Nuklear Age (62 page)

His fingers were still scratchity-scratch-scratching Katkat. “C’mon!” He pleaded to no avail. “Okay. I can do this. I’ve punched through walls and comets and missiles and robots and stuff. Surely I can summon, from within the vast depths of my Nukleadium Core, enough power to resist the cutie wutieness of a kitty belly.” His Plazma Aura flared as he tried to pull away. He leaned away from Katkat, yet his hand managed to continue its belly rub-fest without interruption. With his still obedient hand, he grabbed the unruly one by the wrist and pulled with all his might.
“Herg!
Must. Overcome. Own. Infinite strength. And. Good looks!” Still nothing. “Oh, drat your irresistible hide!” he spat at Katkat.

“Mew?”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“Meow.”

“Honest.”

Katkat purred and squirmed around on his back in utter cat delight.

“Aww geez. No fair.” The Hero pondered for a minute. “Ooh! I’ve got it! Oh Danger: Nukebots. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“We ain’t yer damned slave labor no more, air-breather,” Alpha cursed from within the and rather spacious Danger: Nukebot’s Room which they had the Danger: Nanobots fix up for them during Nuklear Man’s hiatus in jail.

“Aww, c’mon guys! I really need your help this time.”

“Damn monkeys always need our help,” Beta grumbled. He and Alpha poked their metallic heads out their door and said,
“What?”

“I can’t stop scratching Katkat’s widdle belly belly tummy tum, no I can’t. No I can’t!”

“No, I can’t believe I haven’t rejected my latest core mass,” Alpha said, holding onto his stomach area.

“So you can’t stop scratchin’ the cat. Sounds like a personal problem. What do you want us to do about it?” Beta asked.

“Make me stop,” the Hero whimpered. “It’s all like important and stuff.”

“Make him stop, eh?” Alpha surmised. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

Beta gave a nod. “I believe I am.”

“What’cha thinkin’?” Nuklear Man asked even though he really probably would’ve been better off not knowing.

“We’re gonna beat the bajeezus out of you!” They happily announced together.

“That’ll help?”

Beta shrugged as Alpha answered, “It’s
like
help.”

__________

When the hell is Nuke gonna get here, anyway? I can’t keep this going forever
. “Do you really think—”

Superion raised a finger to his lips and gave Atomik Lad a light shush. A moment passed. “There.” He grinned, satisfied. “There. It’s raining.”

Atomik Lad looked out the half-shred tapestry. “You sure about that?”

“Not here. About a mile away. I can hear it. I am more powerful than you can know. I can focus my Negaflux fields to do nearly anything.”

Keep him talking
. “Can you, now?”

“For instance, with a mere thought, I can enhance my vision to transform the infrared into the visible spectrum. Quite convenient in all this bleak darkness, don’t you think?”

Atomik Lad’s Field burst forth with a mind of its own just in time to protect him from a surprise Superior BeamTM. The impact still pushed him back several feet. He cursed himself for not being more alert and then cursed Nuklear Man for not being more prompt. Unfortunately, in that second-long interim, Superion had already reached him and was grasping his Field with both hands. He held him dangling at arms length outside the shattered window.

“All too easy,” Superion taunted.

Atomik Lad could already feel his brain split down the middle. His face contorted with an all-pervading, all-piercing pain that he imagined, in a strangely unattached and distant moment, was like being consumed by fire from the inside out.

Not again.

Not again.

Not again!

“Not again!”

He did the only thing he could. His Field evaporated and he plummeted half numb from the mind-rending agony.

“Clever,” Superion admitted. “But ultimately futile.”

Atomik Lad watched as the lightning splashed sky fell from him. He watched as Superion crashed through floor after floor of his increasingly damaged headquarters. Atomik Lad’s mind wandered.
Stuck between hellish agony and a broad flat surface, my only defense is my only weakness
. He sighed as the air lashed his hair against his forehead.
It was a lot easier when Nuke would just pummel the other guy into submission.

He could feel Superion closing in by the increased rhythm of the usurper’s impacts.
Wait for it, he told himself. Wait for it
.

Smash. Smash. Smash, smash, smashsmashsmashsmash.
Almost there
. Smashsmashsmasmasmasmasmash—
Now
—Atomik Lad’s Field burst forth and the ex-sidekick rocketed straight up. Even with his Field naturally counter acting the G-forces, it felt like he’d left his organs behind. He watched Superion whisk through the fading empty flames left by the Field’s latest birth below him.

