Storiesonline.net ------- Iron Man by Sea-Life Copyright© 2008 by Sea-Life ------- Description: Return to Terana, Serenity McKesson's world of Super Heroes, and the rebirth of Trey Young's dream. Codes: no-sex ------- ------- Chapter 1: Ashes and Rebirth The Emerald Assassin and his horde of Jade Warriors fought the Midland chapter of the Guardians to a standstill in the streets of Kansas City for two solid hours before they were defeated by a final desperate sacrifice by the Sprite. Her blast overwhelmed the Assassin's kinetic barrier and destroyed almost half of his gemstone-powered artificial forces. The effort almost cost the Sprite her life that day, and she was never able to return to her crime fighter's role again. A lot of people in Kansas City almost died that day, caught in the spillover from her final, brilliant attack. I was one of them. I was Ceferino Escobar. My friends called me 'Spider'. Then the blast hit and a wall of stone and steel fell on me, and for a long time, I wasn't anybody, just a body with nobody in particular at home anymore. When my body was ready for me to come back again, I did, and I was Ceferino again, but I wasn't Spider, and I wasn't the same. My friends still came, and they still joked and told stories, and we laughed together, and it was good, but it wasn't the same. The called me 'Ceffy', or 'Cef', or even Ceferino, all breathless and humbled before me. Nobody called me Spider, and as I worked to be whole again, fewer and fewer of them came. Even Bethania came less and less often and her visits grew shorter and shorter, until the day she came to say she was moving to San Antonio, and had met someone, and they were getting married. I wished her luck and happiness, and cried as I thanked her for sticking it out so long with the cripple. After the first couple of years I was left with no one but the therapists and the nurses. Even the nurses stopped coming eventually. Not because they stopped caring, but because I no longer needed their care. I was self-sufficient for the most part, me and my wheel chair. The physical therapists were good. They cared, and they found little bits of progress to remark over every visit, and true enough, there were small signs of recovery. I had regained all feeling in my legs, I could even move them, a little. What I couldn't do was stand or walk or run, or any of the tiny little things that had made me Spider Escobar. After three years of physical therapy, including two surgeries and countless examinations by specialists, physical and mental, it was decided I was as well as I was going to get. The special fund provided by the Guardians of Man stopped paying for the therapy. I still had a modest 'pension' from them that let me rent a small apartment, buy groceries and listen to the radio. I could even go to the corner bar now and then and have a beer, or a glass of wine, if I was of a mind to, and every once in a while I did, but all it did was remind me that people saw me differently now than they had before. They saw only Ceferino, where there had been so much before. I found a job, working for the Kansas City Star, working in the newspaper's circulation department. I spent my days either on the phone asking people to subscribe to the Star, or asking why they had dropped their subscription. A good day was one where all I had to do was work on our mailing list to make sure it was up to date. I hated it, but it was a decent job, and I could do it as well as any of the ambulatory bastards in the cubicals around me. That's not fair, actually. For the most part, they were good people, and they watched out for each other, me included. Once they'd gotten over the surprise that this Escobar could speak perfectly unaccented English, they let me do my job and made sure I didn't go stir crazy. It drove me crazy anyway. Potlucks and office parties, nights out and trips to the ball park. Socializing with the whole people drove me insane, and it could take an entire weekend alone to recuperate from a particularly insipid episode. Alone at home on the weekend, I indulged myself in the one thing I could still feel good about. Electronics. I built radios, alarm systems, anything I could find plans for, and a few things that I just cooked up myself. Most of it was pretty trivial, and pretty useless, but there were some people out on the west coast doing some stuff with silicon semiconductors that were very interesting, and I followed their work like an eager acolyte at Sunday Mass. I had a feeling this kind of research was going to produce marvels a few years down the road. It probably already had for some super-thinking heroes or villains. Still, my Friday evening anticipation of the weekend was ruined by a visitor I should have anticipated, but didn't. The Guardians were represented by the law offices of Deloit, Burke and Blevins. They were the ones responsible for checking up on the various pensioners within the Guardian's compensation system, and I had received an annual visit from one of their representatives each year at the beginning of December. I didn't hate them, it was just that the nameless efficiency left a bad taste in my mouth. I always disappointed them, not having acquired a wife and family, showing no signs of moving beyond the job at the Star and the small life I had found. This year was different though. Oh, the visit was the same, a lawyer looking to check some boxes off on the forms he carried, make sure I was 'happy' and not planning any legal action against the Guardians. Ask the same questions, get the same answers, hand me a small Christmas bonus check and wish me a happy holidays and be on his way. Yes, that part of it was just like always. It was what came after that was different. As I returned from the door where I had seen this one off, a Mr. Simmons, I almost fell over in my wheelchair when I realized there was a woman standing in my kitchen, by the refrigerator. A tall, statuesque woman. Very statuesque. Maybe my Friday wasn't ruined after all. When it finally registered that this very gifted woman was wearing a somewhat familiar outfit, with a mask and gloves, I took a second look at the overall picture, and I realized that I recognized her. I had seen pictures in the paper now and then. The pistols at her hips and the swords over her shoulders helped. "Midnight?" I asked. I know, stupid, right? A world famous super heroine, one who should be doing pinup shots for the magazines, and I have to ask if its her, like I don't know. "Sorry for dropping in like this. Have you had dinner?" "Dinner?" I know, again, stupid, right? Got a gorgeous, live super woman in my kitchen and I get monosyllabic. I may be a cripple, but I'm erudite, dammit! I did a slow burn at my stupidity, and it finally burned through the binders on my brain and tongue. "Midnight, I'm sorry, you've got me feeling a bit stupid at the moment. What are you doing here?" "That's okay, you have reason to be confused. I should have no business being here. I'm not one of the Guardians, I'm not here for anything to do with them, so why am I here? There can be no reason, right?" "Well, that would have been my current thinking," I agreed. "In the old days I would have assumed, falsely, that you had been captivated by my suave manner and drawn by my masculine magnetism." "That is not the reason I am here, not that you aren't a handsome man, and I'm sure if I were younger and more prone to swooning, I would have already been overcome by your presence." The light-hearted manner in which she returned my playful posturing was nice. I hadn't been able to play those kind of games with a woman in a long time. The pity factor always came up too quickly. "No, I expected not. So, since it is not the Guardians, and it is not my manhood, what is it that brings you to my apartment?" "You still haven't answered my question," She said, playing with the basket of rolls on my kitchen table. I hope she didn't try to take a bite, they were probably hard as rocks. I had to replay the last few minutes back in my head to remember the question. ""Dinner? No, I haven't had dinner. I was going to make something, but the lawyer interrupted me before I'd even begun..." "Then dinner, my treat?" "Okay," I answered. You taking me out to some place fancy, or you wining and dining me here?" A raised hand later, there was a glowing ball of blackness on the kitchen table, and when it receded, the table had two places set with fried chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and gravy. "And you can cook!" I joked. It was the right thing to say, because she laughed out loud and shook her head before answering. "I can cook, actually, but my abilities at ordering take-out meals are like no one else you know. Shall we?" The fried chicken tasted like it had just come out of the cooker, and everything else was perfect as well. That was a hell of a skill to have for someone who was single. "Obviously, with my arrival following the Guardian's lawyers, I know your story. I'm not here to make any sort of charitable donation, or sympathy-based offer," She waited for my eye contact on that before she continued. "I'm looking for someone who has what it takes to finish something that I was once a part of. Something that never got its chance." "And you think I am the guy to do this?" I snorted. "This doesn't make me feel confident, to think that you have scraped the bottom of the barrel, coming to me." "You are far from the bottom of the barrel, Ceferino," She told me, again with those eyes locked on mine. "You are not even close to the bottom of the barrel. What I will ask you to do will take brains, heart, strength of will and a hero's soul." I wondered what a super hero would ask of me. What someone who could do the kinds of things that Midnight could do, would expect of someone like me. "I'm willing to listen, of course." I bluffed. "You think you are fooling me, when you say that, don't you?" She interrupted. "But I know better. You are willing to listen, and you are willing to believe in something outside of yourself." It gave me the creeps, a bit, the way she seemed to be peering straight into my soul when she said that. If she knew better, then she knew me better than I knew myself. But I couldn't say she was wrong. I decided that greed was the better part of valor, and tried to turn the conversation. "What do I get in return, if I do as you ask?" The question meant nothing. I would do what she asked and only hoped it would leave me someplace besides the place I was now. If it didn't? If I was back to being Ceferino Escobar, boy circulation clerk, then that was okay too. "I promise you nothing," she said, exactly as I expected, "But that does not mean that nothing is what you will get. The future is unwritten, and we are going there." "Perhaps we will walk the same path for a while," I offered, quoting something my father used to say. "That might not be so bad, eh?" "Perhaps," she said, and I saw the glowing blackness surround us, and when it receded again, a moment later, we were not where we had been. We were in the mouth of a huge cavern. This mouth was on the face of a high cliff, and I could see more cliffs and mountains beyond. The cavern was not natural, I could tell that immediately, and the smooth floor looked to be poured concrete. "What is this place?" "We never got a chance to name it, beyond calling it the Fortress. This is what we called the Flight Level." Midnight said as she guided me across the huge open floor to a normal looking elevator door set into the far wall. "You keep saying we. Who else are we talking about?" "When I say we, I'm talking about Trey Young. Once, he was a super-villain called Lord Steel. Later, he was a super hero, or he would have been, but he never got to appear publicly under his new identity, not even once. I'm not even sure if He'd settled on his new name. There were several suggested." The elevator doors opened and we were in a new area, a confusing tangle of open beams, steel shelving and workbenches. If there was any doubt what this room was for, it was washed away when the suit, bathed in light, came into view. Wow! Fifteen feet tall and made of steel. Articulated, banded steel that had the feel of a coiled spring just sitting there. When I turned to express my awe to Midnight, she was at the other end of the room, staring at something else, also sitting under its own light. I wheeled myself over and looked past her at what drew her attention. It was a statue of a man, on his knees leaning back, as if resting. It was the look on the man's face that told the story. "This was Trey Young?" I asked. "Yes," she answered, turning away again. I think I understand love. I've been in love before. What was in this man's carved face, and what I saw in Midnight's eyes as she turned away? That was love, I'm sure. "So do I understand you correctly then?" I began once I'd caught up with her again. "You wish me to don the suit, and become the super hero that Trey Young didn't get the chance to be?" "Yes." "It won't matter that I'm a cripple?" "Well, about that. I've called in a specialist, if you don't mind." "What's one more specialist? I've been poked and prodded by the best. I'm used to it." "All right, lets get moving then." We got back in the elevator, and we went back up, and past where we'd started. The door opened to a very nice looking area, like a huge loft apartment. I could see a very nicely appointed kitchen, a comfortable looking living room with a big fireplace and what looked like huge floor to ceiling windows which I didn't think could be real. If they were televisions, they were like nothing I knew existed on Terana. "Nice view, don't you think?" I turned and the woman in front of me was almost unrecognizable, beyond a certain spectacular architecture. The mid-length blond hair was gone, and in its place was long, black hair that went to her back. Her face was paler, with milkier skin than the tanned Midnight had. "Wow, that's quite a change," I said, captivated. "This is my normal appearance. My name is Serenity McKesson. I wanted to be looking normal for our visiting medical expert." When she said this, the woman I now knew as Serenity McKesson held out a hand, as if to make an introduction, and as she did, another woman appeared out of nowhere. Serenity McKesson is a lovely woman, and one with a lot to be admired in the 'assets' department. The woman who appeared beside her was beautiful. The Helen-of-Troy kind of beauty. "Wow." I said, without realizing it until it had been said. "Ceferino Esobar, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Ginny McKesson." "A pleasure indeed," I said in a foolishly overwhelmed tone of voice. The last name finally clicked. "You are related then?" "Serenity is my daughter," the woman said in a clear voice. "A pleasure to meet you as well, Mr. Escobar." "Call me Spider," I said. "I'm Ginny." "You are a doctor?" "Yes, I am, and one with some advantages the doctors you are used to don't have. I am going to ask you to trust me for a moment, but I do not need to put you on an exam table, or any of that normal stuff. Just sit for a few moments, okay?" "Okay," I said, relaxing into my chair. I watched the doctor, and she simply stood there, eyes closed and a slight smile on her lips for a long moment. The smile slowly moved towards a frown, and I could almost feel her gathering some sort of energy around her and then her brow furrowed slightly before smoothing out again. We remained that way for quite a while. "Spider, there is damage in a couple places, very small and hard to see, that affect your motor control and ability to balance. This is a kind of nerve damage, and would be impossible to treat by normal methods. Fortunately for you, not all of my methods are normal." I felt something wash through me then, a wave of energy that felt amazingly good. "Wow!" I said out loud. "Wow, indeed," the doctor said. "Serenity, would you come stand beside Spider while we see if he can stand up?" Stand up? Crap, I was feeling like I could charge through a crowd of elephants right now! The good feelings, the energy, the rush had me wired, but I was wired with fear too. This was an awful big bait to dangle. I wanted it to be real, but the fear was there that it would be another bad dream. 'If this is a dream, then let me keep on dreaming a little while longer, ' I muttered silently to myself. I pushed up and out from my chair and lifted myself up onto my feet, and stood. And stood! I kept waiting for the wobblies to set in, as they always did; for my legs to buckle or waver, but nothing happened. I simply stood, like I had done most of my life. I decided to go for it, and took a step forward. So far, so good! Another step, and I was feeling woozy and suddenly sweating bullets. "Here, you'd better sit down," Midnight ... no, Serenity said. "You are going to have to build those muscles up again, Spider. Your legs aren't used to the work, and the rest of you will have trouble for a while remembering how to work together, but with plenty of exercise and daily walks, you should be back to normal pretty quickly." "Thank you doctor McKesson," I said, grinning. I turned to Serenity and asked a heartfelt question. "Who did you say I had to kill for this?" ------- Chapter 2: The Unbound Heart Okay, so nobody wanted me to kill anybody. But for a minute there, I felt willing to. The doctor wanted no part of any promises from me. She didn't do what she did to get anything in return, she said. She did it because she could, and her daughter asked. Before I could apologize, she kissed my cheek, hugged her daughter, and then was gone. "Welcome to my world," Serenity McKesson said to me, as I stared at the spot where her mother had just been standing. "Wow," I gushed. "You say that a lot, but in this case, I agree." "So I'm going to get myself in shape, and then I'm going to learn how to wear that big-ass hunk of steel downstairs?" "Nope, at least not in that order. You're going to be getting yourself into shape, and while you are, you'll learn all about that hunk of steel and what its capable of. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, we'll see about strapping you into it and getting you comfortable there." Now that I had time to think about it, I had time to consider the details, minus the heroic ambiance of the initial proposal. There were questions that needed asking. "Do I keep my normal life and do this on the side?" "I don't know. Only you can decide that. There are some advantages to having a public identity you can use. There are disadvantages as well. People you know could get hurt. They could become targets if an enemy learns too much about you. This is a decision only you can make for yourself." I thought about that. I could give up the job at the Star easily enough. It was make work, really. Something anyone who could read and write could do. "If I kept that life, I'd have to keep the chair." I said out loud, only realizing it as I said it. "The chair is good cover, but it comes with its own liabilities. You'd have to get really good at pretending to still be a cripple." "Not too hard. I always had feeling, and some movement. A small increase in movement and strength here or there would be no big thing." "something to consider then," Serenity offered. "If I stick with my life now, how do I get back and forth between here, wherever here is, and my apartment?" "I'll have something for that, when the time comes. For now you'll just have to depend on me." "I guess so," I laughed. "I'm kind of depending on you already." She looked at me, a hard look, for a minute before nodding slowly. "Yes, I guess you are." My big Friday night, reading the latest radio hobbyist magazines and electronics journals was replaced by a night of ... reading manuals and schematics from the amazing work of Trey Young. I spent it alone, too. Well sort of alone. The first thing Serenity did after her mother had gone was to introduce me to Ava. "Ava, please activate," Serenity said suddenly to the otherwise empty room. A pleasant feminine voice responded. "Active." "Ava, command mode please." "command mode active," Came the reply. "Ava, ident speaker," Serenity commanded. "Scanning," Was the reply, followed by a brief pause. "Identity confirmed, Serenity McKesson." "Ava, scan the other human being in this vicinity," Serenity ordered. "Scanning," Came the reply, followed a moment later by, "Complete." "Ava, ident for this new person is Ceferino Escobar, commonly called Spider. Confirm." "Confirming. New ident is Ceferino Escobar, to be called Spider." "Spider, say hello to Ava," Serenity asked. "Umm ... Hello Ava," I said hesitantly. "Good evening, Spider," The voice responded. "Ava is a she, and a very feminine sounding she, but she's not real, in the sense that you and I are," Serenity told me. "Ava is the household artificial intelligence. She can close or open doors, turn lights on and off, make coffee, you name it. She is very versatile." "Artificial intelligence?" I asked. "For real?" "Almost for real. This is not an artificial being though," She cautioned, suddenly. "The programming is very advanced, and the computing power is so great that human responses and even emotions can be simulated. Ava's actually limited in those areas by design. She can be pleasant and cheerful or concerned and insistent, even alarmed if there is immediate danger, but she won't laugh at your jokes, won't cry or laugh at all. Ava is many things, but she is not a person." I asked where the name Ava came from, and Serenity laughed, a rude snorting laugh and said it had started with her parents and some of their friends. "Ava is actually short for Audio-Visual Assistant. Mom and Dad were using one of her predecessors to run the television and slide projector and stuff at their first house. It wasn't until they'd set her up and had her running things at one of their meetings that someone thought to ask if she ran the rest of the house as well as she did the meeting room. It was one of those rare times, I think, when my Dad was stunned at his failure to see the obvious." So Ava and I were left alone, me to read my manuals and study schematics, and Ava to sit in her electronic silence and do whatever she did when not responding to a request. I had a very nice bedroom, a suite really with its own bathroom and sitting room apart from the common rooms of the 'residence' as Serenity had referred to it. There were three other bedrooms in the residence, mine being the largest. The artificial view from the common room was too nice to deny though, so I stayed there to do my reading. It was very interesting reading, to say the least. I was pretty much lost in the early sections that discussed the metallurgical theories and methods Trey Young had invented or adapted to his uses. The sections on fabrication methods and assembly were also pretty confusing, but I felt some of it I at least knew well enough to appreciate for what it was. The wiring and electronics though! This entire thing reeked of genius, but the electronics I could wrap my head around. It was way into the wee hours of the morning before I put my reading down. I'd decided I was seeing two types of systems overlaid on each other, and they were starting to make my already heavy eyes water with confusion. "Ava, I'm going to bed," I said out loud. "Very well, Spider," Ava responded. "I've turned on the lights in your room. Is there anything else you would like me to do?" "Just turn off the lights out here once I'm gone, thanks." "Very well, Good night." A wobbly walk to the bedroom, a quick visit to the bathroom and I was out like a light. Hey who could blame me? It had been a big day! Saturday started out pleasantly. Ava woke me with a little cold air in my face, some music and the announcement that I had time to take a shower before breakfast was served, and to please be dressed when I came to the kitchen, as Serenity was serving breakfast. The shower itself was the first revelation of the day. There were multiple shower heads, blasting hot water in needle jets. The towels were warm and fluffy, like they'd just come out of the dryer. I felt like I was in a five star hotel! Breakfast was oven-baked French toast and sausages, with fresh orange juice and coffee. Again I felt a little pampered. Serenity was not in her Midnight uniform today. She was wearing jeans and a sweater. She looked nice in a sweater. Very nice. While we ate, we talked about my reading. "I was completely lost in the metallurgy and assembly sections, but I really got into the electronic controls and communications stuff. Some of it had me really confused though." "There are several reasons that even someone with a lot of expertise in electronics could be confused, and we'll look at some of those reasons as we get into looking at the suit," Serenity told me. "What was your general impression though?" "Its very advanced stuff, some of it I don't get at all; it looks like two completely different systems have been integrated together, using some stuff I don't recognize at all." "That's because it is two completely different systems. Two completely different technologies, really. We'll get into that when we start digging into the systems. Meantime, keep reading what's there. It'll start making sense as we go along." It was already starting to make sense to me. I could feel myself wanting this. Wanting to be a hero, and just maybe, a super-hero. The suit seemed capable of making me one, if I could master the complexity of it; if I had the brains to use it effectively. If I had what it takes to stand and fight. Saturday alternated between studying Trey Young's notes, and climbing over, in, and around the suit. The climbing in part was very interesting. "Trey and I never discussed whether the suit was capable of being worn by more than one person," Serenity told me as I stood at the hatch. "It was custom fit to him, and you are more or less the same size, one of the reasons I thought you were the best candidate for this, actually." So I slid in, feeling my legs and feet slide smoothly into the recesses made for them, down in the giant legs of the suit. My legs didn't even make it to the knee of the suit's legs though. Not even close. There were a series of metallic fiber loops that they slid into, and at the bottom stirrup-like rests that my feet slid into. I wiggled a bit afterwards. "Okay, this doesn't feel to bad, and I think I'm solidly in. "Good. Look to your right, just about shoulder level at the front of the hatch. There are a vertical double row of indicators. The top left one should be glowing green." I looked, and there was indeed a glowing green indicator light exactly where Serenity suggested there should be. "Got it! I called out. Green indicator on the top left." "That tells you the lower torso is seated properly..." She began " ... and the hatch won't close until that light is green," I finished. "You got it!" She called back. "Okay, so what's next?" "I find the armlets. Their should be a row of three on each side, and a glove just past the last one to slide a hand into." As I said it, I did it. The armlets were of the same woven metallic cloth as the leg bands. I slid both arms through their series of bands and both hands into their respective gloves. As I knew it should, the top right indicator blinked on, glowing the same warm green as the first one. "My arms and hands appear to be properly seated, the top right indicator is green," I hollered. "Good! To close the hatch you just pull both arms in, like you were going to hug yourself. Keep pulling until the second light on the left indicator column goes yellow." I pulled, and sure enough, the top of the suit began to tilt forward as the sides clam-shelled in. A second later, I had a glowing yellow indicator. "Got it!" I yelled. Damn! My voice was loud in the suit, but I didn't know if Serenity could hear me or not. I hung there in the dark of the suit, my only light the meager collection of indicators, now just barely visible at the bottom of my vision. I was just beginning to think Serenity was pulling some sort of joke on me, when I heard her voice inside the suit. It sounded tinny, has if it was coming from a very small speaker. "You are effectively stuck, at this point, with no control access, and no way to do anything. Did you read enough last night to remember what the next step is?" Oh yeah! What's the point of reading the frigging manual if you're going to panic in the dark and not remember it? I thought about what I read. I had to trip the helmet actuator. All the controls were dead until I had the helmet on. There was supposed to be a leather-padded actuator right behind my head. All I had to do was slap my head back and into it. I gave it a pretty forceful slap, and I felt the helmet slide down over my head. Mostly it was a visor and two side plates, not really a full helmet at all. Another light flickered to life on the indicator tree, but even more obviously, the front visor flickered to life, and suddenly, I was seeing the room around me. The perspective seemed odd, but it was a very clean, color picture. Without thinking, I turned my head to see if I could spot Serenity, and the scene changed as I did. "Good, you've moved the head of the suit, and you should be seeing what the eyes in the suit see. I'm to