Warren Hately's Blog

IN THE WALLSPACE, once the window is secure, I switch on the light and fire up the computer on its small folding trolley. As the iMac goes through its start-up, I shuck out of my leathers and sniff my armpit and check my breath and squint into the small round wall mirror and then I put my Enercom phone and Miss Black’s business card (“For all sorceries, great and small”) on the pile of disorganised paraphernalia on the shelf unit built into the support struts at the back of my neighbours’ wall. The piles of business cards, scrawled notes, spiked receipts and creased paperwork seem to stare back at me like a mistreated pet. Not for the first time, I imagine what it would be like to have a secretary, a personal assistant as they call them these days, but because of my talk with Miss Black I start seeing the idea in a new light.

An agent?

On the top of the pile is Senator Keenan’s card and below is the one Nautilus gave me. Perhaps cleverly, the teal-coloured rectangle only has the name of his agent, Saul Osler, a mobile number and an e-contact. I turn the card over a handful of times before snatching up my cell. It’s just after one in the morning. On the computer, I moved the mouse in the cramped space allowed and click on a link I have to Enercom’s home page, and I hope I might be able to find some technical help because I can’t find the card for the woman who signed off on the sponsorship deal, Karen Someone-or-other.

The call to Nautilus goes through to a machine and I leave a terse request for him to call me back, hitchingly reciting the Enercom number. I put the phone down and there is a muted thumping on the bathroom wall letting me know Elisabeth is awake and knows I’m home. My phone problems will have to wait for another evening.

Thinking on Miss Black’s comments again, I thumb the power down button on Zephyr central and tug the lever to release the secret door, not bothering with the spy-hole as usual. A vision from the Hell of the Irish clad in a dark lavender gown awaits.

 

“I THOUGHT YOU were coming home hours ago?” is the first thing she says.

Wearing just a pair of boxers and feeling the cold, I say nothing as I start the shower running, hoping the banging pipes won’t wake Tess until Elisabeth tells me she’s staying at Astrid’s place.

“Again?”

“What of it? She’s fourteen years old, Joseph. She doesn’t have a wife to explain where she’s spending all her time.”

“God, you know where I’ve been. Out,” I say – not my cleverest response.

Elisabeth nods. “I didn’t see anything on the news.”

“I’m touched that you even looked.”

“Joseph,” she says, and eyes me seriously for a moment until I cease all other movements and concentrate on her stern expression. “Don’t talk to me as if I’ve stopped trying. One day I might, and you’ll know about it then.”

Elisabeth’s parents were refugees from 70s Derry and there’s still enough Northern Irish twang in her own voice that it reminds me of Bono and the other guy who shirt-fronted me at the nightclub and I go sullen, no real suitable reply, and shuck my shorts off and step into the shower which is too hot as usual. I rapidly spin the cold water tap and the handle comes off, so I repeat the move using slightly more care.

Elisabeth switches on the exhaust and steps from the room.

When I’ve crackled dry, I dress in jeans, a faded pair of trainers, a long-sleeve tee under a Jets shirt, and I grab my motorcycle jacket as I head for the door. Elisabeth sits on the bed like she’s riding it side-saddle, a pool of light falling upon her from the tasteful reading lamps we recently installed. Her mouth opens in an O of surprise as I go for the front door and it’s a pernicious but immature part of me that takes pleasure in it.

Down the all-night deli, I tinkle in through the glass doors and make a hotdog from the machine and take a napkin and eat while browsing through the newspapers and magazines. I take copies of the Post and Starscene and the last two Chronicles, since I don’t know what day Sal’s article appeared. Once the unmoderated buying begins, it’s hard to know where to stop. Even TV Week does a line in supers gossip, and once I’ve got a Who, a What’s Weekly, a Give-Me-Five and CityLife, even the teen magazines start looking reasonable. I belatedly realise I am on the cover of a kids’ magazine that is one part activities, one part comics, and three parts mindless drivel, with the caption “Could he be your father?” emblazoned underneath. I grab this one as well and head to the counter where the Uzbekistani teenager with a mohawk and lip ring nods coolly as he tallies up my spend.

I’m yearning for coffee and at the same time looking forward to sleep. I stumble and lose my hold on the magazines just inside the doorway to the flat and Elisabeth emerges, wild dark hair standing up, watching with quiet eyes as I clutch my purchases to my chest and push the loose magazines along the floor with my foot and through to the coffee table in the lounge. The flatscreen is on mute, tuned to a news channel showing forest fires half a world away, and the city is dark and asleep outside the panel windows that line that wall of our apartment. A modular sofa starts beneath the windows and curls around the coffee nook and I sit down, followed by Elisabeth, and start pawing through the Post.

“I need you to have a look at my phone.”

“Your phone? You don’t have a phone.”

“Zephyr’s phone,” I clarify.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“It’s 2am.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I’m tired. I’ll come to bed when I’m done.”

“You don’t want Tessa to see those magazines. . . .”

“I know,” I reply.

Instead of disappearing, Elisabeth eventually comes and sits across from me. I briefly eye the long legs that disappear under her gown as she tucks them beneath herself. Her work cell sits on the ledge behind the sofas and she checks it for the time and sighs, tapping her fingers against the samsonite letting me know she wants a cigarette.

“Go on.”

She laughs, more a purr than a laugh, and hunts down a cigarette and lights it, smoke spiralling slowly through the air.

“Explain yourself, Joe. This seems kinda nuts.”

“I’m reading about Zephyr.”

“You used to keep a scrapbook,” she says.

“I used to be sixteen.”

“We both used to be sixteen,” Elisabeth says and I look up, wincing through the smoke at the face of the girl I fell in love with in high school and who has since grown older, less interesting, yet even more essential to my life. I nod.

“I have to treat Zephyr like a business. I’m thinking about . . . I’m not sure what I’m thinking about, but it’s a change from the ground up.”

“You’re changing costumes again?”

“No.”

I wait a good minute before saying, “Aquanaut has an agent. . . .”

“Bully for him.”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

“And who’s heard of Aquanaut? If I wasn’t your wife – Zephyr’s wife – I wouldn’t know him from half the head-cases you’ve mentioned in the past seventeen years.”

“He calls himself Nautilus now.”

“Whatever. That’s better than Aquanaut.”

“I thought if I had an agent, a . . . PA, maybe even an office – even a virtual one – then this would be more like a job.”

“A PA?”

“You’ve got one. And you’re always reminding me this isn’t a real job.”

Elisabeth snorts contritely. “Don’t hold it against me. I’ve been saying it for twenty years and it hasn’t mattered yet. You don’t have to have a real job, Joey. That’s what you’ve got me for.”

“I want more than just . . . just scamming money from reporters for stories,” I say with a touch more anger than I expected.

A spark leaps from my eye to the glass window and vanishes.

“Is this about money?”

I drop my gaze to the table. I have opened Starscene to reveal photo after photo of figures in costumes mixing with film stars, musicians, famous directors, supermodels, the Dalai Lama, Robert Mugabe, Princess Mary of Denmark, King William, Giorgio Armani. Their masked, multi-coloured heads grin out of the pages at me. Overleaf, there are stills from the latest Paris Hilton video leaked to the Internet. The headlines “Masked Ball” and “Superhero Gangbang” read garishly. I recognise Sky Blue grinning, naked except for his blue-and-white wrestler’s mask, his lower torso pixellated, Paris leaning back into him with her eyes as droopy as ever. Paragon and Lionheart are also in the scene, masks intact. For a moment, the surreal idiocy of the whole thing overwhelms me and I flick back over the glossy pages with such haste they threaten to tear, and nearly invisible smoke curls off my fingers. When Elisabeth places her hand over mine, the page falls open to an image of U2 descending from the stairs of a plane painted the colours of the Pan-African flag; and the caption reads: Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton.

“I don’t care about Zephyr,” Elisabeth quietly says, kissing the side of my brow. “I never did. Oh Joey, can you forgive me? I was a girl. It was so surreal, so amazing . . . but I moved on. You should’ve moved on too.”

I try to say something and fail, realising I have nothing in my lungs, so I take a breath so deep my chest shudders. I feel the urgent need to communicate, but I don’t want to overdo it.

“The amazing becomes mundane so quickly, honey,” Elisabeth says. “I still love you. Do you believe that? You don’t have to make Zephyr into a . . . franchise to please me. You need to do something for yourself . . . something other than beating up bad guys and waving to photographers.”

I am feeling calm again. I turn slightly, but in the dark, between the shadows and the smoke, I can barely pick Elisabeth from the silhouette of the city.

“What would I do, huh?”

“Didn’t you always want to go to college? Write? For real?”

I’m out of the room so quickly there’s not even the chance to make a breeze. I slam the door to Tessa’s room behind me and curl up fully clothed on her short bed, a banana print comforter across me. The panelled windows are veiled by thick velvet drapes, cut by a teenage hand and never hemmed. Somewhere close by, an ambulance starts up its siren and I close my eyes.

Zephyr 1.9 “Older, Less Interesting, But Even More Essential” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

ANOTHER NIGHT AND we’re piling out of Mastodon’s armoured limo on the perennial red carpet at Mechano’s. Doormen dressed as robots give me the creeps. But I’m with British hero Lionheart, Adam Sandler, and actors Jason Statham and Stanley Tucci, though I don’t actually know which one is which, though one has an English accent and seems to be keeping Lionheart amused and that’s all that matters because Mastodon and I are trying to show him a good time. He’s been in the country a week on a film promotion for his new documentary on the evils of forgotten land mines, a passion he developed apparently after being intimate with a certain formerly alive British princess, not that he’ll admit it, the cause like a torch he’s carrying in her memory. I don’t know why he bothers. He’s plenty interested in the local variety of “tottie,” so it’s not like he’s a monk.

Mastodon is an enormous, beyond barrel-chested one-time hero of the 70s who hasn’t exactly gone to seed, but whose reputation was only enhanced by the news he’d married porn actress Ginger Lynn. He still gets around in the open fur-lined jacket, enormous side whiskers and the bull horns protruding from either side of his collar, but these days there’s more white in his hair than black. I don’t really care. I once saw him throw a taxi at a guy for wolf-whistling at a pair of underage girls. I like his style, plus I was quick enough to catch the cab and save everyone from an embarrassing lawsuit. If only he’d stop calling me “son,” reflecting on battles with Dr Stingray and his Orbital Death Station, and remember I’ve saved the world once or twice on my own, things would be peachy keen.

Mastodon also has the best drugs. Almost a motto. I am sailing pretty close to the wind with a concoction the old man calls Lottery 99. He has connections to a private chemist and I know I saw him once, some years back, in police observation photos taken of Twilight’s uncle, Mob boss Tony Azzurro.

As we emerge from the limo, Mastodon mutters something about “finding some bitches” and coincidentally the crowd of people who for some reason have nothing better to do than hang outside the club like lepers give a cheer and I, stupidly as it turns out, hold up my hands and grin. Jason Statham or Stanley Tucci elbows me and I turn to see a yellow cab disgorging four shabbily dressed Bohemians. It only occurs to me this is the rock band U2 when Bono walks up the steps past me, looks me up and down and nods, “G’day mate” in a fake Australian accent and gives a stoned laugh that is echoed by his bandmates. Me and Mastodon and the others filter into Mechano’s like the rest is some kind of dream, and doormen and hat-check girls and bar staff effortlessly disappear in front of us as we proceed. Although I never have to pay anyway, it is slightly disturbing to see the actors we seem to have accumulated aren’t at least being weighed for their value by the customary big men at the door.

Inside, it’s like there’s been a power failure. It’s pitch black, the air so cold our breath is coming out like from a dry ice machine, and for a moment I think I can smell sewage until I realise Courtney Love is standing in the foyer nervously juggling a baby it seems someone has unwisely passed her, the diaper full, her make-up a smear of red and black like some Norwegian goat metal band gone wrong.

“Zephyr,” she moans like a zombie as we go past.

“I do not know this person,” I say loudly just in case anyone’s actually paying attention.

We round the bend and it seems like the Messiah has returned to earth. Amid the strobes, cameras flash, which seems weird because Mechano’s has such a strict policy, yet Bono has his hands in the air and moves up some carpeted steps and I realise they are moving to our usual booth. Twilight, Darkstorm, even Red Monolith – none of them are there to stop it happening. The club owner is Mechano himself, a mutant nobody has really worked out whether his life depends on weird proto cyber-technology or if he just has a kink for wearing lots of metal. His polished bald head positively gleams in the light from rows of overhead monitors showing explosions and car chases and girls in vinyl giving lap dances and cars exploding from alleyways and leather-clad Japanese power pop bands pulling faces while women seemingly giving birth to fully-grown men.

Lagging behind Mastodon, we fall into a rut inches from the dance floor once we realise no one knows where to go. Lionheart bends over and throws up among the feet of some underage girls and they dance in it, oblivious, eyes closed like caught up in the Rapture. There’s already ketchup stains on the left side of the Brit hero’s tawny-coloured bodysuit, just shy of the heraldic lion-thing in maroon on the middle of his chest, and the matching briefs he wears over the top aren’t as skin-tight as they probably were when he got up this morning. The strobe lights make my eyes tired even though today has been a total loaf; and when, minutes later, I spy Lady Macbeth slow-dancing with the Edge, frustration threatens to boil over.

We mingle near one end of the horseshoe-shaped bar. Red Monolith and – of all people – Miss Black stand with a guy in a pale blue-and-white bodysuit I don’t recognise.

