“The city’s vibrant tonight,” Winters said quietly, his eyes intent on the distant lights of Harbour City. Slowly he turned towards his friend, the golden sunlight warming his pale face. “What will you do now, Mikey?”

Michael Licuan turned away from the city and looked up towards the pale skies and the shimmering sun.

“There’s so much I’ve yet to understand,” he said slowly, “I want to see the stars; I want to find any Millennium Men who have been abandoned. I want to see other worlds.”

He smiled and turned to look at them, glancing at each in turns.

“I know you’ll look after the Earth for me, I trust you and…” he paused, troubled for a moment as his eyes settled on Ohshiba, “I want to honour your brother’s sacrifice by making sure that no one will ever have to suffer like he did.”

Ohshiba Kunihiko nodded sadly and smiled despite the stained tears on his cheeks.

“Kenta never understood how miraculous he really was. I’m honoured that he was my brother.”

Calmly he extended a hand towards Licuan.

“Just as I’m honoured that, in his last moments, he had a friend and teacher as noble as you, Millennium Man.”

Licuan smiled and grasped the shorter man’s hand.

“That’s not my name, not anymore. Your brother owns that title now,” he said firmly.

“Then what shall I call you?” Ohshiba asked with a frown.

“Call me Michael,” Licuan responded and slipped his hand away, lifting his feet from the black soil. “Space is a big place and there are so many worlds out there. I want them to all know about Earth and her heroes. I want them all to know just how important you are to me.”

Winters stepped forward, wiping tears away with the sleeve of his new uniform.

Landspeed divx

“Take care, Mikey,” he whispered in a choked voice.

Michael Licuan nodded and the three gathered heroes; Charlie Winters, Ohshiba Kunihiko and Millie the Millennial Mutt, stood upon the edge of the pit, watching as he lifted himself into the air, paused to look over his shoulder and wave at them and then soared off into the distant heavens.

Anthology Two Presents…
ARTIFICE COMICS:
“The Broken, the Beaten and the Damned”
Written by H.H. Neville, Edward Ainsworth, Jae Lizhini, Brent Lambert, Jacob Milnestein and Aaron Baugh

***

The Man Who Couldn’t be Stopped
by H.H. Neville

I watched him retire. I was a cherub-cheeked ginger then; my voice hadn’t even deepened. Youthful ideals bubbled into watery meniscuses over my eyes until they burst, streaming down my freckled face. It was a sad day. Even the usually bright TV screen seemed morose, dim; weeping loudly, distorted and full of static.

Thunderpants trailer

This was no Lou Gehrig farewell. There was no valiant speech, or reflection of a Hall of Fame career. It was no VJ Day parade through the streets with rag-top Caddys pulling heroes through a narrow cavern of swooning human beings under a heavy snow of streamers.

I didn’t know him then as I do now. No one did and it didn’t even matter; he was family. We knew he would do anything in his colossal power to protect us, protect our city.

When he needed us to return the favor, we refused.

*

Carrion was heaped in neck high piles and the funeral pyres burned wild.

The carnage had ended and a clear victor sat his throne atop the dead. Unsatisfied this new King sought to add one last corpse.

Hampton Means took city mayor. It was a bloodbath.

A savvy politico, he convinced the people that the dangers larger cities like Los Angeles and New York were now facing with “science villains,” were a short time away. Maybe a year, a month, a week, tomorrow. His lightning rod was our own science hero, “The Human Locomotive,” the Conductor.

He said the Conductor was catnip to villainy, only a matter of time. It didn’t matter that he’d never hurt anyone, and only been a beacon of good. It wasn’t his fault, that’s just how it was. The way of the world.

The LA Science Riots fresh in everybody’s minds, it was the perfect platform.

Even mom voted for him. Said she did it for my safety. I felt betrayed.

*

It only took two months for the “Means Act” to be enacted and the Conductor went from an admired personality and loved protector of our city into a “vigilante.” They told him to turn in his mask and admit his identity to the authorities or leave the city forever.

download Connors War movie Mom said she’d take me to the Retirement Gala the city was throwing in his honor so I could say a final goodbye to my childhood hero.

I refused. She put it on the TV over dinner anyway and for some reason I watched it with her.

It was the middle of Pioneer Square, with the Firemen’s Memorial hinted at in the background. There was a glass podium adorned with an official city seal and three posed microphones. To each side were large blown up photos of the Conductor; smiling wide below shiny copper goggles and bole half-mask that covered his upper skull. He wasn’t a big man, about six-one and amply built; just athletic enough to look the part in his matching auburn body suit that covered him neck to toe with copper pinstripes in patches on his ribs. Beside those were several seats filled with city officials, judges and even Means.

The local broadcast kept cameras on them. Thirty minutes went by, an hour. Means and his cronies seemed visibly annoyed, started to sweat, watched the little hand tick away on their watches. For two hours the cameras were fixed, waiting. Eventually they switched over to some sitcoms, already in progress.