your left now, the other direction," Serenity's voice came to me through the earphones in the helmet. I turned my head, and thus the suit's head, to the left, and kept turning until I saw Serenity. She was standing at the diagnostics console that the suit was currently hooked into. She gave me a smile and a thumbs up, and I tried to raise an arm to wave, but nothing happened. "Sorry Spider," She said. "I've got the motor controls for everything but the head disabled for now. We'll save moving the actual suit body for another lesson." "Okay, then lets get me out of this suit," I answered. I considered what I had read. If we were in full combat mode, there would be lockouts to bypass in order to open the suit. Since we were still essentially in standby mode, all I had to do to open the suit was slap that same pad behind my head. The helmet offered a little resistance, but not that much, and with a backward toss of my head, the clamshell opened and the top lifted. There were actual handholds in the top of the hatch that I could grab to lift myself out of the body of the suit, once I got my arms out of their restraints. I could tell that this would become a practiced motion, like hopping into the driver's seat of a convertible. "How did it feel?" Serenity asked as I walked over to the diagnostics console. "Any signs of claustrophobia?" "No, but I wasn't in there very long," I answered, then had a thought and added, "but once the helmet was down, my field of view felt so natural I no longer seemed to be in the suit. I saw as if I was the suit, and turning the head seemed very natural." "Good, that's the way its supposed to be. Wait until you get to the point where you are forcing the head to do a complete 360 degree turn." "I can do that?" I asked, startled. "Oh yea. Your actual head is only about where the suit's collarbone would be. The suit's head is a completely isolated extension, and it can turn a full circle in either direction. It will automatically stop if you do, once it has reached its normal position again." "Cool," I responded. In my own head, I was picturing myself running full speed one direction while looking completely behind me. We spent the rest of the afternoon working with the clamshell mechanism. We popped the internal hinge seals and detached the clamshell doors completely. With the hinged doors off, we could have removed the top half of the upper torso, the upper chest, shoulders and head. The hinge mechanisms themselves were self lubricating, sealed units. The splice joints that attached them to the torso were a series of interwoven metal splines that were then shut by a series of six locking pins than ran through both sets of splines and the sleeves that held them. The cover plates that sealed them off inside the suit were clever accordion mechanisms, more like the roll top part of a roll-top desk, except that the individual slats were almost invisible once they were extended and locked. That evening I got to use the remote control manipulator to move the empty suit from a standby mode to repair and refit mode and back again, learning how to use the automatic presets, as well as the manual controls needed to get it positioned for field repairs away from the fortress. By the time my head hit the pillow that night, my head was spinning with all the new and newly confirmed data it had in it. I expected to dream of Serenity McKesson, but did not. I dreamt of flying. Sunday morning, I discovered that the gymnasium and running track in the back of the residence level were not going to be optional items, at least as far as Serenity McKesson was concerned. "Those wobbly legs are one thing, but you need to work on every part of you if you're going to be spending long stretches of time strapped into the suit." I couldn't find a flaw with her argument, and so I spent my early morning moving from station to station using my arms, legs and back to move dead weights until the muscles complained. Then we walk/trotted a mile. A shower and breakfast were very welcome afterwards. Serenity cautioned me to keep it up when she wasn't around. "What are you going to do?" I asked in response to the slightly threatening tone of that order. "Put me in the suit and then beat the crap out of me?" "I've done that once before to the wearer of that suit," she said. "I could do it again. I will do it again, when the training gets to that point." "Sparring?" "Oh yeah, and you haven't seen what I can do with a little creative application of some of my tools. four words..." I waited, finally arching an eyebrow. "Toe-to-toe slugfest." "So my goal here is to get good enough to exchange haymakers with you?" "Exactly." The rest of the day was spent studying the heads up display. This system was holographic, and was another of the systems I didn't hardly more than half understand. Some of the electronics made sense, but it went far beyond anything I had seen before, and the fact that the holograms were made by projecting fields of gravitic force seemed unreal to me. Using the HUD as part of the control system felt weird. It was basically a 'squint-n-twitch' interface. A variety of facial and/or eye movements activated different functions. "Too bad this couldn't be voice activated, so I could mutter my commands at least. All these facial contortions remind me of my mother, always telling me not to make faces." "Someday, Once you're used to what you've got now, I might be able to come up with something even better," Serenity offered. "Better than voice controlled?" "Mm Hmm..." She affirmed, her head buried in the back of the diagnostics console as she made an adjustment. "How?" I asked, once her head popped back up. "How what?" "how better?" "Oh! Umm ... thought controlled would be better than voice controlled, wouldn't it?" "I suppose it would, if it didn't mean a stray thought could activate something accidentally." "Oh, it wouldn't be like that. You'd have to think 'at' the suit to activate a function." Sunday evening I was introduced to meditation. I'd done some as part of my therapy. A Yoga instructor, whose job was to keep me limber so my partially functioning limbs didn't get any more useless than they already were. She was cute, and I might have advocated a little mutual meditation at my place, if I thought she'd have been interested, but I could tell she didn't see me when she looked my way. All she saw was the wheel chair. Some therapy. After dinner, my wheel chair and I got a ride back to the apartment in Kansas City, courtesy of Serenity McKesson. It was then that I realized, despite having had hints from her description of some of the events leading up to Trey Young's death, that the ability to move from one place to another was not a Midnight function. No mysterious 'Midnight force' required. At least not the kind I'd been shown at first, with all the globes of inky blackness. "How much of what people see when you are doing your thing as Midnight is just special effects?" I asked. "A good deal of it. Everything that uses the blackness field is holographic. The swords and the guns are very real though, and very effective." "I wondered about that, once I realized you were able to do some of the same things without the big visuals." I looked around. The apartment looked its usual drab self. "Thanks for the ride home." "You're welcome," Serenity said, laughing. "I'll drop by in the evening, later in the week, and we'll look at setting you up with your own transportation between the fortress and here. You've got a pretty sophisticated alarm system in place already, but we'll want to add a few things that can spot some of the potential super-powered kinds of break-ins." And with that, and a wave, she was gone. I wheeled myself to the kitchen and found a beer in the fridge. We had discussed it, and decided that it would be safest if, for now at least, I stayed in the chair whenever I was in the apartment. Whether we decided to reveal some 'improvement' in my condition at a later date, or continue to use the wheelchair as cover, for now it would be safest to show no change. I could live with the chair, knowing it didn't limit me. Hell, some super-hero might don fake glasses and be happy to call it a disguise. I had a wheelchair and the doctor and therapist visits to 'prove' mine wasn't fake. Maybe my new attitude was evident, but I seemed to have everyone around me in a good mood at work the next morning. Someone was having a birthday, and so there were plans floating around to meet after work at Kew Gardens, the office's usual watering hole. Despite the name, it wasn't even close to Kew Point, but it was a nice enough place, and very close to a transit station for those who didn't live nearby. "Ceferino, are you going to the Kew after work?" Adeline, one of the file clerks asked as a group of them walked by my desk. "I think I will, Yes." I answered. "You seem to be in a good mood today," She observed. "I guess I am," I said, thinking of what I would say. "I got my annual Christmas bonus check from the insurance company last night, which always makes me feel good, plus I'm making a little progress with the legs. I'm moving them a little better. Still no strength, but one step at a time the therapists have told me." "Oh! I thought you had stopped seeing the therapists." Rita, one of the others, said. "I have, but I'm still doing the therapy and the exercises. The insurance company isn't paying for regular therapy sessions anymore, so I only see them and the doctors a couple times a year." "But you're still improving?" Rebecka, the last of the group, and the cutest, asked. "Sure!" I answered, with some enthusiasm. "Very slowly, but yes." "Good! Maybe we'll get you out on the dance floor at the Kew one of these days." "Why not tonight?" I asked, spinning around in my chair." I've got some decent moves as long as my bearings don't freeze up." The three of them laughed along with me at that, and I got three 'see you tonight' calls as they moved on down the hall. I wondered if impending superhero-ness made everyone feel so giddy, or whether it was knowing that I was once again a completely able-bodied individual that had me in such a good mood. Maybe it was both. Whatever the cause, I was determined to go with the flow and have a good time. ------- Chapter 3: Flights and Fancies The evening out at Kew Garden had been more fun than I'd allowed myself in a long time. Rebecka and the other girls from the office had gone out of their way to make sure I was always having fun — either with good conversation, food or yes, even dancing. The dancing was fun, if frustrating to a degree. There were no slow dances for Spider, and no sense of physical intimacy while dancing. I did feel a little of that while we were sitting though. One of he girls always seemed to have a hand on my arm or shoulder. Sometimes I even had one girl on each arm! With this being an office party, we had our share of office talk and gossip. The birthday boy was Brian Kennedy, from the accounts receivable department. I only knew him by name, and it quickly became clear to me that he was a bit of an asshole. He considered this birthday as an excuse to flirt with all the women present, and several of them a bit outrageously. I realized that there were several of us men who were seen as islands of refuge in the sea of sexual innuendo that was Brian from accounting. Peter Sands was one of my fellow islands, and during a mass visit by the ladies to the restroom, Peter sat by me for a moment, and I confirmed it. "Is Brian like this whenever you guys go out, or is it just because its his birthday?" "He's more or less like this every time," Peter confirmed. "He's almost as bad at the office as he is here, but being out from under the eyes of the managers makes it worse." "I'd complain, if I were these girls," I said. "He seems particularly bad with Rebecka" "Yeah, well every single guy and some of the married ones in the office, except for you, has asked her out, and she's always turned them down. Kennedy is the only one who didn't get the message. If anything, it just made him worse." "Well, if I'm just here as a refuge, I'll gladly play my part," I volunteered. "I've avoided socializing far too much since the accident, and its time I got back in the swing of things. Things like these nights out are just the ticket for me." "I'm glad to hear you say that. You have been the object of a lot of office gossip..." I must've given him a sharp look, Peter held up his hands in a defensive gesture and grinned. " ... hey, its been mostly supportive, and only a little of that 'cripple sympathy' I'm sure you hate." "Yeah, I do hate that. You sound like you're familiar with it." "I have a cousin who's a few years older than me. She's been blind since she was five. She got that kind of reaction all the time, especially back when she was dating. I was the sympathetic ear, so I got to hear exactly how much she hated it." "How'd she handle it?" I asked. "Better than I would have. She was and is a pretty attractive woman, so she didn't have to worry about suffering the fools for long, 'there are so many fish in the sea', she used to tell me, but then add in disgust, 'but so many stupid fish!'" I grinned at that, and Peter shook his head as he joined me. "Yeah, she's a riot." The ladies returned from the trip, and we were once again back to mixed company. Birthday Brian came wandering back to the table shortly after the ladies, having wandered off to annoy a few women at another table, and the social dynamic went back to where it had been. Peter immediately asked Adeline to dance, and rose from where he had been sitting beside me to escort her on to the dance floor. Rebecka sat down in the chair he vacated and slid her hand onto my arm. "So, you and Peter were visiting?" she asked. "Yup," I answered. "I realized that he and I were you ladies' main buffers against the birthday boy, and I asked him if that was normal." "So you got talking about Brian, and about us ladies?" "A little," I answered. "Peter seemed willing to accept that role." "How about you? Do you accept that role?" "I don't know. He also told me every single guy at the office has asked you out and you've shot them all down." "What do you think of that?" "Well, I'd hate to fall into that role before getting my chance to be rejected." "Oh." She said, blushing. I blushed right alongside her, but about then the music changed, and Rita came over and asked for a dance. I wasn't sure if I was glad for the interruption or not, but I didn't get a chance to expand on that conversation again, and a half hour later, the party began to break up, and then we were busy dividing up the bill and paying our tab. I got some very nice kisses on the cheek from Rita and Adeline, as well as Diana and Maggie, two of the other girls from the fourth floor, and one from Rebecka as well. It was probably only my imagination that hers lingered slightly longer on my cheek, and that her breast pressed into my side more firmly than the others when she did. The next day at work was more of the same, as far as my newly inspired open mind and attitude went. I did see Rebecka Anderra again that day, first when she came past my section carrying a report of some kind and gave me a wave and a hi, and second when I went by her section, on my way to nowhere in particular, and gave her a spin salute with my wheelchair as I tossed off a greeting of my own. Where was the sudden interest coming from? I don't know, maybe it was there all this time and I'd been too self-absorbed, too focused on my own problems to notice what the people around me were doing, or how they were acting. Maybe it was just that my new attitude was generating some renewed interest. I guess I'd find out down the road, if things progressed. It did make the next three days at work very, very interesting, especially when Rebecka suggested that I should call her Becka. That suggestion was welcome, but was somewhat overshadowed that night by Serenity''s reappearance. "I hope you've had a good week, because you're mine for three days starting tonight, and you're muscles and your brain are both going to be complaining before we're done." As a seer, Serenity McKesson was pretty good. At least she had a knack for predicting my future. Friday night we spent going over the same material we had covered the weekend before, but at lightning speed. We didn't stop when we got something wrong, in fact we didn't keep track of what we got right or wrong, Wing did. Wing, it turns out is not just a ship, it is also the intelligence that runs it, and that intelligence is artificial. The for real kind, not the fake kind like Ava, the fortress' interactive control system. We opened a very formidable looking inner compartment in the ship, and there she was, all pink and purple and sparkling. "I call them brain sponges," Serenity told me. "I found them in a place I called Sand Song". "Are they alive?" "Yes, in their way. The vital part, what I call the helix, is made up of the structural secretions of a microscopic colony organism that builds up into these large nodules. "Kind of like coral, in the coral reefs?" "Very much like that, but free floating, like jellyfish." "Because of their unique structure, they are particularly sensitive to certain kinds of energy. Mental energy. It is almost a symbiotic thing. The structure remaps itself almost instantaneously in the presence of another thinking being. Its almost as if the organism borrows the intelligence of the animal it is closest to." "Indiscriminately?" I asked, thinking of a situation where the creature reconfigured itself to resemble a less complex, but closer animal. "I haven't spent a lot of time on research, so I can't say. I do know that Wing doesn't seem to notice the difference between me and any other human, when they're nearer. She doesn't reconfigure herself every time someone else is the nearest person." "This tour of Wing is pretty cool, but why are we doing it?" I asked, suddenly curious. "Because I'm giving her to you," Serenity said. "With my gifts, I really don't have a need for her, like I thought I would when I first started my career as Midnight. You, though, will need an 'eye in the sky'. With some further modifications she can become your mobile repair center, even a place to get out of the suit and get cleaned up without having to expose yourself to danger." "There wouldn't be much room for me, once the suit was inside," I observed. "True, which is why we will be looking at finding a new shell for her. You've seen the true 'Wing', the ship she's wearing is really just a shell." I spent several days with a set of colored pens and a drawing tablet trying to mock up a version of Wing that was ideal for my situation, or at least the situation I hoped to be in some day. The idea of a repair bay at the rear with room for the suit, as well as room to move around it while working meant that Wing was going to have to be quite a bit bigger than she was now, especially length-wise. The repair bay would have its own tool bins and equipment. I considered the possibility of carrying passengers. I could envision having to transport wounded victims, the lost or stranded, even medical and emergency personnel. Then I had to consider transporting prisoners. This had me design in two side bays, one side for normal passengers and the other side for those requiring confinement. I finished up my plans with a small 'service' bay nestled between the cockpit and the repair bay modeled after those on airlines where the stewardesses made the coffee and prepared the meals. When Serenity saw my plans, she was complimentary. She only suggested a few touches, like lockable cabinets for medical supplies and confiscated weapons. She took my final drawing, saying she would run it through some specialists she knew. "If everyone likes what they see, should I see about building it?" "Will I have a few days to think about it?" I asked. "Oh yea, at least a week, even at the earliest." "Okay," I said with a grin. The plan for my real life was to get me out of the wheelchair whenever practical, but to make it obvious that walking was a very limited option. Whether the decision was to keep the chair as part of the disguise or to abandon it, this development would fit both scenarios. For a first step in this effort, and yes, I know what an irony that choice of words represents, I made a show of getting up out of the chair during a morning break and sitting on the edge of the counter as I visited with several people in the break room. Of course this maneuver drew an immediate reaction. "Spider, you stood up!" Adeline shouted, almost causing Gordie Langland to spill his coffee. "Sure," I answered with as much nonchalance as I could muster. "I've been telling you all that I do have some limited mobility." "Well, yeah, but I thought that just meant you could, like move your legs and stuff, not actually walk!" "Well, the walking part is pretty much limited to two or three steps before things get wobbly, but I can get in and out of my chair, stand, lean against things, anything that only requires balance." "That's great!" Gordie chimed in. I suppose this makes taking care of yourself at home a lot easier." "Yup. I have arm bars and hand rails and stuff, some things I made for myself out of a little hardware store surplus. Comes in handy in the bathroom for getting in and out of the tub and whatnot." "You still need them?" "Mostly for the psychological boost," I answered. "I feel more secure still, using them, so I do. "Getting in and out of the tub used to be a pretty harrowing experience for me, and my mind isn't ready to let go of that association yet." So word spread of my standing act. I swear dozens of people managed to wander by my desk in the next few days, just hoping to see me in the act of standing, or maybe leaning. A few did see me standing, here and there. This was part of my plan, after all. Thursday morning Becka finally got her chance, and this wasn't one of my planned events. I'd come wheeling into the building that morning and saw a new flyer on the wall by the elevators. I went over to see what was up and found a notice from the city about potential power outages in the evenings in the surrounding areas. I only lived a block away, so I was curious about whether I'd be effected. There was a phone number to call for more information, but it was at the top right corner, and I couldn't quite read it from where I was sitting. In the past I would have asked someone to read it for me, but today I simply set the brakes on my chair and stood up, pulling my pen and notepad out of my jacket pocket to write the number down. "You're taller than I thought," Came Rebecka's voice from behind me. "Long arms and long legs. When I was a teenager I was really gangly and awkward and it looked even worse. That's where I got the nickname Spider." "It doesn't look bad at all now, and I think you're just the right height." "I don't know..." I said, tilting my head a little. "Lets see. Come over and lets have a hug." "Okay," she said, with a slight hesitation and a bit of a Mona Lisa smile. The hug was everything I thought it would be. "Nope," I said. "What?" "Not too tall. Just about right, I'd say." We were both able to ignore the blush growing on each other's faces by my getting back into the chair, but I'm pretty sure she saw mine. I know I saw hers! At my desk later I called the number and discovered that the power was indeed going to be off in my apartment building a week from today for two hours in the evening from six to eight. There had been a notice posted, the lady on the phone said. I mentioned that I was in a wheel chair and wondered if those sort of considerations had been taken into account when they placed them. "I had to stand up to read the phone number so I could call you," I told her. "Most folks in a wheel chair don't have that option." I think I flustered her a little, but if it got a few people thinking, I'd accomplished my goal. I saw Becka sitting in the cafeteria at lunch and wheeled myself over. "Hi Spider!" She said cheerfully. "Hi Bec," I answered. "Remember that conversation we were having at the Kew the other day, about being a buffer?" "Yeah?" "Well, I'm taking my turn," I said. "Would you like to have dinner with me next Thursday?" "Dinner? Thursday?" She asked, blinking. Wow, two women flustered in one day. I was on a roll. "Yeah, the city is going to have the power off in my building for a couple of hours, so I definitely need to dine out that night, and couldn't think of a more pleasant dinner companion. What do you say?" I did my best puppy dog impression while she blinked back at me for a long moment. Two other women at the table sat poised for the rejection, curious, I'm sure, to see if I was let down gently or slammed down hard. "Okay," She answered. She answered okay?" While I was letting the concept of her acceptance slowly resolve itself in my head, I heard, faintly, "Where would you like to go, and what time?" "To be honest," I answered with a grin. "I hadn't thought that far ahead. The power outage is from six to eight, so I'd suggest six? Is that too early?" "No, that would be fine. Maybe we can have a drink first, stretch it out so you won't have to go back to a dark apartment." "That sound's great," I said, the grin growing broader. "Think about where you might like to go and we can talk about it some more on Monday, okay?" "Okay." Damn. Ceferino Escobar, future super hero had a date! ------- Chapter 4: Edge of the Envelope I spent Saturday afternoon in the power suit learning to walk forward. Serenity had a kill switch connected to me via an umbilical, and I was under strict orders not to try to jump, walk backwards, or stand on one leg. I complained of course, but her reply put me in my place. "Just be glad you're not starting out with crawling, like most babies do." "Yes coach," I replied. Walking was okay. Walking was good. Walking was one step away from running. Once walking seemed natural, we moved to the simulator. It seemed a little backwards, but Serenity insisted that the real world walking experience would help with the transitions to other modes of travel in the simulator. In the simulator I was able to try all those modes of locomotion I'd been denied in the suit, starting with learning to balance on one leg, then the other. "The biggest problem is that your muscles have one idea of what they need to do to achieve a particular action and the suit has another. Your muscles are a smart system, and so is the suit. Just as your muscles will adjust to what they need to do when in the suit, the suit will adjust itself towards what you are trying to do. If everything goes smoothly, the time in the simulator will allow the two systems to meet in the middle somewhere and smoothly, we hope, achieve a compromise that is complete enough to become transparent to both of you. That happens and bang, you have integrated your actions with the suit functions." "I always wanted to be integrated," I said. Too bad she couldn't see me sticking out my tongue after I said it. The weekend helped me forget that I had actually asked Rebecka to dinner, and that she had accepted, but Monday morning was a big reminder when she stopped by my desk and asked if I'd thought of a place to go. "Ahh, no actually, I kind of got buried in some technical journals and spent the weekend poring over schematics and articles on semiconductors." "You study technical journals?" Rebecka asked in a very surprised voice. "Yeah, I was going to study electronics if things had gone differently for me, but instead, I got this chair, this job and electronics as a hobby instead of a career," I explained. "Oh, thats sad!" Rebecka said sympathetically. "No!" I corrected. "Along with all those things came meeting you!" That brought out a mutual blush, and before I could react, a kiss to the cheek and when I was once again aware of my surroundings rather than the tingle on my cheek, she was gone. I may have been a desk jockey, but I wasn't a managerial desk jockey, so I had some real work to do that morning, but as soon as it was break time I headed out for the newsstand in the lobby, looking for the Sunday papers that I'd forgotten about while off at the Iron Man lair learning how to walk. Funny I know, to think that a newspaper office had a newsstand in it, but we did share the building with other offices, and the stand carried more than just the Star, including a good selection of magazines and paperback books. "Morning Spider, what brings you to my stand on a Monday morning?" Kenny the news man asked. It occurred to me that I had no idea what Kenny's last name was, or even if he liked to be called Kenny. Everyone called him that though. He had to be in his fifties though, so I decided to ask. "Do you like being called Kenny?" "You came down here to ask me that?" "No, I came looking to see if you still had any of the weekend papers, but I thought about your name when you were saying good morning, and it suddenly occurred to me I didn't know," I explained. "Sure, I've got the Star and the Herald both. What're you looking for?" "Restaurants. Nice ones. I've got a date Thursday night." "Restaurants, eh? You want to impress this girl by taking her to a great place with great food, or impress her with a place with high prices and upper crust