“Can you believe that shit?” I ask, thumb in the direction of the former villainess, but between the greetings and the disconsolate sighs, no one seems to take me up on my frustration.

I nod to Miss Black wearing her usual variation of the same elegant outfit, hair teased out a bit more and a diamond necklace around her high throat, and eventually my gaze settles on the guy in blue. He and Red Monolith are talking half in sign language because of the music pulsing overhead, and one of Mechano’s plate-armoured waiters walks past us with a tray of drinks going in the direction of you-know-who.

“So who’s this guy?” I ask the person on my left, realising only as I turn that no one’s there, Mastodon and Lionheart nowhere to be seen.

Jason Statham or Stanley Tucci says, “Where’ve you been? That’s Sky Blue.”

“Sky Blue? What sort of name is that?”

“He’s the guy that saved that girl from that film,” the actor replies.

“Oh.” I’m going to say something about wishing someone had saved me from Deuce Bigalow as well, but it’s just too fucking loud and I’m too annoyed to be bothered.

“And he was in Starscene this month,” one of the two actors add. “I can’t remember why.”

It occurs to me it’s been a while since I was in Starscene and I think about giving one of the reporters a call. Then I remember my ringtone and Nate Simon’s column in the Atlantic City Post.

Fuck.

At that precise moment, Sky Blue leans across and asks me, “Has anyone else been hassled out by that guy in glasses?”

I look at the spot not indicated by Sky Blue and recognise Clark Kent standing looking anxious. Every other head is turned in the opposite direction except for him, standing watching out little group, white teeth clamping his bottom lip, “stalker” written all over him.

“Yeah, I know that guy,” I mutter.

I’m too tired for this shit.

“I’m going,” I say, and physically push off from the bar.

Across the room, Mastodon and Lionheart sit in a booth with Cameron Diaz, Sheryl Crow, Ralph Lauren, Jack Black, Scarlett Johansson and the Edge.

As I’m leaving, I practically run into a skinny guy in an Armani overcoat, horn-rimmed glasses and suede pants, designer unknown, hair the colour of an albino cat. Practically isn’t actually the word since the other dude basically collides with my chest and it’s only reflex that makes me snatch him by the upper arm so he doesn’t fall over on rebound.

“Thanks,” the guy yells in my ear. He has an Irish accent. “I’m a big fan of your work.”

“Really? Thanks.”

I barely slow. The guy holds out his hand. “Adam Clayton.”

“Nice to meetcha,” I throw back and then I’m gone.

Except not quite. Miss Black comes out the exit after me and calls out. We pause for the spectacle of mega-star Macaulay Culkin arriving in a white muscle car, the crowd surrounding Mechano’s going nuts, the chiselled twenty-something still milking the success of his lead role as Achilles in Troy. I feel slightly ill to see Black Honey is Macaulay’s date for the night, especially when I don’t mind admitting he’s one of my favourite actors. As the happy couple tread past, Black Honey’s eyes find mine and she mouths, “Fuck you” very, very slowly and clearly.

I turn to Miss Black and tell her, “This is doing my head in.”

“Being famous?”

“Are we famous?”

“Well I was reading about you in the Post yesterday,” she says.

“Christ. I’m not gay,” I stress.

“No shit,” she replies, as I happen to be staring at her boobs (or where they should be).

I make a noise to signal surrender. Miss Black shrugs and brushes back her hair.

“I wanted to ask you if you were serious about reforming the Sentinels?”

“I think the mayor thinks we’re called the Squadron,” I reply. “Why?”

“There’s a bullet point in Sal Doro’s piece last week about the robot malfunction,” she says. “Man, I can’t believe we can’t keep anything a secret any more.”

“I blame Animal Boy, personally,” I say like turds wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

“Gary?”

“Isn’t his name Tom? Thomas?”

“No!” Miss Black laughs. “Jesus, Zephyr, how many years have you known him for? It’s Gary . . . Gary Something-or-other.”

“Long enough that he’s not a boy any more, I guess?”

“Would you tell me, if you were thinking about it?”

I pause a moment, reflecting on what exactly we’re talking about. I’m straight again, I also note with abject disappointment. Hand-in-hand with that comes wondering about the time. A revelation.

“Is this what Sal Doro thinks?”

“Quote, ‘Is Zephyr reforming the Southside Sentinels? It’s no coincidence the whole team from 2002 were at City Hall’.”

“That schmuck.” I feel owed five hundred dollars like it is a palpable thing, as conscious of it as I am of the hole in my ass.

Miss Black touches my arm lightly. “Zephyr?”

I smile, lifting a leather finger to brush across her cheek. I’m the hero again, at least for a moment.

“What’s got you worried?”

She looks indecisively at the finger and refocuses her gaze on my eyes, eyebrows furrowing intently.

“It’s been a quiet couple of years for me,” she says. “I think I’m ready to take my career to the next level. I’m getting an agent.”

“An agent?”

“Yeah. When I heard Aquanaut talking about it, I thought it sounded like a good idea.”

“Since when does being a hero need an agent? Jesus,” I sigh. “There’s no end of bad guys to fight.”

“It’s a tough business,” Miss Black shrugs.

The word business seems to resonate, and I think of my wife. It’s only been a few days, but Miss Black hands me a card, still crisp from the printer.

“Just think about it, will you?”

Zephyr 1.8 “Between The Greetings And The Disconsolate Sighs” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

I LAND ON the roof of the Jenssen Building without a sound. Having extricated myself from the pomp and formality of the mayor’s little shindig, my bladder is aching and my ears are sore from Senator Keenan’s profuse thanks. I’m still not sure she was suggesting what I think she was suggesting when she slipped me her business card. The fact she tried to put it in my back pocket herself is suspicious. And I don’t have any back pockets.

I scout around in case Doro is early, which wouldn’t be unusual. Instead, it’s just me and the pigeons on the roof, so I start thinking about trying to change the ring-tone on my phone and I scoot around behind the protruding back of the roof stairwell to take a leak.

For a moment I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. Then what I first think is a corpse and then realise is a desiccated human being steps, disturbed, from possible hibernation behind the half-open janitor’s cupboard at the back of the roof projection. Huge, nictitating brown eyes bat at me. I’m too stunned to notice the fist. It hits me with surprising strength and then the creature backflips, taking me in the chest with both feet on the way round. I go a good five yards and wind up hanging backwards over the edge of the building as I struggle up, gobsmacked, this thing like a moss-coloured, year-old cadaver with misty bits of cobweb or something drifting off it.

I can do no more than yell “Hey, wait!” before a long, weird, slightly unlikely-looking pair of insectile wings unfold from the figure’s back, a pattern like an owl’s eyes on them, and they’re buzzing like a saw mill and he lifts up and away, over the edge of the building, disappearing, a moth-man, with no explanation. I peer over the ledge dumbfounded and I’m still there, kneeling, a little less awed and more contemplative when Salvador Doro comes puffing and cursing out the other side of the roof.

“Zephyr, Jesus, it’s about time we found another place for this.”

“You could be right.”

Sal moves across the roof and it’s only a minute or so before he’s smoking. I accept the offer and marvel at the rank taste in my mouth, the sensation of my bronchioles scorching, the almost fizzingly palpable way my body goes into action repairing the damage. It’s not hard being superhuman, just weird. Sal waves an envelope in my face.

“This better be on the money,” he says.

“Hey, don’t bat that fucking thing at me. I’m no crack whore.”

I snatch the envelope and check there’s five hundred inside along with the Chronicle’s joke, a tax invoice, and I gut the package like a fish and tuck away the important bits. The rest becomes a crumpled ball, flash fried.

“So what’s the story, morning glory?” Sal asks.

We have a special kind of relationship and he knows he’s not up here for his good looks. He is, at least, a relief from the reporters too star-struck to remember what’s off-the-record. A 35-year veteran of the boroughs, Sal Doro was writing about supers in this city back when Captain Atom left the army and Divine Grace was still a three-dollar girl who could only make a sparkle with saliva and a whole heap of elbow grease.

“Did you catch that show at City Hall yesterday?”

“The Hermes Foundation gig? One of the cadets went along. Marv got some photos of that shiny new robot. Impressive.”

“I don’t have to tell you this doesn’t come back to me, right?”

“Sheesh. For the millionth time, Zephyr. . . .”

A guy’s gotta pay the bills somehow, especially with my wife always ready to remind me that hero-ing isn’t exactly an income. So I lay the scene out for Sal, the tussle with the robot, an inexplicable malfunction – no need to go putting sensitive information out there for the next jumped-up malefactor – and of course Zephyr gets a good mention. This time I’m generous: I concede Seeker, Vulcana and the old Aquanaut came up with the goods. The others don’t rate a mention. Sal’s smart enough to know there’s an angle in this and asks me about the coincidence, every card-carrying member of the Sentinels in the same room. Then he raises an eyebrow and sits back to listen.

He’s disappointed.

“You got another one of them envelopes in there?”

“Jesus, Zephyr,” the hack coughs and flicks away the dead stub of his smoke. “I don’t even know this is worth it, let alone paying for another.”

“Worth it? You say that all the time, Sal, and then my quotes are on your front page, right beneath that photo byline the lino boys mocked up in the Stone Age. Trust me, ‘Robot rampage’ might even be an easy fit. Tell the headline guys.”

Sal quietens down to ask a few pertinent questions and I give him what I can, describing the professor and even throwing a few more names at him, this Dr Martin Thurson as well. Sal jots it all down in six-point type and offers me another cigarette. I decline.

“You hear what Nathan Simon’s been writing about you?”

“Like I’ve got time to read the Post. I hate broadsheets, you know that. Too damned hard to fold.”

“Real cultured, you.”

“So what does he say?”

“Jeez,” Sal stands and makes a face, stretching his back in the obscene way only men coming on sixty and two-twenty pounds can manage. “Maybe I oughta let you read it for yourself.”

“Spit it out, Sal.”

“Well let’s just say the words out on a certain fruity ring-tone that makes people wonder whether Zephyr doesn’t bat for the other club.”

Blood, among other things, drains from my face.

“You’re kidding me?”

“Look into these baby blues,” he says, pulling down one vaginal lid.

“Shit. You know it’s not true.”

“Maybe I just ain’t your type.”

“It’s this stupid phone. It’s a default.”

“You should get someone to look at it,” Sal laughs, turning to go, waving with a folded up newspaper I didn’t even notice him carrying. “Let me know if you wanna Sal Doro exclusive on why the Sentinels aren’t reforming. I hear the mayor’s been having hush-hush luncheons with half the city’s masks.”

I shake my head and let him go. Over time, my gaze turns. For home.

 

CALLING HOME IS overdue. Not my home, I mean the home I grew up in. They used to call it Queens, before the whole area got wallpapered over as Pierce (carrying on the presidential thing, you know, for Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857 – I know it’s not exactly the most memorable name but, unlike Cleveland and Washington, he didn’t have a city named after him already). The grey streets are much the same as they were when I was a troubled teen, unable to confide to anyone why I blew all the fuses in our semi-detached every time I had a wet dream. Or at least that’s how I remember the area. Truth be told the old town and I ain’t exactly on best terms these days, though it’s nothing to do with Max and George. Something about being a world-class, ball-busting badass superhero means you don’t go back to the suburbs as often as reminiscence might otherwise dictate.

So, twenty-first century telemetry has to do the trick. In the wallspace again, I fire up Zephyr’s iMac supercomputer and wonder how I managed to be conned into such a slackwire gizmo. The only thing I can download that runs on the damned thing is porn, but my guy in New Hampshire swore by it and so the Apple billionaires got another penny in the fountain thanks to some nameless schmuck who bought the thing outright one day, just walking in off the street with a wad of cash, the accompanying Tribune payslip nothing but a smoky residue.

My guy – let’s call him Niall, it’s his name after all – runs the message board for me gratis ever since I saved his girlfriend from a flying car during a downtown slugfest with Crescendo. (See how naturally I managed to slip that word there into this, this whatever it is we’re having, conversation?) It was her first trip shopping in the big city on her lonesome. A cute little thing she was too, those tight little buns in my big hands as we flew to safety, the bad guy buried under rubble it took the city Works Dept three days to clear. Whew. Girls who look like Japanese animation aren’t really my thing, but if you met Niall, well, you’d know how the rest of the stories goes if you can’t guess already. Let it just be said the man does a fine line in sophisticated web artistry I’d frankly be too embarrassed to master myself.

There’s not much happening on the message boards. I put off the inevitable for as long as I can and then place the call, adjusting the webcam so it doesn’t catch the old red-and-white get-up still mouldering on its hook. Max and George were web-savvy before anyone had even decided on a name for the Internet, so it doesn’t surprise me when one of the dear old dykes picks up on the third ring.

Maxine already has the headset in place. She looks distracted for a second, gazing off-screen and giving me an unguarded look at the fine lines and wrinkles that come with the territory of being an ordinary schmuck. Poor old bird (imagine the English accent). The haircut is as fierce as it is trendy, undiminished by the natural steel wool colour or the grey that seems to bleed into her cheeks. All the same, a genuine twinkle wipes twenty years off those bespectacled blue eyes that once melted hearts around the MIT Gender Studies Department water cooler. Or so she used to tell me. Georgia may have carried me to term, but it was Maxine who came through in the mothering stakes, as much as I would otherwise be tempted to call it an even race.

“Hi mom.”

“Joseph,” she smiles. “So nice to hear from you. I’ll have to tell your mother all those things she said about you last night really were misplaced.”

