Kingdom of Heroes (9 page)

He looked down at his blood soaked shirt. The wound had apparently been leaking through the bandage; he hadn’t noticed. “Well, I guess I am.”

“Come on, 616” she said as she walked out the door. “There’s not a goddamn thing left for us to do here.”

He watched her walk out. Once he was sure she couldn’t see, he turned back to the desk and picked up the piece of paper. He folded the note in half, placing it inside his back pocket. He turned back towards the door and silently followed her out of the room.

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TIME REMAINING: 7H47M36S

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TIME REMAINING: 7H47M35S

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ACCESS FILE: SELF DEFENSE PROTOCOLS

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ERROR

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FILE SYSTEM DAMAGED

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FILE SYSTEM REPAIR INITIALIZED

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TIME REMAINING FOR ALL REPAIRS: 7H45M51S

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TIME REMAINING: 7H45M50S

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Arthur Grant opened the door to his office and walked into the room. All of the business with prisoner 616 and The Agent had been resolved, and as usual, he was left to finish the paperwork and clean up the mess. His office was on the lower end of the spectrum, small, crappy carpet, crappier furniture, but it at least had a nice row of large windows, giving him a brilliant view of the large building on the other side of the street.

Grant looked toward his desk. A woman stood in front of it, blond hair, unnatural light protruding from every fiber of her being, light that lit up the room like a bright summer day. As Grant stared in silence at the beautiful woman in front of him, all other light in the room besides her began to disappear; darkness overtook everything, covering the windows and turning every other source of light into shadows. The briefcase he held in his hand fell to his feet, spilling papers all over the worn out carpet.

“No.” he said, his voice quivering. “I’ve done everything The Agent has asked of me. Everything. Without question, every time.”

The woman who seemed to be made of light walked towards him.

“I have never told anyone,” Grant pleaded. “I’ve never said a word to any one about The Agent’s plans. Ever.”

The woman stood in front of him, her light filling his senses even as the room around them seemed to become gradually darker.

“Please,” he cried, tears flowing from his eyes. “Please, I won’t say a word, not a single word.”

She leaned in next to his ear and whispered. “I know you won’t,” she said, her voice almost as translucent as she was.

The blade of light she emitted from her left hand entered Grant just below his naval and cut upwards until it reached the top of his sternum. She pulled the blade back and watched in silence as Grant fell to his knees, his now external intestines held within his hands.

“Not a word,” he muttered to himself while he collapsed onto the ground, his blood and assorted organs creating a pool around him. “Not a word,” he said again as the pretty blond lady made of light disappeared along with the rest of the world into the darkness.

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Journal Entry

[Found on page 39 of the journal]

Note: The following is an interview of Fire Maiden and The Ice Queen in a pre-war magazine designed and sold to men. The article was published somewhere around three years before the war. Could only find the one page and not the rest of it.

Today I was granted the absolute best assignment I could have ever been given in the entirety of my life. Today I was asked to interview the, at least in my opinion and the opinion of the majority of men who read this fine publication, greatest superhero duo on the planet, Fire Maiden and The Ice Queen. These two have beauty, brains, and the ability to set you on fire or freeze you then shatter your bones. What’s not to love?

After much debate with their manager (yes, superheroes have managers. What a world we live in today), it was decided that they would come to my place for a nice casual interview. Then, I had to go and change my pants. With clean pants, a stack of notebooks and several number two pencils, I sat at home, more than prepared for what was about to come.

Much to my dismay, the duo didn’t fly in or arrive by ice slide, but instead, they showed up in a chauffeured black limo. Fire was dressed casual, wearing a simple pair of jeans and a tight t-shirt. She had her long blond hair put in a simple ponytail, and the little make-up she wore brilliantly complimented her luscious face. Ice, on the other hand, went all out in her skimpy baby-doll style dress and very high heels. I could also tell she wasn’t wearing a bra since, well, let’s just say that a woman who can freeze anything she wants is probably always cold. Ice’s trademark snow white hair was in an up-do (whatever in the hell that means, I had to ask one of the female staffers how to describe her hair), which made her look more prepared for an awards show than a sit-down interview at my place.

The atmosphere around them remained quite relaxed throughout the night, and the two super heroes, and might I add the two most beautiful women I have ever been this close to before, let me ask pretty much whatever I wanted. What a night.

Axiom Magazine: So you two seem to be a very tight duo. Have you always been this close or is this something recent?

Ice: Definitely recently. Before our powers came in, I couldn’t stand her. She was such a goody-goody.

Fire (to Ice): I liked you.

Ice: We were just two extremely different people when we met.

Axiom Magazine: And where did the two of you meet?

Fire: High school. But once our powers came in, I discovered that I could control fire---

Ice: And I could control ice.

Fire: So it just kind of made sense for the two of us to team up.

Axiom Magazine: Wait, high school? If you don’t mind my asking, exactly how old are the two of you?

Fire: I’m nineteen, and Ice is eighteen.

Ice: Don’t worry, we’re both more than legal.

Axiom Magazine: I think you just reassured 99% of our readers, and me. So what made the two of you take to the streets as costumed crime fighters?

Fire: I really thought we could make a difference, change the world, fix the problems plaguing this generation and the next.

Ice: I thought we could be become famous and then rich.

Axiom Magazine: Lofty aspirations.

Ice: Thank you.

Axiom Magazine: So in high school, the two of you hit the streets and stopped crime throughout Southern California. What kind of crimes did you encounter?

Fire: We ran into everything from bank robbers and carjackers to kidnappers and rapists.