atmosphere?" "Great place and food, for sure," I answered with a laugh. "I can't afford the other option." "Okay, then forget the papers, let me get you a reservation at Torrento's. My cousin Sal is the maitre de there. You'll love the place, and they treat you good there." He picked up the phone and began to dial. "Oh and call me Ken if you'd like. What time you want to eat?" "We were thinking around six or six thirty, maybe have a drink first?" "No problem, I'll tell Sal to save you a bottle of the good stuff, okay?" "Thanks Ken," I said, and boy, did I mean it! By the time my break was over, I had a reservation for six thirty and an address for Torrento's, which was actually not far from the office. I could only hope that Rebecka hadn't already been there, or, if she had, loved the place. I may have mentioned that I hate my job, and its true, I do. I love where I work though, and the people I work with, although there are some, Like Brian Kennedy in accounting, who I could not force myself to like at all. Because I hate my job, I apply for every job the company advertises that I feel I come even close to qualifying for. Very often these jobs are completely outside my areas of experience, but I figured pretty much everything was outside my area of expertise. Wednesday, I got called into the office to have a chat with Bob Enright, my boss. "First things first, Ceferino," He said, waiving me towards a chair. I wheeled myself into position beside the chair in front of his desk. "You applied for the assistant copy editor's position, and I want to let you know that you will not be interviewed for the position. There were just too many applicants with experience above you, son." "I understand," I said, meaning it. I had known a couple of those applying, and I knew they were both far more qualified than I was. The application had been more a statement about my current job than it was a desire to have that one in particular. "But, we have been impressed with your job performance, and I at least, feel like you are capable of more. Obviously you think so as well." "Yes sir, I do." I answered, even though it had been more of a statement than a question. "With that in mind, I went ahead and entered your name into the pool of applicants for a new management training program that's due to start up in a couple of weeks. What do you think of that?" "Management training? As in training to be a manager?" "Exactly. Would it bother you to move into the management side of things?" There were some unspoken things in that question. Like a lot of newspapers, ours was heavily unionized. The people in my department weren't unionized, but most of the staff in the editorial and production sides were. Would I be willing to be on the other side of a picket line if it came down to it? That was the real question being asked. I thought about that. My only loyalties were to the people I worked with, and even those who were friends but not direct co-workers were non-union. "No, I don't think so. I might disagree, morally or philosophically with the paper's position in a dispute, but I think that someone would have to really be trying hard to screw the workers over for it to become something I'd have a problem with." "Fair enough. So are you willing to go through the program?" "What all is involved. I won't have to move, will I?" "No, but you'll be going to Hartford for two weeks for orientation, and then you'll come back to your old job until a training position comes available. That part of the program is still being developed, but the idea is that we will be finding temporary positions for the trainees to receive on the job managerial experience, usually alongside a mentor. Those positions haven't been identified yet, so once the two week course is complete it could be quite a while before the second phase of the training gets going." "The managerial positions could be anywhere?" I asked, suddenly realizing that we were part of a newspaper chain. We weren't talking just Kansas City here. "Yes, it would definitely be someplace other than here. The idea is to get people away from their normal work environments and away from the people they know, reducing that sort of influence on the outcome will be important." Mr. Enright saw the look of concern on my face, but mis-interpreted it. "Relax son, I think you've got what it takes to do well in this program, and you'll make a good manager some day." "Thank you sir," I said, smiling at his compliment. "But I was worried more about the usual difficulties someone with my disability has in new places, you know?" I spun around once in my wheelchair. "Stairs and narrow doorways, getting around. Things like that." "I hear you're making some progress in that area. Is that right?" "Yes sir, I am able to stand, even take a step or two, but that's about it. After several years of therapy, treatment and surgeries, it seems like a small payoff, but I hope to keep improving with time." "That's nice to hear. I know it must be frustrating for it to be going so slowly, but a lot of people in your position have no improvement to look forward to, eh?" I had to agree. Of course Mr. Enright, nor anyone else, could be told of the true progress I had made, thanks to the work of Doctor McKesson. But I appreciated his positive attitude, and the fact that my disability hadn't been a part of our discussion until I brought it up. Mr. Enright told me he would let me know by the end of next week what the particulars would be as far as the travel to Hartford for training would be, and I went back to work. One doesn't get called in to have a meeting with the boss without everyone in the office knowing about it, so I had to fend off questions immediately. I simply told everyone it had been to discuss a training opportunity, and that I wasn't at liberty to discuss the details. That would hold them off at least through the weekend. I stopped in at Torrento's Wednesday evening to familiarize myself with the place and introduce myself to Ken's cousin Sal. The restaurant did have a bar, and it was the typical high bar top with tall swivel chairs for seating. I practiced getting in and out of the chairs from my wheelchair, which of course impressed Sal and Pete, the bartender. I told them I was not paralyzed, really, and explained the used-to-be true facts about my biggest problems being muscle loss and nerve damage from the accident. There was no spinal damage and no paralysis. That had always been true, and still was, in a fashion. The fact that the damaged muscles and nerves had been rebuilt, was the secret. Thursday was a hard day to get through. I had already asked Rebecka if she liked Italian, and she said yes, so we were set. I gave her the address to the restaurant, since we would be meeting there, and told her I had made the reservations for six thirty. She appreciated the extra thirty minutes of preparation time. I knew I'd have no problem showering, changing and getting there on time, but I made sure to tell her to take her time and be ready. "Its more important to me that you feel ready for dinner than that you be on time." I told her that the second time I stopped by her desk on Thursday. Yes, I stopped by twice, just to double, and I guess, triple check. I was at Torrento's ten minutes early, and took the corner seat nearest the door at the bar. It was the easiest place to park my chair while I sat. I ordered a glass of the house red, on Pete's recommendation, and had only finished half of it by the time Rebecka arrived, right on time. I thought I had never seen her looking lovelier, especially once Sal had taken her coat, revealing a swirling, dark red dress with a loose, scooped neckline that revealed a pleasant, tantalizing amount of skin. "You look amazing!" I semi-stuttered as I stood. "Thank you," Rebecka said with a blush. "You look handsome yourself." "Would you like to have a drink at the bar?" I asked. "I think we've still got ten minutes or so before our dinner reservation." "Sure." I asked for a refill on my wine, and Rebecka had the same. We talked mostly about the effort of making it home, getting dressed and ready for dinner. When the waitress came to escort us to our table, I noticed two things immediately. First, Sal had given us a very nice table near the huge fireplace near the small dance floor. Second, Rebecka bristled slightly at the attractive young woman who was going to be our waitress. I appreciated the unintended compliment, but as the waitress left with our appetizer order, I reached over and took Rebecka's hand. "Relax, Becka. I'm here with you. The waitress is not competing with you for my attention." She blushed, and hung her head for a second before looking up at me with a smile. "Thank you," She almost whispered. "There is a reason I've turned down everyone at work who's asked me out. I have had a few bad experiences, and one terrible relationship that I wasn't sure I was over." "Wasn't sure?" "Not until recently." Another blush and large smile, this time her eyes never left mine. "I was in a bad relationship too," I told her. "Mine was with fate, and I was convinced she had ruined my life." "But?" "But recently I've decided that fate is fate, and she has no more power than we give her, so I told her to take a hike. You had a lot to do with that, I think." "Me?" "Yes, of course. You were worth forgetting about being seen as a cripple. You were worth risking pain again." "You were worth risking pain for too." Becka shuddered as she said it, and I wondered what memories might lie behind those words that would cause it. I hoped she would come to trust me enough to tell me some day. The appetizers arrived then, a bruschetta with roasted tomatoes and basil, and when the waitress asked if we wanted a refill for our wine, I declined, saying I wanted to wait to have something with the main course. Becka joined me in that decision, and that left us deciding on our meal. But as we began the discussion, the waitress hesitantly interrupted. "Excuse me sir, ma'am, but the chef is preparing a special meal for you. The owner has selected the wine to accompany it." We both just blinked dumbly at that at first, and with a weak smile, the waitress made a hasty exit. "Do you know someone here?" Becka asked. "Well, sort of," I answered. "You know Ken, at the newsstand?" "Kenny the news guy? Yeah, what about him?" "His cousin Sal is the maitre de here. I asked him if he could recommend a nice Italian restaurant and he made our reservation here for us." "I think Ken must have done a little more than make a reservation," Becka said. "Have you done him some kind of big favor? "just talked to him like a real person," I answered. "And not as soon as I should have. I was treating him like a fixture. I think that's how most people at the office treat him." When dinner arrived, we discovered that we were being treated to a northern Italian Veal medley, with Ossobusco and Veal cutlets, the pair complemented by rice and a risotto Milanese. I speak of this with confidence now, but only because the waitress explained it all to us. What didn't need explaining was the taste. The meal was absolutely delicious! Becka and I talked during the meal, mostly of our impressions of people we both knew, including Brian, the asshole from accounting. When I broke my news about the managerial program, Becka was ecstatic at first, but pouted a little when she realized it would mean I would be gone to Hartford for several weeks. As we continued to chat over dessert, a trio began playing some music, soft and slow, and I asked Becka to dance, without even thinking about it. I took the chair out onto the small dance floor, but I locked the brakes and stood, letting Becka nestle into my arms and put her head on my shoulder as the two of us swayed together slowly without really moving. "If I fall, will you catch me?" I asked. She giggled at first. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?" But she followed that by lifting her face up for a kiss. A soft, sweet, lingering kiss. "But the answer is yes, I will," she whispered into my ear. ------- Chapter 5: Hammer Time I spent a good bit of time Friday evening and Saturday morning babbling to Serenity about my date. She seemed amused, and I hoped that she wouldn't tease me too much over my behavior. While I babbled, we worked, both in the simulator and out of it, and by Saturday afternoon Serenity had seen enough. "Okay Iron Man, I think its time we let you try and take a swing at something. You game?" "We're going to fight?" Serenity only laughed, a rude snort of a laugh too. "You would be more likely to hurt yourself than to hurt me," She said with a little more seriousness. "No, you're going to do some standing punches against something a little more predicatable, okay?" So I got to punch things. Specifically, I got to punch a curious construction made of a series of truck axles mounted on swivels, each on top of a heavy pole. The pole heights varied so that some punches were chest high, some head high, and some low, in what would have been the bread basket if I'd been punching at another copy of my suit. The swivels were obviously built with different levels of resistance, and I could hear Serenity in my ears as I worked. "Feel the punches landing? That's feedback from the suit. It's letting you know how much resistance your blow has encountered. That should allow you to decide whether you need to ramp up the power, or dial it down, as the situation demands." I did feel it too. I felt the weight of the axles, saw the speed with which the axles spun on their swivels, and after a dozen punches, tried my first one-two punch, trying to connect with the other wheel housing as it spun towards me. I missed gloriously. My only consolation was that I didn't spin myself into the ground when I did. "Your own reflexes betrayed you there," Came Serenity's voice. "You threw that second punch with the timing your own body would have used, and it was too slow." I visualized it in my head for a moment, and could see that it wasn't a matter of speed, it was simple mechanics. I was wielding a much longer mechanical lever, with a much different moment of force. As my mind shifted into that sort of thinking, Serenity interrupted. "If you begin to think of this as an equation to solve, you loose the genius of it. The beauty of this design, and the way it is implemented is that you don't have to think about those things." She paused then, motioning me back to my most recent target. "Its just going to take practice and time." By the time I was feeling some confidence in my ability to throw a one-two combination, we were done with punching for the day. We ate lunch and then I got to do a little kindergarten gymnastics. Forward rolls, jumps, hops and squats. Cartwheels and handsprings would have to come later. Saturday night I got two presents from Serenity. I got an odd telephone that I could carry with me. If the phone in my apartment rang while I was out, the little pocket phone would ring and I could answer it. "You'll have the same capability built into the suit, but most of the time when you're in the suit, Wing will be your answering service when you're busy. She'll take calls just like an answering service would." I got to play with it a little, made easier by the second gift, an interestingly odd goo that got squirted onto my bedroom door jam like caulking a boat. When it was done, I had a permanent passage between the Iron Man fortress and my apartment. Instantaneous, in-the-blink-of-an-eye transportation between the two. "We'll have to see what we can do for the two weeks you're in Hartford," Serenity told me. Saturday night I called Becka and we talked for over an hour. Sunday was a study day and again I spent the day with my nose buried in the technical manuals. Some of the manuals seemed to be getting written as we worked. The stuff dealing with the fusion power core in particular seemed to have been recently written and designed to explain the unexplainable in layman's terms. It was kind of like discovering that your Indy 500 race car came with a Harley Davidson manual that had been heavily edited with white out and a marking pen. I paid attention to what were the obvious alterations and insertions, knowing that what I was really learning here was that if that part of the suit broke, I wouldn't be able to fix it. For minor things, the manual gave step-by-step instructions on what to do to correct the problem. The key was going to be really knowing the steps for the things I could do. Fortunately, the power core itself seemed almost foolproof and unbreakable. It, like the pocket phone and the transporting door goop, were things I was never going to be able to duplicate on my own. It made me wonder how long term Serenity saw her commitment. A question I meant to ask her when I was a little closer to being ready to become Iron Man publicly. Serenity and I ate dinner together at the Fortress and then I walked through my new doorway and into the bedroom of my apartment. Her parting words, just before I did were encouraging. "You did well this weekend. I think that next week we're going to go out into the desert and do a little running and jumping. Some serious running and jumping." With a promise like that, it was a good thing I had Becka to get me refocused on the rest of my life come Monday morning. Actually, she should have come first as far as that went, but I had a letter sitting on my desk when I got in. It was a company envelope, the kind you get when someone at corporate headquarters has something important to share with everyone, such as a pay freeze, or an increase in our insurance deductible. In this case, I didn't see its duplicate on anyone else's desk. I opened the envelope and found a letter from the corporate personnel office, an itinerary for the training in Hartford, and a business card for Keith Graham, the corporate liaison who would be our point of contact in Hartford. The letter encouraged me to contact Mr. Graham if I had any questions in advance of the training. We were now officially scheduled to start the session two weeks from today. I checked my in basket for the day, even though I knew what my schedule looked like. Monday's were not the best days to make cold calls, so I usually limited myself to follow-up calls and requests-for-contact calls. I had a pretty small return list, and the RFC list was long only because everyone tended to route them to me because they knew I didn't mind doing them. Only two of the follow-ups were marked as urgent, so I called them right away, and those conversations took up the first half hour of my morning. The second call was the longest, with a poor retiree who was complaining that his delivery had stopped coming. I checked my copies of the paid up sheets and couldn't find him on it. When I told him this, he said he should still have two months credit, because he had suspended his delivery while he had been in Florida for the winter, and he wasn't going to pay twice for anything. I checked the suspended delivery sheets for the entire winter and couldn't find him on it. By the end of the call I'd finally gotten in touch with the local delivery boy, who remembered the old man asking to have his delivery suspended, and in fact he hadn't delivered a paper to him during that time. "Did Mr. Sparrowgrove give you a delivery suspension form to turn in?" I asked. "No, he didn't. I had him sign a blank one, and promised to fill it in for him. His arthritis doesn't let him write too well anymore," The delivery boy told me. "And did you turn that form in for him?" I asked. There was a long pause, followed by a shaky, "Crap! I don't think I did." "I'm guessing not," I told him. "I couldn't find a record of it." "Oh man, I'm sorry Mr. Escobar," the boy told me. "I did have an extra paper for a while, but I never connected the two." "That's okay son," I told him. "We'll credit Mr. Sparrowgrove for an additional two months starting immediately. Just don't let it happen again, okay?" I promise, and I'll make sure he gets a paper tonight, too." "Do you have extras?" I asked. He'd suggested that he didn't often have extra papers. "Don't worry, I'll pay for it myself if I have to. Its the least I can do." I called Mr. Sparrowgrove and explained it to him, and told him the paper should begin being delivered again that evening. Those kind of calls were very rewarding, but they could chew up the clock. When I was done, I headed downstairs very quickly to spend a moment with Becka and let her know what was going on. "I'm going to be gone for two weeks, I was hoping maybe you'd agree to another date. One where you're not just helping me out." "Oh, that was a real date, I think, and I'd love to go on another one. What did you have in mind?" "What's playing at the Starlight?" I asked, not sure that Becka would even know. The Starlight was Kansas City's beautiful outdoor theater, and their productions were world famous. I had gone to see The Sound of Music there last summer. It was one of the few social activities I indulged in, and even then, I went alone. "I think its the Music Man," Becka said. "Have you seen it?" Not at the Starlight," I answered. "I remember seeing it with my parents once when I was a young boy. It was in Spanish though, I think." "You think?" "I was very young. I don't remember much from then, and what I do remember is vague at best. I remember the brass instruments and the music, but the words are a little foggy." I told Becka I had some phone calls to make, besides the ones I got paid to make that is, but that I'd check on the Starlight and check back. "I can check on the theater stuff, you go ahead and get your stuff done." I headed back to my desk with the image of Becka's beautiful smile burned into my memory. I made a couple quick calls off of my call list, nothing consequential, and then called the number on Keith Graham's business card. "Mr. Graham's office, this is Alice," A Woman answered. "Good morning," I answered. "This is Ceferino Escobar, calling for Keith Graham." There was a moment's hesitation, probably while her list was being scanned, "Ah yes Mr. Escobar. Dr. Graham was expecting your call. One moment please." A moment later, the dead line came live again and a pleasant, soft male voice came through. "Good morning Mr. Escobar, I'm glad you called. I assume you have some questions about the upcoming training?" "Not so much about the training itself, but I do need to know as much as I can about the facility itself, the neighborhood its in and whatever else might make it difficult for me." I had to assume he knew of my condition, but the next few minutes would confirm what he knew for sure. "Ah yes, you're the young man who is paralyzed." "No." "No?" He stuttered that, surprised, I think, at my denial. "No sir, I'm not paralyzed. I have extensive muscle and nerve damage in both legs and hips, but no actual paralysis." "But you can't walk, and are in a wheelchair?" "I am in a wheelchair, but I can stand, even take a few steps fairly reliably. Much more than that is pretty iffy. I continue to exercise and follow the doctor's and physical therapist's advice, and I am improving. Incredibly slowly, but improving." It turned out there were a couple things that Mister Graham could immediately think of that were going to be a problem. Some of the exercises the trainees did were performed on a stage, the only access to which were a set of stairs to either side. Four steps, no railing. Several field trips to places in the Hartford area were usually done by bus, and he was fairly certain that those buses weren't equipped to deal with wheelchairs. "Mr. Escobar, I will work on resolving those problems for you, and I'll call you back sometime next week and let you know what's going on, okay?" "Yes sir," I answered, pleased with his promise. "Mr. Escobar, if I decided it was important enough, could you fly out a day or two early, so we could go over the possible problems?" "I'm sure I could, if you thought it would be helpful." I agreed. I wondered about two extra days of meal money though. Doctor Graham must've heard something in my voice when I answered though, and guessed the source immediately. "Any extra days would be completely covered by the meal and hotel allowance of course. In fact, I might be able to work out a bonus for this, since the need to address these problems benefits the company long term. You certainly won't be the last employee with special needs that we send through the training program." "Thank you sir, please call me Spider." I said, in a burst of camaraderie. "Spider, eh? Well, you can call me Doc, or Keith if you prefer. To be honest, even my wife calls me Doc." "Okay Doc." I answered. Even as I did I was already thinking of how I would break this to Serenity. ------- Chapter 6: River City I might have known. Serenity was completely fine with the possible changes to our schedule. In fact she declared that the changes suggested that we just take the two weeks off while I was in Hartford. She would go home to visit her parents. Becka was a little less pleased, but her displeasure pleased me to no end. "Spider, we just started going out, and now you're going to be gone for two weeks, and then you say you might even have to leave a few days early." "We're going out?" I asked stunned. "As in, officially dating?" "Well," Becka said, suddenly shy and blushing. "I guess that's how I thought of it. "Didn't you?" "Thought of it? No." I whispered, shaking my head. "Dreamed of it. Prayed for it, yes. But I hadn't dared think of it that way — until now." With that, Becka stood up and dropped herself lightly onto my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss before hopping back up and resuming her place at her desk. "The Starlight will have to be Thursday night again, if you don't mind," Becka said, as if the kiss hadn't happened. "The Music Man doesn't have a weekend date for a couple of weeks, which means not until you're in Hartford." "Thursday works for me," I answered. "And anytime you want to repeat that last little bit is fine with me too." "I'm sure," She said with a light little laugh that was too musical to be called a giggle. "How about you escort me to lunch today, and we'll see if we can find an appropriate moment." The remainder of my morning was a blur. Lunch was a local sandwich shop, one of the usual places. There were plenty of people there from our office and our building, and I did get my second kiss, as sweet and brief as the first one, but this time in full view of a lot of people who knew us. I sure couldn't find anything to complain about as far as my Monday went! With my new doorway to the fortress, I was able to take advantage of my evenings by stepping through and spending several hours a night working out in the gym or reading my manuals and studying the schematics and mechanical drawings. Every time I spent any length of time at this task, I found myself marveling at Trey Young. Terana had lost a genius when that man had died, there was no doubt about it in my mind. Thursday night at the Starlight was a great experience. Since it's an outdoor theater, there was no need to dress up, and with the curtain going up at 8, we had a fun, no pressure, early dinner at a diner near the theater. We joked about this and that and even had fun reading that night's edition of our own paper to each other. I saw a raised eyebrow several times while making comments, particularly while we were reading an article by Clive Barksdale, the Star's 'science and technology' reporter. Becka didn't make any other comment through, so I didn't ask. The play itself was grand fun. This was a local production, not a visiting Broadway production. The stars were local, and familiar for the most part. The male lead, a full-voiced baritone named Gene Craddick had been a featured male lead in Kansas City musicals for as long as I could remember. His current co-star was a very lovely young lady whose name escapes me, but who had a fine voice herself and a lovely bosom, prominently displayed in several of her outfits, which seemed odd for Marion the Librarian, but I guess the director decided to feature her prominently. So to speak. I got a slug in the shoulder for making that comment to Becka, but she did giggle as she did it. The music was good, with some members of the Kansas City Philharmonic filling out the otherwise decent local amateur orchestra that performed for most of the local productions. The brass section was strong, as it needed to be for this play, and along with the other featured voices, left no jarring notes. Cripes, I should be a critic, I guess, but live theater has always been one of those things I've enjoyed. Yet another of the things my Mom loved that she passed on to me. There was another dinner date the next week, and the kiss that ended this one could finally qualify as seriously steamy. I stood for it, and Becka pressed herself against me without reservation during it. I let my hands hold her tightly, but kept them in the small of her back. A goodnight kiss in the middle of a crowded neighborhood sidewalk was no time to begin to develop wandering hands. Finally it was time to leave for Hartford. I was catching a late night flight on Friday night, and Rebecka rode with me to the airport to see me off. This meant a very long and