“Oh, he’s pissed,” Atomik Lad noted as Superion arced down and up after his quarry leaving a loop of red-purple energy in his wake.

They soared above the rooftops of Metroville with Superion gaining much too rapidly for Atomik Lad’s tastes. In a fit of desperation, he made a feint to the northeast and veered the other way with all the speed he could muster. Sadly, this maneuver, though extremely cunning, led directly to Superion’s chest. The ex-sidekick bounced off and tumbled in the air for a second before righting himself and coming to a stop.

The two crimson clad figures faced each other like old West gunfighters. Lightning crashed between them. Tumbleweed of the sky.
Odd
, Atomik Lad said to himself.
My field actually dampened the light and sound for me
. He noticed Superion didn’t have similar safeguards. It was probably even worse with his enhanced senses. “I should attack now. I should—” he saw a distant golden pinprick behind Superion. “I should wait for a second.”

Superion recovered and laughed. “The god of war hates the man who hesitates.”

“Oh yeah? Check this.”

“Booya!”
Nuklear Man proclaimed with a supersonic body-check. The two titans tore through the air at a steep angle as they sped past Atomik Lad and through buildings until the ground broke their fall several blocks away.

Atomik Lad positioned himself in mid-air to look straight through the offices they’d punched through and at the crater Nuklear Man had just made, its dust still settling. The crater had punched a hole straight through the street into the city’s sewers. The darkness below flashed with alternate golden and red-purple splotches of energy. Atomik Lad closed in cautiously, floating through the angled path his mentor and foe had taken through a handful of downtown high-rises.

Superion and Nuklear Man shot out from under the street at opposite corners of an office building. They hovered above their improvised man holes, capes flapping lightly in a wind that may or may not have been there.

Superion cackled somewhere along the thin line between elation and madness. “So. That Atomik Lad was able to connive behind my back to free you in some kind of last ditch effort to defeat me."

“Uh. Okay.”

“Pathetic. And though I could easily dispatch you with little effort thanks to my incredible power, I will instead choose to prolong your suffering by forcing you to face your own friends and comrades-at-arms who have been completely brainwashed by my Superior CharmsTM!”

“Uh. Okay.”

Superion did a mid-air sidestep to reveal Mighty Metallic Magno Man, Angus, Shiro, Dr. Genius, Delivery Boy, Mail Man, Meter Maid, and the Librarian all wearing official Superion T-shirts. “Oh, the psychological torment!” Superion rejoiced. “Torn between his loyalty to the tenets of justice and his loyalty to his friends, the Hero is damned no matter the action he takes!”

“Uh. Okay.”

The Mindless Mob approached Nuklear Man with a collective snarl of disgust at the idea that something,
anything
could actually be so heinous as to attempt to impede upon the rule of Superion.

“Face it, Nuklear Man,” Superion taunted from behind the throng. “Your Heroic heart cannot stand the thought of bringing pain against those whom you hold most dear. You can’t blast your friends.”

Nuklear Man’s mighty shoulders slumped, his head hung in defeat. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got me right where—PLAZMAAA BEAM!!!” His fellow heroes were scattered like bowling pins by the fusion-ish bolt. The Hero’s voice was soaked in sarcasm as he mocked Superion’s mad ramblings, “I’m not gonna shoot my friends. Dur, dur, dur.”

“Hm. I had not considered that course of action,” Superion admitted.

“Feh, consider this. PLAZMAAA BEAM!!!” The golden stream of energy blazed to Superion.

“SUPERIOR BEAMTM!!!” A reddish blast collided with Nuklear Man’s. Multi-colored sparks splashed from the point of impact.

“Hey!” the Hero protested. “Stop that!”

“You first,” Superion retorted. His beam doubled in size, pushing Nuklear Man’s out of the way and knocking the Golden Guardian down the street into a grocery store.

The Hero leapt out of the produce section feeling a bit weird because of the odd positions his impact made possible with himself and a collection of cantaloupes. “Ahem. Yes, I have kept my dignity.” He straightened his spandex and cape. “‘Cause no one saw me.” He raced out of the shop like a beam of light aimed at Superion. The Sinister Scoundrel dodged into the heavy night air like a shaft of red-purple lightning.