I chuckle. I never stopped pausing over that habit of them speaking about themselves in the third person. You blink and the fucking signifier’s changed to the other one. Spivak pronouns be fucked. Other kids in the club had mums and godmothers, aunties, birth mothers and, craziest of all, one even had a dad (after the operation). In our family of three we just settled on mum and mom, Georgia with her Irish lilt, and Max with her ability to cut to the chase and otherwise read me like a book.

We shoot the shit for fifteen minutes. This is me assuaging guilt, so it’s OK that I’m not big-upping myself. I’ve carried on a family tradition by never coming out to either of my parents. Though Maxine has always given me a knowing twinkle I couldn’t shake, I figured if it was good enough for them to hide me and each other from their respective families until they were all safely in the ground, I can keep myself and Zephyr separate too. The only problem this leaves me is having to answer the occasional curly one about myself that hits on the issue of my life being a complete disaster if you don’t have the fact of being an ass-whooping household name to fall back on. Quite apart from explaining how the fuck an ordinary Joe like me fills the day, being a work-from-home freelance writer and a practically unemployed one at that means I don’t exactly glow in the “make mommy proud” stakes. Max has her own bodyweight in degrees, diplomas and honorary positions of merit. George is a published author of cringingly erotic fiction and a prolific visual artist to boot, though – and it sort of comes with the territory – while she has mellowed out a heap from her student days, more often than not her pieces require a pretty spirited defence whenever they make it out into the public. Some artists can get away with hand-making everyone their Christmas gifts. With some of the shit (and piss, and menstrual fluids) my mum has messed with over the years, you’d be begging Santa to go on the Naughty List once you got a delivery from her.

“We were a little worried about you, Joseph,” Max lays it on me eventually. “Your mum ran into Beth last weekend and something she said made us wonder if there was cause for alarm? You know what we’ve always said about partners supporting each other?”

I mumble something and the monologue continues. (Yes they really do speak with one mind sometimes. It’s scary).

“What about dinner? It’s been an age since we saw little Tessa. She’s growing so fast. I know you’re probably terrified about the prospect of her spending more time with her grandparents, but really, Joseph. . . .”

“Jesus, mom, give me a break.”

“That’s your inner teenager talking, Joey,” Max replies sternly. “She must be what, almost fifteen? I’m not going to let anyone seduce her. God forbid she would grow up anything other than the normal Elisabeth seems to so fervently want.”

“Beth’s got some pretty strong reasons for wanting her family normal sometimes. . . .”

“That sounds like something we could discuss over dinner one night this week. What do you say?”

Knowing when to fold, I nod reluctantly and we pencil it in. I’m no Sisyphus, but even I know when a chore’s overdue.

Zephyr 1.7 “Knowing When To Fold” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

VULCANA HAS OF course turned blue since we went public. Once I manage to get out of the threesome with Miss Black and the mad scientist, I can’t help noticing her and Chamber arguing at the back of the room. Animal Boy is close by, watching and saying nothing, and it occurs to me a name upgrade might not be such a bad idea for him too.

“I can’t believe you, Mike,” Vulcana hisses as I move within earshot.

“Hey, what’s the problem?” I ask.

“It’s nothing,” she snaps.

“Chamber says he can’t remember Vulcana saving him from Infernus,” Animal Boy offers.

“Ooh, so the cat hasn’t lost his tongue after all,” says I.

“Careful, Zephyr. You know cats love to scratch leather.”

“That’s a really faggy remark.” I turn to Chamber and eye him up and down. “What gives? I remember when we tussled with Infernus. The irony that it was on Fire Island should be enough for anyone.”

“All those homos he killed. . . .” Animal Boy shudders.

“It was a long time ago,” Chamber quietly booms. “Sue me, OK?”

“Sue me?” I frown. I don’t exactly remember those words being in ultra-stern Chamber’s vocabulary. Next I expect him to call Vulcana “girlfriend”.

“Jesus, this party blows. I don’t know why I agreed to this. Step back.”

We know what’s coming next, but I can’t help being a little patriarchal as I guide Vulcana back by the shoulders. She shrugs me off as the sliding double panel in Chamber’s chest opens and what we could only ever describe as black light starts to pour out.

“Zephyr,” a deep robot voice sounds behind me, “I feel I need to explain.”

I turn and say Hermes’ name at about the same moment Chamber appears to fold in on himself and disappear through the doorway in his own chest. We’re all caught in the residual non-glow, but it’s only a bit of N-dimensional energy wash and it’s pretty harmless if you’re not in direct contact.

“The professor was trying to tell me you can speak for yourself,” I say.

Hermes says nothing. In fact, he stops moving completely.

“Hello?”

“Jesus, he looks kinda fried,” Vulcana says.

Animal Boy turns into a mottled house cat and bounds away. Nautilus, sensing a commotion, comes over with his biggest shit-eating grin and rests his elbow on my shoulder.

“What blows?”

“This guy, I think,” I say. “Mr Tin Can.”

Hermes still isn’t moving and I peer around for Professor Prendergast only to notice Senator Ivory Keenan and deputy mayor Anatolia Dufresne coming towards us. I don’t have spider-sense or anything so convenient, but my eyes are narrowed as I turn back to Hermes just as he starts emitting a nearly silent, high-pitched shriek.

“Get down!”

Using super speed, I turn and collect the two female politicians in a clothesline hold, hammering across the room and basically throwing them through the double doorway to safety as there’s a loud detonation behind. Mostly because that’s where I wind up rather than any desire to shelter the pair with my body, when the commotion ceases, I snap about and see Hermes standing in the same spot with ghostly smoke pouring from the palms of his giant hands. Vulcana and Nautilus are nowhere to be seen, but there are two large gaping holes in the floor where they were standing.

 

INSIDE THE RECEPTION room it’s pandemonium.

The mayor and his staff and other dignitaries rush for the door and I have to wade against a human tide to even get in there. It’s the story of my life, going the wrong way when everyone else is running for safety. I should’ve gone to college and become an architect or a lawyer. I’m sure they still manage to get their kicks, even if it’s on the racketball court.

Mentally, I tick off the members of the team. Chamber and Lone Wolf have already skedaddled and I doubt they’ll come back. Vulcana and Nautilus have freshly disappeared. Animal Boy’s nowhere to be seen. That leaves Miss Black and Seeker.

“I’m here, Zephyr,” Seeker yells.

I look across and note her hovering up near one of the corners of the roof, her milky white glow a signature move, long dark hair writhing perpetually on an invisible breeze like she’s underwater or something. I hope her spiritual powers are as strong as ever, because when it comes to a slugfest and two of our other heavy-hitters are already down and out, I don’t want to have to rely on Miss Black and her “globes of power,” no pun intended.

(We never really made a joke of that because she’s quite flat-chested. Not that that sort of humour was ever really out-of-bounds, but let’s face it, if anybody had globes of power it was Seeker. That lady’s got a serious rack, and they glow in the dark).

It’s a good thing, but where there was pandemonium before, suddenly it’s just me, Seeker and Hermes standing in the big room.

Seeker and I exchange glances and I have to admit it’s weird to be back in this situation again. It’s almost like I’d forgotten that for fourteen months several years back, Zephyr didn’t have to work solo. I’m not sure why I didn’t enjoy it more or cut the others more slack. God knows, I’m no Nightwatchman, who seems to get off on his own company. The idea of not being alone in all this has a certain appeal – or maybe I’m just getting soft?

Hermes snaps his head up. His eyes, such as they are, seem to track me as I inch into the room.

“Hey, buddy. What’s going on?”

Hermes swiftly lifts his right hand up and a spray of hot light hits me and I fly back and through the wall beside the double doors. As I’m pulling myself out of this, bits of plaster and chunks of wood falling around me, Seeker gives the robot a good dose of his own medicine. Her phosphorescent corona pours out along her arms, bathing the man-machine, who raises a forearm to cover his head but otherwise doesn’t budge.

“I don’t think it’s working, Zephyr. He has no soul!”

I finally untangle myself and then it’s time to get underhanded.

“Jesus! Haven’t you learned about that by now?”

It’s hard to explain how I do it, but if you imagine my internal organs have more in common with a pop-up toaster than a human being then it’s easier to believe I can concentrate and channel huge amounts of electricity through my body and out my hand and into our friend over there. Unlike Seeker’s efforts, my powers seem to work just fine. The Tin Man judders and shakes and staggers backwards as I ease off the juice.

“Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!”

I can’t believe my ears and then I doubt my eyes as well as Professor Prendergast jumps up from beneath one of the catering trolleys with a black device in both hands. Seeker lands on the ground beside me poised for action and I shoot a glance as Hermes topples over backwards with smoke leaking from his chest.

“Please, please. . . .”

“You gotta be kidding me, doc. That’s a dangerous robot you’ve got there.”

“It’s just a malfunction,” Prendergast groans as he rushes over to Hermes like a fallen child. “I don’t understand what happened!”

“I think he got a mouthful of N-dimensional radiation,” I shrug, as you do.

“N-dimensional. . . ?” I’m not quite prepared for the Professor to go quite so livid nor so foul-mouthed. He starts cursing everyone under the moon and wondering why he wasn’t warned there might be an unsecured source of N-dimensional energy at the Hermes launch.

“I guess the mayor’s not that au fait with Chamber’s powered suit,” Seeker shrugs.

I agree with everything she says except the French bits.

“Idiots,” the professor continues. He presses some buttons and, robotically, Hermes climbs to his feet, though he stands unmoving thereafter.

“Obviously a stronger shielding device is going to be needed. . . .” the doc mutters to himself, adjusting knobs on his walkman until Hermes straightens up and puts his arms out level.

With one more adjustment, Hermes’ rocket boots ignite and he goes flying through the huge panelled window immediately behind him, changing course rapidly once he is in the air and arcing over the city until he’s out of sight.

“I’ve activated Hermes’ automatic homing system, which will take effect whenever he is seriously damaged. Obviously, there are a few adjustments to be made.”

The professor looks around dryly and adjusts his tie.

“You can tell that fucking nincompoop mayor I will speak to him next week,” the scientist says.

I’m still getting over the shock at his potty mouth so Seeker stands in for me with a “Sure, professor,” and Prendergast shuffles at a fair clip from the room.

“Well I knew something was going to happen,” I tell her.

In the silence Miss Black drops her invisibility and gently clears her throat.

 

PEOPLE SLOWLY START back into the smoky reception room. Among them is the mayor and straight away I march over and front him up. For the sake of appearances, I don’t go grabbing him by the lapels like I’d like. Pykes and I have been here before. I keep my voice low, malevolent.

“What the hell were you thinking, Pykes? That damned robot could’ve gone berserk and levelled half the city.”

“Really, Zephyr? With you here?”

“Drop it, Roland,” I sneer. “That scientist’s already left. How sure are you about him?”

“Look Zephyr, we’re grateful to you that a crisis has been avoided. We’d appreciate absolute discretion as far dealing with the media goes.”

“It’s not gonna benefit anyone to go calling the press in,” I lie wildly.

“Fortunately the Southside Squadron saved the day, hmmm?”

“It was the Sentinels, Pyke. Now tell me what you were thinking, calling the old team together without even consulting me about it?”

“We spoke about this, Zephyr.”

“Not that I recall,” I reply, possibly getting even angrier. “Who do you think you are, trying to pull strings like that? You weren’t even mayor then. God knows, Harry Spelling wouldn’t ever pull a trick like this.”

Alison Kirkness is keeping most the people away, but Miss Black and Seeker are close enough to angle in for a listen. There’s still no sign of the others.

“Zephyr,” Pykes says, and he pitches his voice low and lets his eyes get all droopy with sentimentality. “This city needs you all. All of you. United.”

“Don’t you think there are better ways to get that result than just tricking us all into the same room together?”

It’s Miss Black who speaks and I’m glad for her. It’s nice to have another monkey flinging the brown stuff around for a change. Pykes is used to flipping me off and it’s clear he’s a little more lost for words taking it in the ass from a twenty-something girl magician.

“Well, I’m . . . We never meant. . . .”

“Some of us have higher responsibilities than a mere city, mayor,” Seeker says, all the otherworldliness she can muster shining through in her haughty voice. I have to confess she makes a convincing sight with that hair of hers writhing slowly upwards.

“I’m . . . sorry,” Pykes moans.

“Well there’s a first.”

I turn away and the mayor grabs my arm.

“Zephyr, please. Consider what I’ve said. We can talk about it again – under proper circumstances.”

I relent, nodding.

“And please, the utmost discretion.”

I look around. Senator Keenan inclines her head towards me with her mouth half full of pickle sandwich.

“Good luck keeping it a secret in a city of forty million people, but sure, Roland. Just remember you owe me one . . . and no more surprises.”

The mayor and his team disperse to shore up support among the other guests and Animal Boy limps in with Nautilus and Vulcana, both of whom look a little frayed.

“This is bullshit,” Connie mutters.

“Why are you limping?” I ask Animal Boy.

“. . . caught my foot on the way down.”

“Jesus. Aqua – Nautilus, you OK, pal?”

“That fucking robot, man. Next time I see it I’m turning him into a waffle iron.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. “Well apparently he’s a super-intelligent computer in a state-of-the-art military robot shell. I’m guessing he’d be tough to tackle if he had a brain in place. That N-dimensional energy seems like a bit of a . . . whaddayacallem? You know.”

“An Achilles heel,” Seeker says in monotone.

“Right.”