very meaningful series of kisses at multiple points on the way to the boarding gate. "I'll miss you while you're gone," Becka whispered into my ear the last time. "I'll make you dinner when you get home." Damn! How was I supposed to concentrate on the work at hand for the next two weeks when I had that promise hanging over me? The hotel in Hartford was called the Goodwin. It was in downtown Hartford, just north of Bushnell Park. It was more than a short stroll from there to the training center, which was at the other end of Bushnell Park on Capitol Avenue. Doc Graham met me at the airport, in a van equipped with a hydraulic lift. He'd rented it specifically for my needs, and the driver as well. It seemed like a lot of trouble, but again he reminded me that this was an area that the company had been weak in, and my entry into the training program had forced some folks near the top of the corporate food chain to recognize that and take action. I was merely benefiting from that action. The training itself was both dull and enlightening at the same time, and while it was worthwhile, it wasn't worth talking about. At the end of it, I'd spent two weeks with some good people, along with a few Brian Kennedy-like assholes who I pegged as folks to work hard to avoid down the road. I talked to Becka three times during the two weeks, and it would have been more if I'd have been brave enough to use the pocket phone that Serenity had given me. I discovered it seemed to work from just about anywhere, which meant no long distance charges. The dinner plans were spoken of in tones that suggested we both saw it as a big deal. Doc Graham seemed to be a kindred soul. I can't explain the reasons I thought that, it was just after meeting him and spending some time with him in the company of other trainees, I felt like we meshed on some level. We laughed at the same jokes, we seemed to dislike the same types of people. I even told him about Rebecka, and thinking that just maybe I had a girl back home, instead of just knowing a girl back home I'd dated a couple of times, and he was sympathetic. I think that was also the reason I got invited to dinner at his house, and met his wife Jackie and their two little girls, April and Diana. April was still in diapers, but walking with about the same level of wobble that I was demonstrating publicly. Diana was four, and a little chatterbox. It made for quite the lovely scene, and I enjoyed my evening with them immensely. The training sessions had included a lot of exercises designed to promote team building, problem recognition and problem solving, there were even odd exercises that featured extemporaneous speaking and debate techniques. Some where fun, some induced some serious flop sweat in a lot of us, and I was no exception. To my own surprise I did well in the debate and extemporaneous speaking sessions. I had already thought I could do well in the problem solving sessions, and had. We had a short session the last day followed by a farewell dinner that tried hard to pretend it was an 'awards' style banquet. A lot of little plaques and certificates were handed out. I was surprised to get a handful myself, including actually winning the debate 'award' outright. The flight home was one of those horrendous late evening atrocities that gets you home a couple hours after you should have been asleep. By request, Becka didn't try to meet the flight. I promised to see her the following evening for that promised dinner. I made it home to the apartment and didn't even bother checking with Wing to see if I had any messages. I put my head on the pillow, managed to think briefly of Becka's head on the pillow next to me, and before that thought could develop further, was out like a light. Our dinner was lovely. Rebecka's apartment was lovely. Rebecka was ... beyond lovely. We had baked chicken and tiny fingerling potatoes all spiced and seasoned. We had wine, just a couple glasses with dinner. Then there was a long stretch of time in which I found Becka's couch to be very comfortable, and her in my arms to be even better. Finally I let my hands roam a little, and when I heard soft sounds of encouragement, let them roam a little more. This was exciting. I mean terribly exciting. Becka's hands were doing a little roaming of their own, and soon noticed my excitement. "I'm very ... excited ... too," she whispered into my ear, followed by another feather-light kiss there. Did I say excited? Whoosh! Together, we managed to stop before the excitement got us carried away. We got straightened up and had desert. Over the desert, we talked. Becka asked me a curious question, sort of out of the blue. "Spider, remember that article in the Star we read, the one by Clive Barksdale?" "Their science guy? Yeah, I remember we both cut it to pieces, why?" "I've always kind of thought that the Star could do better than that pretentious stuffed shirt, and the way you seem to get into your technical books and hobby magazines, I wondered how you would do trying to write those kind of articles." Wow, talk about being blind-sided! Still, I thought about what she was asking. "Honey, I think you're amazing, and very kind for thinking of me that way, but ... I have no idea if I could write at all, let alone well enough for the Star to print!" "I figured, but I thought you might like to try. That Clive character is really annoying." "It sounds like you pay a lot more attention to that section of the paper than I do, so I'll have to take your word for it." "Now that you've been to management training, you'll meet him." Becka said with a sour expression. "He goes to all the paper's official functions." It finally clicked. Clive Barksdale had hit on my girlfriend at some point in the past, and she hadn't liked it. "We won't let thoughts of him ruin our great evening will we?" I asked, throwing in a small grin so she knew I wasn't completely serious. "That man can't ruin our anything," Becka said stiffly. "I won't have it." "Then forget him," I said. "It seems I've finished my dessert. If I go wash my hands, will you meet me back on the couch for a small goodnight snuggle?" She would, I did, and back at the couch we had another steamy twenty minutes of soft lips and mutual exploration, until Becka sighed and looked me in the eyes, suddenly very serious. "Its the weekend and there's no work tomorrow. Would you like to spend the night?" Would I? Silly question. ------- Chapter 7: Running the Wasteland Midnight took me to an isolated stretch of desert somewhere south of the New Mexico/Texas border; east of El Paso and west of Odessa. It was Midnight who took me, not Serenity. She was in full dress as her superhero alter ego, and we maintained our personae the entire time we were outside of the Fortress. "Its important to develop a public persona and to use it religiously whenever you're in public wearing the suit," she told me. "It is helpful that the suit completely disguises your voice, but if there are mannerisms that people associate with you, you will have to be careful to eliminate them." making the suit do a double take wasn't easy, but I did a good enough job that she caught it, and barked a short laugh. "Not the people. Eliminate the mannerisms." I laughed back and shrugged in the suit to show her I was settled in and ready to go. "Alright, lets run then. See that low hill to the south?" "Uh huh." "Go." And I started running. It felt smooth to me, but I imagine from the outside it looked pretty intimidating. A fifteen foot tall steel humanoid shape, feet pounding the hard, sun-baked ground as it moved at a decent 30 miles an hour, shook the ground pretty good and raised a good sized cloud of dust. "So far so good," came Midnight's voice. "Try cutting left and right, like you're dodging something." I did, and found the dynamics of shifting all that weight suddenly caused some problems as, once again my body's idea of how to do it conflicted with the suit's, but after a couple dozen sudden shifts, it was beginning to smooth out. "Alright, without slowing down, give me a forward roll coming to a stop after you complete it." Midnight requested. I decided stopping to think about it was the wrong thing to do, and just went for it. The roll actually went pretty smoothly, way better than I expected. The stopping part? Not so well. I did a couple of rolls forward followed by a little wobbly one that sort of looked like a dying toy gyroscope when its on its last legs, and then I was laying in the dust, wondering what went wrong. "That was fun," I said out loud. So I did a couple more standing forward rolls and we talked about momentum and timing, and then I tried a running roll again. Better, but not great. Once I had those looking semi-graceful, we stopped those and began trying a full running shoulder roll, both left and right. Those didn't suck as completely as my initial full speed forward roll had, but they weren't pretty, and they were definitely harder on the system if you didn't get it right. After lunch, I learned my first real trick. We practiced jumping to start with, and here in the open desert, it was serious jumping, using all the power and mechanical advantage the suit had to offer. "Jump straight up." I did, and I judged my effort as basically jumping my suit's height, about fifteen feet. Landing was like running as far as impact went. "Flex slightly and jump again." I did, and this time I jumped a good three times my own height. When I got to the apex of the jump, Midnight called out. "Initiate a landing sequence." I have a pretty damned good memory. I usually remember things fairly easily. I'd read the manuals that Serenity and Trey Young had built, and thought I knew it pretty well, front to back, but how I pulled the landing sequence out of my head in time to perform it in the middle of that jump? Your guess is as good as mine, but I'm beginning to think my legs weren't the only things Doctor McKesson may have messed with while I was under her care. There's no way I would've been able to remember that one detail so well without having isolated the procedure and practiced it. The 'landing sequence' was just a particular one of those 'squint & twitch' moves, and a relatively easy one. The end result being me, in the suit, coming to a smooth, flex-legged landing at the end of the jump. "You like that?" came Midnight's voice over the suit's comm. "Yeah," I answered. "But we might need to have a little chat later about why I was able to pull that out of my head so easily." We spent the afternoon working more on jumps, and a couple variations on them, as well as combining them with some of the running and other maneuvers that I was beginning to get comfortable with. Another couple of days like this, and it would really start to feel like boot camp. I didn't realize it until I climbed out of the suit at the end of the day, but it had really been a physical workout. I was drenched in sweat, and I made a hasty exit for the shower. After I was clean again, it was back to the suit to clean the inside thoroughly. The last thing I wanted was to let the inside of the suit begin to smell like an old gym sock. I didn't bother with the manuals that night. I ran a mile on the treadmill in the gym to work the knots out of my muscles from being in the suit all day, and followed that with another hour in the therapeutic bath. Serenity referred to it as a hot tub, but I'm not sure where that term came from. Dinner and a long phone call to Becka finished my night and I was asleep the minute my head hit the pillow. Sunday was filled with fighting! After an hour in the morning with the swiveling axles again, Midnight threw on something she called her 'giant midnight force' suit, and we began sparring. Punch and counter-punch at first, just getting used to the feel of actual moving around and throwing punches and blocking them. All at a very sedate speed. After a midmorning break, we ramped it up, and got into some serious fisticuffs. I had been a decent brawler, back before the Battle over Kansas City caught me up in its drama. Decent enough I guess for the streets where I lived and hoped to escape from, but not what you could truly call an accomplished or effective fighter. What I did have was the sure knowledge that if I lost a fight, I didn't have the number, or type of friends who could keep the wolves at bay. I refused to play some of the games required, so I had earned no tolerance. By some manner of thinking, given the way life was expected to turn out for those who grew up where and when I did, the Sprite didn't ruin my life. In fact, she may have saved it. What I knew about fighting got taken apart, sorted out, and what seemed like a billion new chapters added. Midnight then put it all back together. The process wasn't fast, it took that weekend and many others over the long winter and spring. Many, many looong weekends. Weekends where I was missing time with my new girlfriend. To cover for those absences, I did write articles for the science and technology section of the Star. I wasn't submitting them yet, but I did write them, and Becka and I would spend time in the evenings, when we weren't otherwise occupied, going over them together. She was a harsh critic and a cruel editor, but she found a way to inspire me past my flaws and shortcomings as a writer. In the middle of April, I got to fly for the first time. Flying in the suit requires a little explanation. Just as a lot of Midnight's power is disguised with holographics, my ability to fly is disguised as being done with jets in the boots, shoulders and back of the suit. The jets, while real, produced negligible amounts of thrust. They're strictly for show — anti-gravity is the real power. Aerodynamic flight controls are also achieved with the use of complementary secondary gravitic fields, and although the science behind it was beyond me, the application of it soon prove to be far more natural than I'd have expected, especially since most of it is controlled by on-board dedicated flight control processing systems. "We need to get you some flight time someplace where we don't have to worry about being observed," Midnight told me Sunday night. "Next week I'm going to take you somewhere different, okay?" "sure," I said agreeably. Dinner was cooking and I was a few minutes away from calling Becka for a chat. I was feeling far less stress after today's workout than I had the day before, and I had finally gotten to do a little flying. I was feeling on top of the world. Back at work on Monday, I continued to wait for the after-effects of the management training class. Someone would come calling to tell me I was going on temporary assignment somewhere, but I had no sense of the timing. Days, weeks, months — none of the participants or my bosses gave any indications. I was clueless. Work was its usual mindless series of phone calls, sprinkled with the occasional moments where I actually had a sense of accomplishment, and they served mostly to mark time between visits with Becka. We ate together every day for lunch, and got together most workday evenings. So far Rebecka was accepting my excuses for being gone entire weekends at a time. But I knew I was going to need to come up with something better soon if I didn't get that temporary managerial assignment soon. In the meantime, the two of us worked together in the evenings to see if I had what it took to write newspaper articles for the Star's science and technology section. The 'story' I had been writing and re-writing concerned the paging system used by KCGH; Kansas City General Hospital. It was a 'state-of-the-art' system, and combined both telephonic and radio communications to create a system that allowed those on call to at least move about their own neighborhood without having to stay in the house to answer the phone. The doctors and emergency personnel there raved about it, and it was brand new, only having been put in place a few months earlier. I was fortunate in that the two base components, the Bell Systems DCX11, which was the heart of the telephonic system, and the Johnson and Brown Radio Dispatch Center, model IV, were both very popular systems, and I had been able to read extensively on them in a half dozen of the technical journals I subscribed to, and I was able to use those journals as resources while I wrote more specifically about the system as it was installed at KC General. A few phone interviews with some of the people involved, and I had a pretty thorough piece as far as the technical side of things went. The trick for me was humanizing what I wrote; making it interesting for the average person. Most of the polishing was for 'putting some heart in it', as Becka described it. I probably would have spent far too much time polishing and re-polishing, but I had something of a deadline in my own mind. I was hoping to have it submitted and either accepted or rejected before the company could make a decision on assigning me to a management training position somewhere. That Thursday morning I dropped it off at the submissions desk on the way to my own office. Becka had suggested Thursday because it was a lucky day for me, our first two 'dates' having both been on Thursdays. We celebrated in advance by going to dinner, followed by dessert at my apartment. Saturday morning I was at the fortress bright and early, and had the suit almost through its preflight checklist before Midnight appeared, two cups of coffee in her hand. We finished the preflight together and then I caught her up on my article writing while we finished the coffee. "What's your second article about?" "My second article? I don't even have a first article yet." "You've submitted it though," she shook her head as if I'd failed to answer a question correctly in class. "If its accepted, you should already be working on the next one. Waiting until this one is accepted before starting on the next one just gives you less time to work, doesn't it?" Well crap! I could see the sense of it, and started right then and there trying to think of an idea for what I would write about next. "Save it," Midnight said, setting her empty cup on the workbench. "Get in a bathroom break, get warmed up and lets get you in the suit. We're going flying today, remember?" Oh yeah! Flying! I made my pit stop, followed that with five minutes of stretching exercises, and then I was climbing into the suit, ready to go. "We're going someplace where we don't have to worry about being watched, so we can go full out, but no questions about exactly where we are, or I'm likely to get unhappy, got it?" "got it," I answered, nodding my head. Apparently the suit's head nodding along with me was funny, because Midnight laughed, and then, while I was still absorbing that thought, the world blinked, and we were somewhere else. "Follow the leader time," she called, and then was zooming off. I kicked in my own flight controls and was chasing after her a split second later. Wherever we were, it started off in a steep-sided valley, heavy forest sandwiched between sharp, icy peaks. As we flashed through the valley itself, following a fast running river below us, Midnight dropped lower and lower until we were mere feet above the river itself. The suit had a terrain-following mode that I kicked in, and while the suit's built in guidance system did its thing, I tried getting an overview of the valley. My sightseeing effort was cut short though by Midnight's decision to boost her speed and begin climbing. I hit my own boosters and followed again. We weren't above the trees for more than a second when the speed notched up again and our path took a sharp turn, heading straight for a line of peaks which my suit told me were to the east of us. The line of peaks was just the first in a rugged series of peaks. An intimidating band of rugged and wild land that stretched as far as the eye could see to the east of us. Midnight zigzagged through the mountains with me on her heels for a good hour. By the end of that hour our speed had slowly ramped upwards until we were flying just below the speed of sound. It was incredible, and I felt myself grinning like a madman inside my suit. The grin was short lived though, as once again Midnight changed things up. This time she went ballistic. As in ballistic missile, launching herself almost straight up, heading for the stratosphere! I followed, finding another notch, speed-wise, and within minutes we were high enough for Terana to be a curved ball beneath us when Midnight slowed to a stop, hovering in the thin air. My suit told me we were 30 kilometers above the surface. "In theory your suit is at least capable of suborbital flight," Came her transmission through the suit's comm. "With the enhancements we've made, and particularly with the addition of the antigrav flight system, I suspect you could achieve full orbital altitudes without a problem." "I've got an hour's worth of air though," I added. "Not enough to really let me do much up here." "No, but this is an avenue of escape. Pursuers aren't going to be able to follow you much past this point, and most of them won't make it this far." "Now, I think its time to change the game around," Midnight said, raising an arm that suddenly was outlined with black flames. A ball of it shot my way and clang, I was hit with a bolt. Even as she dropped below me, suddenly rocketing back towards the ground, her call came through the comm. "Tag, you're it." For the next several hours we played tag back and forth, in and out and above the vast mountain range we'd first flown over. I used my 'repulsor' beams and Midnight her own force blasts. I understood, as she did, that we were both using the same grav field weaponry, but with this game we were both fully in our personae, and even the banter back and forth assumed a different tone than it had. I'd like to say I held my own, but to be honest, it took me much longer to score a tag on her than it did for her to reciprocate. But I was getting better as we went along, I could tell. Our flight had taken us well into the afternoon, and when Midnight finally pulled up and signaled a stop, it was very welcome. After a moment's pause, we were suddenly in the hangar bay back in the fortress, and it took no conversation to get me to initiate the process for getting out of the suit. I had worked up a good sweat, and I was hungry enough to make my stomach rumble, but I was glad to notice that I didn't feel exhausted as I had earlier in the training. The conditioning program was starting to pay off. "You get cleaned up," Midnight told me as I was climbing out of the suit. "I'll work on some food." I took a long shower, and over some grilled tuna and rice, we critiqued my day. Midnight seemed pleased, but she went out of her way to avoid a direct compliment. "That's it for today." she said as we were cleaning up after the meal. Tomorrow we'll do some ground work, and save the flying for after dark. Rest up. Start writing another article. Call your sweetie." -oOo- The following day started quietly enough, with a bacon and eggs breakfast and a really good coffee. After another warm up session to get the muscles loose, and the obligatory trip to the bathroom, I got suited up and we were off. When the world blinked around me this time, I was standing in a small clearing surrounded by trees. "This looks suspiciously like that forest we spent some time flying over yesterday," I said through the suit comm. "It is, but no flying today. We'll save that for tonight, remember?" Of course I did, and when I turned to look at Midnight, it didn't take any guessing to see what she had in mind for today. She had transformed herself into that giant version of herself, the one that was a good match for me in my suit, and she was swinging her arms and flexing her legs in a good impression of someone preparing for a fight. "No flying, but outside of that, anything goes," she said once she straightened up. "If your comm unit goes out and you want to cry uncle, put both hands over your face, otherwise, just holler uncle if you've had enough." I nodded silently and saw her nod in return. "Go!" I hadn't had much time to consider strategy, but that 'anything goes' phrase had sort of perked me up. I fired all four of my forward facing repulsors as soon as the words were spoken. The impact sent her flying, the old fashioned way, ass-over-tea kettle way, and not wanting to waste any time, I jumped after her, doing a sort of tuck and roll in mid leap, coming down feet first straight at her midsection. I was all set to kick in my boot jets just as I got close enough, but she rolled to her left and took off with a leap. The boot jets weren't much for flight, but they put out some serious heat right at the outflow ports. I had to dodge a blast from her just as I landed, and only partially succeeded. The blast caught me on the bottom half of my right leg, knocking me off balance just enough to keep me from doing a recovery leap in pursuit. Instead, I had to gather myself and reset, only a momentary thing, but enough to give her some distance, and some cover in the heavy woods. I grabbed a small tree, twenty feet tall or so, and broke it off at the ground and leapt, looking for Midnight with my full suite of detection gear active. When I saw movement below me and to my right about a hundred yards I threw the tree and followed it with a repulsor blast from my left hand. I used the shoulder attitude jets to knock me down out of the middle of my leap, and with my feet back on the ground began a full speed run in the direction I'd thrown the tree. Damn, this was going to be a fun day! ------- Chapter 8: Revelations and Relationships The flight capabilities of the Iron Man suit had special meaning for both Serenity the person and Midnight the hero. In either persona, this was the most important modification to the suit's abilities, as she saw it as representing her biggest contribution to my becoming the new Iron Man, born out of the tragedy that had been the rise and fall of Lord Steel. Flight was good, and that first night time flight lesson was where the depth of this contribution first came clear for me. This wasn't just a matter of slapping on an anti-gravity unit and some controls, this was an integrated, complete system that made flying effortless and being heroic while flying even possible. The key to it all was information and feedback. Inside my suit I had instantaneous access to information that was contextual where it needed to be without putting barriers between me and other information I might want. Flying at night was hardly more difficult than flying during the day. I had radar, infrared, ultraviolet, audio, gravitic and other detection systems that integrated together, provided a seamless picture of where I was and what was around me. I got speed, distance, vector and acceleration readings on just about everything the sensor systems could detect, and those systems did automatic threat appraisal, flagging things with priority flags. It wasn't simple, don't get me wrong. There was a very steep learning curve there, but it was full of logical steps and recognizable transitions. It didn't require blind leaps of understanding, and after my first session of night flying, I felt like I had it about 80 percent mastered. For sure I knew that what I had learned that night had already made me a better fighter during daylight hours. I had been depending to heavily on sight and sound. I now knew there was a complete range of detection systems that I should have been accessing. "The gravitic detection sensors will give you a big advantage over most of Terana's villains," Midnight told me later that night. "Everything has a gravitic signature, and they're hard to mask. Most biological systems, even those super powered ones, aren't going to be able to mask it, let alone detect it." "That's going to be great, but for me, the most amazing thing is the way things are integrated. I already feel like I can do most things with barely a thought about how I'm doing them. I guess my only real concern is to wonder how I'll stack up against some of the bad guys out there." "You mean as far as skill?" "No, skill will come with time, I know that. I mean power-wise. How will I stack up that way? How do my gravitic repulsor blasts stack up against, oh, something like the Shrike's sonic needles, for example." "I understand your concern, and I think over time you'll come to have a lot of confidence in your repulsors, but don't forget that it is the suit and its physical strength that is your primary asset. Your basic strategy against most foes is going to be to get close and physically engage them. You're going to be bringing more strength and mechanical advantage to the situation than just about anyone you fight, and between that, and the amazing alloy Trey Young made his suit from in combination with the new gravitic shielding ... well, you have a grip like nobody else. As close to irresistible as exists here, I think. Once you've got them in your grip, you've always got a good blast from the suit to tame them if they're resisting." This was something else about the suit that had been less than obvious at first, but which came through with practice. It was also the reason the suit wasn't painted but was left as burnished metal. The fusion plant that drove it could generate an incredible electrical