The Conductor, “The Man Who Couldn’t be Stopped,” didn’t. He left; turned away from us – as we had done to him – and never came back.

There were rumors that he’d go down a few states to LA and fight crime there. They didn’t mind science heroes; they even had their own team there.

I knew better. The city he had loved broke his heart.

*

Three years later, I was about eleven then, and in a spot of trouble. Late for dinner after six hours at my favorite arcade tucked inside Pier 57 and seeking a stern lecture from mom.

I decided it would be quicker not to wait for the Waterfront trolley, instead huffing it around the International District into Beacon Hill. I knew a few shortcuts to make the trip quicker, cutting through narrow berths and sprinting knotted alleyways. The sun bubbled away like a fried egg under the evening sky; a pumpkin orange yolk and indigo whites. It was getting dark, real objects turned black lost their shape, became shadows.

“Hey, kid, hold on, a sec.”

They were just shadows, too.

“Yeah, I think you dropped this,” the voice came again.

I turned, gullible young kid. I still believed my city was as good as when the Conductor watched over it.

It’s funny, I don’t really remember their faces that well. I just remember when they finally stepped out of the shadows, the two of them looked like they meant to hurt me.

I do remember the baseball bat they had with them. A Junior Carolina Clubs, the upper two-thirds painted shiny acrylic black, and the lower third blond hardwood.

My eyes started to water and my teeth chattered. I knew right away, I’d been duped and that this was bad news. Worse than being late for dinner.

“All right kid, hand over your wallet,” demanded the one with the bat. “I’d hate to get my bat here a little messy.”

“But–but–I–don’t have anything,” I tried to protest, scared.

“Whatever, kid, I saw you dropping coins into the arcade all day.”

Michael Jackson’s Last Days: What Really Happened move

I reached into my back pocket, returned with wallet feebly in hand. “I may ha–have some bus money, I think.”

“See, that’s something, ain’t it? That’d buy me some smokes.”

I said nothing, just held the dollar store red Saturday morning cartoon wallet out toward them.

“You just lied to me kid. That’s bad, real bad.”

“Is this what my city is these days?” A third voice entered the narrow alley, from behind.

The small-time crooks spun one-eighty.

They started laughing real hard. Between them I could see hints of another man. He looked decently built, a broad shouldered man, showing signs of age; his cheeks had begun to sag into jowls and a bit of a paunch showed beneath his clothing. His dark hair was fading; speckled with grey. He favored his right leg with a slight lean.

“You want some of us, old man?” The man without the bat bantered; his voice still giggly.

“Take all of me you want, leave the kid alone, got it?”

“Sure, whatever you say, Pops.”

The thugs charged him, two-on-one. The one with the bat took his best Reggie Jackson and swung.

I closed my eyes, couldn’t watch.

I heard the muffled explosion of wood against skull and body hit the ground.

I wearily opened them again.

The two thugs were prone, unconscious on the pavement behind the stranger, old enough to be my father.

He held my wallet out in front of me, smiling wide.

“Don’t want to forget this, son.” I took it from him, still shocked. “Are you okay to make it home?”

“Y–y–you said ‘your city?’”

*

That was the day I met him, the Conductor. It was so weird to think of him as old enough to be my dad. As we got to know each other over the next few years, though, it felt more comfortable.

He didn’t like going out in public any more. The city felt different, not like the good ol’ days. He had me fetch his groceries twice a week so he could stay in.

We’d sit and talk. He’d tell me stories and I’d ask questions. When I asked him, “What have you done all these years after you retired (neither of us felt comfortable with the word ‘quit’)?” He answered in his simple, sensical style: “The only thing a none-too-bright, out-of-work science hero with part of an English degree can do…write comic books.”

I’d even read some of them before. They weren’t very good.

He taught me how to solve for x in proportionate fractions, throw a curveball, which frequencies the blues used for dispatch and that it didn’t matter if a man had super strength, he would never be able to pull a ferry out of the Sound; not enough size, mass or evenly distributed torque. Whatever he pulled on would snap off in his hands. He learned that the hard way, he said.

*

Two weeks before my fourteenth birthday, I hit puberty. Voice cracked, hair on my chest; the usual. I chalked up the swollen muscles and burning beneath the skin part of “growing into a man.”

The pain got to be too much one day. I knew something was wrong. I collapsed in the shower, it felt like something was tearing apart my chest from the inside and it was. Gobs of flesh flaked from my chest, sticky and wet. Streams of shower spray masked my tears, but could not mask my screams. Mom’s screams soon joined from the inverse of the door. She was pounding, begging to be let in. I couldn’t face her, didn’t know how to face her. I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew I didn’t feel safe; not in my own body.

I snubbed tears into my forearm, and put my clothes on quickly, still damp. I just wanted to be safe. I could only think of one place. I opened the door, sprinted past my mother. She called for me, crying. I wish she could help, but I knew she couldn’t. Eventually, when she saw the bathroom, she knew she couldn’t either; mixed chunks of human flesh in various states of turning to metal littered the floor and tub like molted feathers.