I look at the others and there’s a lull and someone in the background, a woman, starts laughing moronically, and I vaguely recognise her from an old morning television program. All eyes eventually return to the floor in the middle of our circle.

“Pykes wants us to reform.”

“Man, that ain’t ever gonna happen,” Nautilus laughs too quickly and then, frowning, asks, “Right?”

“I’ve kinda . . . moved on,” Miss Black says sheepishly.

“And I’ve got college,” Animal Boy says.

“No offence dude, but I wasn’t really thinking about you,” I say.

“Really?” He frowns and looks undecided between incensed and actually upset.

“Zephyr’s right, man,” Nautilus says. “First sign of danger and you’d turn into a cat and high-tail it. What use is that?”

Animal Boy blushes and Vulcana growls at Nautilus.

“Hey, everyone’s power has a part to play in a team.”

“This from the lady who turns into rubber, for chrissakes,” Nautilus barks.

If colour could come to her cheeks, I’m sure it would. Instead, Vulcana slaps the ex-Aquanaut hard across the face and precisely because of her altered molecular state, Vulcana’s hand bends as she slaps and it makes a loud and almost rude noise and it’s so absurd Miss Black, Animal Boy and I burst into laughter with Nautilus only a moment behind. Vulcana, however, remains irritated.

“God, you lot were always so puerile. I can’t believe I even entertained the idea.”

Looking good in her high black boots and leotard, Vulcana waves half-heartedly and leaves the room.

“It wouldn’t be the same without Vulcana. Sorry dudes. Love me or leave me, I’m out of here,” Animal Boy says.

“You mean it wouldn’t be the same without her to stick up for you. Take a hike then,” Nautilus says.

“Feeling’s mutual, creep,” Tom says and morphs into a dog and cocks his leg and sprays pee all over Nautilus’s feet. Nautilus jumps back and the dog, aka Animal Boy, bounds from the room.

“That’s real superhero behaviour,” Miss Black mutters.

“When you make your decisions, I will be in touch,” Seeker says, beginning to turn insubstantial.

“How are you going to know?” I ask the wind.

“She’ll know,” Miss Black sighs.

“I guess Chamber and Lone Wolf are out,” I say eventually.

“I didn’t think Adrian looked too good.”

“Hmmm.”

“I’ll catch you dudes later,” Nautilus says. He slips me a business card and then jogs like a Superbowl champ from the room, issuing waves. Miss Black makes a pained face.

“Want this?” I hold up the card.

She snorts. “Hardly.”

“How about this?” I offer her one of mine and she takes it pensively, chewing the inside of her cheek. “You wanna get a coffee or –”

“Actually, I’ve got to go. Thanks Zephyr.”

I get a kiss on the cheek that makes me feel like a granddad and then I’m the only hero left in a room full of council employees and politicians. A janitor starts sweeping up plaster.

I slip from the room and text Salvador Doro: usual place, midday.

Zephyr 1.6 “Real Superhero Behaviour” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

IT IS WARM in the apartment. The wall of white tiles in the bathroom slips gently back into place and I press down on it hard until I hear the magnets click and engage. I’ve already stripped in the narrow wall space, the best I get as far as secret bases go, and so I have a quick hot shower just because it seems the thing to do. From there to bed is a short journey, and a mercifully quick one.

There’s all sorts of things I mean to do. Perhaps it is leftover sentimentality from my confessional with Twilight, but I want to watch my daughter sleeping and then hold my wife in the dark. I even want to give the cat a midnight dinner. I must be high, I reason, as I slip into the cold empty bed. I assume Elisabeth is passed out on the couch where she was watching TV. The moment my head hits the pillow and I only just realise I am alone, it’s like I have fallen into a trap set by my enemy, Mr Sleep (that’s me being metaphoric again folks). My eyes lag shut – and then it’s morning.

In fact it is quarter to ten. I leap up with a start, glad not to have fried the sheets as I sometimes do, and after securing my manly bits with a clean pair of boxers I bust out of the bedroom and careen around the flat for a minute before ascertaining I’m the only one there.

On the bench in the kitchenette, Tessa has left me a note: “Mum said you worked late so I called Astrid’s mum for a ride. Mum gave me the money for school so don’t worry about that either. Could you still pick me up at three?”

She has forgotten to write any kisses on the note or sign her name. Instead, it is signed “Me,” which seems slightly obnoxious, but very much her age. Fifteen years old and no longer her daddy’s daughter. Or that’s what I’m feeling.

The reality is I should be relieved. I can survive on five hours of sleep and I don’t bother showering, going straight into the wall cavity and hurriedly dressing in my leathers again. An old white-and-red costume, complete with floor-length red cloak, gathers dust on a hanger. I can hear the phone ringing in the flat, but I ignore it.

I move to the tinted window and open it a crack and when the way seems clear I vault into the sky and the window pretty much swings back by itself. As I start to lag in mid-air, I push it, rocketing in an arc over the city, the traffic helicopter tipping in acknowledgement. At full speed it only takes me a few minutes to cross the city. I don’t want the complaints that come with breaking the sound barrier so I keep it to the low five hundreds.

Even though I am not late, I feel late, descending with my shadow over City Hall insignificant compared to the hordes of people, cameras and news crews covering the steps and the wide marble courtyard fronting one of the city’s most magnificent surviving Modernist buildings. There are a few costumes amid the front rows of the crowd, but these are interested onlookers like Paragon and Red Monolith who have been admitted to the front rather than invited. Since I was apparently never briefed on the details or else I’ve completely forgotten them, I don’t have a clue in hell where I am supposed to be. I land on the roof and thumb the security code I was given years ago and I’m jogging down the stairwell when one of the mayor’s secretaries whistles from an open doorway and I scuttle through into the oak-panelled interior of one of the city’s plush meeting rooms, and suddenly I remember what Vulcana said.

The seven surviving members of the Sentinels stand on the other side of the room and my late arrival seems just too much like old times for it to be anything more than heavily ironic. I can only take my cue from how I handled it a million times in the past, laughing off the odd accusatory glare (Vulcana, Seeker, probably Chamber too, if he had a face), bemused smiles (Aquanaut, Miss Black), disinterest (Animal Boy) and worried anticipation (Lone Wolf). The mayor is there as well, along with his deputy, the featureless Miss Kirkness, along with a nerdy-looking guy in a tweed jacket carrying a large black electronic device. There’s also a few cops in the chamber, but they’re doing their best to look invisible, picking over the sandwich tray at the back of the set-up.

“Zephyr, you’re late,” Pykes says.

“Hey, chill, baby. When have I ever let you down?”

“Do you want me to get my diary, Mr Mayor?” the PA asks.

I pout at the gibe and Roland Pykes, his security blanket and gold chains around his shoulders, gives an irritated gasp and gives up. I turn to acknowledge a few of my former teammates, though Chamber seems to be looking elsewhere and Lone Wolf, looking more like a homeless person than ever in his old trench coat and barefoot get-up, nervously avoids my eyes.

One of the secretaries fields a cell call and then sticks her head back into the room.

“They’re ready for you, Mr Mayor.”

Pykes turns to the guy in the jacket and asks, “Ready, Professor Prendergast?”

“As I’ll ever be, I suppose, Mayorr Pykes. Lead on.”

They file past, followed almost immediately by Adrian’s pet wolf. It must need to pee or something, presuming Adrian eventually managed to house train the damned thing. Seeker inclines her head to me, and Aquanaut gently punches my shoulder and then I fall in beside Vulcana and Animal Boy, pretending for a moment to sniff the air around the former teenager.

“Jesus, Zephyr, get some new jokes, man.”

“Where have you been hiding, Tom? The zoo?”

“Actually I’ve been finishing college, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the place?”

I eye him up and down a moment. He’s still a weedy piece of work, but at least some of his old hyperactive energy has diminished. Shame the same can’t be said for his Adam’s apple.

“I guess you’re old enough to shave now,” I smirk. “What’s that like when you turn into a Sabretooth? One big shaved puss –”

“Zephyr,” Vulcana says and nudges me fairly hard in the ribs. “Is there something you were going to ask me?”

I cease my grinning and turn back to Connie. Since we’re still in private she hasn’t made the switch yet, which means I’m looking at a handsome brunette with a peaches and cream complexion, great boobs, and eyes that seem to see into the core of my being. I also note she’s sporting a fresh haircut, long at the front and shaved right to the nape of her neck.

“Nice ‘do.”

“Thanks. I had to pay an extra fifty for the first appointment.”

“That sucks ass,” I say, and then realise my sentiment’s probably a little too strong for something so mundane. I make a sheepish face that usually gets me out of that sort of thing and then gesture around.

“So what’s all this then?”

“That Professor Prendergast is donating his latest invention to the protection of the city,” Vulcana replies in an unimpressed voice.

“Latest invention?”

“Yeah, the Hermes Foundation, you remember that?”

“If you say so.”

“Hermes is the donation.”

“The . . . Greek god?” I know I’m straining and the pain shows. Vulcana gives me a nod.

I can’t ask any more. I still haven’t found out what the hell the mayor thinks he is up to assembling the Sentinels without discussing it with me first. First though, we troop down the last of the Hall’s main staircases and out through the foyer, following the rapidly-striding mayor and the diminutive scientist trying to keep up. Beyond the main doors there’s the sort of crowd that has become a rarity these days. The day is overcast, the sky smeared with clouds the colour of lead pencil. I check my mask and fix a rakish smile in place and then the cameras start flashing.

 

I AM ALARMED to finally understand Hermes is a fucking robot.

Me and robots don’t exactly have the best history and this one is bigger than me and designed to resemble a buff super-warrior in an off-the-shoulder toga-cum-miniskirt kinda thing. His enormous silver head is styled with Classical curls. Beside me, Seeker mutters something about wondering where’s the fig leaf and I laugh derisively as the mayor’s ambitious speech overshoots his ability to deliver. I sense journalists in the crowd lying in wait to ask fresh questions about the latest scandal about the deputy mayor’s expense account and, like a psychic, anticipate an adjournment so we can get together behind closed doors once the photo opportunities are over. As I have foreseen, so it comes to pass; and we’re only fifteen minutes out the front of City Hall before the first raindrop falls.

Pykes stops mid-speech and turns back to me.

“Zephyr, can you do something about that?”

There’s something I’ve never liked about the mayor and he knows it. I think he thinks it’s his post-doctorate qualifications, his aid work in the Middle East, and his self-indulgent interest in palaeontology. Actually it’s his ruddy schoolboy complexion, the handsome-but-evil-Nazi-bad-guy scar running down one cheek and his habit of consulting with no one before making big policy decisions – like assembling my defunct super-team without asking me, Zephyr, who’s saved his worship’s arse more than once.

With the city’s entire media watching, the best I can come up with is a strained “Wh-at?” It’s irritating for me that people by now still don’t understand I can’t control the weather. I can generate weather and make a stink when I’m up among the clouds, but simply magicking away a rain shower isn’t in my vocabulary, let alone my abilities.

Pykes simply hisses, “The rain,” and turns back, beneficently smiling for the cameras as he resumes his speech about commitment to safety not just for the city, but the entire eastern seaboard.

“So, you gonna do somethin’ about that, Zeph?” Seeker asks.

Those around me chuckle and I just sigh through my teeth, head shaking.

Five minutes later, we’re corralled indoors, this time into one of the really big meeting rooms, an impressive one on the first floor. Almost immediately, Lone Wolf’s dog jumps up on the food table and starts chowing down on the buffet and Chamber reaches over with one of his big tensile steel mitts and flicks the beast across the room.

I haven’t seen Adrian that fired up in years.

“Don’t you ever touch Hero like that,” he snarls, feet spread in a fighting stance and bo-stick upraised like a sword.

Chamber folds his arms over the metal trunk of his chest and says nothing. Perhaps because I have known him the longest and I always felt kinda bad about the circumstances of his leaving the team, I move across to Lone Wolf and try to smile.

“Hey, Adrian, long time no see. How’re you doing?”

“It’s a long time? Yes, Zephyr,” he replies softly, looking anywhere except into my eyes. “I haven’t exactly been around.”

I clear my throat and wonder why the hell I didn’t just zero in on the free drinks.

“Yeah, so, how are you now? All . . . better?”

“I’m still in treatment, Zephyr, if you must know,” he says.

Because he won’t look at me, I can get a good look at him and how badly he has aged in the past five years. His hair and stubble are grey, his skin with the complexion of a cadaver. Although there’s still that suggestion of sinewy strength Lone Wolf always possessed, I can’t help conclude something of the fight has gone out of the guy.

“Cool, yeah, OK, but are you like, OK?”

“Well . . . I am better than I have been . . . for a while.”

“That’s great,” I say, leaping on any positivity. “Why’s that?”

Adrian finally meets my eyes.

“I’m a lone wolf, Zephyr. I should’ve always been left alone.”

Holding his fighting stick like a cane, Adrian whistles to his pet and then he strides from the big room without so much as looking back.

“I guess in hindsight he thought that was a pretty bad idea, coming along here today,” a cocky voice says from behind.

I turn and there’s Aquanaut. We share a brotherly hug and I ruffle his slicked-back blue-black hair.

“Hey, Aquanaut, man, long time no see.”

“Actually man it’s Nautilus these days. I’ve changed, uh, monikers.”

“Oh.” I pause and try and work out where I’ve heard the word Nautilus before and I can’t place it. “That’s cool. Any, uh, reason?”

