Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (25 page)

“I’ll tell them the truth,” I said. “I’ll stop you.”

He laughed the kind of nasty, evil laugh I thought you only heard in Vincent Price movies. Then he began to flex his sloppy muscles. His flesh began to solidify. His torso turned red and his legs black. A shock of raven hair erupted from his skull and a blue cape flowed down his back. Perfectly human, a brilliant yellow emblem appeared on his chest.

“Really, my dear boy. Who do you think they’re going to believe?
You?
Or
LIONHEART?
”

ISSUE TWELVE

IS THAT YOU?

There was a moment of blind panic when it seemed like the entire universe was going to collapse in on us with the Simon Tower morgue as the focal point. He
couldn’t
be Lionheart, I told myself, he just
couldn’t.

Then I realized I was right, he
really
couldn’t, and for two reasons. First, someone who possesses the Heart of the Lion was incapable of committing a malevolent act. (It never even occurred to me to doubt this, I accepted it as a simple scientific fact, like the world is round and that God created women for the express purpose of giving me an ulcer before I turned 30.)

Second, Lionheart had saved my life, and I had been loyal to him ever since. Far from being loyal to this abomination, I wanted to rip him into so many pieces it would take all of Five-Share and half of the United States Marine Corps a week to find them all. Once this realization sunk in, my panic was replaced by pure rage, and I wasted no time informing him that I did not believe his parents were married.

“Tut-tut,” the Gunk-as-Lionheart chuckled. “Such
language.
”

“How can you
do
this?”

“Oh, my boy, it’s easy, I’m a shapeshifter. One that, thanks to you, now has enough dominion over his own body to again to control the shifts. I’m
very
grateful, by the way.”

“Nobody will believe you’re Lionheart. They all know he’s dead.”

“
Missing
,” he reiterated. “The only person who was present for that battle is Hotshot, and he’s never told anyone that he
watched
Lionheart die.”

“He told
me.
”

“Well aren’t
you
special? As for my credibility... Morris and Mary are
mine
, remember? And so is the susceptibility field. In terms of legitimacy, child,
I
am Walter Cronkite.
You
are Jerry Springer.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’ve also got
your
powers.” I bore down and concentrated, shifting the colors on my costume, slimming myself a bit more and broadening my shoulders. My hair darkened from its natural brown to Lionheart’s jet black. I gave him a smile that Lionheart once gave me, drifting away from a burning building.

“
Now
who are they going to believe?” I asked.

We both lashed out at the same time, deflecting each other’s blows. He swept at my legs with a low kick but I leapt over him, coming down and landing my elbow on his neck. The first strike was mine.

Second, third and fourth were all his, as he snapped a fist up into my face, down into my gut and hurled me into the wall. As I felt my bones jar against steel, I realized that, while the blows
hurt,
they didn’t seem to be doing any actual
damage
. The malleable shapeshifter body we both had was acting as a cushion -- only my skeleton was solid now.

He charged me, but I countered by rolling onto my back, catching him in the gut with my feet and flipping him. He crashed into the bank of steel drawers and crunched his jaw down on the ice-block that contained poor Deep Six.

I followed his head down, smashing it with both fists. “Still think you got what it takes to be Lionheart, you son of a bitch?”

“More than
you,
boy.” He launched an elbow into my crotch and I winced. I was immensely relieved, a second later, when I realized that the blow didn’t hurt any more than the others. Even my sensitive areas were nice, spongy shapeshifter-flesh for now.

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him over Nightshadow’s skeleton and into the door, which smashed open under his weight. I leapt out after him and followed into the hall, where he tangled his legs with mine and pulled me to the ground.

“Give it up, boy! You haven’t got a prayer!”

“Would Lionheart give up, greaseball?” I brought my elbow down hard on his knees and I heard a pleasant crunch. The Gunk rolled over and howled in pain. I scrambled to my feet and delivered a solid kick to his face, which briefly showed signs of flowing back into its natural, orange state, but he managed to keep his wits about him enough to resolidify.

The music in question began to well up inside of me -- it was a fast-paced low brass rhythm, pounding out staccato riffs over and over again -- the kind of music you hear during heated battle scene in a movie.

“Will you make up your--” he turned the corner and the music exploded into one loud, high-pitched blatt as though everybody in the orchestra had screamed into their instruments at the same time.

