2.4 Assault on Downtown

Downtown was on fire.

Jack Flash looked at the flames in his hands, but he could do nothing about it.

The Dogpack were insane. He wanted only to stop the Cabinet before they could retake power over the Divide. The Dogpack wanted the same, but they were willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives to accomplish their goals.

He knew he couldn’t stop them. He was powerful, but not powerful enough to take either the four powered members or their hundreds of dawg-soldiers. I started this anarchy. It’s on my head. But if all these people are going to die today, than I am sure as hell going to make sure Mr. Mayor goes with them.

“You stupid fucks!”

Jack Flash turned to see Witchqueen’s portal close behind her. Matrix, her cyborg lover, stood beside her and it was his voice that rang out.

“You fuckers are going to come and burn down my fucking town?” Blades unsheathed from his finger-tips, each three inches long and razor sharp. Pitbull and Bulldog were unfazed by the threat, as they charged in, their dawgs following.

Jack Flash turned his attention away from them. Neither the Dogpack nor the Cabinet was his major concern.

No, he was arriving right now.

Mr. Mayor swooped down over the crowd and landed only feet away from Jack Flash. His blue eyes glowed as the aura faded around him. His body shifted from flesh to metal, and Jack Flash found himself standing only steps away from a solid steel monster who wanted him dead.

“You’re a damn fool,” Mr. Mayor said. “You know you can’t hurt me. Your fire doesn’t hurt me and I doubt any of these fools you call allies can do anything either. So leave now or I will take action against your territory as well as the puppies’.”

“I can’t do that, Mayor. This needs to end tonight.”

“Have it your way, Jack. But I’m no monster. You have been a worthy enemy and I will regret ending your life today.”

Jack lighted up his full flame aura. His clothes burned away as his entire body was engulfed by fire. He couldn’t cause any damage to Mr. Mayor, but he sure as hell planned to make the man hurt.

Mr. Mayor charged towards him, but Jack leaped in to the air. His jump took him up several stories. He knew Mr. Mayor couldn’t follow without dropping his metallic form. From his vantage point, he could see Pitbull swing his chain at Witchqueen, only to have the weapon pass through her as she went intangible. He saw Bulldog and Matrix as they traded blow after blow with no noticeable effect on either man. He watched as the people of Downtown took to the streets to take on the invasion of the city by the dawgs.

Chihuahua pulled his barely clothed concubine along by the chain on her neck as the blind man walked in to the midst of the melee. Behind the pair came dozens of canines of all shapes and sizes. They looked almost like some kind of retinue, but far angrier. The dogs were ready to fight, and they immediately started taking their aggression out on the people of Downtown.

Jack reached the peak of his jump and immediately used his flame powers to create a thermal beneath him. This allowed him to slow his descent. Mr. Mayor waited beneath him, ready to catch his prey.

The damn fool doesn’t know he’s right where I want him.

A streak of white and blue struck Mr. Mayor from behind. The metal man stumbled forward at the blow as his attacker came to a stop. Johnny B. Goode looked up at Jack, a dopier grin than usual on his face.

“Keep hitting him!” Jack said as he dropped back down to the ground.

Johnny was a good kid, a simple soul who grew up in the wrong town with the wrong kind of people around him. He was a natural meta, always as exponentially strong as he was slow on the uptake. He could take a beating and dish one out like the best of them, but all he ever wanted was to be hero. He first started to follow Jack around over a year ago. At first he was just a pain, but Jack quickly realized he wasn’t going away. So he did the exact opposite of everything he thought wise and took the kid as a sort of sidekick. He sent Johnny on the easiest of missions, usually the ones that brute force could easily solve. Like kicking the crap out of a would-be ruler that thought he was invincible.

Johnny struck a double handed blow across the back of Mr. Mayor. The concrete splintered beneath Mr. Mayor as his body was driven down. He looked up at Jack as he stood over the injured mayor.

“Keep it up until he’s out, Johnny!” Jack looked in Mr. Mayor’s eyes as he struggled to get to his feet. “Beat him down until he can’t move anymore!”

“But I might hurt him, Jack.”

“He wants to kill us, Johnny. We don’t have time to play nice. Do it!”

Johnny nodded. He drove a boot down in to Mr. Mayor’s back and continued to stomp the man farther in to the ground.

Jack turned back to the rest of the battlefield. He leaped off to help Bulldog against Matrix. This fight was still a long shot, but they might just have a chance now.

*****
In the shadows of a nearby alleyway, the biker known only as Skull Solo watched the battle. He knew he should be out helping his fellow Cabinet members in their fight, but at this point he didn’t much care. His time with the boys was over with now.

“You sure this will work?”

