Anna smiles, and the phone rings; Pen looks around, trying to remember where he left the receiver, and she reaches around him and picks it up from the microwave.
“Hello,” she says.
“Did I mention the powerful, sun-flick thing?” Pen asks.
She hands him the phone. “For you. Puppeteer, I think.”
“Prophetier?”
She rolls her eyes. “You think I can keep them straight?”
Pen sticks out his tongue and takes the phone. Prophetier’s voice is, as ever, low and cracked. “Strength. She’s headed out again. I’m watching her now. Probably to the same place. The alley off of Third. She’s too weak now. They’ll kill her. You have half an hour.”
“Hello, Proph. How are you?”
“That’s all I have.” A click, and Prophetier’s gone.
Pen puts the receiver to his forehead. Like in the old times, his heart quickens and his senses reach out; the world sharpens. He looks up at his wife and counts the fifty-seven specks of gold in her left eye. On top of them his own features are lightly reflected; he can see the wires on his cheeks begin to glow.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m the only one who can.”
“I know.” She turns back to the pancake. “Don’t be too late. You promised to work on your speech tomorrow. The funeral’s coming up.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and she turns back to him and hugs him close.
“It’ll be fine,” she says as she rests into his shoulder. “Just be safe. Save the day PenUltimate, then come home and be safe.”
Strength, Woman Without Weakness #486
It’s now, and there are three men around her, and they’re moving closer. But she’s not worried. The one nearest to her is battered, scratched, and
bald. He has a tattoo slipping around his chin and a gun in his hand that he points with unearned confidence. He’ll be first. She lunges toward him, and he fires.
It’s nine years ago, and there are three men around her. The Big Three: Star-Knight, Ultimate, and The Soldier of Freedom. They have invited her to be the fourth member of the group they’re forming: The Liberty Legion!
We will work as one, as a team to defeat our enemies. We are searching for the best to join us. We want you.
Her own reflection blankets Ultimate’s metal face. She looks so young.
It’s six years ago, and there are three men around her;
villains
is what they all call them, one who fires lightning from his eyes, another who transmorphises into an elephant with tusks of fire, and another who can disappear and then reappear before he left. But she’s not worried. She spins and flips and moves as no one has ever moved. They have powers, but they’re weak, and eventually, inevitably, she wins.
It’s twenty years ago, and there are three men around her, and they’re dead. Her father and her two brothers lie still in a house in the suburbs of Arcadia City. Just minutes before, she watched as they dragged her mother away to debase her and kill her.
You, you are nothing. You have no strength. We don’t need to hurt you. You’re nothing but a weak little girl.
So they left her in her room alone, surrounded by books, stories of princesses kept behind castle walls, and after a while she stops hearing the cries. She’s untouched, but she can’t walk, and she has to crawl over to her father’s body to beg for his forgiveness, to plead with him to remember that she wanted to be strong, but she just couldn’t. She’d tried. She’d tried so hard.
It’s five years ago, and there are three men around her, and one of them just fired a gun. The bullet lashes through the air. But she’s not worried. She reaches out and captures it inside her palm. Slowly to her, but so-very-fast-to-them, she twirls and chucks it at the one behind her. And he goes down. The one with the gun fires again, and she catches that bullet too. Without even looking, she flings it to her side, and another one falls. She glares back to the one with the gun.
Come on,
she says,
one more time.
It’s four years ago, and there are three men around her, two villains and a hero. PenUltimate, Ultimate’s noble sidekick, throws a punch as she throws a kick, and the villains reel back. They’d been dating for four
months, and yesterday she’d told him she loved him, told Pen how strong she knew he was, how strong they would be together, forever battling side by side. Today he’d brought her someplace quiet to tell her he was ending it. He wasn’t strong, he said, not like her. He never would be. Before she could cry, they were attacked, and Strength smiles as the villains recover, charge, and her fists again sink into flesh.