The
faux
Lionheart and I glared at each other, then down the hall where Ted had charged. At the same time, we began to run.

I don’t know how he did it -- between a bum leg and the fact that I started standing up, but somehow the Gunk got ahead of me as we raced. Before long we were in the more populated areas of the complex, charging past a series of perplexed Capes and Masks and one
thoroughly
confused-looking Goop. Even Dr. Noble wasn’t wearing a smirk as we charged past him and LifeSpeed into the lounge.

Where Annie was watching a movie on late-night cable.

The Gunk made a beeline for her.

“Oh, the
hell
you are!” I screamed, hurling myself at him and “borrowing” a burst of inertia from LifeSpeed. I hit him at the waist and he crumbled like a lousy quarterback. I began to pound him with both fists as hard as I could, insane with rage, shouting, “Take it
off
, you monster! Take off his face!
TAKE OFF LIONHEART’S FACE!
”

I felt hands surrounding me and pulling me away -- it was like fighting Dr. Noble all over again. Once I was back on my feet Gunk/Lionheart pulled himself up and just stood there. He didn’t need anyone to hold
him
back.

“All right, all right, I’m coming!” Morrie shouted, pushing his way through the crowd. “Will somebody please tell me what the -- oh my God.”

He had as much amazement on his face as anyone else and I remembered what the Gunk had told me, he was so “simple” that he didn’t even know he was being manipulated.

“That’s Copycat!” the Gunk shouted, “and he murdered the Gunk!”

“That’s the Gunk!” I returned, “and
he
murdered
Lionheart
!” As soon as it was out of my mouth I realized how unlikely it sounded. Not that
his
story had much credibility, but... what had I told Sheila once? “Heaven’s retention rate for us
sucks.
” And the Gunk was counting on that well-earned stereotype to carry his line of crap through.

Heads began to turn in my direction, most of them with scowls, rage or simple disbelief in their eyes. Only Ted, Annie, Animan and Hotshot looked like they were struggling with the Gunk’s story -- and Hotshot looked like he was going to have an aneurism.

“No way I’m going to convince you guys, huh?” I asked. I switched the shapeshifter powers back on and made my body incredibly slick, gliding away from my detainers. Before they could make another motion to grab me I jumped forward and attacked.

“Change
back
,” I shouted, driving a roundhouse punch to the Gunk’s jaw before bolting out of the lounge with a burst of LifeSpeed.

I darted into the express elevator and thumbed the button for the roof. As the door began to close I saw an entire mob rushing towards it. I thought I would make it, too, but in the second before it closed a humanoid mass blasted through the crack. I had company.

The pneumatic lifters the elevator used fired and we began our rapid ascent to the roof. The mass next to me began to regain its shape -- stolen, of course, from Lionheart.

“You see, boy?” the Gunk hissed. “They all
love
me. By the time I’m done with
you
, the only one on your side will be your mother.”

“
Your
mother!” Even in the confines of the elevator I somehow found the maneuvering room to deliver a blow to his gut and a few more to the head before the elevator doors opened and we spilled out onto the roof.

We danced out onto the gravel, trading punch for punch, kick for kick, until we made it to the edge. I fell back against the railing, nearly destroyed by exhaustion.

“Give up, Joshua. I’m going down in the history books, while you won’t even merit a footnote.”

“You’re going down in history, all right,” I spat. “Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler, the Gunk.”

“King Arthur, Robin Hood, Richard the
Lionhearted
…”

I bristled at the names – according to legend, they were three of the heroes whose spirits gave power to the real Lionheart. Whether it was true or not, I didn’t even care at this point. This guy comparing himself to a Plantagenet would have been bad enough. Comparing him to Siegel’s last real hero made me snap, and I launched at him. He backhanded me and I caught a glimpse of the skyline, a dizzying spectacle beneath me. Vertigo began to set in. He hit me again and I thought I would vomit. He struck me once more and I flipped over the rail.

With the wind whipping past me I tried one last, desperate stab of survival. I tried to force a pair of wings out of my back with Gunk’s shapeshifting powers, hoping I could fly.

I’ll never know if it would have worked or not, though, because just about then I fell out of range of the Gunk’s powers.

The color drained out of my uniform and my hair lightened to brown. My gut softened, my shoulders narrowed and the ground got closer.