*

He answered the door, saw me in tatters. He said nothing, picked up the pieces and brought me inside.

We didn’t talk. He looked over my steel skin, his eyes moist. Mine slowly dried. When he has done, he put a hand over my damp scalp. It was the most certain touch I’d ever felt.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.” He just kept repeating those words until I believed him, stilled.

“What do I do?”

“I don’t have all the answers for you, son; I’m sorry.” He left me, walked toward his cellar steps; his voice growing faint as he dipped below. “But I have something that’ll help.”

Under a handful of minutes, he came slowly back up the stairs, a plain wooden shoebox under his arm.

“Not the best security system ever,” he chuckled; handed me the box. “But I pity the crook that comes across this old man.”

The Count of Monte Cristo buy

He nodded for me to open it.

I removed the lid, placed it carefully to the love seat cushion. Under a brown velvet sleeve, was a vision of my youth, I was so terrified of losing. A ruddy brown leather half-mask, gold hooped goggles sewn into them.

I looked at him, disbelieving. He was smiling wide as always.

“It’s yours now.”

***

Origin of the Species
by Edward Ainsworth

Kent, England

What is Evolution? This was the question she continuously posited to herself, a self perpetuating cycle within her mind. The idea and knowledge rolled around in her metallic skull like a marble down a drain. With every helicon motion the thought became less and less solid and more and more out of her reach.

What was Evolution?

It was her tenet. Her sonnet to the ages, she was the evolution of less than a hundred years work, and yet, unlike Nature she had evolved leaps and bounds. Her tree of life branched a million ways, each branch seeding more and more, unlike nature’s concept, she had taken a blink in the scheme of things to become the way she exists, nature took thousand and thousands of centuries to create the perfect creature.

As her reflection wavered in the pond before her, her eyes refocused, casting their infra-red gaze over the inhabitants of the body of water. Tiny fish, stickleback, newts, snails, leaches, even a dragonfly nymph.

She reached into the water, servos and motors whiring underneath her synthetic plastic skin. The sheen of the water matched the sheen of her own “Flesh” as she pulled the Nymph out and closely examined it.

“What is your purpose?” She asked, her voice quiet and docile. She was not a violent creation, despite what her creators had intended.

“Our purposes do not match, little one,” she said, bowing her head. The Nymph didn’t move, its own head staying stock still while D@r\/\/1n rested her forehead against its own.

“Yours is a purpose of life. You move through your stages of your life without comment on them. Metamorphosis from nymph to adult, everything about you changes. If only it were true of life.”

She looked at the small creature, as she placed it back under the surface of the water. Fingers which could crush steal gently laying the animal on a long strand of aquatic plant, looking through the ripples of the surface as the creature begins to breath again.

“My purpose…I cannot transpose my purpose. My only reason for being is to destroy and re-create. In many ways, I am representative of Hindu triumvirate.” She smiled to herself. Her learnings had never been programmed into her. Her “interests” were more than simply directives, actioned inside of her computerised brain. They were fundamental aspects of her personality.

“I am the creator, maintainer and destroyer,” she said to herself, looking at her emotionless face in her highly reflective plastic dermis. She sighed deeply, another unnecessary human affliction she’d lifted form her creators – Mannerisms.

“My purpose asks, no screams and begs, of me to crush this land. To level everything biological in it, and build the perfect perpetual bubble of synthetic environmentals and strata. To create a world for humanity to thrive in, without plant or flower, or insect or element. Yet without those things the humans seem to forget…they will not thrive.”

She gently lifts herself from her knees, looking into the water. She could feel the different factions of her programming and brain coming into conflict with each other. Ideals that didn’t mesh with prime directives, as the wind blew leaves and pollen through the tight coils and wires of her hair.

“Perhaps I should take a leaf from the books that live within my brain, Nymph. Perhaps I should observe the nature of myself, rather than the nature of humanity.” She stared into the sky, and smiled, as the large clouds floated above cast, mottling the sunlight across the large meadow, and across her own face.

“Perhaps I should Evolve.”

It took a moment for the idea to sink in, a moment populated by silence from her moving parts, accompanied by the symphony of natural sounds. The gruff rustling of grass against grass in contrast to the warbling of the birds within the trees around. The gentle sloshing of the water as all manner of creature cut through its form with their limbs, powered by instinct and purpose.

She looked across the meadow, birds swooping low to pluck insects from the flight paths, rabbits gently chewing their food. It was as though nature was talking to her, all these animals, they were their own keepers. That had been created by something, other animals, but they found their own paths, their own ways, their own purposes.

“I will find my own purpose, as nature dictates to me,” she began, digging her fingers into the soil, and gently writing her name in the dirt.

D@R\/\/1N.