A man in a large, ruffled cloak walked up beside him. The rest of his outfit matched the cloak in audacity if not color. Multiple colors, none matching, all made from various man-made fabrics, mostly polyester. Anyone who saw him would immediately recognize the Gigolo. And any of those people, at least in this part of town would immediately try their hands at killing him.

No one caused more problems for Mr. Mayor than the Gigolo. Nobody.

“Yeah, this will work. With this data I will be able to crippled Downtown and take out Mr. Mayor once and for all.”

“And the money?”

“Twenty million Canadian waiting for you as soon as you hit the border. I’ve got my boys on the outside waiting to smuggle you through the fence.”

Skull pulled the DVD-rom from his vest pocket and placed it in Gigolo’s hand. “Then I guess it’s good doing business with you, boss.”

Gigolo smiled and patted Skull on the back. “Yes it is, my friend. It most certainly is.”

2.3 Death Ray's Return

The din from inside suddenly turned to screams, and Death Ray knew that, like it or not, it was time to bail Bob’s ass out of the fire again.

He rushed back through the kitchen door just in time to see a massive cyborg raise his weapon to strike. At blindingly fast speed, he whipped the ray-gun from his belt and fired.

The blast caught the cyborg’s left wrist and sheered straight through it. Off balance the axe tilted away and sliced through the air just inches from Bob’s skull.

Someone grabbed Ray from behind. He whipped around to see his foe but saw nothing, even as the grip tightened on his shoulders. He suddenly choked as he felt Venus de Milo’s touch burn in to his skin.

He dropped to the floor and gasped at the pain. He let the ray-gun fall from his hand as he reached to his back. He yanked one of Venus’ detached arms from his back and slammed it down against the floor. Across the room, Venus cried out. Ray felt the other hand’s grip loosen and fall away.

His back still burned, but Ray retrieved his gun and climbed back to his feet. Ray shoved his way through the crowd, trying his best to get to Venus before she reached the exit.

A metal fist struck him alongside the head. The blow took Ray off his feet and he fell hard on his hip. His gun fell from his hand and slid several feet away as Wargod moved in for the kill.

Ray swept a foot out but instead of tripping the cyborg, he only managed to bruise his foot against its solid steel leg. Wargod reached down with his remaining hand and grabbed Ray by the throat.

Wargod lifted Ray up by the neck, and at the same time began to crush the life out of him.

Ray silently cursed as he raised his hands up and clawed at Wargod’s face. His fingers caught against Wargod’s raised right optic sensor. Ignoring the pain it caused him, Ray drove his fingers in to Wargod’s fleshy forehead and ripped the bionic eye away.

Wargod roared in pain and confusion. Ray felt the grip loosen around his neck. He took the distraction as an opportunity to bring his legs up. He drove them in to Wargod’s chest and pushed away. He felt his collarbone snap as he yanked free of the cyborg’s grip.

Ray tumbled to the ground and rolled up on to his knees. He reached down beside him and picked up the ray-gun from the floor.

Wargod turned towards him just in time to take the blast from the ray-gun in his remaining optical unit. The cyborg roared in confusion as it lost all vision.

Ray stood up and scanned the room for Venus. He knew she wouldn’t leave without her servant, but he could not see her anywhere.

“Over here!” At the sound of her voice, Ray turned back towards the bar. She stood atop it, but she was not alone. She held an unconscious Bob Cat by the hair, as she stroked his face with her free hand.

“If you don’t want to see your friend’s skin melt from his face, I suggest you drop your weapon.”

Ray grimaced as he lowered his weapon to the ground. Despite all the dumb shit Bob pulled, Ray still loved the kid like a brother. He couldn’t just stand by and let him die.

Wargod moved past him and straight towards Venus as she continued to talk. “We’ve got what we came for, and despite my hatred for both your asses, I really don’t feel like fighting to the death today. So if you let me and Wargod teleport out of here, I will let your little friend here go. Agreed?”

Ray nodded.

Wargod reached Venus’ side. Venus pushed Bob Cat in to Wargod’s free hand. She began to gyrate her hips on stage. A few drunken stragglers began to cheer at the free show.

After several seconds of dancing, a blue glow began to radiate from her skin. It coalesced in to hundreds of particles of floating light. The particles floated away from her and formed a ring. After a few more moments, the ring flashed to life and formed an iridescent blue rift in space/time.

Venus stepped towards the warp, but she stopped short before entering it. “By the way,” Venus said as she turned back towards Ray. “I’m a liar.”

Wargod threw Bob Cat’s limp form through the warp hole. Ray cursed. He reached down and yanked the gun from the floor as he sprinted towards his opponents.

Venus walked through the portal, followed two steps behind by Wargod. Ray pushed himself forward and dove towards the warp-hole.

It closed just as he reached it and Ray found himself hurtling in to the bar. He crashed down hard and felt his arm and several ribs break on the impact.