It’s ten years ago, and there are three men around her, but she’s not worried. She should be. She’s never done this before, never done anything like this before. One man charges, and she shuts her eyes and flinches, and he slams his fist into her face, and it breaks—the fist, not the face. Her eyes widen. One of the other men gives up and runs away. The one remaining fires a gun at her. And she can see it. She can see the bullet in the air. It hangs, metal against blue sky. She opens her hand, grabs at it, then closes her hand. She unwinds her fingers and looks at the pummeled lead in her palm. She smiles. The bullet clinks to the ground, and the two men run.
It’s six months ago, and there are three men around her. The Big Three: Star-Knight, Ultimate, and The Soldier of Freedom. A light burns blue beneath them and around them.
We are the founders of The Liberty Legion; it has to be up to us. There’s only one way to fight this threat. We have to save them; they’ve trusted us, and we have to save them. The Blue will destroy us all. Someone has to be the one. Someone has to carry this burden, absorb the powers of all the heroes, and stop it. Someone has to make the sacrifice. Someone has to die.
They look at her with a veiled smirk of pity.
It can’t be you. We’re sorry, we won’t allow it.
Her reflection blankets Ultimate’s metal face. There are tears in her eyes. She looks pathetic and weak.
It’s two years ago, and there are three men around her, and they lie still. They’re not dead, just unconscious, though they’d be dead if she’d wanted them dead. The CrimeBoss and his top assassins: Heroin and Red Rapist. Their reign ends here. They had gone too far. They had decided to challenge Strength in her city, and their reign ends here.
It’s eleven years ago, and there are three men around her, and they are gods.
I am Ra of the Egyptians. I am Odin of the Norse. I am Jupiter of the Romans. We have come back to choose a champion. There is a destiny ahead that will cause the end. Someone must stop it; someone must be the one. One must have The Strength. Only one without weakness can bear this burden. We have scoured the stars to locate such a person. We have found only one. We all have
destinies, this is yours. It will be painful, every day it will be painful.
But she’s not worried.
It’s now, and there are three men around her, and one of them just fired a gun. She waits to see the metal against the blue, and she reaches out her hand—and the bullet rips through her palm. There’s blood and pain, and she falls. No. She’s back on her knees, but one of them is on top of her. He kicks her in the gut, and she drops to the concrete. Red seeps into her mouth, and he kicks her again. Another of them cracks her in the face with something hard, and she’s gone, but she comes back. Fuck you, she wants to shout, but she’s gagging on something bitter. God, she’s so heavy. She twists onto her back, and she can see the sky and all the stars not hidden by the towers of Arcadia. Her hollowed hand twitches.
Fuck you. I’m Strength. You bastards are weak. All of you are weak. Everyone is weak. Except me. I am Strength. I am Strength. She hears laughter, and she hopes it’s her own.
It’s now, and there are three men around her, and they’re moving closer. But she’s not worried.
Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #567
One of them already has his pants down; he’ll have to be first. On the other side of the alley, Pen bends over and selects a particularly jagged rock. Pen cocks his arm and throws. The rock slices into the man’s right cheek, and he topples over scratching at the new blood on his face. The other two look up from the woman held beneath them. They squint into the darkness.
Pen knows them, can read the bubbled thoughts they believe are original. There’s something out there, maybe a few hundred feet away, standing in the dark. One of them points his gun out, but he doesn’t fire. Of course. It’s too far. Too dark.
Pen closes the distance. He keeps to the shadows—even the night has shadows, one of Ultimate’s first lessons.
I am metal, and in the day I reflect light to blind my enemies. In the night I must use the dark as I have the light, as a weapon to be wielded against those who try to breed evil into the streets of Arcadia.
Jesus, will that voice ever get out of his head?
The gun goes off, but Pen’s not worried. Let him waste his bullets at this distance. People have been firing guns at Pen since before his twelfth
birthday, and they’d never managed to hit him; but it gives them confidence, and he lets them have it.
