Nuklear Age (52 page)

“Nuke, just put Katkat down. I’ll bring him by when we visit. You’ll be out of there soon anyway. There’s no way this charade can really be legal.”

Civil Defender snatched Katkat from Nuklear Man’s grasp.

“I think it would be in your best interest to give him back.
Now.”
Nuklear Man’s Plazma Aura flared with that final emphatic word.

“And I think it would be in your best interest to put these cuffs on and accompany me down to your temporary cell.”

“Meow!”

Nuklear Man took in a deep breath and released it loudly through his nose. “Give him back,” he stated calmly.

“Stop making this worse,” Atomik Lad pleaded.

“Cuffs, Golden Boy.”

Hands that could crush metal tightened into fists,

“Give me the cat,” Nuklear Man said.

“Nuke!” Atomik Lad had to scream to startle his mentor into paying attention. “Just turn yourself in for now,” Atomik Lad told him. He took Katkat from Civil Defender. “We’re going to fight this. You may be a dumb ox, but you’re still a Hero. They can’t do this to you.”

“Oh, fine. But I won’t like it.”

“I know.”

“Don’t forget to feed Katkat while I’m gone.”

“I’m the one who feeds him anyway.”

“And don’t be sneaky and take his room away.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t go through my stuff.”

“Fine.”

“Especially my Danger: Funtime for Nukie Drawer.”

“Gah. Don’t worry about it. And don’t
tell
me about it either.”

“And don’t read my Captain Liberty comics with those grubby ex-sidekick hands of yours. You’ll muck up the pages with your greasy adolescence.”

“Could someone hurry up and take him away already?” Atomik Lad asked the court.

Several police officers clamped several handcuffs around the Hero’s wrists. Then he stopped melting them with his Plazma Powers. The cops finally got a pair to stick and they escorted him out the court room.

Count Insidious led Dr. Menace out by the hand. On their way out, he stopped to gloat thusly, “Hey guys. Sorry about that trial thing. Nothing personal, it’s just part of the job –
the part I love!
Because I’m so damned hideously evil!
Bwa hahahaha!
And the best part is, I’m free! Free to go to my meticulously gothic mansion and make crazy undead love to my even more hideously evil girlfriend who managed to sue you jerks into the grave for foiling one of her many vile plots to destroy you!
Gwa hahahahaha!”
He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and wiped away a tear of blood. “Woo. Did I mention the undead love?”

“Yes,” Atomik Lad steamed.

“Just checkin’.”

Dr. Menace winked at the ex-sidekick. “Don’t think for one second that I have finished with you. Mwa hahahahahaha!”

“See you around, Aorta Lad,” the Count said. The happy Evil: Couple disappeared in a
BAMF
of sinister black vampire smoke.

Atomik Lad was still holding Katkat. The courtroom bellowed with the muffled sonic hangover from the media circus in full swing just outside. The jury had gone out to celebrate. Judge Letgodsortitout went into his quarters to watch that wrastlin’ tape. Scraps of paper and monkey fur littered the floor. Atomik Lad shivered from a draft coming through the holes produced by Angus and Norman earlier.

“Meow?”

“I know,” he responded even though he really didn’t know. “Don’t worry. We’ll get out of this.” He held Katkat close and mentally conjured his Field. The red hue it cast onto the world was welcomed for a change. “My world now. Just me.”

“Rowr!”

Atomik Lad smiled as he flew them through Norman’s hole in the wall behind the jury box. “Yeah, you too. I just mean they can’t get us in here. Ugh, I’m talking to a cat. And now I’m talking to myself about talking to a cat.” He glanced at his Danger: Watch. “Damn, it’s been a long day. How about we go home, call Rachel, and get some sleep?”

“Mew.”

“Glad you—
ah!
I’m doing it again,” he rubbed his eyes. “Maybe being away from Nuke for a few days won’t be so bad after all.”

And with that, Atomik Lad rocketed to the Silo with Katkat snuggling in his arms

__________

Ring.
“Hello?”

“Hey, Rachel.”

“Oh, Sparky. I saw the whole thing on TV. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re not the only one.” He gave an exhausted sigh and watched Katkat suck down some Kit-N-Chow.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Today was hell.”