“Oh not really, just the Aquanaut, I think it was a little difficult for some people. My agent thinks the Q and the two Us, and besides, it’s a bit like, you know, Aquaman. Kinda gay.”

“Well then, you were kinda gay for a few years there, Spock.”

He laughs, but not without rubbing a thumb and forefinger over one of his gently pointed ears. His costume hasn’t changed much, with sea green tights of fine metallic scales and a very minimalist singlet with a weird cross-shaped harness over the top.

“You’re not in the city any longer?”

“No. I’ve been in California for the past two years, trying to get this pilot of mine made and, you know, generally just chasing waves and beating on the odd bad guy.”

“Are there many, like, major villains over that way? I don’t hear much about it on the TV,” I say.

“No, not really. It’s how I like it. This town is too creepy, man. It’s like an idiots’ circus, you know what I mean?”

“Uh, not sure I do, but then again I still live here, so. . . .”

“Yeah, sure, I didn’t mean anything like that.”

We both hum at the same time and look around – and that’s about when Hermes comes over.

 

I COULDN’T TELL you how much he weighed. Judging by the sound, it is a hell of a lot. With roughly the same physical dimensions as Twilight, except made from solid metal, with or without his platemail loincloth, Hermes cut an impressive figure. I wasn’t buying the whole robot thing anyway and his impassive, immobile face doesn’t help.

“Gentlemen,” the robot says and inclines his head, offering a large hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Nautilus and I just stare at him for a moment and Nautilus is probably even more open than me, moving slowly around the robot like the freakish example of modern art it is. Hermes’ cloak is real cloth and Nautilus tugs at it. The hand remains open for all of three seconds.

“He’s huge,” the artist-formerly-known-as-Aquanaut says.

“He’s sure that,” I agree.

Hermes tilts his head slightly and I lift my eyes.

“How’re you doing, robot?”

“My creator named me Hermes after the Greek god of messengers. I hope that’s not . . . intimidating . . . for you.”

“Intimidating?”

I look around. The professor is talking with Miss Black, who’s flicking back her shoulder-length blonde hair almost like she’s flirting with the old guy. You’d never know with a chick like that. She’s freaky, and not always in a good way.

“How’s he doing that?” I ask.

“What?” Nautilus asks.

“The talking. I can’t see the professor has any gadgets up his sleeve. Besides, he looks a little busy.”

“Gentlemen,” the robot responds in his most patient baritone, “I assure you there is no ventriloquism at play. I’m the one talking to you.”

I ponder this a moment. It seems kinda unlikely and I say as much. I’m surprised to hear frustration in the metallic echo of the robot’s reply.

“Gentlemen, I assure you, I am very much the . . . the real deal.”

“The ‘real deal’,” Nautilus laughs. “Fuck. Who programmed you, boy? Does the professor know jive too?”

“Jive?”

“You know, like 70s black people talk, not the dance,” I feel compelled to explain.

“Gentlemen . . . Oh very well.”

The robot walks away. I almost feel for him when his path immediately confronts him with the sandwich table, with which he obviously can’t really engage. The robot’s enormous hands conform to fists and he just stands there, his back to the small gathering as more and more people come in.

I’m still curious. I walk over to the professor and Miss Black and elbow my way into the conversation.

“So professor, what’s the deal with Hermes? How do you make him talk?”

Prendergast obviously feels the need to back up his explanation with an account of early Newtonian physics and the work of the Russian Formalists. After a couple of nervous sidelong glances to Miss Black, who still looks rather fine, I must say, though in a slightly secretarial way, her customary flared black slacks and wide open-collared black shirt exposing both her delightful collarbones and wrists, I realise she’s not going to interrupt because she’s a knowledge junkie and is probably turned on by the professor. So I hold up my hands and actually use the phrase “Whoa.”

“I’m just trying to work out how you make him talk, doc.”

The scientist actually tilts his head as he looks at me through his thick spectacles. It’s not the sort of look that would ever make me feel comfortable. I ponder how he would look with a spark up his nose.

“Make him talk?” the professor repeats. “He talks for himself, Mr Zephyr.”

“No, seriously. Come on. I know it’s a trade secret, but we’re all kinda curious.”

“Hermes is a sixth generation self-replicating intellectual machine, Mr Zephyr. Don’t be fooled by his rather . . . Adonisian exterior. He’s essentially a new type of super-computer on a level far superior to anything the world’s ever seen.”

“If he’s such a hot computer, how come you put him inside all that armour? Sounds to me like you could give Microsoft a run for their money if you went commercial.”

“Well, I’m not motivated by money, Mr Zephyr.”

“It’s just Zephyr.”

“OK.”

“So,” I shrug, just making conversation now. “What are you motivated by then, professor?”

The scientist gets a far away look as he says, “I want to stamp out tyranny, and the cruelty of men against men.”

“Far out.”

I think that’s a shame because Hermes would look good as a wrestler.

The nerdy old guy focuses on me again and says: “A colleague of mine by the name of Dr Martin Thurson recently went missing right in the heart of this great city of ours, Zephyr. When it really dawned on me that something like this could happen, I dedicated the Hermes project to the form you see now. I aim to find my colleague, sir, with Hermes’ help. Any assistance you could offer would be greatly appreciated.”

“Martin Thurson? OK,” I reply. “I’ll uh, you know, keep an ear to the ground.”

The scientist nods and pats me on the shoulder and says it’s much appreciated and as he smiles encouragingly to Miss Black, who is watching me with a guarded sense of caution I believe, there’s a dramatic lull in the conversation I feel the urgent need to fill.

“So, what time do you think our old enemies will attack?”

The professor gasps and I check the time on my Blackberry, careful not to set off any buttons. Miss Black chuckles because at least she’s familiar with my sense of humour. On the other hand, the professor looks like he needs a change of shorts.

“You can’t be serious . . . and so calm about it?”

“Oh sure,” I shrug. “It’s pretty typical of big events like this. You know, all the city’s top crime-fighters gathered under the one roof. I guess if it was Think-Tank or Overlord or someone, they might even try and steal your neat-o new computer boy over there.”

The professor looks a few shades paler as he produces a square of handkerchief to dab his face.

“I’m not sure if Hermes is ready . . . I hope I haven’t unveiled him too soon.”

“The, uh, mayor seemed to be saying Hermes was like, part of the police force now?” Miss Black says, speaking telepathically and, as usual, sounding like Daria.

“Uh, seconded,” Professor Prendergast slowly confirms.

“Cool,” the former teen sorceress replies. “Any idea why the rest of us are here then?”

Zephyr 1.5 “A Guarded Sense Of Caution” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

IT TAKES TWENTY minutes before I corner the new girl.

Imogen Davies resembles an Irish milk-maid with her long dark hair, dark blue eyes and fair skin, just a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose dark enough that I can see them by the streetlights once emergency services gets the power back up on the street. Possibly number one on my top ten, at least this week. Away from the camera crew and without her microphone she’s just a teenager, nervous and adorable and I can’t help falling into the smug, confident, all-powerful role she expects and will probably fantasise about later tonight. Or that’s what I imagine. She’s new to the job, but she’s quick to remind me she’s not fresh out of college, which isn’t something I really want to hear with what I have in mind. But I’m reassuring her that the night news shift is when all the cool stuff happens just as It’s Raining Men starts emanating from my lower back, and if I look horrified, Imogen Davies looks completely gobsmacked. I make a pained face and mutter something about having to change that ring-tone and then I back the hell out of there.

On the phone, it’s my wife.

“Where are you?” She sounds sleepy. “It’s 2am.”

“Downtown, honey. Playing the hero.”

“Are you OK? Are you safe?” These questions are rehearsed. I think the fear wore away long ago. I think she’s forgotten I’m risking my life out here. I guess that’s what I get for being too good at my job.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. A bank went on a rampage, nothing major.”

“Oh.” She’s vaguely interested and I can hear her switch on the TV and mute the sound.

“It should be on NBN.”

“They have a helicopter view . . . and an interview with Nightwind.”

“That fucking. . . .”

I want to crush the phone, but the Enercom people were surprisingly firm when they had to replace the last one. It occurs to me I should get them to change the ring-tone.

“Are you coming home soon?”

“It’s my job, honey –”

“Your job doesn’t pay the bills, Joey,” Elisabeth says.

I shut my mouth and grind out my annoyance on my teeth.

“I’ll be home soon,” I hear myself eventually say. “Go back to bed, Beth.”

NBN and the radio reporters have gone by the time I tuck the phone away and turn at the sound of the White Nine van arriving. “Van” isn’t really the word. If the armour was just on the outside you would call it a tank, though it is that and so much, much more. Along with a crack squad of five SWAT officers, the enormous six-wheeled van disgorges several technicians in coveralls and an honest-to-God scientist in a white coat. She’s about sixty and appears to have a goatee so I’m not that interested, though I do drift close enough to where Vulcana is watching them strap Earth-boy down to his stretcher, an awkward metal thing that will slot into a cabinet within the van’s insides.

“Is he still out?”

“Yeah, you zapped him good and proper.” Vulcana turns and acknowledges me with something akin to a smile.

“Well, you know, just wanted to make sure he was down for the count.”

“I think I had it handled,” she shrugs.

“Hmmm, where’s Chamber?”

“Where does he ever go?” Vulcana asks. “I don’t think we ever really settled that one.”

“It was creepy, being absorbed into his chest like that. I was never comfortable with it.”

As I say it, I know it seems like a moment’s true confession and I guess it is. I sense rather than watch Vulcana regarding me for a long moment.

“Me too,” she says slowly. “Still, we had to get around.”

“I guess,” I reply, thinking about our many trips shrinking down into the N-space void that filled Chamber’s torso and reputedly fuelled his powered armour. I shiver. How the fuck did we survive that and why were we so calm about it at the time? I blame the inevitable nihilism that accompanies any fin de siecle.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She starts crouching to do her “spring into the sky” trick and I hold out a hand.

“Wait, what do you mean, tomorrow?”

“The mayor’s thing,” she replies.

“Oh, that Eros Foundation . . . uh . . . thing?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of a get-together of the old gang. I’ll see you there, OK?”

I’m still grappling with this concept when Vulcana does her trick and flings herself into the night with the vague noise of a tyre being depressed. I’m left surrounded by the technicians for the prison van and cops and a few late-night spectators and TV crews filming the scene for additional footage “just in case” before they go back to their soy frappuccinos and file their reports. There doesn’t seem to be anything else for me to do except I don’t really want to go home.

Although I didn’t see him standing there, Nightwind appears out of the shadows, but I still refuse to believe it is due to any “ability” he might possess. I secretly imagine luring him to a rooftop and teaching him to fly. He’s grinning as he comes across the buckled street to me. The smug cut of his mouth is all I can see.

“How do you think they’re gonna get rid of this building? It’s kinda in the way, don’t you think?”

“Man, I could care less. . . .”

“Do you wanna get a drink? I hear Chloe Severigny’s at De Lux.”

“It’s Sevigny, man. And no I don’t wanna. Sheesh. If maybe I needed a fucking blowjob then I would go to De Lux to see Chloe Sevigny thanks very much, Ass-wind.”

“Wow, you’re such a jerk, it actually hurts,” the other guy responds.

“You want a slugfest, motherfucker?”

“A slugfest? What the hell does that mean?”

“In the comic books, that’s when two dudes go at it and wreck a few city blocks,” I snap.

“Christ, you’re wasted.”

Nightwind then has the gall to turn his back on me and walk off. There’s a few too many cops around for me to do something stupid so I turn away as well. I’m just thinking about my reply, but after a few moments, Nightwind is nowhere to be seen.

“This is such a pile of balls. I’m going home.”

I take to the air.

 

EXCEPT I DON’T go home. God knows, I know I should. My internal pedant, who I have pretty much strangled to fucking fuck my whole life, is waggling the stumps of his fingers about my appointments in the morning, the thought of re-uniting with the Southside Sentinels making my asshole completely tighten up, not to mention knowing I’m now past that time where I can actually get a full night’s sleep anyway. It sucks, and the whole aftermath of the Terraformer thing is bumming me out and I don’t have any drugs that I can actually metabolise. I fly aimlessly over the city until I realise my unconscious has been nudging me towards the islands.

I’m hovering over Twilight’s pad. The tennis court and the twin swimming pools forming the yin-yang symbol are still lit up even though it’s now well after two. I think Twilight normally likes guests to alight at the helipad, but for some reason it’s not illuminated, so I descend among the spruce trees lining the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea.

There’s a guy in a charcoal suit holding an Uzi and I crackle loudly, tracers of light running over my body as a courtesy to let him know I’m there. He recovers pretty admirably from being spooked and I recover from being spooked when three more guys with laser sights on their various weapons emerge from the bushes nearby.

“You’re Zepha?”

They’re all Italian Americans, heavyset but well-built, their suits Armani or Louis Vuitton, cut-down versions of Twilight himself. Keeping it in the family, I guess. You can’t really accuse the Mob of nepotism. That’s the nature of the beast. These aren’t Sicilians though, small, dark and murderous. Twilight told me where the family came from, but I’m never able to remember. They’re northerners, anyway. I can only wave a hand as the sentries appear.

“Is the big guy around?”

The one who spoke before shakes his Rolex from under his cuff and then looks at me.

“It’s half-past two in the morning.”

“Uh, so?”

“He’s in the sanctum.”

“OK.”