Ray pulled himself upright. He reached down, grabbed his arm, and shoved the bone back in to place. Damn it, he thought. Why does every night out with Bob have to end up like this?

He dragged himself towards the door. It was going to be a long night. He had a rescue effort to mount.

2.2 Enter The Everyman

Gold-Diggers wasn’t the usual type of joint John Simmons liked to frequent. The beer was good, some of the least watered down in the entire Divide, but the entertainment just wasn’t his style. All the Latinos and black girls just weren’t his style. Give him a blonde with big boobs rather than this booty-shaking any day.

He shrugged the complaint off as he downed another Michelob in two gulps. He tapped on the counter and the bartender hustled another glass out of the tap. At least the drink is good, he reminded himself. And with the tab covered by the locals, the price is definitely right.

John enjoyed his task as the people’s Everyman. He enjoyed getting free drinks, he enjoyed the attention of his fans, and he most definitely enjoyed the ass-kicking his job entailed. For the first time in his life, he felt almost happy with who he was. And it scared him.

He finished his current beer, his tenth of the night, and signaled the bartender for the next. The bartender’s eyes narrowed a bit probably at the thought of all the free beer he was serving, but he served it up anyway. John looked down in to it and contemplated just how much his life had changed since the early days of the Divide.

He didn’t like thinking about that. He took another swig of beer and silently wished Pinaretti would find her way here. The city councilwoman had kept her job from the days back when it was a legitimate position in Detroit right through the reigns of both Mr. Mayor and the Antagonist. She was good at her job, and even those opportunistic, evil bastards recognized it. Unfortunately for them, she also served as his source of information on the comings and goings of the current political circles. In exchange, he happily protected her constituents as judge, jury, and executioner of anyone who would dare attack their thirty-five blocks.

And the sex with Jan was damn good too.

Unfortunately for Everyman, thoughts of Antagonist and sex made him even more depressed. He couldn’t help but think of Barbara, his bitch of an ex-wife. Most guys only had to deal with hatred issues when it comes to divorce, but not me. I have to deal with her, her psycho, city-controlling boy-toy, his minions, and my brainwashed little boy.

Vic, I’m sorry, kiddo. A better dad would never have let that happen to you.

John grunted and downed his beer. He pounded on the bar to get another beer sent his way.

God damn Jan needs to hurry her ass up, he thought.

He felt naked skin brush against his arm as someone sat down in the seat next to him. He glanced over as the new arrival ordered a shot of Jack.

He found himself looking at one of the booty-shakers from on stage, and damn, did she have a lot of it to shake. A light skinned black girl in a garish red wig, a cut-off t-shirt that must have been taped on to her chest, the usual shiny faux-gold jewelry, and a pair of coochie-cutters that left the bottom half of her ass in view of the world.

He thought for a moment about what Jan might look like in that outfit. Damn nice. He grunted and shoved the thought away before returning to his beer.

The stripper apparently wasn’t done with him. She shoved him hard in the arm. Had he expected the blow, John could have easily shrugged it off, but coming from nowhere it pushed him off balance on his stool. He straightened one leg to stop himself from falling to the floor.

He pushed back his first urge to attack and turned to look at the girl.

“Hey, you dissing me and my girls? Cuz I don’t take well to any little white boys coming in here and not at least going to the trouble to make sure me and my sistahs get paid. You feel me?”

“No, I don’t feel you, lady. I don’t give a shit about you or your skanky ass friends. I came here to have a drink. Do you ‘feel that’?”

“Look here, bitch-boy. I don’t care who your ass be, big mucky-muck local hero or whatever. You dis me and my girls and I will kick your ass.”

John leaned over and looked at her shorts. He smiled a drunken grin. “I think it would be way easier for me to hit yours. Now get the hell out of here.”

He started to turn back to his drink just as the girl brought her shot glass hard in to his face. The blow caught him flat-footed and he fell back and out of his seat. He landed hard on his own ample but far less attractive posterior.

“I told you not to treat me and my girls like that. Now I’m going to have to beat your bitch ass.” She yanked one of the charms that dangled from her bracelet free. John watched in shock as the charm suddenly enlarged in to a full-sized nunchaku.

John rolled away as the stripper brought the nunchuks down where he lay only moments before. Tile splintered on the floor. John glanced back towards the bar where his own weapon still sat propped against this side of the table.

His vision came back up just in time to see the nunchuks swing back his way. He threw up his left arm as a sacrifice. He felt the bones shatter as the stripper’s weapon struck. He instantly willed the pain away.

John quickly skimmed his body back across the rapidly clearing floor. Using his good arm, he pushed himself easily back to his feet. His steady drinking now over a minute gone, he could feel his body already erasing its effects. Normally he hated his inability to sustain a good drinking buzz but in this case he thanked his lucky stars.