“I think someone needs to go to sleepy time.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to call so you’d know I was still alive, though I hardly feel like it right now.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do to get Nuklear Man out of jail?”

“Yes. First, I will sleep until noon. Second, I will devise a plan.”

“Mow!” Katkat reported after finishing his midnight meal.

“Sounds like you’ve got some help over there.”

“I need it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure thing. Sleep tight.”

He hung up the Danger: Phone and shambled to his Danger: Katkat’s Room.

“Yeowr?”

“What the? How’d you get here already?”

Katkat answered with cutie wutie blinky eyes.

Atomik Lad hoped he did not just think they were cutie wutie blinky eyes.

“Yeah, c’mon. You can stay with me. But it’s right back to Nuke when we get him out of jail. Got it?”

A purring leg rub was the cat’s response.

__________

That night, deep within the dank bowels of the Metroville Courthouse jail, which hadn’t been dank or bowel-like since an inmate sued the state on the grounds that jail wasn’t nice, Nuklear Man slept fitfully upon his uncomfortable Danger: Sleep Slab. His cape was pulling double duty as a Danger: Blanky.

Nuklear Man shivered as a gust of cold air worked its way under his blanket. “Need sleepy,” he muttered incoherently as he pulled the makeshift Danger: Blanky over himself. The draft seemed to huff in annoyance before giving another blast that tossed his cape clean off his Herculean frame.

“Urrrrraaaarrrrg,” Nuklear Man said like a creature recently risen from the dead. “Stupid air conditioning. Nukie will…um.”

His voice trailed off when he noticed it echoing among the cave walls “…Smash you?”

More echo.

“I don’t recall it being quite so roomy when they escorted me in here. Also, it wasn’t a cave.” To the left, darkness and a slight downward incline. To the right, more darkness and a slight upward incline. In front of him, some more darkness and really neat stone pillars growing up from the cavern’s floor. Above, only darkness and presumably a ceiling too far away to see. “Come to think of it, I’m almost sure it was a lot smaller in here. And a jail. Boy, those civil workers sure can get a job done quick and quiet. I can’t believe I slept through all the construction a job like this must’ve taken.”

He began walking down the incline. He picked up a few loose stones and hurled one into the cave’s depths. He waited for echoes that never came. “Sheesh, when I said the cell was awfully small for my huge muscles, I didn’t mean they had to do all this.” He paused to examine his Nuklear Physique. “But I think they got the scale right. A place this big is just
about
big enough for my might. Give or take some mightiness.”

Nuklear Man prepared to toss his last stone when another gust of wind issued from the cave ahead of him. The air was rank and heavy, like the breath of the Earth itself. It rang with a deep resonance that shook the massive cave only slightly.

“Seriously. Someone needs to fix that air conditioner.” He sniffed at the air. “Smells like something’s burning. One of the belts musta come loose.”

He could feel it in the cave walls and floor first, and then in his very bones before the voice was actually audible. “Son.” It echoed from every direction. “Son, listen to me.”

“Kinda hard not to, Dad,” the Hero said while trying to shake the ringing from his ears.

“You are my vengeance.”

“Really?” The Golden Guardian flexed a couple times. “
Yeah
, living vengeance! Cool.”

“They are mad. Yes, truly mad.”

“Yeah, they seemed pretty upset.”

“We all have our destined roll to play. But you,
you,
my son are outside their destiny. You will bring a new fate crashing down on them. Their doom will be forged in the flames of your heritage.”

“Sure. Who we talkin’ about anyway?”

“Oh, to see the looks on their smug faces. So sure, so very sure. Such arrogant certainty in the unyielding future.” The voice twisted into a bitter roar of laughter that made the cave tremble. Pebbles of varying sizes rained from the great stone pillars surrounding Nuklear Man. The laughter grew in intensity and the Hero could make out two faint lights floating above him almost beyond the range of his Nuklear Sight.

“You know what I was just thinking? I was just thinking that maybe you’re not real and I’m not really here because here isn’t really real either because you’re scaring me. Maybe instead, maybe you’re just some kind of personification of my ego ‘cause you’re really loud and maybe this cave is supposed to be like my brain ‘cause Sparky is always saying how cavernous it is. That’s what I think.”

The laugh shattered into a scream. Nuklear Man felt certain it would tear the cave to pieces.

“Or not,” he said meekly.

