Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage (21 page)

“And you decided to go into the hero business instead? Good for you.”

Goodwin cleared her throat. “This is
hardly
the time or place to interview potential candidates for your team, Juice. They’re here for a reason. A gestalt.”

Juice looked blank. “What’s that? I’m not sure I know the word.”

“It’s something psi users can do when we get together,” said Switchboard. “We can amp up each others’ abilities. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

“We’re going to cross-examine your minds,” added Juliet. “Between the three of us, we should be able to find any sign that they’ve been altered in some way.”

“Will it hurt?” asked Ace.

“Not at all,” said Switchboard. “You won’t even know we’re there. It should only take a couple of minutes each. We work fast.”

Juice cracked his knuckles. “Well let’s get on with it then. I’m ready for a real shower, a change of clothes, and a debriefing.”

There was no ceremony, no joining of hands or anything like that. Sally was a little disappointed in the lack of spectacle. Juliet closed her eyes, but Switchboard seemed to just unfocus his and Michael just looked around and grinned nervously.

“They’re untouched, as far as we can tell,” said Switchboard after several tense minutes.

“So are we cleared, Ms. Goodwin? May I assume command of my team once again?” asked Juice

A muscle twitched in the older woman’s jaw. “Very well, Juice. Welcome home.”

“It’s about time,” muttered Ace.

“All right, who on the team is here right now?” Juice asked Switchboard.

“Just us plus the other Hero Academy graduates. Doublecharge, Desert Eagle, and Mastiff are flying in on the
Marilyn
. They’re expected within an hour.”

“Fine,” said Juice. “I want everyone available in the conference room in one hour for debriefing. That gives us some time to clean up.” He paused, considering. “Have the kitchen throw together some trays or something. I haven’t eaten in a hundred and thirty years, and I could get outside of a sandwich like you wouldn’t believe.”

“A hundred and…” Michael looked confused.

“One hour,” reiterated Juice. “Sally, Ace, Will… hit the showers.”

“Yes
sir
!” they chorused.

Five minutes later, Sally sat under the steaming hot spray of her shower and cried for the loss of her friend. Shannon’s death weighed heavily on her. A hundred and thirty years meant nothing when they’d been talking mere hours ago. She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye. Sally promised herself she wouldn’t ever take a relationship for granted again. Life was too short, and too many parahuman heroes had the misfortune to die with their boots on,
killed in action
, as Juice had said.
 

Once she wound down her grief, Sally settled about the business of really getting clean for the first time in months. She worked
half a bottle of shampoo through her hair followed by most of her favorite coconut-scented conditioner. She scrubbed her skin pink with her loofah and did her face mask twice. Once out of the shower, she took the extra time to blow dry her hair and brushed it until it snapped with static electricity, and then decided to leave it down without braids.

She knew she’d be expected to dress in costume for debriefing, but decided to wait until the last possible minute; she’d been stuck in stuffy Victorian fashions for almost three months of subjective time and was enjoying the freedom of being unclothed.

She called her mom back in Arizona to let her know she was back and all right. Her mother changed emotions so rapidly that even Sally had a hard time keeping up; one second she was relieved her daughter wasn’t dead, the next she was furious that Sally had gone and disappeared for seven weeks. Sally looked up at her wall clock and saw that she only had five minutes to finish getting ready. She promised to visit just as soon as the whole mess with the Archmage was taken care of, and said goodbye.

Four and a half minutes later, dressed in full costume, Sally entered the conference room. Doublecharge, Sondra, Jason, and Switchboard were all there, along with Juliet from the Lucky Seven, Icebreaker from Just Cause’s Second Team, the young psi Michael, and several other youngsters she didn’t recognize. She squeezed Sondra and buried her face in the scent of her friend’s feathered wings. They smelled like baby powder, like home. “I missed you,” she whispered.

“I missed you too… but not as much as someone else,” said Sondra. Sally nodded as her eyes fell on Jason.