Ice: But we really didn’t get to encounter the big stuff until we joined The Seven.

Axiom Magazine: That was my next question. How has life in The Seven been different from the old days of crime fighting as a twosome?

Fire: Now we don’t just handle the little crimes, but we also deal with things happening to the whole country, and sometimes, to the whole world.

Axiom Magazine: So is the leader of The Seven, Agent America, as much of a hard-ass as we all think he is?

Ice: The Agent is a brilliant leader, and I think I can speak for both of us here when I say that I trust that man without a doubt. I would follow him into the mouth of Hell itself and back if that’s what he asked me to do.

Fire: Same here.

Axiom Magazine: So a personal question, have the two of you ever double teamed a guy?

Fire: We double team people all the time. There was this one guy. Ice froze him to the ground, and I burnt the gun out of his hand. It was great.

Ice: I don’t believe that’s exactly what he meant, Fire.

Axiom Magazine: Not exactly.

Fire: Oh, that.

Ice: Truthfully, I’ve been trying to get her to do that with me for years, but she’s just too much of a prude. I’ll convince her one of these days.

Continued on page 169

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“Well shit,” The Detective said as he walked into The Ice Queen’s spacious penthouse apartment. The living area, which seemed empty despite several sofas scattered about, featured a cathedral style ceiling stretching to at least twenty feet tall. A huge fireplace sat inside of one wall, and the far wall was nothing but a giant window, displaying the entire city skyline. The only thing missing was a bear skin rug. “Nice place, was the Taj Mahal not rent controlled? Or I guess the commute would have just been too much.”

“Have I told you to go to Hell lately?” she asked as she threw her keys onto a coffee table which sat in the middle of three leather couches and a very large television.

“Not in the past five minutes or so,” he answered, still standing five feet from the closed front door and staring at the place in amazement.

“Then consider yourself told.” She pointed to a room to his immediate left. “The kitchen is right there. If you’re hungry, there’s food.”

He was hungry and bloody, not to mention tired. Just a few hours ago, the thought of running around the city with a beautiful former super heroine, getting shot at, and discovering corpses all around the city was truly the last thing he thought he would be doing with his night. Life was strange. He walked into the massive kitchen. Food sat everywhere. There was fruit on the counter and fresh bread next to it; he opened a cookie jar shaped like a bear. It was filled to the top with homemade chocolate chip cookies--- not store bought, actual homemade cookies. He took a couple out and ate as he looked around.

He walked over to the silver refrigerator and opened it. His jaw dropped open, nearly spilling the half eaten cookie from his mouth. He hadn’t seen this much food in one place in over a decade. The people of the world, neither the normals nor the super powered, didn’t live like this anymore. The war had cancelled trade practices throughout the globe. Economies didn’t support this kind of indulgence. No wonder this guy wanted to kill The Seven, he thought to himself. Maybe the guy was just hungry and was going to use murder as an excuse to raid their cabinets.

Ice walked into the kitchen. “You find anything to eat?”

“I found a cookie,” he answered, holding up one of the half eaten chocolate chip concoctions he held in his hand.

“My personal chef, Juanita, makes those,” she said in return. “Aren’t they fucking delicious?”

“I had a personal chef in prison,” he said, holding his hand over his mouth to cover the other half of the cookie he was still trying to chew. “His name was Bubba, and he personally poured a ladle of goop onto my tray three times a day, every day.”

She stopped and looked over at him. “You were in an isolated containment unit in a maximum security prison for super powered individuals. I sincerely doubt there was anyone named ‘Bubba’ there.”

“There was,” he replied, a slight smirk on his face. “He telekinetically pulled down the porch roof on his family’s double wide, killed his entire family and seven dogs.”

She visibly tried to hold back a grin. “There are times I hate you.”

“I know. That’s the usual reaction I get from pretty women.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said as she lightly chuckled under her breath.

The doorbell rung. They both jumped a little as the sound echoed through the massive apartment.

“That should be Fire,” she said as she walked to leave the kitchen and answer the door.

“Can’t Jeeves get it?” he asked, knowing the reaction it would evoke.

“Who the fuck is Jeeves?” she asked as a tiny smile appeared on her face. It was probably there, he assumed, against her will.

“I just figured you would have a butler named Jeeves.” He followed her out of the kitchen to the living room. “You and Jeeves just made sense together. Maybe he could have married Juanita. Then you would have had a whole indentured servant family. It could’ve been sweet.”

She looked through the peep hole. “It’s Fire. For God’s sake, please, just be quiet.”

He put his forefinger next to his lips and made a sound like air leaking from a tire. “I’ll be good, but only because you asked so damn nicely,” he whispered.

She shook her head from side-to-side and opened the door. A blond woman leapt through the door, throwing a bag on the floor and wrapping Ice in a tight hug.

“Oh my God,” the blonde cried breathlessly. “Gabby, are you okay?” The blonde pushed Ice back a little and looked over her body, like a mother checking her toddler for boo-boos. “When you told me what happened, I was so worried about you. And poor Adam, I don’t know how I’m going to break that to Emily. I haven’t even tried to tell her yet, and I know she’s going to feel it off of me before I do. Oh God, then there’s Billy and Anthony. Are you all right?” she asked again, double checking Ice for injuries. “If anything happened to you---I just couldn’t bear it.” She grabbed Ice again, pulling her in for another tight hug. “Do you know who did it? Were there any clues? What did The Agent say? How close was the bullet that almost hit you? How many times have I told you, you have to start taking better care of yourself? It doesn‘t matter; all that matters is that you’re okay.”