“This date and place shall be marked and known as the origins of my birth,” she declared to no-one around her, listing with her eyes closed to the sounds of nature. She recorded them across her memory banks, a USB stick clicking out of place and becoming isolated within her. To store and remember this moment.

She knew it would be difficult, to evolve past her creators’ desires, but she would persevere.

The Works of Charles Darwin begged that all organisms find a niche to inhabit. That if they were to survive they would need an adaptation, or a food source that no other organism had. The same could be said for technological advances, either split into something new, or advance something existing beyond the point of renewal.

She would split. She would advance. Though she was unnatural she would follow the laws of nature itself, and listen to the words she spoke. Through the language of birds, and the poems of flowers, she would begin to understand what it meant to become something alive.

She would learn to be alive. The ideas burnt through her silicate brain like wildfire, burning filaments with their white-hot touch.

In return for being taught how to live, she would aid the planet itself. To live. To go against her programming, to go against everything she’d ever been taught or learned, and to give instead of taking from Nature.

She would make sure that Nature survived.

She would find her purpose now.

***

Just Intonation
by Jae Lizhini

• Treasure Seekers: Tibet’s Hidden Kingdom dvdrip

Rush hour is a technological symphony. The puttering of loud engines keeps time with mechanical percussion. High pitched horns form a synthetic melody of wood winds. Nefarious voices scream splintering the timbre with ferocity of a syncopated brass section. The ensemble situated in a pit of concrete under the curtain of a muscled grey sky.

The sound of glass shattered the music like an unsatisfied audience. A form tossed from the shimmering shards; a body twisting and turning. It lost its bid against gravity from three stories above the mechanical orchestra. For a heartbeat all sound stopped. No one in the city thought anything of the absence of sound. For the center of attention was on the falling body. Obviously not its identity – only that something had suddenly broken the monotony, changed the day to day for only a split second.

The falling form gritted his teeth under the Atlantic blue mask. The muscles of his torso fluttered like a wave beneath the rapid beat of his heart. Tightly he closed his eyes. Though he had never fallen from a three story window before, evidence supported it would hurt. Of course not many people were in any facility to talk about such things.

The sound of his body impacting the hood of the SUV was blanketed by the devastating sonic boom. Metal curled and windows shattered in a nine foot radius. An ivory ring of air and debris circulated his crash, sending a heavenly halo skyward. The young man’s body crackled with a buzzing yellow lightening. His body slid from the mutilated vehicle. His bare back was exposed through the torn rubber of the blue wetsuit that tightly wrapped his thin torso.

Under the mask he was called Nixon Kennedy, just another hard luck story of failed youth. Only the sharp pain in his ribs reminded him he was alive. A shield of reverberation was all that cushioned his fall. Despite his hatred of rush hour, the sounds fueled his bizarre ability, and that very thing saved his life.

“Breaking and entering, kidnapping, destruction of private property…” a deep throated voice called out from beyond Nixon’s eyelids. “So what’s your gimmick then? Going to program a slave army of animals?”

“Saving lives same as you,” the masked youth said slapping his bare hands onto the cold asphalt, slowly rising up. “Just because they are bought and sold, doesn’t make it sound.”

“Right then,” the broad voiced man spoke. His bright blue eyes narrowed into the eye holes of the masked youth. His broad shoulders gave way to a scarlet cape, the fabric fluttering like a flag in the breeze of the coming night. “So you are a terrorist?” A smile lit up on his square jawed face, the slender gable mustache spreading across his cheeks. “How’s then we beat some sense into you.”

Under the mask of Nixon there was no smile. He let the soft hum of sound twist arcs through his skeleton, fortifying his damaged tissues with new strength. His black boots pushed off the damaged asphalt. His left arm thrust behind him. He clamped his mouth hard. His shoulder slammed into the center of the capped man’s washboard abs.

Nixon’s body shook with the impact. The caped man’s body was as immovable as concrete. The hero tilted his head down towards Nixon. His green spandex stopped midway up his thick neck, and squeaked like Styrofoam as he moved. His left leg shifted upwards in a blurred violence. His foot slammed maliciously into the boy’s blue covered chest.

Nixon let out a high pitched groan, his back impacting the broken asphalt.

“Just bad luck you had to pick today of all days,” the heroic man spat.

His large feet stomped loudly against the broken ground. He surveyed the young man’s prone position with a twisted grin. “Doc had called me in for a physical of sorts. I’m the big project for the lab, ya know. My body is implanted with the parts of those animals. Hell mate you may have been ‘liberating’ a future arm or leg of mine.”

“I know, I can hear them screaming,” Nixon spoke in a laboured voice.

“You have no chance of winning, so you might as well just stay down,” the thin mustache under his lips spread wide. “No use at all.”

Species III dvd

“Sorry mate, I have to,” Nixon said in a winded voice, slowly the young hero regained his height, “Be a sorry state if I didn’t.”