Worst of all, my flesh suddenly felt the impact of every blow I’d received. All at once it felt like I was being bludgeoned by a dozen hammers -- particularly in the groin. I’d rather let Dr. Noble use my ears as a wishbone than feel
that
again.

Through all of this, the ground came hurtling towards me. The speed and the wind and the pain finally overcame me, and I barely even felt the arms that caught me in the seconds before I finally blacked out.

CAPTIVE

When I could see again I knew I was dreaming. Annie was not only there, but she was smiling. “It’s all right,” she said. “We’ve broken out. We’re free.”

We were soaring high above Siegel City in the dream. The skyline was moving as though we were watching a time-lapse movie of the city growing and evolving -- beginning ten years ago and leading up to the present.

As the city flashed below me the sky remained the same. It was sunset, and the great yellow disc fell below the horizon while the sky around it erupted in a kaleidoscope of orange and red and purple. It reminded me of something I’d heard an artist say once: “never paint a sky blue.” I don’t know if it’s precisely what he meant, but I took that as a warning to always look past the obvious.

“
Exactly,”
Annie said as I thought that. “Watch.”

The city still evolving beneath us, she pointed to Lee Park, where a figure was rising into the air with another in tow. It was Carnival, I saw, recognizing that frozen, blood-red armor that hadn’t existed for ten years. He was flying too, with one arm extended in front of him and the other clutching a skeleton by its collarbone.

As he rocketed through the sky the armor began to glisten, then soften, then melt. It turned back into the slimy orange body the Gunk had always worn, even sprouting four extra arms. The slime flowed down his arm onto the skeleton. There seemed to be an endless supply of it. The skeleton was soon coated as well.

As he flew past me the Gunk fired a despicable grin in my direction. As he did it, his features solidified and a mask grew across his face. His body hardened and clothes appeared, a cape finally sprouting from his back. He was the phoney Lionheart again.

Laughing like a madman, he hurled the screaming goo-covered skeleton to the city below, rocketed off in the distance, and was gone.

I looked at Annie as if she would have the answer, but she wasn’t there anymore. In her place were a pair of glowing purple eyes on a figure dressed in swirling magenta robes.

“What do you
think?” Mental Maid asked.

Suddenly, my dream-self lost the ability to fly and I fell straight down towards Simon Tower, which was still under construction. I fell straight through the top floors, rocketing down through the building and into the complex beneath. I fell straight down, faster, finally falling into a room I’d never seen before and...

...then I was awake.

I was lying on a cot in a small, dark room with a single bare light bulb -- 40-watt, I’d guess. Morrie was such a damn cheapskate sometimes. The walls were a naked white and they ran about seven feet before cornering, then repeated the process. The single door, on the wall opposite the cot, was blue with a small glass panel set at eye-level. There was no doorknob.

As I shook my head and tried to squeeze the feeling back into my limbs, I realized my hands were bound together in front of me. This was one high-tech pair of handcuffs, with a center bar instead of a chain, covered with electronic energy read-outs and pneumatic clasps holding it on -- the thing was as close to escape-proof as anything ever designed.

These weren’t handcuffs, I knew. I’d seen them once before, on a thawed-out Icebergg. They were power dampeners, and as long as I had them on, I was helpless.

I sat up, then hoisted myself to my feet. This was a mistake. I stumbled across the room and smashed into the far wall. Only the collision kept me from falling down entirely.

I slid myself along the wall until I reached the window in the door. Outside was the Justice Giant, his feet on a desk, watching a small portable television. It appeared to be showing the episode of
Happy Days
where the Fonz had to save Richie, Potsie and Ralph Mouth from some calamity or another.

“Hey!” I barked. “Hey, what’s going on here?” I banged on the door with the power dampeners until I finally made a noise loud enough to get Justice Giant’s attention. He looked back at me, frowned, and then motioned at somebody I couldn’t see.

I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of who he was talking to. This was another mistake. The door opened and gave me a solid crash in the face, toppling me back to the floor. I felt a hell of a lot of pain, I noticed, but the biggest pain I felt was the realization that I wasn’t getting a Rush from either of them.

“Dude! You can’t
stand
there!” Ted bent down and helped me to my feet, Animan behind him. They pushed me back and sat me down on the cot.

“Those power dampeners can majorly screw with your sense of balance,” Animan said. “Just sit down and
relax
, man.”

“What’s going on?” I moaned.

“You’re waiting for your trial,” Ted informed me.