I stand there a moment more feeling stupid, which is weird since if I was invading some villain’s base I fancy I’d wipe the floor with these guys. Reminding myself of this, I clear my throat to avoid an imminent falsetto and ask them to tell Twilight that I’m here. Reluctantly, one of the younger guards peels off from the others to do as asked.

The remaining trio escort me to the edge of the pool. There are a few deck chairs around, which seems odd given the cold night. There’s nothing as tardy as wet towels or empty glasses to suggest the area’s been recently used, nevertheless I get that sense. The water is heated, steam curling off it like a giant mug of warm milk. The goons don’t waste the effort trying to make conversation and I don’t bother either. Mafia and heroes don’t normally mix. Or not normally, anyway.

“Zephyr.”

Twilight mostly has the diction of a well-educated New Englander and if you didn’t know his background, you at least wouldn’t guess he was Italian mafia through and through. He looks more like a Greek god, which is to say he looks like the Anglo idea of such a god, something over six-and-a-half feet tall with a lantern jaw, dark blue eyes and impeccably groomed blonde hair tending ashen. He is possibly the best-looking man I’ve ever seen in my life and I don’t mean that in a queer way. Lift your head above your belt-line (or while you’re down there, make yourself useful). Twilight is the best of us, that’s all. As a hero, he is perhaps the best. As for the rest of it, especially the mafia thing, it all gets a little murky. Oh, and let’s not mention the consorting with demons part.

He appears at the other end of the pool wearing a Chanel robe unbelted over his work costume, a dark grey bodysuit that imperceptibly turns black in the upper body, going into a high collar like a Star Trek uniform or something. Normally there are gloves, but these are removed, though the face mask, larger than the simple domino I wear, remains in place. He’s well turned out as always, though I have a sense one or two hairs are out of place. The man’s sheer physical presence conceals any signs of wear or tear or the lateness of the hour. In the body and shoulders he is enormous, possibly even deformed. I have to turn away after a moment because I feel like a midget or something compared to him. I’m in awe. It’s embarrassing and gay.

“Hey, I thought I’d see you at Mechano’s tonight, or Halogen.”

“Is that where you were?”

He strolls down the edge of the pool and crouches to dip his fingers in the warm water before running them through his hair. Then we shake hands, mine with his other one and he grins, teeth practically sparkling.

“It’s late, I’m sorry,” says I.

Twilight keeps grinning though he turns and gestures for me to walk with him. There’s no fence around his pool. Across a hundred yards of immaculate lawn the French doors at the rear of his enormous house are open and light spills from them suggesting warmth in the form of a large snifter of brandy if not a log fire. I note the path that wends away to the right, splitting off from the way back to the house and ending at a cold, grey-looking stone building, octagonal perhaps, and with a domed roof. Twilight’s sanctorum. He steers me towards the house with a hand on my elbow.

“I’m Twilight,” he says gently. “You know my time is the night.”

I realise he’s making a joke. “My time is the night” is the phrase his action figure repeats if you press the button in the middle of his back. At that moment I can’t remember mine, but I remember the PA’s face when I suggested: “How do you like your ass? Deep fried or crispy?” After regaining her composure she politely suggested mothers might not be so cool with their kids repeating that line.

Mothers! Reminds me I need to ring mine. Both of ‘em.

Oh I remember. In the end my figurine phrase was “Electric, baby,” I swear, in what sounds like Austin Powers’ voice. I think it may have been a cost-cutting exercise.

I mutter something conciliatory to Twilight and thank him again for seeing me. You would never guess we were friends. I’m stammering something about how dead it was at Halogen, repressed feelings of walking to school with my neighbour’s dad coming back to me I guess because of mine and Twilight’s height difference, and I vaguely wonder if this is what most women feel, always having to look up. If I had had a father of my own perhaps I would be better prepared or might feel otherwise. The emasculation doesn’t grow on me.

“Zephyr, what’s going on?” Twilight asks. “This isn’t like you.”

We pass indoors. The back room has a library, a rosewood grand piano, a drinks cabinet, a big slab of woodwork that conceals a widescreen TV though it is open now and gently playing a football game, Lions versus Jets. I always went for the Jets because that was Flash Gordon’s team. Pity they’re losing. Maybe they need another Flash, though they test pretty hard for supers these days.

“I’m just . . . I don’t know. I’m a little down.” I shrug and try not to bob my head or do that Joe Pesci voice I always have to resist around Twilight, like I’m trying to get myself into trouble with the Cosa Nostra or something.

Twilight moves to the cabinet, dwarfing it, and nods for me to go on. I’m suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation and once he hands me the expected snifter, I tip it up gratefully and indicate towards the outside bunker.

“Forget about me, anyway. Me and my mortal concerns. What’s been shaking, Twilight?”

“Oh, it’s been very quiet. . . .”

“It must’ve been. No adventures. . . ?”

“Actually no, just some . . . personal research.”

“And uh, how are the family? You know, the Family, these days?”

“I think my uncle and I have finally come to an agreement,” Twilight smiles. “You leave me alone and I won’t interrupt your sordid little drug deals by summoning Dimensional Shamblers.”

I laugh, though I have no idea of what a Dimensional Shambler is. I can only gather it is some mystical kook of the sort Twilight is usually mixed up with. Despite the heroic stature, he’s more Dr Strange than Superman, as I sometimes like to put it. I did ask him once that, if he was a sorcerer, why he had superhuman strength, could fly and reflect bullets off his bare skin. His answer was a good one.

“Because I’m a sorcerer . . . and because I can.”

I reflect on this as we sit down to drink. The brandy is warm, but that’s about all it does for me. I gather we’re not quite the same, Twilight and I. He has that satisfied look on his face I’ve only seen on housewives trying to wean off chocolate and enjoying their failure.

“So what has been happening?” I ask.

“No,” Twilight replies. “Tell me about you.”

And he waves a hand and possibly says something, a spell or an oath or something, and then I’m spilling my guts like Woody Allen, telling him things I didn’t even realise I was thinking, about how I don’t think I can balance my life and my secrets any more, that I feel trapped inside my own body, that my wife seems to want me dead and home feels like a jail and that even though I would never want to take back the fateful day I was struck by lightning climbing the wind farm fan, I hope to dear God my daughter Tessa has the chance for an ordinary life.

“It’s just such a pressure,” I hear myself whine, vaguely aware the spell’s effects are winding down. “I’ve had my powers twenty years next March and I sometimes feel like there’s two of me, and I almost wish there was, it would be so much simpler, and so much kinder to my family.”

Twilight sits back with his fingers steepled. I lean and wipe sweat from the back of my neck and exhale heavily.

“Whew, what the fuck was that?”

“Just a little trick I’ve been learning, Togamon’s Tantric Expression. It normally only works on fairly simple minds, but I guess my magic is more powerful here in my home.”

He smiles that elusive charismatic smile of his that convinces me to take no offence, though there’s genuine chagrin there that he just slugged me with a mickey without even asking. Unless his family ties have done their research, he doesn’t know my secret identity or too much about my private life. We’re friends, yeah, but we’re not exactly swapping spit.

“I might have an answer for you,” he says eventually. “If you aren’t put off by the solution being . . . esoteric? Leave it with me. I have to think, and consult my books.”

I stand up because it might not sound like a dismissal, but I am at once strangely keen to get out of there. In fact, I’m not quite sure why I’ve come. Perhaps it’s the magic in the air or maybe just a little belated common sense. Beyond the French doors a red laser sight sweeps over the hedgerows in the garden.

“Are you coming to this thing tomorrow?” I ask, shielding my eyes against light that seems too bright.

“The mayor’s reception? No. They don’t like people like me at City Hall.”

“That’s a shame, dude.”

“Not really, as I think you’ll find out.”

“Hmmm,” I nod. “OK.”

“Just remember, Zephyr: I’m an anti-hero, OK?”

“Sure, Twilight. Sure. Why are you telling me this?”

I’m frowning at him and he seems to be doing the same to himself.

“I’m not sure. Just . . . go home to your wife.”

I nod and move out into the garden, and thence to home.

Zephyr 1.4 “Spilling My Guts” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

WITH MY FAVOURITE ex-teammate having pipped me in the hostage-rescuing stakes, I figure that leaves me with the madman. I yell again, wordlessly this time, since he seemed pretty on top of his game when last I made a noise and this should make him come again. And I’m not wrong. Office dividers fly out of the path of a wall of dirt and boxes of photocopy paper and busted underground cables and suddenly second-hand computers. It’s all I can do to jet out of the way as the mini-avalanche slams past.

In the vague hope I might be able to track my prey, I jog through the third floor of the bank in the wake of the debris, pebbles and grit leaving a path across the carpet like the skid mark of the world’s biggest itchy-assed dog. Then I’m at the row of back windows, saw-toothed with glass now, looking out the back of the building like I am in a slow-moving car, sienna’d automobiles trampled in the bank’s wake.

There’s a bunch of cops on the street corner so I jump down from the building and land in a pose in front of them. The policeman I’d seen before, Benjamin De Freitas, comes out of the crowd. I probably know a few hundred cops in the city by now, not that I actually remember all their names or anything, but they remember me and feel like the feeling’s mutual. It’s a good thing. I used to call cops “pigs” and a bunch of other names I’ve recently forgotten, but now I kinda feel like one of them, and I like to entertain the fantasy that that feeling’s mutual. They go out with nothing but their badge and gun (oh and flak jackets, tear gas, pepper spray, those neat batons, yadda yadda yadda) and I have the power of six million light bulbs or whatever the fuck it is. Still.

I don’t know what I was trying to say. Kinda drifted off there.

At least they get paid, which is what my wife says.

“Zephyr, what’s the deal?” De Freitas asks (don’t ask me how an Afro-American winds up with a Dutch name, but that would be because it’s Portuguese, so go figure), removing his cap and wiping dust from his forehead.

“I think my colleague’s freed the bank manager –”

“What the fuck was the bank manager doing in there? It’s past midnight.”

“Well I’m just about to go back onto the roof and rescue his secretary, so maybe you’ll get to ask your questions from someone who knows what’s going on, officer. All I know is there’s a person inside with earth-controlling powers. That’s how come your bank’s suddenly sprung legs and decided to go on a little holiday.”

De Freitas nods grimly like that sort of explanation is a walk in the park for him, though he is a beat cop in the world’s biggest city, so perhaps it really is no surprise. He motions weakly across the street, drawing my attention to the first camera crew setting up for a shot. I notice Imogen Davies frantically brushing her hair and hurrying through her voice warm-up.

“You got time to explain that to them, Zeph?”

“I think I have to stop the bad guy first, right?” I don’t let him know I’m sorely tempted. The delectable Miss Davies is the new kid on NBN’s graveyard shift and we haven’t yet had the acquaintance.

“Well, it’s not like it’s in your contract.”

Me and the cops share a nice long laugh and I pat De Freitas on the shoulder and he stops laughing and looks vaguely disturbed, though the others don’t seem to notice a thing wrong.

“Let me get back to you on this one.”

I turn around and Nightwind is coming down the rubble-strewn street with the bank manager in tow.

“What are you doing with him?”

“Hello?” the cloaked kid replies irritatingly. “Rescuing him?”

“I saw Vulcana carry him out of there. . . .”

“Yeah and she asked me to escort him to safety. Big deal, right?”

I’m just shaking my head as Nightwind actually says, “Oh goody, cameras,” and moves off in the cute reporter’s direction adjusting his cloak and cowl.

“Bastard.”

I almost break the sound barrier on my way back to the bank roof. Sure enough, Mr Severin’s mousy secretary is crouched up near the air-conditioning, the so-called ground all around her crumbling with the disturbance to the building. Hovering, I offer her a hand, and then I float back down to deposit the lady beside her employer, who already has a paramedic fitting him out for a blanket and hot chocolate.

“Save some for me, alright?”

I wink at the cute young blonde medic and she gets all red faced, which you’ve gotta admit is kind of adorable. Very much a Minnesota farm girl, which is right up there on my top ten. Then I shoot back around the front of the building.

Yes I have a top ten.

The bank’s marching inexorably on. Vulcana watches the front while walking steadily backwards keeping pace with it.

“What do you think?” I shout from overhead.

She glances up and shrugs, “Second floor, somewhere near the front.”

“OK. Let me have a try.”

There’s not much left in the way of actual windows any more. I crouch and then fly in through one of the sagging frames and almost straight away spot the dude standing with his legs wide apart and his hands waving megalomaniacally, as these fucking guys tend to do. He doesn’t have the decency to wear an actual costume. Instead, he wears these god-awful brown slacks, a Brooks Brothers t-shirt and a wrestling mask.

“Dude, give it up,” I say loud and clear.

Earth-boy snaps his head in my direction. He’s solidly built tending to heavy, though he’s probably not as tall as me, which is a nice change. I’m a respectable five-eleven – a figure frequently eclipsed in the superhero world.

“Man, go away, alright?”

“Go away?” I make a show of clearing my ears and walk a few steps closer. As I drop my right hand, it fills with a nimbus of blue-white power.

The tough guy’s stance reminds me of the captain on the deck of a ship and I almost laugh. Earth-boy drops his chin and repeats himself.

“Yes, go away.”