charge that could be discharged through the skin of the suit. When I did that while I had a good grip on something, guess where that charge went? It was a high-powered weapon of last resort, definitely to be used only against very powerful opponents. Used against a normal person, it would very definitely be fatal. "So I'm a grappler at heart then?" "Exactly. Haven't you proved that the last few days?" "You've proved it for me, I think," I countered. "All I can say is I'm glad I'm not going to have to worry about going up against you for real." "Well, I'm not your typical Teranan super hero, that's for sure." I thought maybe Serenity was offering me a peek behind the curtain, so I asked the question that I'd wanted to ask for quite some time. "You're not exactly what could be called your typical Teranan at all, are you?" "You could say that. To be honest, I've been told I'm not much like anyone anywhere, but I came here because it was always my dream to be a super hero." So that place you took me to do all the flying, that wasn't Terana?" "No, its a place I call Glacier. That entire world is mostly as you saw it, an endless series of mountains with little pocket valleys everywhere. There are no people there, so our rough stuff in that valley isn't enough damage to be concerned about." "But it seemed so much like Terana, where is it?" "It is Terana, in a way. Its not another world so much as it is another facet of this one, but that explanation isn't something I think you need to know any more about. Its enough that you know that some of what I've given you are from places like that." "Like Wing?" "Like Wing, both the shell and the intelligence inside of it." "Yeah, Wing," I echoed, my thoughts drawn to the ship and the bright intelligence that lay at its core. "You need to spend some time with her," Serenity told me. "The new shell will be done soon, and you and her have to reach a mutual understanding." "Yeah," I said, more to myself than to her. I'd been thinking the same thing, off and on. "Before you worry about that though, you need to decide what to do about Rebecka," Serenity said, her tone suddenly softer. "She can't be happy with your weekend disappearances. The current situation will not last." "I'm mad about her Serenity," I said with a sigh. "I can't walk away, I just can't." "I've known that for months, Spider. I'm not asking you to walk away." "But I've got to tell her, give her a chance to walk away. Not everyone can handle the..." "That's why I picked you, you know." Serenity chuckled. "What?" "You'd already faced death, and worse, and you coped. Came out stronger, truth be told. You were still an honest, honorable man, but one without pretensions, bitterness or anger. You had no axe to grind." ------- I sat and thought. Wing was hovering at the edge of the atmosphere, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The new shell was awesome, just perfect. It was almost twice as big as the old one, and seemed bigger. The flight cabin had room for four people and there was a comfortable service room behind it. The suit bay behind it was empty tonight. I'd left the suit back at the fortress, this was just a good way to get away from it all and think, and still give myself some time with Wing. There's no real 'talking' when it comes to Wing, not as far as 'friendly conversation' goes, but when I'm around her now, I sort of feel her moving around the edges of my thoughts. I try feeling for the edges of hers as well, but as Serenity explains it, her thoughts are mostly just a slightly altered reflection of my own. I still wasn't sure how much more we had to go down this road towards comfortable acceptance, but we were clearly moving in the right direction. Wing wasn't at the center of my thoughts tonight though, Becka was. I told her Monday morning at work that I didn't want to spend my weekends apart any longer, but that there were things I would have to tell her that might be hard for her to accept. I had expected her to demand to know immediately, but to my surprise, she was completely amenable to my suggestion that she come to dinner Friday night, when I would reveal everything. She countered by offering me Thursday night, our night, at her place, dinner and all. "I don't know what's coming Friday night, but I love what we have now, and I want as much of it as I can get between now and then." That was one of the infinite reasons why I loved her. What a woman! I had to work hard to pull my thoughts back from thinking of Becka and into the present. At the altitude Wing and I were at, and in this remote and isolated region, I didn't expect any traffic, which was why I had chosen it in the first place, but Wing continuously kept me apprised of whatever traffic she did see at the periphery. Faint arcing tracks were painted on the display in front of me, all at the far edges. Tomorrow was Thursday, and it was getting late, time to get home and get some sleep. "let's go home, Wing." Wing engaged the drive and we were very quickly moving east and into the thickening atmosphere below. ------- "you're bad!" Becka shrieked, followed by a throaty laugh as we entered my apartment. I'd made a little grab at her very excellent ass as she went past me and through the door into the apartment. We were both still awash in the afterglow of last night's lovemaking. It had made for a very interesting day at work today. I'd even had people ask me over the phone what had made me so cheerful. Not that I could tell them the complete truth, but with all honesty, everyone who asked got the same answer. 'Love', I told them. We had decided on the walk from her place to mine to stop at a Chinese restaurant that we both liked that was on the way and grab some take out from their very large buffet. A very large paper grocery bag, full of enticing aromas rested on my lap, and I wheeled myself towards the kitchen with it. Even as I did, I was thinking of getting up out of the chair and walking the rest of the way. That would be stage one of the revelations for tonight. "I locked the door," I said over my shoulder without looking. Becka was hanging her overcoat. "Oooh, not wasting any time are we?" she giggled. "I thought you were gong to feed me first?" "We'll eat before things move to far along, but there are secrets, and then there are secrets," I said, standing up and walking the rest of the way to the kitchen counter with the grocery bag. Becka's eyes went wide at that, and I reinforced it by turning after I'd set the bag down and walking back to the chair, picking it up and moving it up against the wall, out of the way. "My god, Spider!" Becka cried, the buttons on her sweater forgotten. "You can walk!" I cocked my head at her, and threw in a little smirk. "I mean you can really walk, not just a step or two!" "You'll have to trust me on this, but when you first met me, I couldn't. I've had some medical treatment recently that was just a little bit beyond what you can normally get. I really wasn't able to walk then, but am completely healthy now." "Completely healed?" "Completely," I answered. "Hell, I'm healthier than I was before the accident, but that's because I've gotten into serious shape." "Well, I could have told you that. You are a physical specimen, Cef." "There's a reason for that as well, but lets dig into dinner first, okay?" We ate dinner in companionable good cheer. I was encouraged to see Becka remain cheerful and happy after that first, semi-innocent revelation, but still worried about how she would handle the rest. The Chinese food was good, and still hot. We drank tea while we ate and laughed over stories of our various take-out dining experiences over the years. Dessert was definitely not Chinese, it was chocolate ice cream with cherry sauce. "Should we save some of this sauce for ... later?" Becka asked. "If there's a later, that might be interesting," I leered, offering up my best eyebrow wiggle. "But let's make sure there's going to be a later, first okay?" "This is really going to be that big a deal?" "It really is. It might be too big a deal. I don't think it is. I hope its not ... You've said you love me, I've said I love you." "I do." "I don't doubt it, even a little bit, and you don't even know how happy you've made me because of it, but what I'm going to show you, could be a complication too large to live with." "Well God! Let's get it over with then!" "Alright then, lets get this stuff cleaned up and we can get to it." The cleanup took only a few minutes, most of which was a debate about whether to refrigerate the cherry sauce or not. Considering the implied future use, neither of us thought a little time at room temperature would be a problem. Once the cleanup was done, I walked Becka towards my bedroom door, folding my arms around her from behind, her hands caught up in mine. "In there?" She asked with surprise. "This isn't some sort of whips and chains thing, is it?" "No," I laughed, moving us in position to stand in front of the open doorway. "Close your eyes." "Okay." I stepped us through, triggering the transport mechanism, whatever it was. The suit bay, where we had been transported to was quiet, but it was much larger than my bedroom, and much cooler. Becka could tell something was different immediately. "what just happened?" she asked immediately. "Open your eyes," I told her, stepping around her so I was blocking her view of the suit itself. "Oh my God!" Becka whispered. "Where are we? How did we get here?" Welcome to Iron Man's fortress." I said, stepping aside so she could see the suit. "Who is Iron Man?" "I am." Becka struggled with information overload, looking almost panicky as I slowly walked her across the length of the bay, towards the suit. "It won't look familiar, probably," I commented, nodding at the suit. "The man who created this suit was a bad guy for a while, under the influence of those Jovian invaders. He was something of a third rate villain until he ran into a new Super Hero called Midnight. Know who that is?" Becka nodded. "She's the one who cleaned out that nest of extortionists and enforcers on the west coast. Brought in the Crimson Spear?" "That's her," I confirmed. "She fought Lord Steel, this suit and the man in it." "His name was Trey Young," Came a voice behind us. Becka spun, I turned more slowly, and there was Midnight, in her full outfit, black Midnight force flickering around her. "Trey was a genius, and outside of the control of the Cloud Kings of Jupiter, he was a good guy. He'd built the battle suit with the intention of becoming a super hero, but he wasn't able to do that at first. Later, he was, and I helped him to realize that dream." Midnight had walked towards us as she said this, stopping in front of both of us. "And then he died," She added in a soft, sad voice. There was a long, dead quiet moment after that. The sound of the ventilation system seemed to swell up out of the silence until, finally, Becka asked the obvious question. "So, you have been training to do this? To become this ... Iron Man?" "I have," I answered. "And your legs?" "My mother," Serenity offered. "She's a doctor, and a one woman medical miracle worker. She had dropped the dramatic accessories and pulled her mask off. Even the hair color was back to its Serenity roots. Crap! I cringed a little at that thought, very grateful I didn't say it out loud. Knowing Serenity, she may well have heard it in my thoughts, but if so, she was practiced enough at masking her reaction to the thoughts of others that I couldn't see any change in her expression. "How dangerous will this be?" "Very," I answered flatly. Her questions had me seeing her slipping away from me. "Potentially," Serenity amended. "Most villains I'm aware of on Terana won't have the power to get past his suit's defenses, but a few do. A New one could come along, but the ... situation that resulted in Trey's death also could mean that fewer and fewer super heroes will be born or made here in the coming generations. At the least I expect it will taper off to some degree, both in the numbers, and in the levels of power they are able to wield." I heard an unspoken 'but... ' in that declaration, and so did Becka. "But?" she asked. "But that's merely statistics. It doesn't guarantee anything." "Will he be your partner?" Becka asked, nodding at me. "Or maybe your sidekick?" "No." We both answered simultaneously, and with some vigor. This actually got a brief giggle from Becka. "Midnight's presence on Terana is going to be short-lived, I've decided," Serenity said. "My family is doing great things someplace else, and I have had my fill of being a hero. I want to spend some time making sure Spider will have everything he needs to keep going without me, but then, I'll be leaving Terana." I could see Becka absorbing the concept that this person she was speaking with had just implied that she was from someplace else. Someplace that was not Terana. "Other worlds?" she asked at last. "Other Teranas, but yes, even other worlds. I have a little brother who has been to the stars ... Well, only the nearest ones, so far." "Spider?" Serenity said, motioning towards the suit. I looked to Becka for confirmation. "Okay," She said with a grim nod. "Put on the suit." ------- Chapter 9: Missile Man I was moving just below the speed of sound, ripping through a feathery washboard layer of clouds that rested a thousand feet above a denser, more complete layer of cloud cover. The full moon above me light up everything below me, lining every edge in silver fire and dipping the world in a patina of aloof coolness. Inside my suit, I was grinning like the Cheshire cat. "All right, that cloud to your right is a bad guy. Give him a blast," came Serenity's voice through the comm. I rotated on my central axis slightly, lining the front of my suit up with the right side of my line of flight and flicked out an arm, my battle suit covered hand clenched into a fist and triggered a blast with a gravitic repulsor beam. My wrist and fist were wrapped in an envelope of pale green light for just a second before the beam flicked out to spear the nearby cloud, punching a hole through it. "Good," came the observation from Serenity. She was in Wing with Becka somewhere above and behind me. "Uh oh, bad guy on your tail, watch out." A blast of white flashed past me. She was firing at me from Wing! I banked hard right, into the space where the white beam had just passed and hit the jets, plummeting a thousand feet in a few seconds. Another beam of light speared past me to my left, and then, without pause, another beam passed in front of me. I banked right again and then rolled left and down. Another shot, further away this time. I curled into a ball, did a forward roll in mid-air, rotating a half turn as I did, and shot back up at full power, going for the stars, punching through the sound barrier as I did. "Excellent!" Came Serenity's voice. I could hear Becka laughing in the background. That was a good sign. "That's enough for now, lets head home." "Sounds good," I agreed, throttling back my speed and flattening out my line of flight until I was headed back down in a shallow dive. While I was getting out of the suit and cleaned up, Serenity gave Becka a quick tour of the Fortresses' living quarters. I took a quick shower and threw on a t-shirt and some cotton gym shorts and a pair of sandals. I didn't want to get dressed completely until I'd had a chance to cool down from the shower. When I found them, they were whipping up a late night snack of BLT sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies. "So what do you think?" I asked after I'd gotten my kiss from Becka. "I think that its a good thing I didn't know about Serenity before this. I'd have been so jealous, but she tells me other than the usual ogling of her ah ... attributes, there's been nothing but business between you too." "Well, I'll admit to drooling a little at first, I am a heterosexual male after all, but I'd like to think we've at least approached friendship by now," I said with a pout. "We are that," Serenity said with a laugh, "at least as much as I can be and still be a mentor to you in this process." "I'm glad you're not jealous," I whispered, kissing her ear. "Hard to be now," Becka said evilly. "Serenity let me know about her mind reading ability, and tells me that she can guarantee that you are mad, mad, mad in love with me." I looked over at Serenity, a scowl starting to form on my face. "And she with you," was all she said. The next couple of weeks were interesting, to say the least. Becka became a part of the Iron Man team immediately, fascinated by the remote monitoring equipment, and spent endless hours with Serenity learning to use the diagnostic and monitoring tools that were a part of the whole setup. When I expressed some concern to Serenity that she might be biting off more than she could chew, she told me not to worry about it. "I've given her a little boost in the memory and comprehension areas, just like I did for you when we started this." I stared at her for a long time, and it was a hard stare. "What?" she answered with a snicker. "You didn't think these mental powers were only good for peeking into people's thoughts did you? Of course I did a little tweaking." "I should have guessed that," I admitted. "But I thought I had just finally found something I had a natural affinity for." "Well you do, dummy," Serenity snorted. "Why the hell else would I pick you? That doesn't mean I couldn't maximize what you already had going for you, did it? You and Becka are very much alike in those areas as well, so it was easy to make sure she was able to keep up with you." "More like making sure I could keep up with her," I muttered. "Maybe," Serenity laughed. That was the end of that conversation, though I think Becka may have had a similar conversation with Serenity later. -oOo- Kansas City was a bit conflicted about its identity. It tried hard to be a cosmopolitan center of forward thinking, progressive opportunity, but it was a rail and cattle center at its roots, and so the people in and around it were a mix of modern city dwellers and rural country folk. As a center of commerce, it drew its share of bad guys, and today, it was a relatively low-level thug who called himself The Missile Man. Like the mind-controlled Trey Young's Lord Steel, he usually rented himself out to more serious bad guys who wanted to send a message. This message apparently involved the rail yards on the east side of town, as Missile Man was busy blasting pieces of it to bits with his missiles. "This guy has several different kind of missile attacks," Wing's voice said through my suit comm. "He's got a low powered 'swarmer' missile that he fires of in groups of thirty to fifty, a more powerful missile he calls a 'streaker' that can easily blow a car to bits. His most powerful missile is the 'Boomer', as he calls it. This one can take out houses and small buildings." "Should I be worried about any of them?" I asked. I was flying at top speed, with Wing shadowing me at the edge of the atmosphere, and about ready to drop down into the Kansas City area from my cruising altitude. "Even the boomer shouldn't get through your shielding, but the concussive force could be dangerous. I'd avoid direct contact with that one, and try not to let too many of the streakers get to you either, but the swarmer missiles you can ignore." The pyrotechnics issuing from the freight yards made it very easy to pick a place to land, and I managed to do it pretty much unobserved, since everyone in the area had already made a hasty exit looking for someplace to hang out that was missile free. With all the gravitic enhancements the suit had, I could walk or run quietly, if I was of a mind to, but the sound and feel of the impact from my suit's tonnage clomping along the ground was a nice calling card, I thought, and it would probably set the mood for the coming confrontation. I thought that it was chilling enough an effect that I was boosting it somewhat to make the impact more so. I ran alongside a rail spur, with some cattle pens to my right and the whistling sputter and flare of missiles coming from in front of me. I kept myself away from the tracks and the grade under it as much as possible. No sense creating more work for the yard's crew than I had to. When I finally laid eyes on Missile Man, I was surprised at how small he seemed. I guess I was making the adjustment to thinking of myself as the size of the suit automatically now. I had been fighting Iron Man sized opponents in my head, as well as in the simulator back at the fortress, so even a six foot plus specimen like Missile Man seemed small. He was surrounded by a cloud of what I assumed were the 'swarmer' missiles, and I wondered if they served as a defensive screen. If he hadn't felt or heard my approach, he certainly saw me now, and with a wave of a hand, a missile came streaking my way. Was this one of the streakers, or a boomer? I might have thought Wing could monitor my thoughts like Serenity, because right then her voice came over the comm, "Streaker!" 'Okay then', I thought to myself, and with the missile upon me, I had just enough time to slap my hands together like I was swatting a fly. The missile exploded on the impact and my hands bounced apart slightly, but were unharmed otherwise. "Ooh, that tickles," I said out loud. "Who are you?" Missile Man asked. Oh yea, I'd been waiting for that! "You can call me..." I threw in the dramatic pause, just like I knew had to be in the super-hero manual, before upping the volume and concluding with, "Iron Man!" I could have hoped for a few more witnesses, maybe some cheering fans or at least a brass band, but I didn't have time to dwell on that thought, the next missile was definitely big, and it screamed as it flew my direction. 'Let's see if these things are guided, ' I muttered to myself, and launched myself skyward, keeping an eye on the missile itself as I did. I let it follow me up until we were both a safe couple of thousand feet above the ground before rotating back and firing a repulsor at it. Missile met repulsor beam with a very satisfying boom, as the missile exploded beneath me with quite a bit of force. I let myself finish the roll I'd begun and kicked in the 'jets', rocketing back towards my opponent at just below the speed of sound. I fired another repulsor blast, but from this distance, Missile Man had time to react and rolled to his left and came up firing. Three streaker missiles, it looked like. I fired a blast from each hand and took out two of them, but they were coming too fast, and I didn't have time to do more than juke slightly in mid-flight in an attempt to avoid the third one. The juke wasn't enough and the missile hit me in the back of my lower left leg. SPRANG!!!! The noise as the suit and the shielding above it absorbed the blast was painful! The anti-grav drive unit suffered from a momentarily power drain as power was temporarily diverted to the shields, and I dropped out of my flight path. Without any intervention on my part the suit caught itself after dropping a few feet and began correcting for it. In the meantime, I'd recovered enough to see that three more streakers were coming fast. 'Wonder if these things are proximity or impact, ' I muttered again into the comm, without the suit echoing the words aloud. I took out the middle and far left missiles then did a roll along my axis and let the missile on the far right pass within a few feet of me. No explosion, so that missile at least was set to go off on impact. I had to assume it was busy right now doing a high speed turn to try and get back on target, but I didn't wait for it, I kept on going at high speed, only spinning and hitting the jets again within a hundred feet of the ground. I braked hard, one long burst, which was really the gravity controls again, with the suit jets for show, and rolled again, hitting the ground with one foot, a knee, and a balled fist. The ground shook and Missile Man lost his feet. The tracking system in the suit was beeping madly, still tracking that last remaining streaker, and with a spin, I slapped it hard, letting the explosion wash across my suit, protecting Missile Man from the effects of his own weapon. Missile Man was still on the ground, but he wasn't unconscious. The cloud of swarmer missiles still encircled him like a cloud of angry fireflies ... yeah, I know, bad imagery. Who knows what an angry firefly looked like? The little missiles buzzed and popped against my armor as I reached down to pin him against the ground. My hand wasn't quite large enough to wrap completely around him, but with the weight of the suit, he wasn't going anywhere without coming up with some way to knock me off of him first. At arms length now, long as they were, I got my first good look at The Missile Man. No obvious devices or tools built into the suit or strapped onto it. No guns or fancy gloves. The suit itself was some sort of padded woven mesh, probably intended to protect him from the aftereffects of those swarmers going off. The missiles appeared to be a natural ability, not something artificial. This was were things could get tricky, and where I had to use one of Midnight's appropriated tools. She had a stun field of some sort that she called a 'zombie field'. I had one of those mounted in the tip of one of my suit's fingers. With my free hand, I pointed the finger, touched it to his forehead for dramatic effect and out loud told him, "Night, Night!" Missile Man's eyes rolled up, his head lolled to the side and all the little swarmer missiles went 'pop' and disappeared. "Okay Wing start the timer on him, and what's the perimeter look like?" I called through the comm. "You've got three police cars two blocks off and a third approaching from your right about a block away. There are several ambulances and a fire truck as well, but they are even further away." "Any fires? Anything looking ready to collapse or otherwise cause more damage?" "There's some small fires in the wreckage of what's already been hit, but nothing large. No danger imminent." "Okay, thanks," I said, turning towards the oncoming police car and sitting down cross-legged on the ground. I wanted to minimize any threat they might perceive from my size. The oncoming police car arrived a moment later, coming to a slow stop fifty feet from me and the zombified Missile Man. Both doors flew open and an officer stepped out behind each of them with weapons drawn. I kicked in the suit's zoom lens so that I could see both men more clearly. Both were Sergeants, I knew that much, but neither of them was known to me, no surprise there. "Officers," I called out. "I've got the Missile Man down for the count here, but He's only going to be unconscious for another..." "Fifty three minutes" Wing spoke into my comm. " ... Fifty three minutes, and I've got no way to guarantee that he won't start spitting missiles the second he's awake." "Who are you?" the Sergeant standing behind the driver's side door asked. "You can call me Iron Man," I answered. "And you are?" "Ahh ... Sergeant Kowalski," he answered. "and Sergeant Wilson." "Sergeants, I'm new. You've probably never heard of me. I hope you'll hear more of me in the future, and that its all good, but in the meantime, we've got to get this bad guy taken care of. There are small fires here and there that your firemen would probably like to get at too." "All right," Kowalski said with a nod. "Wilson, get on the horn and get the special powers team in here and pass the word to the fire and rescue crews that its safe to proceed." The other officer ducked back into the car while Sergeant Kowalski came around the door of his car, walking towards me and the limp form of the Missile Man. "Don't suppose you know who he was working for?" "No idea," I answered. "I assume he was working for someone, but I wasn't working on anything that led me to him. I more or less just stumbled across him whilst he was doing his thing." "Okay, makes sense; he wasn't that hard to spot, was he?" Kowalski said, shaking his head and laughing. "Say, can I ask you something?" "Sure," I agreed, curious why he suddenly felt the need to ask permission. "Are you recharging or something?" "No," I answered. Then I got it. "Oh, you're wondering why I'm sitting here like this?" "Yeah." "Figured it'd be less intimidating this way. I'd rather not make men with guns feel any jumpier than I have to." The Kansas City PD, like many larger metropolitan areas, is cognizant of the challenges of responding to and handling super powered criminals, and like many cities, their police department has a special unit whose job it is to deal with them. These units often have super-powered staff; people with gifts who don't want to be super heroes, but who want to do what's right. An armored van, looking like a cross between an armored car and an ambulance came barreling up to us and four people in bulky armored outfits got out. "Mencken, check the perp's vitals. Clarke, get him wrapped up as soon as you have a go," a short, stout barrel-bodied man with a gold bar on his helmet called out as he walked towards Sergeant Kowalski and me. He waved in my direction as he called back over his shoulder. "Peterson, check the sheets on this other one." "Sergeant," He said with a nod to Kowalski. "Captain," Kowalski