elevator as it opened. Before either man could react, the daemonite lunged forward and grabbed both men to forcibly haul them out into the sunlight. Beetle still had his BB gun in hand and lobbed it into Carver’s face after pushing a hidden button on the base of the hilt. It exploded in the alien’s face and, once again, Carver howled in a mixture of pain and frustration, as he flung the heroes away to favor grabbing his injured face.
The rooftop of the Chicago City Hall was almost serene, a little pool of green among a sea of skyscrapers that surrounded it. It was one of the first buildings to attempt a rooftop garden and the building’s was exceptional, and particularly private as it was off limits to the public. To the east was the fifty story tall Daley Center, which sprawled with its plaza and landmark Picasso statue, which to the north was the Thompson Center, a tower of glass. In the center of it all was the old white city hall, clean and fancy with its marble and bronze, yet somehow dirty, as if overtly suggestive of those that worked here. The gardens covered the entire rooftop and were lush and well-maintained...but all that was about to change as the brawl had moved here. With nowhere else to run to, this would be where it would end.
“Figures,” groaned Blue from the shrub that had broken his fall. He looked up and watched as Carver’s face knit itself back together. “Like I suspected, accelerated healing as well.”
Gold got back to his feet and readied himself as he watched Carver get his bearings back. All Michael could think was what Skeets had said, and what this all meant. If they lived through this, he made himself promise he’d tell Ted about this, finally. However, the thing he feared most was that not happening, that this was the moment his friend was destined to die and there was just no way Booster Gold was going to let that happen. “Well, at the rate he’s patching himself up, I’d say we have about three seconds to come up with a plan, and since we’ve tried everything possible so far, it’s time to get creative.”
“Or desperate.”
“Creatively desperate?”
“Or desperately creative.”
“Not helping,” chided Booster but that was far as he got as Carver rushed him and the two came together in a wrestling clash. As they struggled against one another, Carver suddenly became intangible and Booster stumbled forward through the daemonite. One he was through, Carver became solid again, grabbed the hero with his tail and slammed Gold down to the ground. “Omph!”
That’s when Beetle bounded up, foot extended and kicked the alien across the face. The surprise more than the force took Carver, who stumbled back and then lashed out at Blue, who dodged under the swipe and lunged inward to land a double-punch in the daemonite’s gut. “C’mon, you’ve got to have some kind of weakness!”
“None that you are going to find, human,” growled Carver and swatted at Blue again. This time he caught the hero, and Ted went sailing into the air, far out and away from the rooftop. As he tumbled in the air he drew and took aim with his grappling gun, then fired, right for the center of the alien that had tossed him again. “Hah,” Carver sneered and caught the hook easily and then yanked on the line hard. “Eager to die, are you?”
Yet before a stunned Beetle made it back to Carver, Booster tackled Blue. “Nooo!” The two went down in a tumble, and as they rolled to a stop they found themselves in a spotlight.
Above them a pair of new helicopters circled, with their attention focused on the rooftop below. The fighting had been going on for a while now and it had caused a considerable bit of damage, and thus drawn a lot of attention. Carver looked up as the spotlight moved to him and he stepped remain out of it. “This has dragged on long enough.” Not finding their foe, the light returned its focus to the huddled, hugging heroes on the ground. “As your deaths come you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you have ruined everything I have labored for her, and come to enjoy. I shall return that to you in your executions.”
Blue and Gold struggled to fight back but found themselves telekinetically ‘stuck’ in place and, as they were pinned there, that’s when Carver assaulted their minds. Telepathically he stabbed at them, sending the captive heroes waves of pain laced with terror and even more pain. They screamed.
And then it stopped.
A portal appeared in the sky and from the swirling vortex appeared a figure. She was small, lithe even, clad in a costume of silver and black that bore a stylized badger head design, with silver goggles and wavy long brown hair. Her lower jaw was exposed, her lips drawn to a cheery smile as she leapt forward and drew a device from her segmented utility belt. It was circular with a pointy prong, one that she jabbed into Carver’s chest as she landed right before him.
“Gotcha!”
Without a further word, Carver shimmered, froze and then crumbled away to dust, which the Windy City was quick to claim. The teenage girl looked pleased with herself and tucked the device away. She muttered something, to herself, and then looked up to the portal above her that she had come from. It was collapsing and getting smaller. She started to jump...
“Wait!”
Beetle pushed off Booster and scrambled to his feet, and when the girl turned to face him, he asked, “Who are you?” Gold was up a moment later, rubbing his head, but looking just as curious.
The girl looked unsure, clearly torn or conflicted and almost rushed forward as her arms extended. “No,” she stopped herself. “I can’t.” She looked up and with a wink the portal disappeared.
Before any more questions could be asked, others joined them on the rooftop, and before anyone could blink really, they were surrounded. Security personnel, the former Samuel Harrison’s aides and city officials, all clambered close in a rush to seek to get answers. There was a flurry of questions then, all of them coming in far too fast for anyone to process, least of all the three figures at the center of it all.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, everyone!” Booster had had enough and held up his hands for some quiet. That lasted for all of two seconds, before it all exploded again. Once again, Booster tried to reign in some of the noise and pointed to people to signal that it was their turn. Meanwhile, Beetle looked at the badger girl as there was something familiar about her...and she did everything to avoid those looks. “You, glasses, go.”
The mousy man in front swallowed but then took charge as all eyes fell on him. “Well, ah, what happened to Mayor Harrison?”
Booster turned and pointed to the girl. “She’s the one that did it.”
The girl stepped up and answered easily. “He wasn’t what you thought he was, duh, of course you know that now...ah, you can’t really kill what he was, so I just sent him ...away. Yeah away, that’s the best way to describe it. He’s not coming back.”
“Well, then we need someone else to be the mayor!” One of the aides jumped in unprompted, as he hadn’t been pointed to. However, that was a sentiment that many shared and voiced rather vocally.
“I guess the mourning period is over,” Beetle whispered to the mysterious heroine.
She snorted, just like Booster would have to an aside of his. “More like they are eager to have someone to blame, or tell them what to do,” she gave back in her own aside.
“Heh,” Beetle chuckled under his breath.
Booster turned and gave the pair a ‘what are you talking about without me?’ look and decided it was unfair that they be spared while he suffered. Ironically, that’s exactly when someone stepped forward as if to follow him and pointed. “Them! They’re heroes, they could do it!” He clearly pointed at Booster Gold and Blue Beetle.
“Ugh,” Booster visibly winced. “See, what you...ah, what’s your name?”
“Ah, Badger. The Badger,” she answered up as she looked nervous.
“Well, I guess we have the Badger to thank for this mess.”
She winced. “I’m sorry, dads.”
Epilogue.
Sometime after Booster and Beetle got past pointing and Badger got past covering her mouth for letting that cat out of the bag, and someone brought forth a very dented but still very-much-alive Skeets (who kept saying ‘Ouch’), the deputy mayor approached the heroes and discreetly informed them of the news. Their services were not required, that he would in fact become the mayor as that was procedure, and that no one in actual charge thought that having a hero, or a pair of them, in charge of a city was a wise idea.
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To Be Continued...
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