I actually am about to laugh when the whole world turns brown. Like a flushed turd, forces beyond my control vacate me from the building, and like, to continue the metaphor, down through the bowels of the bank I go, slamming and smashing through walls, floor and furniture beneath a gigantic tidal wave of torn up city street, until suddenly I hit something hard enough it doesn’t want to give way. I’m crucified, bent backwards over the solid metal arch of the bank vault, and the crushing earth washes over and off me. Battered but not bruised, I drop from the top of the recently exposed vault and onto what remains of the bank floor. There are massive gaps in the stone and wooden supports, the churning earth passing by beneath me. Whatever clever architecture once kept the vault concealed from prying eyes has now been reduced to so much kindling. The enormous circular door as well as its stainless steel chamber sit like an uncomfortable passenger in the bank’s ship’s hold.

Vulcana tumbles in thanks to her unusual body chemistry, unharmed after flinging herself curled in a ball through the bank’s oncoming doors and doing the human pinball thing. She springs up straight and clasps me on the upper arm.

“Are you alright?”

“Oh, now you give a shit?”

“Jesus, give it a rest, Zeph. I just saw you swallow a ton of dirt.”

“I’m not a kid in a swimming pool, Connie.”

“Don’t call me by my fucking name, Zephyr!”

“Sorry,” I mince. “Old habits die hard. I haven’t seen you for . . . ages.”

“I’ve been away,” she concedes.

Exhausted of speech, we turn and regard the vault.

“Do you think this is what he wants?” she asks.

“Well, I don’t know,” I admit. “Why else do you hijack a bank?”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Not a lot.”

She turns away. “Calls himself the Terraformer.”

“Terraformer?” I don’t get it and she’s not about to explain.

“Maybe we can get him to leave the bank behind and just take the vault?”

“He needs the bank,” I reply with rare insight. “Vault’s metal. He’s an earth-controller. . . ?” I shrug.

“Seems reasonable.” Vulcana nods. “OK, plan B: we kick his ass.”

I can’t help but grin and it almost feels like old times when Connie turns to me and holds out her arm like a lady and asks, “Fancy giving me a lift?”

 

WE DON’T EXACTLY catch the Terraformer napping, but he’s distracted by flashes of light out the front of the bank.

At first I think the cops have called in the National Guard or something and a whole platoon is taking pot-shots at the bank – and then I hear the harsh, amplified, mechanised voice that really takes me back to the old days.

“Stop the bank and come out with your hands up!”

“Jesus, it’s Chamber,” Vulcana says, voicing my thoughts precisely.

“Jeez, this really is getting like This Is Your Life or something.”

The flashes of light are actually streams of densified laser coming from the rotating cannons on Chamber’s forearms. I get a glimpse of the bulky former Sentinel hovering out the front of the bank, his torso that big characteristic metal box thing with the panel in the front, and that’s all I have time for. Vulcana whispers in my ear for a “slingshot” and I sort of have to comply. It would be rude, otherwise, and sort of ruin the moment, so grasping her opposite wrists and spinning around several times extremely fast, I hurl her at the distracted villain.

For a woman made of rubber, she hits him pretty hard. The moment the guy goes down, Vulcana starts pummelling him with her big blue fists. He’s gasping and shrieking and the bank grinds to a treacherous stop, the back catching up to the front in the worst way possible, the whole thing pitching forward on its axis, collapse imminent. Although I am mildly worried about being buried alive, I’m not going to miss my shot to unload on our shit-eating villain, especially since Vulcana and I always had this neat understanding that, being rubber, she was mostly immune to my electrical powers. So I jog up and grab one of the Terraformer’s flailing joggers and cram a few volts up his ass.

“Jesus, I think you broke him,” Vulcana says, standing as smoke comes gently off her, or maybe from him.

I don’t say anything, though the idea of tyres burning springs to mind. I don’t think she has any sense of smell in her rubber form so I guess I can relax as long as the smoke dissipates. I look down at the guy on the ground, and mostly out of irritation, lean down and snatch off his mask. Of course I don’t recognise the lightly-bearded blonde guy unconscious at my feet. He could be anyone, as long as you would use the word “ratty” – a friend, a work colleague, an actor on TV, some guy at college, some twink on the Internet.

There is a sizzling noise and the brick wall in front of us basically vanishes. Chamber hovers slowly in and comes to a rest.

“Zephyr. Vulcana.”

“Long time no see, Chambermaid. How’s it hanging?”

“Um, fine?”

I laugh and wait for the wisecracks, but none come. The familiar mechanised voice of the man inside the powered suit clears its throat and then says, “I think this building is probably going to collapse. You should consider coming out.” Then he leans down and picks up the unconscious Terraformer in his arms and retreats from the building.

“Is he allowed to do that?”

“It does seem like a . . . lapse in etiquette,” Vulcana concedes.

It’s not like we’re going to do anything about it. There are cameras outside and the world is watching. Vulcana and I make a few adjustments to out costumes and she fusses with what’s left of her hair.

“I liked it short,” I smile. “You remember when you had that bob? It was sexy.”

“Jesus, Zephyr,” she smiles tiredly, just a trace of genuine irritation. “When haven’t I had a fucking bob?”

Holding hands like in days of yore, we jump from the second floor and into the camera lights.

Zephyr 1.3 “Days Of Yore” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

THE SKY IS a grey curtain like a cataract across the stars. Thanks to me. Free-floating eight-hundred storeys above the tarmac chaos below, there’s nothing like it for fleeing your troubles – and I should know. The heavens are a frequent refuge of mine, even if the irony stinks. I can’t get any closer to heaven than the rest of you.

The cityscape is like a science fiction artist’s wet dream, at least by the light of the three-quarter moon. Superheroes have sure left their mark on this city and given the government more than a few excuses to redecorate, but the botched Kirlian Invasion of ’84 destroyed so much of New York’s infrastructure, the city as it was known could never be the same again. With the millions already quarantined and evacuated for fear of contact with our aggressive spectral invaders, a major, once-in-a-century rebuilding effort seemed so logical even Congress couldn’t say no. Atlantic City – the world’s great megalopolis and magnetic north for every costumed loony in creation – was born.

The architects wanted to include Manhattan instead of leaving it in ruins, the tunnels choked with the dead unable to get through the gridlock on that fateful first day when the skies rained an army of living light beams clad in powered armour. The president himself convinced the architects to make their mark on destiny regardless, gathering a team of designers with a budget never seen before in the history of modern development. Legend also has it an inner cabal of architects, in the face of such a vast rebuild, watched Fritz Lang’s Metropolis no less than twenty times.

The suburb I grew up in as a child still exists. So do bits and pieces of the old cities here and there. In the Bronx, there’s The Bubble: a twelve-block radius of rundown tenements and historic brownstones preserved by the superhero Infinity at the moment of his death. People can enter and leave the force-field protected museum piece. Infinity was one of Captain Atom’s successors from the 70s New Breed team. It was just light he was trying to keep out, given that’s what the Kirlians were made from. Hence the dome looks like a giant black half-marble, especially on a night like this; and I’m just close enough to be able to make it out, dopplered in architecture with the new Planetarium, the needle of the Silver Tower begging for my attention close by.

The mayor of this vast domain is Roland Pykes. Good old gutless Roland, or at least his PA Alison Kirkness, knows how to irritate me better than almost anyone, and that includes Phantasmagor, Crescendo, Think-Tank and the Ill Centurion combined. You’d think I’d get used to it, being a hero on call, but that’s not really one of my virtues.

If I was able to answer my new Blackberry as quickly as my old phone, I wouldn’t have half the problem I do, but the damned thing comes with It’s Raining Men as the ring-tone and I haven’t figured out how to change it yet. I’d get Tessa to do it for me, my darling technopath – that’s a joke, she’s normal, I hope for her sake – except the whole secret identity thing would be kind of hard to explain while she’s fiddling with Zephyr’s red lightning bolt-emblazoned cell phone. Kind of a giveaway.

The phone is sponsored by Enercom and slips into the back of my hidden belt compartment, nestled there right along with a brace of condoms, an emergency cigarette, a phial of special painkillers and usually the idea is to have a $100 bill except I spent mine when Tess needed money for the school excursion I’d forgotten to pay last week.

“Mr Pykes,” I respond in my best gravelled voice.

The reception is good even with all the turbulence I’ve created, shunting air molecules around, creating a narrow storm-front.

“Hi Zephyr, this is Alison Kirkness here.”

“You’re up late, Ali.”

“Still getting things together for this ceremony tomorrow morning.” The reply is as taut as those long legs of hers. “Mayor Pykes asked me to give you a ring and, uh, you know, just make sure we’re all on the same page still?”

“Ceremony?”

I run through a mental catalogue – the closest thing I have for a diary. Elisabeth is in the downtown office, Tessa has school by quarter-to-nine, I promised to clean cat puke (not ours) out of my wife’s car. No ceremonies leap to mind and I am paranoid enough to believe the mayor’s office could be messing with my brain. I spent a month once convinced I was a sexual abuse survivor named Valerie (thanks Mentor), so I’ve learnt to keep a sceptical view of reality.

“The Hermes Foundation ceremony?” Miss Kirkness prompts.

“Hermes Foundation? The porn guys?”

“That’s the Eros Foundation, I think you’ll find.”

“Look, I’m sorry Ali,” I reply and only just manage to mean it, “but I don’t remember any mention of a ceremony.”

“Well it’s not like you have a regular mailing address we can send you the invitation. We have to rely on your memory instead.”

“Sounds like that’s a pain for you,” I mutter.

No reply.

“Well, sorry to keep you in a job, Miss Kirkness. Just tell me the when and where and I’ll make it.”

“The civic centre at ten,” she says, tired and doubtful.

“OK.”

“OK.”

She hangs up.

I’m floating in a foggy cloudbank. With my eyes closed, I put away the cell by touch alone, enjoying the sensation of wet static as it rolls across me with the air. It doesn’t matter about the leather all but insulating my physical shell. The extra senses tied in to my special abilities are alive and well, tickled, in a metaphysical sense at least, by the surrounding saturation.

“Just a little more. . . .”

I flex my fists. KABOOM – and thunder rolls away to either side. I give a chuckle, knowing the city dwellers will be turning in their beds or glancing out windows at the unexpected weather. More than a few will blame me. The bin men always like a good rain so I lay it on for them. Soon the shower is falling away from me, the impression like hundreds of thousands of tiny parachutists going past, falling to their doom. My face and hair are slick. So is the leather. I’m tired still, on some level, but the effort to keep myself aloft is minimal and the clouds shield me from the city, and some kind of haven is what I find myself craving right now.

I should be home, asleep, perhaps even making love to my wife. Possibly both. Tess is asleep in the flat’s second bedroom, the soft whine of her laptop always a strangely reassuring sound in the dark.

I conduct the storm like it was an orchestra, flinging my hands wildly and grinning, hair just long enough to be in my eyes when it’s not standing characteristically upright. A peal of thunder rings like the bells of hell and then a stroke of lightning shudders through the night, my very own electric violin quartet.

Eventually the music stops. Fades. The clouds are dissipating under their own will, depleted, drifting back towards the Atlantic.

Somewhere in the city, it sounds like a building turns over in its sleep – like an uncanny echo of the thunder from before. I am dropping altitude on instinct and pretty soon I pass below the dispersing cover and see a mushroom cloud of brown dust emanating from halfway across downtown.

Without really thinking about it, suddenly I am down and swooping across the city, a black shadow flitting between the taller skyscrapers. Lights are still on. The dust is roiling down the street and now car alarms and others are going off. It’s just after midnight and by rights I should still be at Halogen or maybe partying on at De Lux. I said I would meet Robert Downey there, I suddenly remember.

It seems like now I have an excuse.

 

WHAT I SEE is a building walking towards me.

It’s the Federal National Bank, Jane Street branch, where I have banked a dozen times or so while in the neighbourhood they call Eisenhower these days. It’s a five-storey brownstone full to the brim with offices, just a handful of lights somehow still on, while down below pairs of gigantic earthy legs propel the building ponderously forward.

I don’t know whether to call them legs or tentacles, but clearly this is nothing alive, or not alive in any real sense because I can see churned-up bricks and slabs of concrete and electrical wiring and broken macadam and random assortments of trash swirling through the huge vats of moving earth supporting the building as it lists wonkily from side to side as it comes down the street. There’s a crater somewhere in the background where the bank used to sit and now for some reason it’s going walkies.

For a few seconds I just watch. There’s nothing like gathering your thoughts and not getting too stupid with adrenalin. A moment’s foresight is like a thousand hours of hindsight, my old tutor Hawkwind used to say, often before beating the crap out of me. As I’m watching the building lurch down the street – it’s going pretty slowly and the noises it’s making aren’t pretty – the first cop car slides to an awkward halt throwing parti-coloured light over everything. The strobe reflects off something in one of the upper floor windows and I glimpse the figure of a man before he darts away from the glass.

The vibrations and structural damage to the bank alone are creating a nightmare. Pieces of masonry and drainpipes and marble cladding are falling from the upper levels like chunky rain, and all at once, most the windows in the place shatter outwards, glass sparkling like a waterfall of sharpness as it comes down and is crunched beneath the myriad stamping stumps moving the bank ever along.

More movement catches my eye. The woman is blue and wears a black leotard and a black ponytail juts from the back of her head without moving in the least. She comes from some height, probably off one of the neighbouring roof-tops, and there’s a moment of inertia when she hits the ground, landing in a crouch, before her own particular physical properties kick in and she is propelled up, powerfully forward into the air and through a second-floor window.

Her name is Vulcana and I still owe her thirty bucks.

I see her again about ten seconds later when she flies backwards through one of the last windows with glass still in it, so yeah, in a sense, uh, somewhat rectifying that situation, and since I was just about to go upstairs for a look-see anyway, up I zoom and catch the ungrateful bitch in my arms.