nodded back. "Who's this?" "He calls himself, ahh ... Iron Man, sir," Kowalski said with some hesitance. "Iron Man, huh?" "Yessir," Kowalski regained his composure then, "Iron Man, this is Captain Boyd Manson, head of the KCPD Special Powers Unit." "Captain Manson," I said with a nod. "You look familiar," Manson observed with an unpleasant snarl in his voice. "Not too surprising," I answered. The original wearer of this suit was not so pleasant a fellow as me. Called himself Lord Steel." The one I assumed was Peterson came rushing forward then with a sheet of paper which the three of them bent their head over. Finally the captain looked my direction again. "Would you mind standing up?" "Not if you promise not to get to jumpy and start shooting," I agreed, standing in one smooth, slow movement. The difference in perspective was interesting. Suddenly the men around me seemed less of a threat than they had just moments before. I had to believe that for them it was just the opposite. Suddenly I was a looming threat that they had to crane their necks to look up at. "The sheet on Lord Steel doesn't say anything about flying, or about shooting beams," Captain Manson offered. "The designer of this suit was a genius, but I have my own resources, and have added a few things I thought would be useful." "The designer? It wasn't the guy who was Lord Steel?" "The man who was Lord Steel and the man who designed and built this suit were two very different men," I answered, honestly too, in a way. "The designer did wear the suit for a while, but he died too." "Sounds like an interesting story." "That it is, but not one I'm likely to share anytime soon, I think." "Peterson, get the camera," Manson hollered to the man standing two feet from him. I could see what working with Manson was like. I wondered how Peterson liked it. The one I assumed was Clarke came over then and got the Captain's attention. "Captain, Mencken says the Missile Man is out and likely to be that way for close to an hour or so," Clarke reported. "Actually, he should have only 48 minutes left before he starts to regain consciousness," I added. "Right," Clarke said with a nervous nod my direction. "Anyway, Mencken says he can handle him for now, but we're going to want to get the feds to send a team in if we expect to keep him long term." "Alright," Manson muttered and spat. "Kowalski, can you and your partner help get Missile Man there crated up and in the prison van?" "Sure," Sergeant Kowalski agreed. "Nice to meet you Iron Man." "You too, Sergeant," I replied. "Anything else before I go Captain?" "Let Peterson take a picture, if you don't mind, so we can update our records. It'll help get the word out that you're not that Lord Steel character." "You can officially list Lord Steel as deceased," I told him. "So, officially then, exit Lord Steel, and... ?" As the flash from Sergeant Peterson's camera went off somewhere below me, I smiled inside the suit and added with a booming ring to my voice, " ... and enter Iron Man." ------- Chapter 10: Managing Mayhem "Kansas City Star Subscription Desk, This is Cef," "Keith Graham here Spider, how are you?" "I'm good Doc, how are you?" "Good as well," he told me, "Listen, we've got two open spots where we can insert you for the management program, and I thought I'd give you your choice." "Okay," I agreed. Meantime, my real thoughts were on Becka, and what it would mean to both of us. "Alright, the first one is Flint, Michigan, the Flint Journal." Doc paused there, to let it sink in, I guess. "Okay..." I offered, hoping he would continue. "Second is Des Moines, Iowa at the Des Moines Register." Wow, Des Moines," I said out loud. "That's pretty close." "Yes it is, just up the highway. But its still almost 200 miles. Is that an issue?" Doc asked. "It is a consideration these days," I answered. "I uh ... I have a girlfriend." "We're talking six months," Doc reminded me. "Are you thinking of backing out of the program?" "No, that's not it, and particularly not since you've dangled Des Moine in front of me. That is a far more workable location than I had been thinking was possible. I think we could work around that." "Would your girlfriend move with you?" "I think we're getting close to that kind of commitment, but we're not there yet, and she's a very traditional girl from a very traditional family. I don't think she'd agree to living in sin. Besides, she works at the Star too, and might not want to quit her job to move away for six months without a ring on her finger." "Some might, some not, but it sounds like she's not the type, and that's probably a good thing in the long run." "Yeah," I agreed with a sigh. Doc could hear it, and laughed, but with plenty of sympathetic warmth in his voice. "Trust me, I'm on the road a lot, and I've had to deal with very similar issues. I know what you're feeling." I thought to myself how unlikely that was, given my alter ego, but kept it to myself. The same conditions that presented problems also provided some beneficial factors that I couldn't share with Doc. Particularly if, as Serenity had hinted, she might be able to help. "Let me have a couple days to think on it and talk it over with Becka?" I asked. "Of course, I'll check back Thursday morning then?" "Sure," I agreed. Dinner that night was ... well, not pyrotechnic exactly, but it was loud and lively. Becka was all for walking in the next day and quitting her job so she could move to Des Moines. Not to live with me, mind you, that would be too much for her parents to bear, but to live near me, as she did now; to spend her nights with me, as she did now; to keep loving me from as close as possible, as she did now. The heated discussion led to a heated adjournment to the bedroom, as tangled clothes and limbs and lips became brief hindrances, or sharp spurs to other events. To be honest, in the cold light of day I'm still not sure which function they better served. Did we reach a decision? Several of them, and each was amazing and wonderful. But no, not a decision on anything we'd begun discussing over dinner. I spent some time the next day researching the housing situation in Des Moines. Like Kansas City, it was a crossroads community and another outpost from the previous century that had been reborn as a city of commerce. For some reason it was also a larger media market than Kansas City, or at least a more competitive one. I would be a small fish in the managerial sea in Des Moines. The Flint Journal in Michigan was a much smaller operation than Kansas City or Des Moines, though it was, as in Kansas City, the sole player in the field. The smaller operation would mean I would stick out more. For an ambitious man, that might be an important factor. Okay, I was an ambitious man these days, but my ambitions lay elsewhere. Flint didn't seem to be a good fit in my mind for that very reason, even before I added Becka to the equation. Added, ha! Becka was not an addition. Addition was too simple an operation to describe her impact on my life. She was the calculus of my existence, the trigonometry of my future. The cold light of day brought Becka back to her senses, or part way back at least. At lunch she told me that while she'd love to move to Des Moines with me for the six months I'd be there, she wouldn't do that to her parents. "They know I'm an adult, Spider, and I'm on my own now, but it would be a complete rejection of how they raised me." "I understand sweetheart, and don't forget, I was the one arguing that very point." "Yes, you were," She said, taking my hand and pouting. "Thank you for remembering who I am for me." "There's more than who you are to remember," I said, raising her hand to give her palm a soft kiss. "There's who we want to be to remember as well." We'd been hinting around the edges of making a more public, formal commitment to each other. I had some plans in that regard, and just needed the time to make them work. Fortunately for me, Becka was going to visit her parents for the weekend, for what I think was a preliminary event intended to prepare them for meeting me. That gave me the window of opportunity I needed to do what I had in mind without raising any suspicions. My window of opportunity got blown away by a nasty bastard known as the Tulsa Tornado. He blew into town just before midnight, Friday night, and spent the next four hours taking out a row of tenements in the river district and killing fifty people, including fifteen eight year old boys who were spending the night on a real life river tugboat, sponsored by their scout troop. Midnight met me at the fortress, and briefed me as I suited up. It wasn't just that the Tornado was a powerful super villain, he was, but he had a team of henchmen, I guess you'd call them, and they had weapons, very nasty, very deadly weapons called cyclone cannons. "I'm going to take care of the henchmen and their toys," Midnight told me as I was going through my self diagnostic routines. "There's too many of them, and they're too mobile and independent for you to be able to handle while old 'TT' is still on the loose. Those cannons can punch big holes in things, but the Tulsa Tornado can punch big holes in Kansas City itself." While I was en route, I got a quick education on the Tulsa Tornado himself. He too wore a metal suit, and his was bulky, almost like a tank. From that suit, he spun a shell of sonic force that he wrapped around himself. Just moving from place to place with the field engaged and fully powered up, he could destroy everything within a hundred feet of where he walked. "Will I have trouble getting close from the air?" I asked Midnight. "Probably," she admitted. "The very gravitic manipulation that lets you fly will let the sonic winds he stirs up toss you around pretty good. You'd be better off landing outside his main area of effect and running in." "Yeah, once I'm down I can boost the gravities some to remain stable," I said out loud as it occurred to me. "Good. That's good thinking Iron Man. Keep it up. We're close enough, I'm taking off." With that, Midnight wrapped herself in a field of black force and disppeared. Funny, I knew she didn't need the special effects, but she was fully in her Midnight persona now, and the maneuvers were automatic for her. I hoped I could develop the same mind set. "Wing, open the drop bay door," I called. A few seconds later, I dropped into the night. In my display I could see the sonic fields that Tornado had wrapped around himself. I let myself freefall for a few seconds before kicking in the jets and edging myself south of his location. AS I approached the ground, I braked at maximum thrust and planted both feet on the concrete, landing with some serious crunch. The Tornado's overlapping layers of sonic fields may have been his comfy cocoon, but they sure made him easy to find. I let the tracking system peg him on my display and then began working my way towards him. Most of the buildings between us were in ruins, but I didn't want to risk any survivors who might still be in them, so I headed for the nearest cross street that led his direction. "Wing, anything else in the vicinity?" I asked. "Debris," came the terse reply. I sometimes wondered how these things affected Wing. She wasn't really a person, even if she was a self-aware being. Midnight's adoption of her to this environment wasn't a guarantee that she understood or appreciated everything that happened around her, even if she could in theory communicate her lack of either. As soon as I came around the corner of the building I was running beside, I got a better idea of Wing's meaning. The air was full of debris, including a lot of water from the nearby river and broken water mains in the vicinity. The winds buffeting me were an order of magnitude greater than I had been experiencing. My display told me I was close, even though I couldn't see the Tornado. The winds told me the suit's display did not lie. I ramped up the G's my suit was outputting and kept walking. A minute later I could finally see the outline of the armored suit that was the Tulsa Tornado. It was a very bulky item, that was for sure. I had him on height by at least three feet, but he was seriously wider, almost twice as wide by the time you got to the ground. When my eyes got to the ground, I saw another reason his suit had been described as tank-like. He didn't have much in the way of legs, and what he did have didn't seem to be articulated. Instead, I could see treads, like on a tank or a bulldozer. I spotted something else too that caught my eye. Vents. Small, diamond shaped vents that ran up the side nearest to me. I assumed there were more vents on the side away from me. There were vents along the arms as well, but those were more triangular, and very narrow. "Tornado!" I yelled, cranking up the volume to be heard over the howling wind. "Close down your suit's power and give yourself up!" "Who the hell are you?" A booming, rasping voice answered. Yeah, I was probably going to hear that a lot for a while. "Iron Man," I answered. "Goodbye Iron Man," he said, raising an arm in my direction and laughing a coarse, low laugh that sounded like an avalanche. Shielding or not, the blast of sonic force he fired at me knocked me off my feet and threw me backwards twenty feet. I landed on my back and slid another ten. Once I came to rest, I rolled backwards, planting my feet into the concrete and stood up. I amped the gravity up another notch and began walking towards him again. I raised an arm of my own and fired off a repulsor blast, just to see how firmly planted that suit of his was to the ground. From sixty feet, the first blast rocked him a little, but that was it. It was definitely enough to get his attention though, he turned and began trundling towards me. I kept thinking about those big diamond shaped vents on the side of his suit and decided if there was any way to mess with them, I should give it a try. I tuned my left repulsor to a needle fine beam and fired for one of the vents. The first shot didn't seem to have any effect, but the second one produced a high-pitched squeal that slowly dropped in pitch until it wasn't audible anymore. This got me another arm blast, and again it knocked me off my feet, but with the increased gravity and more awareness of what could happen, I manage to keep from getting blown back more than a couple feet. I fired my right repulsor while still on my back and tried a head shot. If nothing else, I hoped the noise would be disorienting. As I stood again, I stopped part way up and punched a fist down into the concrete in front of me and pulled a big chunk of it loose. I rocked my arm back and launched it as hard as I could, again at the head of the helmet. I followed that immediately with another needle blast at a different side vent. I must have gotten luckier this time, I got the squeal that slowly died away after the first shot. I could only hope they were actually doing something. Another sonic blast rocked me back, but I managed to keep my feet this time, and I realized that the Tornado must require some cycle time between shots, and decided that after the next one, I was going to rush him and get within arm's reach. To coax a quick shot out of him, I grabbed a street sign on a pole embedded in the concrete and yanked it out of the ground. A clump of concrete clung to the pole where it had been in the ground and I stripped the sign of the end by wrapping a hand around the pole and pulling the pole through my closed hand. The flat rectangle of metal went fluttering off over my head and behind me, driven by the still fierce winds circling around the Tornado. I threw the pipe like a javelin and Tornado fired a shot at it, trying to intercept the missile. He succeeded, at least partially, sending the ten foot length of pipe wobbling off over his left shoulder to disappear into the swirling darkness. As he did, I charged, running now at full speed to cover the twenty feet between us. The shot he'd taken at the pipe I'd thrown must not have been at full power because he had something left when I charged and he shot me with it. The less powerful shot barely slowed me down, and before he could ready another one, I was within reach of him. I didn't even slow down, throwing all my momentum into a straight forward punch that pistoned into the center of his chest. That shot knocked him back all of two feet, but knock him back it did. He didn't fall over, his center of gravity was very low. "He's transmitting," Wing told me. Probably calling for help, I thought. Now we'd see how effective midnight had been against the henchmen, but my money was on her. "I think all your little buddies are too busy right now," I said out loud. As I did I was taking up-close shots with my repulsors at the vents in the sides of his suit. I'd taken out six or so of them now, I thought, but there were dozens on each side. If those vents were the source of the sonic field generators that whipped up these winds, who knows how many of them I'd have to jam before they had an effect. While I fired shots at the vents, I kept up my punches to the Tonado's suit. Standing shots like this were leaving some pretty nice dents, but weren't moving him much. I could hear a pretty loud clang with every shot and could only hope it was even louder inside the suit. 'Good armor', I muttered to myself. I had to find a weak spot somewhere, and decided to try the treads. Unfortunately, TT chose that moment to give me both barrels up close. Something I hadn't seen him do before this. It did explain why he had been so quiet since I started my punching bag treatment. He must have had to charge up his cannons. When he hit me with both barrels it drove me back and into the concrete so hard I bounced, and knocked me back fifteen feet, tearing up concrete and asphalt as I went. The force of the blow was enough to make me black out for a moment and when my vision cleared I saw an arm just raising to point my direction. Without thinking about what I was doing, I flexed hard and kicked in the flight gear just enough to do get a dozen feet into the air and roll forward above the sonic blast that blew a hole into the concrete where I'd just been. The extended arm was an appealing target, and with both my repulsors set now to needle beams, I fired from the air at the arm's joint and finished my midair roll. I landed, grabbed the extended arm and did what would have been an over the shoulder throw if the Tulsa Torpedo had been a well behaved sparring partner. He wasn't, and did not go flying over my head, but with a screech of rending metal and a spark of shorted power, the arm did. It wasn't just the arm that lost power when I ripped it off the suit, something inside the suit itself had blown. The sonic fields around us began to die and the winds slowed almost immediately. In the sudden silence that surrounded us, accented by the distant sound of bits of debris coming to rest, I heard an un-amplified voice call out. "I give up!" The battle with the Tulsa Tornado was over. ------- Chapter 11: Challenges and Change One of the limitations I'd had to live with since the day the world fell on me was the loss of my driver's license. It hadn't been that big a deal, living near the heart of downtown, and now it was a perfect highlight to have available to hold up when maintaining the facade of being wheelchair bound. But it definitely had an impact on my desire to make a trip up to Des Moines to look for an apartment. Midnight offered a 'midnight express', but I was worried about being able to explain my movements if those I spoke to in Des Moines compared notes with those I knew in Kansas City. Becka came through in the end, borrowing her dad's car for an overnight trip. It meant taking her with me of course, but other than her parent's potential disapproval, which I presumed I'd managed to avoid or her dad wouldn't have loaned her the car, I didn't see much downside to that. We stayed at the Hotel Savery and enjoyed it very much. The Register's offices were nearby, and Becka and I spent quite a bit of time with a real estate agent and the newspaper looking for a six month lease on an apartment somewhere within walking distance. Again I was hampered by the wheelchair; most of the buildings in the part of downtown we were looking at didn't have elevators. We finally did find what we were looking for on the corner of 9th and Grand. The apartment was on the eighth floor and on the southeast corner of the building away from the traffic on Grand Avenue. The building normally didn't have any short term leases available, but it had recently changed owners and was due for a major remodel the following summer, so the normal tenants were starting to leave for more certain pastures. This meant the apartment was a little run down, but I didn't mind that, and the elevator was large and well maintained. Since it was already empty, all I had to do was put down a deposit along with a handshake promise to sign the lease papers within ten days. The management program had a housing allowance, and since I wasn't going to give up my apartment in Kansas City while I was in Des Moines, I really needed it. Doc Graham really went to bat for me with this one, just like he had during my initial trip to Hartford. Citing my special needs, he got the assistance program to foot the entire cost of the short term lease. I was still going to have to deal with transportation on my own, but the timing gave me plenty of time to get used to the area before I had to worry about winter weather, and the offices were five blocks away. Easy going on city sidewalks, even if it was raining. The only problem with my leased apartment was the lack of furniture. The Des Moines Salvation Army came to the rescue by having a very worn dinette set and couch available at their second hand store. More importantly, they were willing to spare a few men to help me get it hauled to the apartment. The appliances in the apartment were nothing to write home about, they weren't likely to survive the building's remodel. The range had one burner that didn't work and the oven temperature dial was missing, with a pair of vise-grips fastened to it and the temperatures of 350, 375, 400, 425 and 450 marked off on the oven itself with a marking pen. The refrigerator worked fine, though it was pretty noisy when the compressor was running, and the freezer compartment was small. Bedroom furniture was the worst problem when it came time to move in. I hadn't found anything yet, and hadn't been willing to shell out the money for a new bedroom set. While I could hang up most of my work clothes in the closet, my socks, underwear and other items I had to keep in the cardboard boxes I'd moved them in. When the time came to spend my first night, I slept on a long cotton and straw stuffed seat from a sleeper sofa I'd seen at the Salvation Army. The sofa was too broken up to be usable but the pad was fine, despite being dense and unforgiving. I was in the best shape of my life by this time though, I felt like I could have slept on the bare floor. Where the sofa cushion didn't cut it was with Becka. She took one look at it and laughed. "There's no way I'm sleeping on that with you. Even if all we were doing was sleep, I wouldn't sleep with you on that." So my sofa cushion lasted an entire week and Regal Furniture, just a block away on Locust Avenue, got my hard earned money, for which I received, delivered and set up, a bed, two night stands, a dresser and a small writing desk, chair and lamp. In between the time Becka and I made our first apartment hunting trip and the day I broke down and bought the furniture, I had two more outings as Iron Man. By design, neither one of them was in Kansas City, and both were in conjunction with other heroes. "You're not going to be able to be the kind of hero who does stake outs, or tails a criminal back to his lair." Midnight told me one night during a practice session. "Agreed." I confirmed. "I see myself as more of the applied overwhelming force that can be called in when the situation warrants it." "Exactly," she agreed. "With that in mind, and given that Iron Man's schedule of availability is somewhat limited by Ceferino Escobar's commitments, you need a broker, who can check your availability when situations arise where you could fill the need of other heroes." I guess I hadn't thought about it that much, but it made a lot of sense. A fifteen foot tall metal man was not going to be the kind of hero who could just fly around looking for criminals in the act to thwart or impending disasters to prevent. "I guess I have to be sort of in the bullpen for the major league heroes." "At least until you think you can organize your own support team. That is something you'll want to go slow on though. It will mean the right kind of people, with the right kind of skills. The kind who can know who Iron Man is and not have you worried about your identity being revealed." "Man, you are thinking way further ahead on this than I've been," I admitted. "I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I haven't had any thoughts about how I would operate, or setting up a support system." "You will, when the time comes that its possible, and you'll do it well, I know that for sure." I could only promise myself silently that I would not let this woman down. I knew how she had felt about Trey Young, and I was the one she had picked to live his dream for him. The first of my two outings as Iron Man during that stretch was with Midnight herself, and it was in Fort Richardson, her old base of operations out on the coast. We tackled a gang of bank robbers equipped with some sort of laser pistols and jet packs. They were no match for either of us, and while I thought their jet packs were kind of cool, they were no match for my suits flight systems. They might as well have been peddling tricycles. The second, and my first time working with someone other than Midnight, was with an east coast hero called Sunburst. He was facing an old nemesis called Magma Master. His ability to call up molten rock out of the ground anywhere around him was pretty formidable, and with a lot of his kind, he was using the threat of it to extort money from a group of companies with plants in an industrial zone along the shores of Delaware Bay. Even Sunburst, who could probably have made me look like steel wool held up to a lit match, was impressed with my ability to wade into the molten lava and lay a serious uppercut onto Magma Master's stone-faced jaw. Sunburst had some serious power, and I knew that compared to him or Midnight, I was definitely second tier in the super hero business, but of course he didn't see it that way. I think it just goes with being the super hero type. My work at the Des Moines Register began in almost familiar territory. I became responsible for the circulation desk, which included the subscription desk I had been working at the Star as well as the distribution of the paper, both within the city and to other locations. The subscription desk was a three person operation here, and I spotted my first potential problem there almost immediately. Gus Hall was not the kind of guy I would want to have to talk to on the phone. He was loud, confrontational and seemed to exude and air of anger and frustration. Things on the distribution side were less straight forward. I had no exposure to this side of the business before, so didn't have a clue as to what was good work or what was bad. One thing I did notice was that one of the dispatchers for the delivery trucks had just the most amazing voice and impeccable phone manners. I worked for the business manager, Brian Endicott. We'd had a nice meeting my first day, and after three days on the job he took me to lunch at the Bent Nail, a local watering hole that had a very nice bar, but also offered lunch and dinner service to those who worked in the offices in the area. "Well, what have the first three days told you?" Brian asked over our chicken cacciatore. "I can't say much about the distribution and delivery side of things yet, because its still a bit too new, but I think we need to get Gus Hall away from the subscription desk." "Not a good phone presence, eh?" "Exactly," I agreed. "He knows the information, knows the procedure, but he either comes across as angry or frustrated on the phone. That does no good when he's trying to sell a subscription, and I pity the poor customer who calls for help." To be honest, I hadn't had the thought until that very moment. Maybe talking out loud about it made it gel, I don't know, but suddenly it fell into place. "I think we might try having him swap positions with Delores Bailey." "Delores?" Brian asked, searching his memory for who she was. "Oh! The voice in dispatch! Yeah, she would be great to talk to on the phone, wouldn't she?" "I had thought of her already for the subscription desk, but it just now occurred to me that Gus would be much better suited to the dispatch job as well. Those calls are all informational and planned out. There's no selling ... and I think it was the pressure of selling that had Gus tied up in knots." I'd like to say I was always so quick with brilliant solutions, but this one was apparently a solution waiting to happen. The reason there was a management trainee position open was that the manager whose place I was taking had