“You’ll be a sorry state anyways,” the green clad man said. His large hand clasped Nixon’s throat. “Liberal bastards like you are what’s wrong with the bloody country.” His free hand crumbled into a large fist, slamming into Nixon’s masked face.

The Devil Wears Prada video

“Complaining about animals having rights, and needing to be comfortable in their lot,” the green clad hero slammed his fist into Nixon’s skull a second time, “We are humans; we are on the top of the food chain.” He slammed his fist again in the poor boy’s face. “And until a rat or a monkey invents an a-bomb they better get used to it.” Slamming his fist into the boy’s head a fourth time, he lost his grip on Nixon’s neck. The blue clad body fell to the ground like a rag doll, the mask he wore seeping with the blood from underneath.

His blue gloved hands slapped on the broken ground, his body slowly rising once more. His muscles burned and ached, as he moved; drops of blood dotting the black ground. It would be easy to stop here. It would be easy for someone to give up and admit defeat, but this broken youth wasn’t done.

Like the man who stood in front of him, Nixon’s ability wasn’t a natural sort of magic, or some biological accident. Like the animals in the lab, he was the result of bad science. He was an experiment that should have never been conducted. The difference was Nixon had a choice. And he wasn’t imprisoned in a cage, waiting for the next round. If only they were all that lucky.

“What is wrong with you?” the man in the cape asked watching Nixon rise to his feet once more. “This time you will stay down.”

He growled stepping towards the boy.

Nixon’s eyes crackled with a yellow electric charge.

“No,” his voice shot from his lips with a brutal force. The very word impacted the large man in the chest like a speeding train.

Forced a step backwards, he was shocked by the boy’s sudden ability.

Nixon didn’t let the surprise go to waste. Yellow energy crackled across the boy’s chest funneling down his thin arms. Separating the space between the two of them his right fist slammed into the older man’s square jaw. The sonic energy the youth manifested delivered a super human bite.

The Siege movies

“You rape and steal the most precious thing.”

The green clad hero felt his back slam into the firm face of a brick wall.

“They are only animals!” he shouted, as the boy’s right fist crashed into his stomach. The force caused hairline cracks to form across the wall.

“Life is un-quantified!” Nixon shouted back. His left fist slammed into the man’s body once more, the wall waning from the attack. “A rat deserves to live without pain the same as child does. And to use them because they don’t fight back,” Nixon paused his eyes crackling once more as he looked into the hero’s gaze, “that’s unfair.”

The two words came from his lips unlike the speech he was giving. The words slammed into the man’s body in pure force. The wall gave way under the sudden sonic energy. Bricks demolished in a cloud of rubble and dust. The green clad super-hero felt his balance give way, his body capsizing with the shards of masonry.

“Inherently we think we are smarter, and stronger than those we step on. The rich think they are better skilled than the poor. Humans think they are better than animals. You asked me why I fight.”

He looked down at the green clad man, “I fight because no one else is going to.”

The Marksman

Nixon Kennedy turned his back on the man who lay in, a pile of bricks and mortar. Everything was silent. His footfalls struggled to find place as he stepped onto the sidewalk. His first few steps were silent and painful. But after that the streets of Pacific City exploded in applause. He couldn’t help but smile.

The Marrying Man divx

***

For Ryland
by Brent Lambert

My home once beat back the oppressive slavery of The West. We were the only ones to ever do it. Now I intend to help it destroy the subvert oppression that keeps us trapped in a new kind of slavery. For as long as I could remember my family struggled with poverty. Our most lavish possession was a television set. Yet, the high and mighty people of the civilized world turn their noses when children like me turn to crime and hate.

What could they possibly understand of struggle? I’m faced with it every waking day. Our existence is in question every day. What does your white, material obsessed bourgeois possibly understand of this? Come spend a day in the worst parts of Haiti. You’ll understand the meaning of hardship then… They Live by Night video

*

“Ryland! Wake up!” the nine-year old shouted as he shook his older brother in the middle of the shanty alley. His rattling grew more frantic as his brother didn’t move. Never once did he notice the tiny stream of red trickling from the back of his brother’s head.

“C’mon Ryland! We gotta go home!” the boy shouted with tears now sliding effortlessly down his face. He knew what Death was, but that didn’t happen to anyone he could remember. Bad stuff like that happened to bad people. Ryland wasn’t bad. He was his brother.

Caught between running away and staying with his brother, the child could only rub his eyes and cry more. His tiny heart pounded with anxiety and his ribs could barely contain the rapid expansion and compression of his lungs. There was no parent to console him. Ryland was all he had.

Bullets had taken away the last bit of his family so it was great irony that the child would turn to them for comfort.

*

Those stinging pellets weren’t his only comfort. He gained a new family in one of Port-Au-Prince’s most ruthless gangs, the Arab Ravens. They dealt in death and the boy (now a man) soon forgot about Ryland.

Steel Magnolias dvd “Damn it Donatien! You play Dominoes like shit!”