The massive stalagmite columns grew cracks as huge shards of stone plummeted from beyond the invisible heights and into the ground. All the crashing and echoing sounded like a machine gun going off in Nuklear Man’s head. The distant lights flared just bright and long enough for him to discern them as the eyes of an impossibly distant and huge face, weary and worn, twisted in agony.

“Wow,” Nuklear Man said. “You’re really tall.”

The lights dimmed as the scream faded. Nuklear Man could feel it ringing in the very cavern walls. Darkness permeated the cave’s depths once more. The wind returned but without its former strength. It was rasping and heavy with the stench of burnt flesh. The voice too was strained. “Leave me,” it said bitterly.

“Sure. But I don’t know how.” A final boulder fell from directly above the Hero. “Wah!” he exclaimed while collapsing onto the cool floor of his temporary holding cell. “Whew. It was just a dream.” He wiped his brow and in so doing crushed a rock that had been in his hand the whole time.

Its pebbly crumbs fell down his face and horror struck him like a sniper’s bullet. “Or was it?!
Ahhhhhh!”

__________

Issue 40 – The Reign of Superion

Tuesday morning.

Atomik Lad awoke with a stretch and a yawn. His Danger: Clock clicked over to 11:23. “Eh, close enough.” Minutes later, the ex-sidekick shuffled into the Danger: Kitchen where Katkat was already attacking his morning meal of Kit-N-Chow. Which was odd since the Kit-N-Chow was kept in a Kit-N-Proof sealed container on the top shelf of the Danger: Pantry.

“Musta forgotten to put it away before going to bed.” He put some frozen Danger: Waffles into the Danger: Toaster and sat down at the Danger: Table to read the Danger: Paper.

No, it was just the paper. Nuklear Man was in jail so there was no one to sneak around at five in the morning to put a Danger: Label on it. “Grah,” he said to the realization.

__________

A few more minutes later, Atomik Lad was enjoying his Danger: Waffles at the Danger: Kitchen Table while perusing what was now the Danger: Paper. He had to nudge the Danger: Label Maker over a tad to set down his Danger: Glass of OJ. Most of the front page was dedicated to the trial. There were editorials, a summary of events, interviews with members of the jury, an artist’s rendering of a smoking crater that was supposed to be the ruins of Dr. Menace’s warehouse, and pictures taken of the areas most heavily damaged by the encounter with Crushtacean. He didn’t read any of it; he’d seen enough of
that
side of the injustice against Nuklear Man to last him a lifetime. In his search for the comics page, Atomik Lad came across an entire section of the paper dedicated to the faceless victims of “so-called” Heroes, specifically “Philanthropist, Entrepreneur, Inventor: Dr. Veronica Menace.”

“Y’know,” he told Katkat. “They didn’t so much as
ask
us about our side of this. They could’ve at least called to see what we thought of the verdict.”

Completely by coincidence, and having no actual importance by said coincidence, the Danger: Phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sparky.”

“Rachel! What’s up?”

“Just calling to check on you boys.”

“Thanks, we’re fine. I could probably use a shower though.”

“Need some help?”

“…Whimper.”

“Did you just say—”

“Um, so shouldn’t you be at work by now?”

“I should be, but I called in sick. “Right now let’s worry about getting Nuklear Man out of jail before the city’s criminal elements take advantage of his absence.”

“Hm. I’d been concentrating so much on the injustices shoved down our throats lately that I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

__________

Meanwhile, heady with the drunken fervor of Evil that accompanies the disposal of a Heroic figure, Dr. Grammar and Dr. Calculus made a right turn at a red light without first coming to a
complete
stop. “Caveat Anarchium!” they yelled with hedonistic abandon, though not so loudly as to disturb passersby.

__________

The Danger: Call Waiting beeped. “Argh. Hang on, the city might be in peril or something.”

“No problem.”

“I hate these things.” He clicked over. “Hello?”

“Hello, Atomik Lad?”

“That’s me.”

“This is Incompetent Bureaucrat.”

“The mayor? Really?”

“Yes. I was hoping we could have you down at City Hall later this afternoon for a press conference concerning last night’s trial.”

“Definitely. I’m there, what time?”

“We can do it in about an hour if you’re ready.”

“Great. I’ll be there.”