The two living lasers dueled across Metroville’s skyline. Dodging and spiraling like a light speed dance. Arcing and diving, cutting impossible angles around skyscrapers and clashing at speeds just this side of sub-light. Atomik Lad couldn’t keep track of them. First here. Then there. He couldn’t tell the difference between the flashes of natural lightning and the luminal explosions that accompanied every collision of the two titans. Was that thunder or a hypersonic punch?

And then his entire world was filled with a golden-purple blur as they passed by, missing him by inches. Feeling more like a target than a sidekick, an ex-sidekick at that, Atomik Lad descended to street level as the melee raged above him. He mingled with some of the rubble that had been liberated when the battle was waged at low altitude. He passed by, and immediately returned, to two pairs of stubby armored legs sticking out of one ruined store front. He uncovered them and was relieved to find the rest of Shiro and Angus attached to their respective legs in very healthy and natural fashions. He set them against a somewhat intact wall and was considerably more
unrelieved
to find them still wearing Superion shirts. “This could be bad.”

The Surly Scot rubbed his greasy red hair and unkempt fiery beard. His usual Scowl o’ Rage was replaced by the not so usual Scowl o’ Confusion which bore such a resemblance to the former Scowl as to make differentiating between the two an absurdly difficult task.
“Aukgh!”
he groaned.

Shiro teetered slightly, his eyes focusing on something beyond the horizon. “Great Dragon of Mind is in the brainskull, heavy with pain when trees are sleeping time.”

Angus’s Scowl made the jump from Confusion to Rage in record time, “Why cain’t ye ever make sense, ye damn bloody blasted rice-eatin’ moron!?” Angus flinched and held his head to keep the sledgehammer inside it from bursting his proud Scot skull wide open.

“Seeing that spoken, Shiro-kun is to are correcting, hai.”

“Um,” Atomik Lad interjected. “How are you guys?”

“Ah’m bloody
terrible
, ye scrawny punk-arsed son of a—” another flinch cut Angus’s rant short.

“Hm. Well, that sounds like the regular Angus to me,” Atomik Lad said.

“Shiro-kun are being now the pain of calamities.”

“Okay. I guess that sounds like the old Shiro too.”

“What in the name o’ whisakey hit us?” Angus asked as he tried to stand. “One minute Ah’m watchin’ me favorite movie an’ the next thing Ah knows Ah just gots to have me a Suuperion shirt.”

Atomik Lad looked to the sky and grinned. “Looks like Dr. Menace’s plan is working.”

“What?! Dr. Menace! Where?” Angus craned around far too quickly for his throbbing brain to keep up and toppled over from the exertion.

“It’s nothing,” Atomik Lad said. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I’ve got to check on the others Nuke blasted.”

__________

Issue 46 – Clash of the Titans

A Harley with a sidecar on one side and an oversized rifle-cannon-bazooka looking thing on the other roared through the empty streets of Metroville. Its engine gave off a light purple glow against the rain slicked road. The rider wore a pair of shining black wrap around sunglasses. She was cloaked in the flapping black leather of a stylin’ trench coat dotted with beads of water that streaked along its twitching contours. The cycle skid to a stop at a red light, its idling engine gave off a dimmer glow than before. She examined the empty streets. “What am I doing?” Dr. Menace asked herself. She revved the engine and took off into the night toward the Superindustrial Park without the slightest attention paid to traffic signs or signals.

__________

Atomik Lad had gathered the recently emancipated heroes into the also recently half-demolished grocery store. Bottles of aspirin had been distributed among them to handle the headaches that accompanied the loosing of Superion’s mental grasp. A glass bottle shattered somewhere along the liquor aisle.

“Ah toold ye to be carefuul with the whiskey, ye blasted no-fish-cookin’ haggis-brained twit!”

“Shiro are to being small for the job of tall. Not ready for depths of insipid height,” he moaned while sitting in a puddle of whiskey and glass.

“Are ye sayin’ ye be too short for this job?”

“Supaa whiskey action; Angus-san time is hai.”

“When ye know that yer a full half inch taller than me?”

Shiro smiled wide, “Shiro-kun is to calling them as the dragon’s eye of powaa sees from over the sun that also risen into clouds where the city of gods.”

“Ohhh, ye shouldna said that,” Angus growled, his left eye twitched out of control.