“Bitch, you just made a big mistake,” he said. He raised his remaining good arm in a boxing stance.

“The name’s A, Everyman. Just A. You remember that when your ass is sitting in the hospital in the morning.” She lunged forward. Everyman shook his head and wished he could have just one night of peaceful drinking.

No, I don’t, he thought. I love this shit.

Once again, it was time to kick a whole lot of ass. Literally.

2.1 Inside the Q-Zone

As Able entered it some distance behind Mouthpiece, the Q-Zone seemed highly overrated. The Q-Zone was famous even outside the Divide for its randomly occurring “wild zones”, areas where reality shattered and the laws of physics had no meaning. Anything could happen in a wild zone. The stories made it seem like the things popped up every few seconds, but Able saw nothing of the sort. He kept his eyes open nonetheless as he focused his metagene detection ability forward.

He could feel several more metahumans in the Q-Zone, but most seemed to be congregated somewhere ahead. As they neared and Mouthpiece slowed down ahead, Able could see the edges of the crowd formed in the Q-Zone’s center. Able scowled. The only thing he liked less than Americans were groups of Americans.

He pushed his revulsion to the side and pushed his way in to the crowd. As he stepped forward he could see a raised dais in the center of the crowd. Mouthpiece joined his compatriots on the dais. Able recognized the Great Question’s commander Conundrum as well as his two dwarfish sidekicks. A woman dressed like an American cowboy hovered a few steps behind Conundrum. Another man, cloaked in a robe covered in druidic runes, stood off to one side.

The crowd cheered their leaders with reckless abandon. Able felt like he had somehow found himself in some B-movie third world country, where the population mindlessly loved their evil leader. Something here wasn’t right; a tingle in his spine reiterated it.

Conundrum listened to a few words whispered in his ear by Mouthpiece. He smiled. Mouthpiece stepped forward and the crowd went quiet to listen to his proclamation.

“The enemy of the people of the Q, the American’s vile agent Mister Midnight, is dead! He fell at my hands only minutes ago. The Great Question takes another victory in the control of our great Divide!”

The crowd cheered with perfect timing.

“No!” A figure leaped from within the cheering crowd. The multicolored rags she wore fell away in mid-air. Beneath it, she wore a white costume that glowed with light as she floated down to the ground on the stage.

“I will avenge my partner’s death. Prepare to die, Mouthpiece.”

The two midgets moved in to protect their leaders, but the man in the druid’s robes stepped forward. “Shock, Awe, hold,” he said to his compatriots.

The midgets dropped back a few steps. The robed man pulled his hood back revealing rows of nappy dreads. “Doctor Dawn, welcome to the Q-Zone. I plead with you; do not throw your life away here today.”

“It’s you that will die today, Antagonist. You and all your kind!”

Antagonist looked around at the members of the Great Question, both on stage and off. “You’re surrounded by hundreds of my men, Dawn. I rule this city while you’re just a pathetic pawn of an inept government. I will give you one more chance, stand down and leave.”

“Never.”

Americans and their showboating, Able thought. If the fool of a woman would have struck from her position in the crowd, Mouthpiece would be dead now. Instead she placed herself in hopeless odds with no chances of victory. Idiot.

Antagonist shook his head. “Great Question, stand down. I will deal with this fool myself.”

Doctor Dawn dove at the Great Question’s leader but Antagonist shot in to the sky above her head. Dawn answered with bolts of concentrated light fired in Antagonist’s direction, but he answered with a raised force field. The lasers ricocheted in to the sky.

Antagonist dropped the field and unleashed his own devastating blast of force that drove Doctor Dawn hard in to the ground. Dawn’s flowing outfit began to glow even brighter. Able shielded his eyes as he felt what came next.

A blinding light filled the courtyard. Able uncovered his eyes as Dawn’s glow faded back to normal levels. She struck out with another series of blasts in Antagonist’s direction. The ruler of the Divide answered with a shield of his own energy.

With a scream, Antagonist unleashed another blast of pure force. Dawn flew back several feet before crashing in to the solid wall to the back of the dais.

Antagonist walked over to Doctor Dawn’s unconscious form and grabbed her by the chin. He took a moment to look at the woman’s face before he turned to Mouthpiece. “She is yours to work with, Mouthpiece. I will expect her ready by this evening’s festivities.”

“Yes, my liege.”

Antagonist turned to the crowd and raised his arms in victory. The crowd cheered.

Savages, Able thought. Americans at their worst. Nevertheless, he was thankful for the display. None of the metahumans here possessed what he needed. As it should be. I would rather die than make allegiance with this body before me.

Able turned and made his way out from within the crowd. He felt one more metahuman presence nearby. Best to check it, then leave this godforsaken hole forever.