been fired for having an affair with a co-worker. That co-worker had left with him, and you guessed it, she worked the subscription desk. Gus Hall had been promoted up into that position because he was next in line. That was the highlight of the entire six months in Des Moines, to be honest. Most of it was learning policies and procedures, both specific to the area I was managing, and the more generic ones used throughout the organization. It was also learning people. After a month, Becka's dad got tired of her borrowing his car every weekend to come to Des Moines, and he took her out car shopping. She bought a used but well cared for Buick and began making the commute on weekends. Well, that was the story anyway. Most of the time we actually were together at the fortress, working and learning. I was still writing articles, even though the first one had been rejected by the Kansas City Star. It did get picked up by the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. This was how I learned that all the newspapers in the corporation had a shared system, apart from their syndicated columnists, and I could submit articles to the syndicated system. Unlike the typical syndicated writers, and cartoonists whose work was guaranteed to appear in the chain's newspapers, freelance work like mine submitted to the syndicate could be picked up by one or more of the papers in the chain. In this case, my piece on the paging system in Kansas City was printed alongside a companion article written by one of the local Dubuque staff writers which compared their similar system to the one in Kansas City and other locations. Iron Man was becoming an established hero, but Ceferino Escobar was making a place for himself in the world too. Somewhere down the road though, I would have to decide if I could afford to be so much of Ceferino if I wanted to be more of Iron Man. ------- Chapter 12: The Road Ahead By mid August I was feeling very comfortable with things in Des Moines. The operation had been running pretty smoothly when I got there, except for the one obvious problem, and with that fixed almost immediately, it went right back to being smooth across the board. It was a good place to learn the mechanics of management, as I thought of it, the crossing of the t's and the dotting of the i's when it came to managing people in a mixed environment of office workers, field personnel and independent contractors. My situation with Becka was suffering from the distance, even if we were spending a lot of time together at the fortress. The plans I had to ease that strain had been somewhat derailed by the episode with the Tulsa Tornado, but Serenity helped get things back on track again by offering me some items from a 'family source'. Having met her mother, I could only imagine what that really meant. The last Saturday in August, I took Becka to dinner at a restaurant uptown called the Crystal Palace. The food was as upscale as the location and the service was impressive. After the roast duck and before dessert, I pulled the ring from my pocket and slowly descended to a knee in front of her. "Rebecka Marie Anderra, I love you more than I ever dreamed it was possible to love, and it would mean the world to me if you would agree to spend the rest of your life by my side, as I hope to spend mine beside you." I paused, just long enough to lock my eyes with hers and wait until I knew she had to be seeing straight through into my soul. "Will you marry me?" She had the good grace to at least let me finish my question before launching herself into my arms and screaming yes. I had to let her knock me onto my back and mockingly complain. She caught on immediately to the fact that she had just knocked her officially semi-invalid boyfriend on his ass, and began apologizing profusely. It was a dainty, ladylike scream, she informed me later. Of course I agreed. If its possible to use that word when there is screaming involved, then hers should certainly be described as ladylike. The ring was something Serenity came up with. She said it was called a Skystone where her brother lived, but the diamonds that circled it didn't need any explanation, nor did the platinum band it all sat upon. "You'll have time to shop for a more traditional wedding set, but this will be an elegant and unique engagement ring." It was indeed, and Becka was thrilled with it. We had dinner with her parents penciled in for the following weekend. One of the things important to me in becoming Iron Man was learning enough to duplicate Trey Young's work in building the suit. That meant learning the metallurgy, the forging techniques and everything else involved. I realized I would never understand some parts of it, not in a way that meant true understanding anyway, but I was going to be able to do the work, even if it was by rote. I would be able to repair damage. I would be able to rebuild it, if it came to that. Such was my goal. To accomplish this goal, I needed not only understanding of and familiarity with the tools and materials, I needed the tools and materials! In this regard, neither Midnight my mentor, or Serenity my friend, were willing to cut corners. I had to buy the tools and materials where Trey would have. There were intermediate steps and processes that were required in creating both the alloys used and some of the tools needed to work them. While some were standard, some did not exist on Terana and wouldn't exist anytime soon, unless I could create them. My six months in Des Moines would prove to be barely enough time to make a scratch in the mountain of tasks I'd set for myself with this goal. While I threw myself into this, Becka spent her time with Wing. Even when all she was doing was reading the manuals and studying some of the books on tactics and tactical procedures that Midnight gave us, she did it aboard Wing. Long hours we spent apart from each other, me in the bowels of the fortress and Becka hovering at the edge of space aboard Wing, reading and running simulations. "You like it up there, don't you?" I asked over dinner one night. "I do," She answered with a curious tilt of her head. "I don't know why for sure. The solitude, maybe. I like the lack of distractions. Everything seems so in focus." "Well, you've always had what I would have called 'porcelain skin', but I think all this time spent in Wing has you looking even paler than normal," I commented, running a hand down her arm. "Yeah, I've noticed that myself. I guess I need to get out a little more. Too bad we don't have a beach to go sunbathe at." "I'd volunteer to escort you," I offered with a leer. "You would too, you lecher!" She said with false indignation, slapping my shoulder. No one who knew her would disagree with me when I describe Becka as a bright girl who had grown into an intelligent, perceptive woman. She was absorbing a lot of the information that Serenity threw at us. It was a blessing to be able to leave that to her to absorb. She could then manage to shoehorn it into my brain in smaller, manageable doses. Plus she offered rewards for my progress that I didn't think Serenity would be willing to match. The problems involved in getting the both of us to the fortress, as well as to the apartment in Des Moines were an annoyance at first, but Serenity came up with a solution, and one she muttered she should have thought of first. "Back when my dad was a young man, he came up with something he called a jump bracelet that allowed those who didn't have our gifts to be able to get back to their headquarters safely from just about anywhere. Later those bracelets became even more sophisticated and allowed the members of that group to select from a set number of possible destinations," she explained to Becka and I as we sat in Wing's ready room as we were flying across a barren dune-covered landscape. "Are we getting them, then?" Becka asked with some excitement. "Are we going to have jump bracelets?" "Yes, but there have been a few advancements since those days." "Advancements?" I asked, worried a little about the way she said that. "Yes, the technology that those bracelets were built upon has seen some advancements since then, particularly in the development of nano-scale materials and technologies." "Nano what?" Becka asked. To be honest, I think she had half an idea what it meant and was just offering me a chance to show off. "In this sense it means very, very small," I answered. "Sub-microscopic." "That's correct," Serenity confirmed. "And in this case it means that your jump bracelet isn't a bracelet at all, but a little bead of a special material, which itself encapsulates some very special circuitry." Well we didn't wind up getting the typical mad-scientist's explanation, but we each did get a 'shot' from a very cool looking collar that was placed around our necks. The collar positioned itself in the proper spot so that the little bead of material was placed just perfectly against our collarbone, where it met the spine. The explanation and demonstration in how to use it took longer than the insertion did. When we were done, we had the ability to jump selectively to either the fortress, my apartment in Kansas City or the apartment in Des Moines. As an added bonus, we could jump directly into Wing's ready room. "Over time, I'll show you how to add locations as needed. There are extra steps involved when adding a new location that have to be followed carefully." Once that was done, I got to drop out of the back of Wing onto the moonlit sands, and finally — finally! - I got that toe-to-toe slugfest I'd been waiting for. I think I did pretty good too, even though I could tell Midnight wasn't using her complete bag of tricks on me. For one thing, I knew those swords of hers could have sliced clean through my suit, if she got past the shields. She did prove that she could take a punch though, and if I could take pride in anything about that sparring session, it was that I managed to prove that I could as well. I had monthly reviews with my mentor at the Register, and every other month, I met also with Doc Graham and a committee of three 'resources', who were in theory, there to answer any questions I had. I did not fail to notice however that all of them seemed to be fully aware of everything that had transpired at the Register. My questions to them were also answers to questions they had that remained unspoken, I was sure. The group swelled for the last meeting, with two people I hadn't met yet joining the group. I was introduced to Andrea Waldron and John Stevens, both senior managers. Mrs. Waldron was responsible for an area she called the western Great Lakes region, Covering an area she described of as 'all things from Chicago to Grand Forks, Minnesota'. This didn't quite include Des Moines, which was in a different regional grouping. Mr. Stevens managed an area he called the 'Northern Appalachian' region, which included western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. This time I got to answer questions, mostly those of the two new people, and it didn't take too long to realize I was probably in the middle of a very unofficial job interview. Before I left that meeting I had job offers from both of them. When I got back to the apartment, Becka was waiting for the news. We had both known that there would be a job offer from someone. "Manketo, Minnesota or Ashland, Kentucky," I said as soon as I walked in the door. ------- Chapter 13: The Banks of the Ohio We had five weeks, between that meeting in Des Moines and the date when I would have to renew the lease on the apartment in Kansas City. In the interim, the lease in Des Moines would expire and I would have to move somewhere. Doc Graham had explained that I had two weeks to decide on the job offers. In theory, I had my old job to go back to at the Star, but there was very little appeal for me in that. The time was filled with a lot of research by both of us, as we sought to learn more about the two places. We were concerned about cold winters in Minnesota, something we didn't look forward to, not that Kansas City was exactly balmy during the winter months. Manketo was also smaller than Ashland, but it was relatively close to Minneapolis/St. Paul, some fifty miles or so to the northeast. Ashland, on the other hand, was further away from the hearest big cities, but the big cities included Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio, with Indianapolis and Pittsburgh just a bit further away. Ashland's location on the Ohio River, with West Virginia and Ohio just across the border, made it seem more centrally located too. The deciding factor in the end was trivial perhaps, but neither of us had ever seen the ocean, and we would be within a few hundred miles of it in Ashland. We could take the highway west to Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk or head southeast to Charleston or Myrtle Beach. Even Savannah, Georgia if we wanted. Ashland, Kentucky it would be. I called John Stevens that night to tell him I was accepting the position. "Ceferino, when we hire a manager, we give them a relocation allowance and housing assistance. Were you thinking of renting or buying?" "Call me Cef," I said automatically. "I don't think I'm in any position to be buying, and with the wheelchair, I'm sure my options will be limited, so I'll appreciate any assistance I can get." "Of course, I'd forgotten about the chair." I appreciated the indirect compliment, and was even more appreciative of the housing assistance when I found out it included a rent subsidy for the first year. If I was able to take the time to find the right apartment at the right price, I might even manage to live literally rent-free for the coming year in Ashland. The moving assistance was less important, to me at least. I didn't have all that much I would care to take. The apartment in Kansas City came furnished, so I wouldn't be taking any of it with me. The big question was Becka, and the bigger question was when she would make the move. I would have to start the new job well before any date she and her mother would have picked for a wedding. The five weeks became four, then three, and then I was on the road. Becka had answered the questions about when she would join me by announcing to her parents that she would not wait until the wedding to move to Ashland. "I love Spider and he loves me," she told them over dinner in the middle of week three. "We will be married, and we will spend the rest of our lives together. I intend that the rest of our lives starts the day we move to Ashland." She stared at her parents for a moment before adding, "Together." Only the absolute guarantee that we would still be married in Kansas City kept their objections from being stronger than they were. Mrs. Anderra was a romantic at heart, I knew that already from the little time we'd spent together. She wanted to be talked into it. Mr. Anderra was a little harder. Becka was his little girl, and he wasn't too sure he was ready to give her up, whether it was now or later. In the end the sure knowledge that Becka would move with me with or without his approval brought him around. We flew to Ashland two weeks in advance of my starting date and began apartment hunting. We were assigned an assistant, Greg, from a local realty office who looked at the paperwork from the company and told us that we needed to expand our hunt to include houses as well as apartments. "In this market, you could afford a pretty nice home," Greg, told us. "I would really prefer something within walking distance of the offices," I answered. "The wheelchair makes some options unavailable, and others less than attractive." "Well then we'll concentrate on the upper end of the apartment market," he said thoughtfully. "That might mean something quite a bit larger than you were thinking." "Push comes to shove, distance to work is the primary factor," Becka added. "We can overcome anything else. "Too big might be an issue, but too small shouldn't be, not at the price range you'll be able to afford." Greg reassured us. What it got us, after only three days of looking, was a loft a block and a half away on Winchester Avenue. It was the top floor of a partially renovated five story warehouse that had been gutted by a fire three years earlier. A developer was slowly renovating it from the top down. The loft space we rented took up almost a third of the top floor and included a very cool rooftop garden and patio that looked to be very nice in those hot, muggy Kentucky summers along the Ohio. The walls were sandblasted and varnished brick, and the windows were floor-to-ceiling, eighteen feet high. There was a lot of glass. The space itself was almost completely wide open, except for the master bedroom section which included a very large bath, and a smaller but still spacious guest bathroom near the door. Access was via elevator, a large, somewhat bulky freight elevator that was a remnant of the warehouse days. Hell, it was big enough that I could've ridden in it wearing my Iron Man suit. We had to wait a couple weeks to move in while the final bits of renovation were completed around the elevator and fire exits could be completed. We waited those two weeks out in a one room rental a few blocks away. We used that time to shop for furniture and appliances. The loft was huge, but it was completely unfurnished, not even the kitchen appliances were included. What we did get was a huge hot water tank. My first project was going to be redoing the somewhat conventional master bath into something considerably larger. It would mean moving one interior wall, but that wouldn't be too much problem, since everything inside the brick walls was new construction anyway. Becka wanted a much larger shower and a much bigger tub. Shopping for furniture and appliances became an excuse to explore the downtown area and then the rest of Ashville. We were even able to make trips to Ironton, Ohio to the north and Huntington, West Virginia to the southeast. Both were trips on the Ohio River. I was a pretty decent cook, even better than the typical bachelor needs to be. Becka was even better, and particularly good with Mediterranean and Portuguese cuisines, so when we shopped for kitchen appliances, we gravitated towards the commercial kitchen appliances when it came to the big items. The oven, range, refrigerator and freezer were all top-of-the-line General Dynamics units. We bought a heavy duty mixer from Kitchen King and added everything else from toaster to can opener from their matching line. For the bedroom we bought the biggest bed we could find. We knew we were a match made in heaven when we discovered that we both preferred a soft mattress. We bought matching his and hers dressers and two very large armoires that we arranged to almost seem like a walk in closet. It was a damned good thing we had that huge freight elevator, that's all I can say. By the time we'd gotten the major items picked out and scheduled for delivery and installation, it was time for me to start my new job. Becka would have to do the rest of the shopping, and to be honest, I was glad to leave it to her. Appliances and furniture was fine, but I wasn't able to get enthusiastic about shopping for drapes and rugs and pillowcases. I had been in and out of the offices at the Daily Independent, or 'the D.I.', as they called it, several times since arriving in Ashland to pick up an advance on my expenses and to sign some paperwork, including insurance papers. My first official day on the job I met John Stevens for breakfast beforehand, enjoying a nice meal at the Coal Bin Cafe, in the building across the street from the paper's offices. It would be a convenient place to get lunch, and assumed it would be popular with the rest of the staff at the office. The food was pretty good too. We crossed the street together after breakfast and entered the building. The security office was our first stop, where I signed some more papers and was issued an ID badge. From there it was on to Personnel, where I got a set of keys, a sheet with my phone number and other information pertinent to my new position, and a sit-down meeting with Mr. Stevens and Bill Evans, the director of Personnel. "Cef, we know you've got a lot of experience in the circulation department, but that's not where we need you here," John began. "Here at the D.I. We have a damned good circulation department," Bill Evens continued. "We've combined the circulation and customer relations jobs under one man ... eh, person, and she's doing a fine job. "Where we need you is in our research department." "Fact-finders?" I asked, wanting to make sure there wasn't any confusion. "That's right," John said. "Here at the D.I., and most of the papers in my region, our fact-checkers are independent researchers who get assigned to a particular reporter or editor for the duration of a story or investigation. We think that by assigning them randomly, or based on their areas of expertise, we avoid any tendency there might be to have a built-in point of view on a particular issue." "That makes sense." I agreed. "Will I be making the assignments for the research desk then, or is that handled more automatically?" "Its done mostly at random, but we do have some researchers with known strengths that we know to give certain kinds of assignments. That's something that will take time to get a feel for, but you'll have an administrative aide who'll be able to get you up to speed as you go." "Alright Mr. Evans, any headaches already brewing for me that you can warn me about?" "Not particularly, and please, call me Bill." he said with a grin. "As close to a headache I can see is Bruce Hicks, one of the researchers. He applied for your position too, but didn't get it." "Was there any sort of expectation that he was in line for it, based on seniority or performance?" I asked. "No, he's not one of the senior researchers, and we don't generally promote from within that department into this kind of job anyway." "How about performance? Was he considered unsuitable for the job?" "No, actually he was offered the same management training opportunity you were but turned it down." "Okay, thanks. I'll make sure to have a private chat with him after our staff meeting to make sure we're both on the same page on that. I don't want anyone in the department working against me." With that, my first meeting as a department manager for the Ashland Daily Independent came to an end. A new chapter in the life of Ceferino Escobar was about to begin for real. ------- Chapter 14: The Sound of Music I met my administrative aide the morning of my first day, and it was love at first sight. Well — of a sort. Mrs. Nolan was a gray-haired woman in her sixties with a no nonsense attitude and the heart of a drill sergeant. Her desk sat just outside my door and I truly believed that not even the Columbus Cannonball would get through my door if she hadn't approved it first. She was waiting outside Bill Evan's office when our meeting broke up. "Mrs. Nolan, this is your new boss, Ceferino Escobar." Bill Evans said by way of introduction. "Cef, this is Mrs. Nolan." After that brief introduction I found myself being escorted to my office. It felt like I was being escorted; Mrs. Nolan moved through the halls like an implacable force of nature and I drafted along in her wake. The research department was on the third floor, sharing the space with the paper's archives, which made sense. Back issues would be one of the researcher's most important resources. The research section didn't look too disorganized, which I took as a good sign. I wouldn't have any trouble negotiating my chair from desk to desk. The desks were not separated by partitions, and there were eight of them, not counting Mrs. Nolan's desk, which was easy to spot, as it sat in front of the door label 'Research Manager' and had one of those little desktop signs that said 'Mrs. Nolan'. My office itself was an interior one, with no view, but it was a decent size, with room for a table and four chairs as well as my desk. There was a counter the length of the wall to the left of my desk and a huge potted plant that looked like a banana tree or something not all that decorative, at least at the moment. There was a traditional swivel chair against the wall behind the desk but it had been pushed out of the way so I was able to roll my wheelchair right into place with no problem. "Can I get you some coffee or tea, Mr. Escobar?" she asked. "Do you see that as something you would normally do?" I asked. "No, normally I'd let you fend for yourself, but at the moment, I know where the coffee pot is, and you don't," she said with a laugh. "Alright, coffee would be good, as long as you get something for yourself. Do we have our own, or do you have to run off to get it?" I asked. I hadn't spotted a pot out in the main room, but that didn't mean there was one. "We have a coffee pot and tea kettle, and if you want to use it, you'll have to chip in for the supplies. Your predecessor preferred to have his own coffee pot in his office, but he took it with him when he left. Cream and sugar?" "Just black, thanks." The minute or so that Mrs. Nolan was gone allowed me a moment to look around. The desk had three drawers, all unlocked, but with locks on them. It appeared that one of the keys I'd been given would fit them. There was a stack of three file cabinets, also with locks that I appeared to have a key for, against one wall and a wall-to-wall bit of cabinetry along with a counter top along the other wall. The desk was bare, except for a phone and a rolling phone directory. The phone was on the wrong side of the desk for me so I moved it to where I was used to having mine and moved the phone directory to match and looked around the room a little more. About the time Mrs. Nolan came back with the coffee and a plate of cookies. I took a sip of mine and found it to be an acceptable but not exemplary example of its kind. Probably the kind of coffee that people with their noses buried in the archives drank without conscious awareness of it. Mrs. Nolan sat and took a sip of the tea it appeared she had fixed for herself and then sat back in the chair donning an air of inscrutability. "Mrs. Nolan, does anyone refer to you as anything but Mrs. Nolan?" "My friends call me by my first name, but I have few friends, and none here. I find it hard to make friends with co-workers." "I see, well Mrs. Nolan is fine for me, I just wanted to make sure it was fine with you as well." "Of course," she agreed. "There were a lot of empty desks out there today," I commented. "Was that a sign of a lot of busy researchers, or a convenient means of avoiding the boss on the first day?" "A little bit of both, actually. Doris Leland is on maternity leave and not due back for three more weeks. Scott O'Hara is working out of the Lexington State Library right now, fact-checking for Doyle Harding, one of the D.I.'s investigative reporters. Chuck Preston is on vacation in Florida, but due back tomorrow, Felix Gutierrez is probably back in the archives somewhere and should be around later. Miranda Smith is over at the Ashland Public Library working on follow up facts for a story we printed last month under Ronnie Rider's byline." "Explain the phone system to me." I asked, nodding at the phone on my desk. "Sure. You're line one, I'm line two. You can use the phone as an intercom between us by picking up the receiver and pressing the line two button. I can do the same in your direction. Dial '0' to get an outside line. Once you have a dial tone you can make local calls direct from your phone. Long distance calls have to go through the switchboard. I'll probably place those calls for you, its the easiest way." "Alright, when can we have a staff meeting, and do you think Doris would come in for it, even if she's not due back to work?" "Wednesday at the earliest, I'd think. I'll check with Doris and see if she can make it, but everyone else will be here." I had a filing cabinet full of documents that I believed would tell me the tale of the D.I.'s research department. I spent the rest of the day at my desk going over them. For the most part, they were mind-numbingly boring. I suspected that for the most part, the job itself would prove to be the same. -oOo- I dropped down out of the night sky over Macon like a rock falling off a cliff. The lights of the city shone to the north of me as I used small movements to guide me to the meeting point on the banks of the Ocmulgee River. The call had come in from Midnight earlier that day to take Wing to Macon, Georgia and meet up with Blizzard, one of the Guardians' Eastern Seaboard group. With Becka sitting in the pilot's seat, we made the trip from the Fortress in just under an hour, doing a continent crossing sub-orbital skip. Sealed into the flight cabin she had opened the hatch at 30,000 feet and I had slipped out under the meager light of a new moon. At a thousand feet I kicked in the jets and did a bright, burning decent into the lightly wooded area, finding the beacon my comm gear was looking for. Blizzard was dressed in frost and ice. That's probably not literally true, though I couldn't be sure, but his somewhat stocky, short frame was wrapped in swirls of white that seemed to vary from miniature snow flurries to flecks of ice that glittered with the reflected lights of the city