Confidence can also be a weapon
—that stupid robotic voice again.
Pen nears them, within fifteen feet, and his mind focuses. The fight now is everything. Like countless times before, he’s dragged from his body, replaced by training and experience, by wires responding to countless repetitive drills from an instructor who never felt fatigue, whose artificial joints and muscles couldn’t become raw or worn.
There are fourteen spots on a man that can render him unconscious; there are many more that can kill him. Pen evaluates each of the three attackers in turn: A, B, and C. A has the weapon, but he’s left spots four and eleven clearly open; B is also vulnerable in spot four, and has additionally left seven, eight, and thirteen hanging; on C, who’s still trying to hold back the blood coming out of his face, twelve of the fourteen spots glow. From a shadow no one else can see, PenUltimate once again leaps into action.
A reacts first. He aims his gun and fires, and it’s a good shot. Given the speed of the projectile and the reaction time of the human constitution, dodging the bullet will be impossible. It’s impossible for a regular human to do it. I can’t do it.
Then you will have to be better than human,
Ultimate replies.
Pen moves, and the bullet whizzes by.
Pen connects with spot four on A, driving a fist into A’s right kidney. The man goes down, dropping his weapon. He shouldn’t have relied on that crutch; he might’ve lasted longer. B starts spouting obscenities as he takes what appears to be some kind of martial arts stance, and Pen approaches him patiently, anticipating the predictable thrust. When it comes, Pen grabs the jutting wrist and bends it back to where it pops. The man shouts out, coiling into the pain, leaving spot eight dangling sweetly in front of Pen. A touch and some pressure, and the man falls.
Pen approaches C, the last one. C’s hands are spread across his face, blood gathering between his fingers. “You can’t do this,” he says. “You fuckers are gone.”
C’s pants still hang around his ankles, and Pen strikes hard on spots six and fourteen. The man screeches, lunges back, tripping over his own clothes. He stumbles and drops—his head thumps into the asphalt, and he stays quiet.
Pen scans the alley.
Look for backup. Look for the others who first ran and are now ready to return. Look for the ones who think you’re vulnerable now. Look for the danger, and when it comes, end it.
A rat scurries from behind a green Dumpster thirty yards off. Four stories up, a woman three months pregnant closes her window and gives off a disgusted scoff. A camera flashes in the distance, too far to capture a steady photo. Thirty thousand feet above, a rising 777 accelerates past 450 knots. The rat returns to the Dumpster. The area is safe, secured.
“Where’s your little windboard, you fucking coward?”
Pen is torn from his training. He drops to his knees to check on her. Strength’s hurt. Her hand bleeds onto her shredded shirt. Through the gaps in the fabric, he sees the black bruises that now cover her body. Pen reaches out to her.
“Get away—don’t you dare!” She’s twitched herself into a fetal position and appears to be struggling to emerge from it, pushing out legs and arms that stretch and then retract. “Don’t you ever touch me again. Just get the fuck away.”
“Alice, let me see it.” He tries to move her arm, to look at her hand. She reacts as if he were Burn and jerks away. “Alice, Strength, c’mon, please, just let me help.”
“Fuck you.”
He stands, steps back. Spots one to fourteen are on her, and they shine. “I can get you help. I’ll get an ambulance.”
“Fucking coward.” She rolls to her side, manages to untangle her legs. “No robot daddy around to cart your bony ass around. Think you’re so fucking great, the great and powerful fucking hero.”
“Look, this isn’t the time. I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“I don’t need a goddamn ambulance!”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. No ambulance.”
“Always looking for someone else to do it for you.” She sits up and leans against the wall. “That why you didn’t show?”
Pen bends down and then straightens up again. He looks at her, watches her struggle to treat the wounds, then he looks at the sky, waits for all the heroes to come flying back. That’s the rule. Everyone knows. They all come back. After a while, he walks over to her and sits down next to her, close but not touching.