He looked awful. His face was haggard, and even more stubbly than normal. He looked like he’d lost some weight and his eyes were shadowed by terrible dark circles, as if he’d hardly slept in days. He had a long cut on one cheekbone that was healing. Sally frowned and thought it looked bad enough it might scar. She looked around the table and realized he wasn’t the only one in the room recovering from an injury. Doublecharge had a cast around her left forearm. Icebreaker had four parallel scratches on the side of her neck that looked uncomfortably like fingernail marks. Even Sondra had a bandage around one of her legs.

Sally slipped into the empty seat beside Jason. He smiled tentatively at her. She took his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze to let him know all was forgiven, and she didn’t let it go.

“All right, let’s get down to business,” said Juice. “I know you’ve all got questions about where we’ve been and what happened and I’m going to do my best to answer them. Let me get introductions all around, and then I’ll begin. After that I want a full report on the situation with the Archmage.”

Doublecharge introduced the five new faces at the table. They were the just-graduated class from the Hero Academy. Michael, whom they’d met earlier, was introduced as Ment. He dressed all in black and looked like a junior extra from the
Matrix
movies. Next to him was a girl wearing a dark red cloak and a highly polished Romanesque helmet with a visor covering her eyes. A sword was slung on the back of her chair. She was Minerva, the granddaughter of the Just Cause founder Lady Athena. Another girl, a genetic dwarf, sat on the table beside Minerva, dressed in a white outfit with puffy tufts at her wrists, ankles, waist, and throat. Sally’s first thought was that she looked like a poodle in her getup, but quickly squashed such rude thoughts. The girl was Snowball, a powerful ice blaster, on a par with the old Just Cause villain Winternight. Carver was a thin boy in a red and purple outfit who never sat still. He could slice through solid matter with his hands, arms, or entire body if he chose. Doublecharge introduced the boy called Octane who wore no costume but whose body seemed to be made from shiny black goo. His body was made of a liquid polymer that he could reshape into
any form
.

The five Hero Academy graduates had been brought in as emergency backup when the majority of Just Cause disappeared. Doublecharge had her hands full with five new, untested members, and had assigned them to base duty.

Juice proceeded to recap events from the time they entered the Archmage’s castle up to the time when Stratocaster brought them back from the past.

“Any questions?” Juice asked, forty-five minutes later.

“I’ve got one,” began Sondra. “Why did you reappear seven weeks after you disappeared? I’d think that if you were traveling through time, you could have come back a lot closer to when you left.”

Juice turned to look at Will. “I’ve been wondering that myself, Will.”

Will looked perplexed. “I was trying for the day after we left. I thought that would be a safe time to return. But it seems that there is some kind of… well, I guess you could call it a
buffer
zone. The large expenditures of magic, from growing Mount Rugby to the broken spell that sent us back in time, kept me from bringing us back any sooner than now.”

“I see,” said Juice. “Sort of like magnets repelling each other?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Will. “But that’s not all. There’s going to be another huge magical expenditure. It hasn’t happened yet. We only had a very narrow window of time in which we could have arrived and we only just made it.”

“A magical expenditure,” said Doublecharge from across the table. “Can you be more specific?”

“No I can’t. But it’s going to be very big. Bigger than anything I’ve ever imagined.” Will’s face looked drawn as he contemplated what it would take for that much magic to be used at one time.

“You think we’re going to fail. You think he’s going to win,” Sally said. “Well, he’s not. We won’t
let
him.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself, Sally.” Juice smiled. “Although I’d probably have used a lot more words to do it. It’s the lawyer in me.” He leaned back. “Now, I’d like to know just what’s happened during the time we’ve been gone.”

Doublecharge and Christine Goodwin took turns detailing the events which passed since Juice and the others disappeared. The Archmage made his threat a reality, and Jack was leading the man’s armies.
Frazier
had drawn a legion of the dead from the very bones of the earth, and his troops had gained a foothold and were slowly but inexorably pushing the edges of his territory further and further out.