That Valkyrie’s voice belonged to the Queen of the Arab Ravens. Her name was now Bria Duvalier. She was one of the last members of the family that had lorded over Haiti for nearly thirty years. The pills were still working to give Bria a more feminine voice, but Donatien didn’t mind. Operation or not he still thought she was the most beautiful woman in the capital.

“Sorry Bria. It’s been years since I played with—”

Into Temptation video

Damn it. He almost let it slip.

Bria eyed her charge suspiciously and slid a Domino across the table to connect with the already growing puzzle of black and white. “Finish your sentence Donatien.”

Donatien winced. The rickety golden fan above him wasn’t enough to chill the cold sweat coming down his ebony brow. He had made a promise to never say that name again, but to deny Bria was completely foolish. She wasn’t like other people. A strong glance from her made men literally go insane. He had watched her send a man into such a fit that he began to claw his own eyes out. You didn’t deny her orders. Not if you wanted to live.

He couldn’t bring himself to say it. He had sworn to never say it again. His lips wouldn’t move. A dramatic silence fell over the room as the other three men looked to Donatien as if he was the craziest man alive. Their stares were a mix of lunacy and concern.

“Do not make me ask you again Donatien.”

Giving a weak smile full of brittle teeth, Donatien said, “Since I played with my brother Ryland.”

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. psp

Realization smacked Bria and she tried to rub it from her eyes. “I’m sorry Donatien. I should have known. I apologize.”

Fighting back tears, Donatien gave a nonchalant shrug. “Don’t worry about it, boss. It’s okay.”

*

That was a lie. It wouldn’t be okay and it never will be okay. I didn’t see it then, but Bria was taking my soul inch by inch. I hacked people to death with machetes in broad daylight. With a dull blade, I would slit the throats of farmer’s children. The Arab Ravens mowed a reign of terror across Haiti and the government would do nothing to stop us. The name of Duvalier still held clout with some.

You can cast down your judgment on me all you want to. It means nothing to me. All of you are just as pathetic as me. You just don’t know it. I may have drowned my brothers memory in blood, unlike so many in the West I was made to pay for the pain I caused.

And it would change my life forever…

*

Bria held the gun at eye level with Donatien. Her (some still said him) eyes were set in a mode of fury that befitted a true Valkyrie. Perhaps she had been cast down to the Earth because she refused to pick up her dead.

“I told you to take care of that little bastard!”

Donatien stood in front of the gun shivering in the rain and knowing there was nowhere to go. He would have to face his death and try to be a man in his last moments.

“I couldn’t Bria. I couldn’t.”

He wouldn’t tell her that the boy he had been sent to kill looked just like Ryland when he died. And the only thought that could run through Donatien’s mind was whether this boy had a little brother too. It would be pointless to tell Bria this. She was without compassion.

Bria’s lips pulled back into a quick snarl and the trigger was pulled…

*

You Americans might think that was my end, but it wasn’t. With a bullet in my face I somehow lived and whatever God decided to let me live also blessed me. Bria isn’t the only one with power now and I intend to make up for every pain caused in her name.

For Ryland.

***

The Fame
by Jacob Milnestein

(with apologies to Marina & the Diamonds and Lady GaGa)

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am Magenta,” she shouted, reaching her hand out to point towards the heads of the audience below, “and you…you are the Magicians! Thank you and goodnight!”

The audience roared, the sound crashing against the footlights of the stage and washing over her trembling body as she stood there, leaning against the microphone stand with one hand whilst the other reached out to the screaming teenagers in the pit.

A smile caught her lips, long hair trailing down her back and knotted in a hair-bow atop her head, eyes hidden behind radiator glasses. She wore a simple orange leotard and vintage leather jacket with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Sweat trickled down the length of her legs, the sparkle of her sheer tights caught in the luminescence from the light below and her feet arched in a pair of Christian Louboutin’s and casting dangerous shadows on the wall.

Her breath was shallow; her body aching yet her lips could not refrain from smiling.

“Ah, screw it,” she said, pulling herself and dragging her hand back, gesturing absentmindedly to the band at her back, hidden in shadow as she stood at the front of the stage. “This next song is a song about potential. It’s called And You Are All Millennium Men.”

She turned her head and pointed to her right, light flashing above the head of a young man with a bass guitar slung so low that it all but rested on his hips.

Linewatch divx Tearing the microphone from the stand and drawing it to her lips, she screamed, “1-2-3-Let’s GO!“

The audience exploded as one into violent motion at her feet.

*

That summer had been humid, a warmth so stifling that the Underground had stunk of mingling sweat and the sickly sweet odour of full fat Coca-Cola even into the calm of autumn.

She remembered standing on the platform at Ludgate Circus, idly rocking back and forth on heels stamped one either side of the yellow line and lifting her face up towards the faltering grate in the curve of the tunnel. Hot air billowed down upon her from the malfunctioning machinery and the crowded streets above.