to the north and west. His face, which was the only part of him that seemed to even pretend to resemble human flesh, was streaky white, with a beard and eyes that looked as if they were made of hoarfrost. "Greetings, Iron Man," he said in a hollow, windy voice. "Greetings, Blizzard," I replied. "What brings a cold fellow like you out on a hot, muggy Georgia night like this?" That line got me a hollow, windy chuckle. "We think we have a problem in Macon, but we're just not sure what it is yet." "You Guardians don't have enough warm bodies, ah ... so to speak, to respond yourself?" "Oh, we've got the bodies," Blizzard answered, again chuckling at my accidental humor. "Problem is we've already got two missing over this, and no idea what happened to them." "Let me sit down so we can be a little more eye-to-eye and you can fill me in." "Iron Man, Wing is reporting an area of what she calls 'anomalous auditory and visual data to the east of you about fifty yards." Becka's voice came through the comm. "Thanks," I replied on the internal circuit. "Keep me posted if it moves or makes any changes." "We're throwing an overlay on your HUD," she answered, and the overlay flickered into existence in front of me as she did. You should be able to see it at your 120." The entire exchange took place in the time it took me to drop into a sitting position. Blizzard continued as soon as I came to rest. "A week ago Snapdragon, one of our prime investigators reported that she was headed here, following the trail of someone who had managed to pull of a string of completely unsolved crimes all across the southeastern states. When she hadn't reported in within thirty six hours, we tried to contact her, but got no response. The Crusher volunteered to try to pick up the trail and he too failed to check in at the agreed upon time. We've got two Guardians out of action, or worse at the moment, and only now some hint of a clue as to what is going on." "Some hint?" "Some by inference, some not. For example, the Macon Municipal Police Department has not received or responded to a single report of robbery or violent crime in the past seventy two hours. There have been no ambulance calls for domestic violence, rape, gang violence, not even a bar fight." "That doesn't sound so bad," I said, but even I knew it was too good to be true. "Along with that, an associate has now given us information that tells us there is an air of mindless tranquility within the city itself and it seems to extend out in a five mile radius and then stops. Everything goes back to normal just outside those limits." "I'm assuming that your associate is the source of the disruption my sensors are currently picking up in the vicinity?" I asked. "indeed," Blizzard said after a momentary pause. "It would seem you are not so much the agent of brute force we had assumed you to be." "Good to get that on the table then," I offered. "Now why am I here?" "Probably so," he agreed. "We are hoping you will fly over the city and help us pinpoint the source of the ... whatever it is." "And if the whatever it is happens to get me too?" I asked with some concern. "We will be making some strong efforts to pinpoint the source if that should occur, obviously." "Give me a minute, okay?" "Sure," Blizzard conceded, turning away and pretending to gaze at the city lights to the north. "What do you think?" I asked through the suit's comm. "Insufficient data," Wing replied first. "I agree," Becka chimed in a moment later. "We don't know if anyone has even been attacked, let alone how. Kinda makes it hard to make any preparations or plans." I agreed, and Wing was silent. "I would propose doing a high speed flyover with all detection systems active," Wing finally offered. "Plot two points at opposite edges of the city and go as fast as possible between them without breaking the sound barrier?" "Rinse and repeat?" Becka asked. "Huh?" I responded, prompting her to laugh lightly in response. "pick two more points and do it again if we don't get anything, is what I mean," she explained. "Yeah, I like that," I agreed. "Okay, let's get this show on the road." I stood, which got Blizzard's attention immediately. "Alright, here's what I'm going to do," I told him, then explained the plan. "What kind of support do you need?" He asked when I was done. "None from you, but not knowing what our mystery companion is capable of, I'd recommend she, he or it do nothing to put themselves in danger, but to monitor my progress if possible." "Agreed," he confirmed after a pause and a glance in the direction of that companion. I wasted no time and with what I hoped was a heroic leap into the night sky, I was airborne. I flew up a few hundred feet while moving rapidly to the south, further away from the city. Once I was a good half mile away from my starting point, I began a slow turn. "Wing give me an overlay of the city and pick me two points that will take me across the center of the city. Give me an altitude as well. Nobody wants to see me running into any buildings, right?" No response, beyond again, the sound of Becka's light laugh. I was a quarter mile from the first point on my flight plan and had brought myself up to the altitude Wing had fed me. Time to kick it in the rear. I did just that, and with a sound of rushing air, made my run. -oOo- "A pleasure to meet you Doris, and thanks for coming in," I told the petite young woman that Mrs. Nolan introduced me to. "I'm glad I could make it," she said as we shook hands. "Am I early?" "No, you're right on time, but I wanted this meeting to be on neutral ground, so to speak, so we're gathering at the Coal Bin. They've promised some pastries and other finger foods, in case anyone's hungry, and we can have anything to drink that they have on the menu." "Perfect!" Doris said with some glee. Mrs. Nolan, Doris and I made our way across the street to the Coal Bin. We had a small private room in the back of the café and our own waitress. The other five researchers were already there, and it looked as if they'd gotten coffee already. It had obviously been a while since any of them had seen Doris, as she was greeted by a round of hugs and a barrage of questions about her and the baby. "Little Freddie is doing just great, and my mom is ecstatically throwing herself into her new job as Grandma." I got myself a cup of coffee and an old fashioned donut from the service available at the table at the back of the room then wheeled myself over to the head of the table. I sat my coffee and donut on the table and waited for everyone to get settled in. Doris too grabbed a cup of coffee, but skipped the pastries, opting instead for a small plate of the fresh fruit that had been provided. Once everyone was sitting and looking my direction it was time for act one. I stood, pushing my wheelchair away from the table and turning to pull a chair up to the table and stood beside it, taking a sip of my coffee. "That's the first thing everyone needs to know," I said over the murmers. "I'm not in the wheelchair because I'm paralyzed. I have some nerve and muscle damage due to an accident eight years ago in Kansas City. I have had several surgeries since that day, and have spent a lot of time in physical therapy. I have slowly improved over time until I can now stand for fairly long periods. I can walk three or four steps without falling down or feeling much pain." I fielded a couple of questions, of course, but managed to avoid having to relive the circumstances of my injuries. Once those questions had died down I took my seat at the table. "Doyle?" I asked. "yes sir?" He answered. Doyle was a thin, sandy haired man with a prominent Adam's apple, a thin nose and watery blue eyes. "Please, all of you — call Me Cef." I interrupted. "While I expect the respect I'm due as the boss, I don't expect you to treat me as a superior in all things. My friends call me Spider, a nickname from my younger days, and you have permission to call me that if you're trying to get my attention in a hurry, but otherwise, It's Cef or Ceferino unless I say otherwise." I got nods all around, and then continued once again. "Doyle, you had been in line for this job, but refused to agree to take the management training, is that right?" "Yes Cef, that's true." "Will I have a problem with you? Do you see me as taking the job you should have had?" "No, I don't think so," he said after a long pause. "I'll admit, I wanted the job, but I couldn't take the training, so I had to turn it down. That's not your fault, and I'd have no business taking it out on you." "How's your wife doing?" I asked. I could see everyone's hackles rising as soon as I said it. "That's really none of your business." He spat. "Normally, I would agree, but in this case, its why you couldn't take the training, isn't it?" I had been filled in by Mrs. Nolan the day before. Doyle's wife Gretchen had some serious health problems, and they required a lot of care, both during lengthy hospital stays and when she was at home. The Harding's had no family in the area and no children. There was no one to care for her but Doyle. "Yes, it is." He said, still a little angry, but with some resignation added to his tone. "I bring it up only because I was asked to pass on to you the company's offer. If your circumstances change in the future, you have an open invitation to take the training at any time it becomes possible for you to do so." That changed the looks on everyone's faces pretty quickly. I had been pleased to be asked to let Doyle know this information, but I could see why John Stevens had been happy to let me do it. The conversation had been loaded with a lot of negative emotion. "Now, who can describe the average researcher's average day?" I asked. -oOo- "A pleasure to meet you Doris, and thanks for coming in," I told the petite young woman that Mrs. Nolan introduced me to. "I'm glad I could make it," she said as we shook hands. "Am I early?" "No, you're right on time, but I wanted this meeting to be on neutral ground, so to speak, so we're gathering at the Coal Bin. They've promised some pastries and other finger foods, in case anyone's hungry, and we can have anything to drink that they have on the menu." "Perfect!..." ... ? "Spider??? Cef?? Can you hear me?" It was Becka! How did she get into our meeting? I blinked, and the room was empty — no, it wasn't the room anymore, I was aboard Wing, sitting in the diagnostics cradle! "What happened?" I asked. "We know what happened to Snapdragon and Crusher now, sort of," Becka answered. "You were assaulted by an auditory attack," Wing continued. "It appeared to be music, of a sort, and it penetrated the suit itself and put you in some sort of hypnotic state." I remembered the sound of it then. The ethereal, sussurus notes that pulled me towards them. "How did you get me back?" "We overrode the controls of the suit and flew you back to the ship on remote." Becka told me. "It only worked because you didn't seem to be aware of the suit's controls, or the suit at all." Wing added. "That's because I think I just spent all that time reliving the staff meeting I had yesterday. I could have relived the same moment over and over! How much time has passed?" "45 minutes," Wing answered. "Suggestions?" I asked. "We can insulate you from the sound by adding another layer of gravitic shielding on top of the primary one, and making a vacuum between them." Becka offered. "We can do that?" I asked. "We can," she affirmed. "It'll mean rerouting a couple of the flight control generators, but I'm guessing we can sacrifice some maneuverability for a little protection from that musical fugue." "Let's do it," And we did, it took only a few minutes to reprogram the controls we wanted, they had been designed to allow it. It surprised me just how familiar Becka was with this side of the suit's systems. Once the new field was in place we had to get a good vacuum between the two fields and test its integrity. We burned another fifteen minutes doing that, but when we were done, I again dropped out of the back of Wing and into the night air, headed for the rendezvous site. I didn't play any games this time, and came in at high speed, pulling up just in time to make my landing. "Welcome back," Blizzard said. I listened to his words being relayed to me from Wing's remote pickups. "We were beginning to worry about you." "You had reason to be," I confirmed. "Whoever or whatever that is in there, he got to me too. It's some sort of musical hypnotic or mind altering weapon. It caught me up and left me reliving a particular slice of my past over and over. At least that's what we think happened. Sound familiar?" "No, the only sound-based powers I know of are Shrike's sonic needles and Sonique - she uses her voice to stun, but its very pinpoint and temporary, like getting knocked out." "I think I've got myself rigged up to keep the sound from affecting me, but I won't know until I test it. I"m going to repeat the same pass I made last time then look back here." "I think I can provide a minor distraction, if you think it will help, without getting myself close enough to the action to be affected." "Save it for now, we'll need it when we decide its time to go in." "You'll need to go in on foot, when the time comes." "On foot?" "My, ahh, associate would prefer it, if possible. It will allow her to provide assistance more easily. "Alright, but they'll know we're coming if I do. I tend to make a lot of noise when I run, and the ground tends to ahh ... shake a little." "I see," he answered with a grin. "Knocking on the front door, so to speak, eh?" "With a very loud knock, too," I agreed. "You're associate won't reveal herself beforehand?" "She prefers not," Blizzard answered. "It is her way." "Okay with me, I guess." And with that, I was airborne again and retracing my last flight. "Wing, cut your audio link," I called out, and again I made my transition to high speed flight and arrowed across the city. The flight this time was uninterrupted, and I suffered no flashbacks or blackouts. Well, I assumed. Wing and Becka would tell me later. Macon itself seemed very quiet, even for early pre-dawn hours. I did see a lot of lights and movement toward Mercer University, and rerouted my flight path slightly to pass a little closer to the center of that activity. There were a lot of people milling about in a large open area in front of a building which was lit up very brightly. The lights everywhere else on the campus seemed to be much more randomly lit, but still far more so that the surrounding areas of the city. A good many of the people I could see in that area didn't appear to be wearing all their clothes. Some appeared to not be wearing any. From overhead their movements seemed rhythmic, as if they were all moving to the same beat, and all centered around a single slightly open spot just before the well-lit building. "Your soundproofing scheme seems to have worked," I sent to Wing and Becka. I had my intelligence. Time to break this flight off and head for Blizzard. ------- Chapter 15: The Last Stanza By the time I reunited with Blizzard, he wasn't alone. There were six others in the clearing by the river, not including the mystery compatriot who was still mostly hidden from the suit's sensors. The introductions were brief, but it was the bulk of the Guardians from this region. Blizzard introduced me to Silver; a woman clad in a form-fitting silver outfit that might have seemed revealing if it wasn't completely smooth and featureless. Red Ryan; a young man who appeared to be about my age, dressed in red leather pants with bloused leggings tucked into high red leather boots and a leather jacket and a red helmet-like head covering with a built in tinted visor. He wore twin guns on his hips and there was a whip coiled on one shoulder. Crater; a middle-aged man, thick-bodied with a full, bristly beard and visible chest hair sticking up out of the open shirt he wore tucked into a pair of dark green pants made from what looked like heavy canvas. Crater's hands were both covered by balls of an oddly pitted metal, but several times I saw one or the other of them sort of fold back to reveal a hand while he grabbed or scratched or adjusted something. Along with those three I met Starhawk; a man with wings who glowed with a soft blue light and had eye sockets that seemed empty at first, but which seemed to be windows to the stars when you got close enough. He was accompanied by The Leopard, a heavily muscled man dressed in a leopard skin, or perhaps a leopard print. He had a heavy mustache, a pointy goatee and bare feet that appeared to be cat-like. The last of the six was a man dressed in what seemed an ordinary business suit who called himself Blackout. "The seven of us are going to be your backup, and we're going to deal with any problems once the people of Macon come back to their senses." Blizzard told me. "I'm taking out this musical mesmerist on my own then?" I asked. "No, not alone. You and Nightshade will take him out." He answered. That ripple in the gravity field that had been hiding off in the corner since the first time I'd dropped in here solidified then into a womanly form, dressed in black and darkest purple, wearing a cowl that covered her entire face except her mouth and ears. There were no eye holes in the cowl at all. "I am Nightshade," She seemed to whisper, but I had no trouble hearing her words. "I will ride your shadow and strike when the time is right." I had no idea what she meant by that, but it was somehow reassuring. "Once I've kicked in my soundproofing, I won't be able to hear anyone. How will I know you are safe?" "When you see me again as you see me now, you will know it is over." Not for me to decipher the mysteries of another hero, at least not now. We gave the rest of the group thirty minutes to position themselves and then I was off and running. Wing and Becka had mapped my route for me based on observations made during my last flyover, so I got little pointers and flags in my HUD to guide me. I was interested at first in the visible signs of my passage through the streets of Macon. The crush-clang sound of my running footsteps and the sight of dust and debris shaking loose from the buildings around me was cool. I only hoped I wasn't doing any real damage to anything. Once that got boring I did think back again, on my own this time, to the meeting I'd had with my staff the day before. It had gone well, I thought. Overall I wasn't sure there was anything that needed tweaking from me there. To be honest, Mrs. Nolan could probably have ridden herd on that group without me. What I was going to have to get a handle on was the assignment of staff and resources. Separately I had asked Mrs. Nolan how she would describe her own research skills. "Adequate, in a crunch, but not my favorite activity," she told me. "I suspect yours are better than mine, but good research skills are something I'd like to be able to add to my resume," I confessed. "I think we will be the departmental safety valve when things get tight." That meant getting everyone to show me the ropes when things weren't tight. An insistent warble from the suit's detection system brought me back to the here and now. There was a row of people blocking my path. They were just standing there. Not a one of them showed any concern that I might step on them. I did a simple forward roll right over the top of them. It made me think of that first awkward forward roll I'd done in the suit. A lot of fuel had passed through the reactor since that day! "Seems like we've been noticed," I said into the comm. "You have people moving in your direction in large numbers," Wing announced. "We're rerouting you slightly to avoid the majority of them," Becka told me. "The new route follows the railroad spur off of Ash street. Once it hits Edgewood Avenue the campus will be to your immediate left." I had a new flag blinking on my HUD, but I already had a visual on the rail line. I made sure the HUD agreed with what I was seeing, but then I cut left onto the spur and increased my speed. I also lightened up the crush-clang of my footfalls by lightening myself up some gravitically. "Becka," I asked, suddenly having a thought. "Do we have any grav generators to spare, what with our sound-proofing modifications?" There was a long pause before she answered, but she seemed confident in her answer when she did. "Yes, we could spare one more - just as long as you're sure you're not going to be doing anything but running and some low altitude, low speed flying. Why?" "I was thinking it might be hard to keep from stepping on people if more of them get put in place as a barrier between me and whoever or whatever is doing this. I could use a gravitic field as a wedge to plow my way through them without doing much more than knocking them over." "Ooh! Good idea. Give me a minute," she said. I kept running. The grassy open area in front of the one brightly lit building was in front of me, and the need for a way through a crowd imminent when Becka finally came back on the comm. "Okay, here's what we've got," she began. "We've added a setting on the squint and twitch menu for your chest repulsor. See it?" I did. It had been set to glow in a soft lavender color, setting it off from the green, red and amber of the other controls. "Got it." "Its like a dimmer switch, the longer you hold it, the bigger the effect, but it'll start out with a field of effect two running strides in front of you and half your height. That should work for anything human." "Sounds good," I said with some relief. "Good work." "Thank you sweetie," came Becka and Wing's reply in perfect stereo. Interesting as that was, I had no time to dwell on it. I was already plowing people out of my way and I slowed down to make sure the action wasn't strenuous enough to cause injuries. At the slower pace, I could see that the people moving themselves into my way didn't look particularly aware of the here and now. They stared off in odd directions, their heads making random movements now and then, as if participating in some unseen play to which I wasn't privy. They also seemed to move in a rippling variation of a mass lockstep. As if their directions came at them in waves and during the peak of the wave their movement and purpose was hard and fast, but during the valleys between the waves, their purpose was much more uncertain and subject to bouts of random misdirection. "These people's bodies are being moved in bunches like pushing sand around at the beach, but there's nobody home," I commented through the comm. "We're watching through the suit's pickups," Becka replied. "Its kind of creepy." As we got closer to the epicenter of these human waves, I began to notice that more and more of the people involved were partially or completely undressed. I silently cursed myself for noticing a particularly nice set of assets here and there. It also seemed that the bodies may have been getting more and more clothing-free, but if the original residents weren't home, as I suspected, there also didn't appear to be anybody leasing out the space for a party. Nobody was having sex. The briefest of visions wafted through my back brain, thoughts of some Dionysian figure, fat and florid, drunkenly coupling with his victims, a lithe, nude reveler gripped in one hand and a flagon of wine in the other. What I found at the center of it all definitely did not meet those almost subliminal expectations. At the center of it all, perched atop a large mound of pillows, cushions, blankets, rugs and cast-off clothing, was... Well, it was ... a skinny, twelve year old girl, wearing a white dress made of taffeta and silk. A little pearl-studded crown sat on her head and her eyes were half open, heavy-lidded and the eyes that peered under them struck me as 'smoky', but the heat was not based in passion, but in power. She moved her upper body and head in a rhythmic dance and as she did, I saw that she sang, but I couldn't hear. I stood before her finally, at the edge of her tower of pillows and suddenly the dance stopped and the song ended and the bodies around us collapsed like marionettes with their strings cut. No clever wordsmith's turn of phrase, that. It was most literally true. The girl's eyes opened more widely and I saw her lips move, but did not hear. "She is demanding that you stop," came Wing. No Becka this time, I wonder if she fled the sound that came through the speakers there. "Relay what she's saying," I asked. Wing immediately complied. "Stop in the name of Gloria," a little girl's voice came through the speaker. What the hell! Wing was a mimic? I began to reach out for her, but before I could even begin to lean towards her, a ripple, a shade, a rush of dark leapt from me and suddenly there was Nightshade, rising up out of the girl's shadow. She reach out with both arms and pulled the girl into them, nestling her head into her bosom. The girl's eyes just had time to widen when Nightshade leaned in and whispered, "Hush, baby. Hush." The sounds did not come through the speakers, but somehow I heard it. Wing didn't echo them. As they were spoken, the girl collapsed in her arms and Nightshade lowered her gently to the ground. Of course I got the full story much later, most of it from Crater, who when you got him away from being a super hero was a fun fellow to be around. My efforts on the Guardian's behalf had earned me an invite to their headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina. The mad reign of Gloria, Queen of Macon ended that night, and it was only later that the world learned of a sad little girl named Gloria Bentley, who had only wanted to sing at her birthday party, and maybe get a kiss from Jimmy Cooper, the boy next door. But the spark of her specialness, the kind that Terana often cruelly gifted people with, chose that day to break through, and Gloria, singing and wishing, swept the world up in her grip, and then, when she'd realized what she had done, was swept up herself by it. At first she was afraid of what would happen to her when she stopped singing. Then she was certain she knew, and her fear of punishment and shame drove her on. She had sung now for seventeen straight days and nights, feeding off the strength of those who came under her sway. She did not sleep, she did not eat, she did not speak, nor could those enthralled around her, save when she commanded it. She rested now under Nightshade's influence and it was only the true innocence of the girl at the core of her that kept Nightshade from succumbing to her own Teranan curse and bringing her to a sleep that did not end. For me, I was glad that in my suit, I was too big and too scary to stick around and help with the crowds of confused citizens. I had enough problems with the memory of that brief second between the moment when Nightshade whispered Hush and when Gloria Bentley slept at last. That brief moment when a little girl's face returned, only to be washed in sorrow and fear and self-loathing. Serenity McKesson congratulated me and said goodbye. "Spider, anything else I could do from here on would just be polishing the apple. You're as ready as I can make you." I wasn't sure about how well placed her confidence was. In the end all I'd done was run across town and act as a delivery mechanism for Nightshade. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was set on 'getting back to her old life', whatever and wherever that was. "Oh, I'll still check in every couple years to see how you're doing. Terana is special to me and I could never abandon her completely, but I'm done being Midnight. Its time to put my God complex aside and finish growing up." I didn't know what to say about that. All I could do was let her know that I would miss her. Outside of Becka, she was the best friend I'd ever had. I told her so. "You, Wing and Becka make a good team, and there are people out there who would be your friend. Doc Graham probably already considers himself your friend, as does Crater I think, and no, I didn't read his mind to learn that. It is only an opinion. You are a likable person, Ceferino Escobar. Don't let your secret life keep you from making friends. Don't let your life as Iron Man prevent you from living. It is a hard lesson to learn, one it took me a long time to learn myself." There were some details involved of course. Serenity McKesson had arranged a 'maintenance contract' as she called it. The fortress would get annual inspections and repairs to whatever needed it. The suit was my responsibility, but there was a way to contact the head man in charge of the maintenance contract, a short, odd fellow with a big nose named Constantine. He could probably get in contact with Serenity, or knew someone who could. This arrangement was her wedding present to us, and her way of apologizing for not sticking around for the wedding. "Be the man you are, Cef. Be the hero you are. Everything else will follow." I got a hug and a kiss, and so did Becka, along with a penetrating look and a wide smile that I didn't understand until much later. "Remember, be who you are." she said just before she disappeared. So I did. I remained me, the man and the hero. Spider Escobar, and of course... ... Iron Man! ------- The End ------- Posted: 2008-05-15 Last Modified: 2008-06-27 / 03:53:55 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------