The governors of North and South Dakota, Michigan, and Montana had mobilized their National Guard troops to try and hold the front. Unfortunately, the majority of combat units were deployed in Iraq and those left behind were undermanned and under-equipped. Redeploying troops back to defend American soil had begun, but it was a logistical nightmare and happening much slower than required. The President had ordered Just Cause and the Second Team to the battle lines, and called upon the other teams around the country to come and provide what support they could. The Lucky Seven and Divine Right responded right away to the call to arms. Within two weeks, they were joined by the New Guard and the Young Guns, as well as a handful of independent heroes.

Jack was either brainwashed or being magically controlled to fight for the Archmage, and he had become a fearsome opponent. The Archmage directed his efforts from behind the walls of his impregnable castle. He had outfitted Jack in a great suit of armor, with a sword of black steel. Their indestructible friend rode into battle on an enormous black charger that breathed flame and struck sparks from its unshod hooves upon the ground. Instead of slaughtering the National Guard troops they faced, the Archmage’s armies captured and dragged them back to the castle as prisoners. Once there,
Frazier
used the same magic upon them as he had upon Jack, and so he supplemented his armies of the dead with civilians, soldiers, and seven parahumans that had fallen. Every day his armies grew and the defenders had to fall back. Units were being brought in from around the nation, but it wasn’t happening nearly fast enough. The President didn’t want to give the appearance to the rest of the world they’d lost control of part of the country, even if it
was
in rural North Dakota. Homeland Security was endeavoring to keep a lid on the severity of the crisis, because America’s enemies wouldn’t hesitate to capitalize on the situation if they understood how bad it had become.

Goodwin brought up a rough Powerpoint presentation, showing a map of the Dakotas and the Archmage’s slowly-increasing territory. Different-colored icons represented the various super-teams and military units. A sidebar, which showed unit strengths decreasing over time, painted an all-too-clear picture of a losing battle. She highlighted the salient points and then turned to look at Juice.

“We’re running out of options and running out of time. If
Stratocaster
can’t use his so-called
magic guitar
to stop the Archmage, the use of WMD has not been ruled out.”

“
Weapons of Mass Destruction
?” Juice leaped to his feet. “These are
American citizens
we’re talking about here! These are the people we’re sworn to protect!”

The now-familiar tic appeared in Goodwin’s cheek. “The fact is
we are losing this fight
. This man has invaded American soil and has attacked our people.”

“Nucler weapons can’t be the final solution! That’s like removing an ingrown toenail by cutting off your foot!” Juice’s expression was thunderous.

“James,” said Doublecharge quietly. “You haven’t been there. You haven’t seen what he’s
doing
. Nothing we’ve tried stops him. Special Forces teams have disappeared and resurfaced later leading his own units. His damn
dragons
and… what the
hell
are those other things again?”

“Gryphons,” said Sondra.

“
Gryphons,” continued Doublecharge, “
are taking down fighter jets, helicopters, and missiles. He has anticipated our every move and countered it.”

“You’re taking
her
side in this?” Juice’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.

“
No.” She glared at Goodwin. “
I want to make that
very
clear. I’ve had to brief the President twice personally. I
do
not and
will
not recommend we escalate this conflict to higher levels. There
has
to be a way to stop him conventionally. All I’m
saying
is that we haven’t found that solution yet.”

Goodwin frowned at her. “He is the single greatest threat to National Security in the history of our country.
He. Must. Be. Stopped
.
” Each word was like a rifle shot.

“He will be, Ms. Goodwin. We’ve got something he can’t have predicted. It’s not much of a hope, but it’s the best we’ve got.” Juice turned to look at Will. “What do you need?”

“A good night’s sleep, for a start,” admitted the guitarist with a yawn.

“We could
all
certainly use that,” agreed Juice. “Twenty-four hours’ leave for everyone except for duty requirements. Starting
now
.”

For the first time, Goodwin’s face showed some real emotion. She was scandalized. “I don’t believe I’m
hearing
this!” she cried.