She hated the Tube almost as much as she hated the subway snaking out of Brooklyn in her own native city, the city she had once shared with her long forgotten predecessor and namesake. It felt somehow distasteful to her to see people cowering amongst the shadows and artificial lights, ferried through the expanding intestines of a city with no purpose but servitude.

That had been before their record had come out, before the blistering success of their first 7” release and the mounting excitement of the Channel crossing tour from London to Berlin and onwards to the festival scenes in Holland and the Netherlands.

As soon as the figures had come in, both the band and their backwater East London record label suddenly catapulted into the pages of the NME and the Maker, she had promised herself she would never, ever ride another subway car in her life…no matter how nostalgic she got whenever she heard that goddamn Johnny Thunders song. The future wasn’t about rotting underground, it was about soaring through blue skies, about dancing on the ruins of the moon; it was about an entire generation of kids who shone greater than the sun itself!

She reached inside her jacket, thin fingers and Christmas cracker plastic rings drawing out a long cigarette and dented Zippo lighter. The flame sparked and flickered, the acrid smell of lighter fluid and nicotine, days of recaptured youth in every inhalation from the filtered tip.

Magenta closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the window of the tour van and smiled contentedly in her rich red smudged lipstick.

• Jane Austens Mafia! divx

“Um, excuse me,” a timid voice broke her smoker’s reverie.

Slowly, her eyes opened and she lowered her head, pulling down dark bug-eye sunglasses to look at a young girl nervously standing before her, teenage frame wrapped within a studded leather jacket and her dark hair bobbed at the chin.

“Hey,” the older woman said, her voice deep and resounded, the toll of years of cigarettes, “what’s up?”

The younger girl’s eyes widened, her lips quivering.

“Oh wow, you’re really her, aren’t you? I mean you’re really Magenta the Magician!”

The singer lifted the cigarette to her lips with studied indifference and offered the teenager a carefully practised shrug.

“I’m a Magenta, yeah,” she said, gesturing lazily to the back of the van, “I mean really you could call any of the guys in the band that as well, it’s all the same thing.”

The younger girl let out a nervous squeak of excitement, her eyes seemingly growing ever wider.

“But you’re her,” she insisted, “you’re the Magenta who used to be in the New Teen Argonauts, right? You’re the Magenta who used to date Kid Elysium back when…”

“Yeah, kid, you’re right,” the magician said shortly, taking an anxious puff on her cigarette, her brow lined in a deep frown, “but let’s not have a recap of my career to date, yeah?”

The girl blinked, her large, hazel eyes registering surprise.

“You were younger than me when you were in the Argonauts,” she said, as if trying to work out a particularly difficult question, “how come you gave it all up?”

Paper and ash flared with glowing red light, smoke curdling in the air between them.

“It got old real quick, you know,” the magician said at last, “all that running around, throwing poses and saving people who didn’t need to be saved, it got old.”

She leant forwards and lowered her sunglasses even further, drawing the teenager into a conspiratorial huddle.

“The thing with the Argonauts was that they were just a safety blanket, a way to tell people they didn’t really have to make any effort to look after themselves. We were only there to sell lunchboxes to kids and to stick our thumbs in leaking dams, anything else was just pyrotechnics.”

She brought the cigarette to her lips once more and rapped her knuckles against the back of the van.

“What I’m doing now though, well,” she smiled, “this shit is different, you know what I mean? This shit is the real battle for heart and minds.”

Smoke touched her rich red lips and she offered the younger girl a smile.

“It’s been what, fourteen, fifteen years since we lost Pacific City? In that time, how many people do you think have been touched by the Millennial Spirit, and I’m not just talking about people turning that energy into plate armour to fight super-villains and all that, I’m talking about the real deal, the real Pentecostal shit.”

The younger girl shrugged uncertainly.

“I-I don’t know,” she stammered.

The smile on the older woman’s lips widened.

“Millions,” she announced and took another drag on her cigarette, allowing the fact to sink in.

“But that would mean…” the teenager began slowly.

Magenta nodded.

“That’s why old Winters is trying to set up that Millennium Man nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are already millions of heroes out there and there’s another couple of million more just waiting to happen. These people don’t need gimmicks like the Argonauts to take care of them, they’re already their own heroes…they just don’t realise it yet.”

She struck the back of the van with her hand again.

“And that’s why this shit is much more important, you know. Me and my band, we’re out there saying ‘Hey, let’s talk about this shit‘, you know?”

The young girl’s eyes widened with admiration.

“Y-You’re amazing,” she gasped, hastily rolling up her sleeve and producing a marker pen from her jeans pocket. “C-Can I get your autograph?”

The magician smiled and graciously accepted the offered pen.

“Sure thing, kid. What’s your name?”

“Amelia,” the teenager answered in awe, “Amelia Weisz.”

***

Discussion V
by Aaron Baugh

Close orbit, Mars #746311

She was two kilometers long, a third of that wide, and carried more instruments of death than could easily be counted. She was perfect, and yet the mind at the center of her was crippled by rage.

“I want answers, Commander, not ideas and wild supposition. Can you find it?”

“Perhaps,” shrugged the elegantly dressed, blond gentleman with the twelve-pointed star at his collar. His blue eyes were harder than his tone as he laid his hands flat on the mirrored onyx of the briefing room table. “I still maintain that scattering the fleet would produce the maximum effect, allowing us to search our sector much more efficiently.”

“And allow him to pick us off in detail?” sneered his Captain, the bitch who professed herself Lord Governor of the Solar System in this now, in this reality.

“I can’t see that as a problem. The Silver Shadow isn’t a heavy ship, she’s barely even a fifth-rate, and I see no reason why pairing the lighter units in the search isn’t prudent. Surely, if they’re engaged, our heavier units, including Imperial Angel, would arrive in ample time to finish the job and grant you total control of the system. Once we return to Earth orbit the fleet can put its resources to work solidifying our hold on this part of Her Majesty’s domain.”

The Captain steepled her fingers before her. “Very well. Issue the order, Commander Manly. The fleet to disperse, frigates in pairs, to search for the Shadow.”

He stood to attention and bowed slightly, “Yes ma’am.”

*

“Well?” asked the slightly built man.

“We should be good, ah, so long as we don’t take any hard shocks or direct hits,” said his balding engineer, pulling himself up out of an access way.

“Isn’t that why we have deflectors, Roger? To protect against shocks and hits?”

Roger shrugged and listened to the click-clank as his captain strode through the corridor, the low lights reflecting off the polished chrome aspects of his cybernetic half. Silver Shadow, indeed, he thought before turning to return to engineering.

“Status, Mister Bradshure?” he asked as he took the command chair.

“Repairs complete, sir.”

“Excellent. Mister Carter, set course for the rendezvous.”

“Righto,” said the man at the helm. As the ship began to move, he turned to his captain. “Are we sure we want to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Really sure?”

“Yes.”

“Really really sure? Because he IS an imperial officer, you know.”

“And he’s the reason we slipped the blockade at Titan, had the codes to raid Io, and he’s the reason that we’re going to win today. I trust him. Why can’t you?”

“Just asking,” he said, turning back to his display and a glare from Bradshure. “What?” he asked innocently.

*

“Captain, we have something,” Manly said from his spot over the tactical officer’s shoulder. “Routing it to your display.”

A blip appeared on her display, moving somewhat slowly and on a course easily intercepted. Her smile was predatory and full of anticipation. “Plot an intercept course, all ahead flank.”

“Aye aye,” was the automatic response, and Michael laid his hand briefly on the assistant tactical officer’s shoulder as he left the station.

*

“They’ve seen us, and are moving to intercept. Looks like the Angel National Lampoon’s Animal House movie download herself, sir.”

“Maximum speed, Mister Carter.”

*

“Captain, if we continue the pursuit we’ll be out of range of the other ships. They won’t be able to help us should we require it.”

She waved her hand in dismissal. “Keep your course, Manly. The Angel will handle her without difficulty.”

*

“Five hundred k kilometers past the agreed-upon point, sir, and she’s still there. I don’t want to say I told you so…”

“Then shut up, Jeff,” responded the captain.

*

“Prepare to open fire.”

Logans Run trailer

“Captain, we’re still outside effective range,” said Manly as he moved towards the center of the bridge.

“Another word in that tone, Mister Manly, and I’ll have you removed from the bridge.”

Manly sighed and stepped back and to her right.

“Tactical, you may -” but her next words were forever lost in the closely spaced roar of a small automatic. She pitched forward out of the command chair, a bloody mess.

The Tactical officer spun, hand scrabbling for his holstered sidearm. A smaller hand grabbed his wrist as the other cracked into his temple. He sagged and his assistant yanked his weapon free. She made eye contact with Manly and nodded.

“Everyone stay seated. Helm, all stop.”

The helmsman stared at the ruin of the captain with wide eyes.

“Miss Hsia, help him,” said Manly as he lowered himself into the command chair. Already their prey was reversing course and looping back towards them. He triggered the all hands circuit. “Millennium, I say again, Millennium.”

*

“Open a channel.”

“You’re on.”

The main display blossomed to the view of the Imperial Angel’s bridge. A pair of white-smocked men were removing the Captain’s remains from the room, but he was more interested in the blonde man. “Michael,” he said by way of greeting.

“Jian,” replied the other.

“Everything alright over there?”

“Just fine. I’m afraid that Captain Burke will not be able to join us. Hopefully I can persuade some of the other commanders to stand down. A few may even join us, Weisz, Winters…it’s certainly worth a try. The others shouldn’t be a problem for the Angel to deal with. She is, after all, one of the finest ships in the Magistrate’s fleet.”

“Lead on, Michael. I’ve never saved a planet from the rule of a tyrant before, and I’m eager to start.”