“Zephyr,” she grunts.

It’s not a question.

“Hey, ‘Cana, long time no see.”

“I asked you to never call me that.”

“Split infinitives,” I tut.

At her hiss I add, “Sorry.”

“Fuck,” she aspirates prettily. “This city’s got too many heroes.”

I deposit her on the roof of a six-storey law firm down the street from the oncoming building. A few more police cruisers arrive, one of them managing to clip another as they haphazardly park. Cops scurry across the road like worker ants, shotguns and flak jackets and 9mm pea-shooters poised. One of them, a cop I recognise, glances up in the direction we’ve gone as Vulcana irritably shakes herself free.

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? I’m fighting –”

“I heard there was a wrap party for the new Meg Ryan film on 43rd.”

“Baby, Meg Ryan hasn’t made a film for –”

I catch myself on and stare miserably at the back of Vulcana’s blue head. I’m not game to tell her that her vulcanised ponytail has snapped off until she reaches back a hand and swears.

“Not again. Jesus!”

“Short hair suits you.”

After a moment to let her grieve, I ask, “So what have we got in there?”

Another figure lands on the rooftop and immediately chimes in, “That’s just what I was gonna ask.”

I look over sans friendliness as Nightwind walks matter-of-factly across the building’s roof with a goofy smile on his otherwise grimly-masked face. I can’t help registering my animosity and it’s annoying to see Vulcana nod tiredly, but without any resistance to the imposter.

“What are you doing here?” I snap.

“Isn’t that what she was just asking you?” Nightwind sneers. I can’t help being surprised and he reminds me, “Super hearing, remember?”

“Super hearing my ass,” I respond. “Dude, you are a fucking loser. Could you please stand aside so the real crime-fighters can deal with this?”

“Zephyr, what’s your problem? Do you always have to be so damned uppity?” Vulcana snaps.

“Hey, let’s leave the ancient history out of this, OK? At least we have a history. This guy’s a fucking nobody.”

“Hey,” Vulcana says, her blue face dark in the night. “I’ve seen him on news reports like anyone else.”

“He’s never done anything!”

It’s hard not to explode. This is a long-running frustration for me and only made worse by the fact I seem to be the only one onto Nightwind’s ruse. He has a cloak with some kind of thermal fan under it that lets him glide. His inventor dad or the uncle who molested him as a child probably built it to keep him quiet. That and a few more gizmos are all his tricks, and I’ve never seen him once actually stop a crime. The best he can do is glide down to the footpath when the TV cameras turn up.

“Chill, dude,” Nightwind says.

He reminds me so much of the smug handsome guys who were going off to college when I was repeating night school in the early years of my career as a fuckwad four-colour masturbation fantasy that I almost punch his head in right then and there. At least he has the brains to back right the fuck off as Vulcana puts her hand on my arm. Thankfully for Nightwind, and unlike him, ‘Cana has the heightened strength to actually hold me in place – for a moment, at least.

“Just forget about it, OK?” She’s yelling into my face. “Like you said, there are bigger problems.”

My attention comes back just as the roof of the Federal Bank starts past us. I glance over the edge and see the police cars flattened and caked with mud and just generally fucked over.

 

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO I leap off the top of the current building and land on the roof of the bank. Although I can fly and shit, you’d think I would pretty quickly adjust to weird situations like the nausea-inducing way the bank roof seems to be rolling and buckling as the building advances down the street. But I don’t. Almost immediately I fall over, harmlessly of course, but it gives me a good chance to appreciate the view down the street, the lights of twenty-odd cop cars and an equal number of cabs blinking and flickering as their drivers desperately try to reverse them out of the log-jam they’ve created. It’s fortunate the bank is moving slow enough that no-one has been caught underneath, though that’s an assumption.

Fortunate for the guy within, anyway.

There are fissures appearing in the roof, but I’m not waiting for them to worsen. On the roof there’s a pillbox with a door I’m powerfully hurling open and then an emergency-lit concrete stairwell. I can’t quite work out how any lights are on, but then that’s not really my major concern. Instead, I smash my way down the stairs, half-running, half-flying. A woman appears, dishevelled, hair and blouse loose, spot-lit in the emergency lights like a mine cave-in survivor.

“What are you doing here?” I snarl.

She doesn’t say anything for a minute, eyeing me up and down like a frightened rabbit.

“You’re . . . you’re Zephyr?”

“You’d better hope so, huh?”

“The bank manager is still inside, Jonas Severin.”

“He’s doing this?”

The woman looks at me like I’m deranged, eyes flicking from me to the false lure of escape above.

“No, it’s some guy. I don’t even think he knew we were here.”

“And what were you doing here?”

“. . . working. . . .”

“Right.”

I manage to push past her without making any promises and the hallway beyond the door is like the inside of a giant waste-paper basket. I’m reminded of that Monty Python skit about offices as pirate ships. There’s not really any light now and it’s cold inside, enough that my breath steams. I hold out my hand and create a strobe every few seconds to see the way, though that’s pretty lazy since I can read the air pressure and use it like a kind of radar if I want (which, you know, most the time I don’t). I’m yelling out the bank manager’s name though I know it’s not the wisest course of action if I want any element of surprise. I’ve usually found saving people’s lives and sneaking up on the bad guy are mutually exclusive activities, more’s the pity.

The floor erupts in front of me. For almost three seconds I am in a hell made of equal parts earth and waste paper, with the odd filing cabinet thrown in. I imagine mob accountants have dreams like this. No horses’ heads, though. What appears to be a gigantic fist flails about in front of me, the hole in the floor just wide enough for its wrist.

“Gigantor? Is that you?”

For a moment I am choking with dread that it is Gigantor, even though I am pretty sure he’s still on ice out at White Nine. A moment later, I realise it’s not a human hand, however large, since like the legs outside it seem to be made from chunks of rubble and roiling masses of earth, and then I almost wish it was Gigantor, everyone’s favourite English-challenged villain. At the sound of my voice the fist becomes a hand and it turns towards me flattened out like an enormous radar dish.

At least it doesn’t turn into a massive ear. That would just be plain creepy.

I charge up as it comes down, enveloping me, and just as the thing suffocates me like a premature burial, I let loose, exploding in electrical fury, vaporising the thing like a moth on one of those electric bug zappers. It leaves me grinning and sick with the familiar sensation of momentarily being between heartbeats. And then my inner wellness pours into the space left behind by such a major discharge and I’m absorbing energy again from every movement, the lightest touch of the night breeze coming through the shattered windows across the jumble of office furniture, the friction of the leather costume on my joints, the very movement of the building itself.

I peer down into the hole in the ground and there’s another hole directly below it and then more office. I can hear a man’s voice, shrieking profoundly, a thousand times more likely to be our errant bank manager than the earth-controller – unless I have a total nutcase on my hands, which wouldn’t be the first time. I levitate down through the cavity just in time to see a dark shape flitting past me with the bank manager in her arms.

Vulcana.

Zephyr 1.2 “Going Walkies” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

FOR A MAN with the power of six-hundred thousand light bulbs or whatever the fuck the advert says, I am feeling kinda wrecked as I stumble up the steps at Halogen, fingers clawing into Red Monolith’s designer cloak as we make a show of laughing and clowning good-naturedly for the cameras. Actresses swirl around us like blowflies on a dead cow, minor grade, firm-bodied, their post-operative breasts stacked and racked as beautifully as the season’s evening wear can hope to provide for, and it isn’t like I am slapping them away. It’s times like these – which means yeah, pretty much every time I stumble into Halogen or the Flyaway or Silver Tower, or sneak in through the back at Transit or Aubergine – that I think about Elisabeth. Funny how someone you love so much can seem like such a nuisance. I blame it on my inner child, knowing she would as well.

Inside, Darkstorm is talking to Lady Macbeth and I wonder what the hell a villainess is doing in here and whether I should kick up a stink, but actually I’m craning my head above the crowd wondering if Twilight has made a show. I see Black Honey talking to Demi Moore and Tony Sabato Jr, and Eric Clapton goes past and high fives me and then immediately makes a face aghast like he mistook me for someone else. I quickly turn my shoulder on Black Honey, knowing if she’s here, then her other low-level pals won’t be far away.

I can’t see Twilight anywhere, though the club is pretty packed and my ears must be blocked or something because it seems like either the pounding music has rendered me instantly deaf or else I’m hearing something else beneath it, because the music and its accompanying vibrations seem somehow underneath us, and I brush past Lady Macbeth and she makes a face at me, bares her teeth, and I’m just about to power up and slug her one when Red Monolith appears, grabbing me by the wrist and pretty much ignoring the latent static charge he gets in return.

“Hey man,” Monolith grins in that stupid surfer voice of his. “Ease off the Lady, Zeph. Haven’t you heard? The Lady turned.”

I look at the tall blonde again, fairly graceful despite her age, and realise the snarling thing is her attempt at playing the coquette. She’s winking at me as I transfer my gaze with difficulty between her magnetic blue eyes and the dark sheen of Red Monolith’s visor.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Lady Macbeth leans in and does this weird wiggly dance and then starts talking like in the voice of a black woman, which again, maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake, I realise is totally a performance for my benefit.

“Ain’t you heard, Mr Zephyr? I’m turned.”

“Turned?”

“Apparently Think-Tank fucked up,” Monolith shrugs. “Get Lady to tell you about it.”

I wince because even under the seven-foot-tall hero’s red-and-black motorcycle helmet I can tell he’s making wildly suggestive motions with his eyebrows and nudging me too, and even if her brain molecules are still recovering from being re-organised by one of my old enemies, the Lady still gets the drift and gives a look of discomfort, finding someone she knows in the crowd and immediately disappearing. On reflex I turn to check out her ass and I have to concede she’s in pretty good shape. The split-leg black evening gown helps. She hails down Antonio Banderas like he’s a taxi or something, but the sneaky bastard turns and pretty quickly opens his arms for a hug. It’s not like she’s a mass murderer or anything, so I guess it’s fairly easy to forgive and forget. Especially for actors.

“Man, have you seen Twilight?”

“What’s that?” Red Monolith leans in and offers me the side of his head like I might speak right into his ear. Resisting the urge to pull off his helmet if not his head and throw it across the room, I calmly repeat myself more loudly.

“Oh no, I have no idea.”

“Okay.”

“Beer?”

“Stoli,” I reply.

I’m not going to the bar tonight after an incident the previous week that I can only remember in flashbacks. I also don’t have any money. I could flash fry an automatic teller or yank one of the damn things out of the fucking wall, but for some reason I have not. Yet. I’m one of the good guys. It’s a mantra for me. It’s worked so far. It also helps me not forget.

The press and push of the crowd is a little sickening. The air’s moist like we are in the presence of a giant fourth-dimensional armpit, though I know the smell, if I’m not imagining it, comes mostly from the carpeted floor. I’ve been here in the daytime – woken up in a corner, in fact – and it’s not one of the prettiest sights.

I retain the curious conviction that if I keep looking long enough I might find Twilight, so I move along under the awning beneath the DJ booth and nod hello to the guy from Ned and Stacy and one of the Ramones and a girl called Constance who I saved once from a burning tenement, which she has used ever since as her excuse to get into exclusive clubs like these. It is possible that after saving her, Constance gave me a blowjob, but since I was out of my skull on horse tranquilisers at the time I can’t really recall. She says hi, does a little wave. I pull my hard face, eyes far away as I shoulder past her like a man with an important engagement – like I have to return some videos or something.

 

RED MONOLITH FINDS me lurking like a sex offender beside the doors to the girls’ toilets. He passes me the cold bottle and I drink half the thing straight off, knowing there’s no way in hell my constitution will allow me to do something as unhelpful as get drunk. Tired as I am, thanks to a police station siege, an overturned fuel carrier, a weakened bridge in Old Brooklyn and two separate corner store hold-ups today, I can practically feel the little bubbles of sweet liquor pounced on by my hyper-charged enzymes and converted immediately into latent energy, incorporated into the living battery that is my endocrine system – “recruited to the cause,” as I sometimes think about it.

I don’t like to think about it that way, I just do.

I upend my bottle and when Monolith asks “Another?” I nod and he laughs, producing a second Stoli with a flourish from under his legionnaire’s cape.

“Oh so that’s why you wear that thing? Are you sure Calvin approves?”

“No, man. Come on Zephyr, you know I just wanna be like you.”

I take a quick glance to see if he’s joking and of course he is.

“Like me?” I motion obliquely. The leather bodysuit fits like the proverbial glove, a bright red zed like a lightning bolt in the middle of my chest descending to the buckle. “I gave up that spandex shit years ago.”

“I liked your old costume man, seriously,” Red Monolith says and I frown because now I think he’s being honest. Yet I know if I give in to it, the joke’ll still be on me somehow. I glance away and take in his helmeted head two or three times and wonder suddenly how the hell it is I am able to read his expression given his face is covered by a ballistic carbon shield.

“You know the Red Monolith and the old Zephyr, man, we were like colour co-ordinated,” he says.

“My costume was red and white,” I answer. “You’re red and black . . . and you’ve got those yellow panels.”

Monolith motions under his armpits. The actor who used to be known as Tom Cruise walks past holding hands with Richard Gere. A dreadlocked kid raises an eyebrow at us and I make a spark leap from my finger so that he goes away. Fucking drug dealers – never around when we need one, and pulling Uzis on us when we do. On a good day I might bust him. On a better day I’d find he was carrying something that might actually get me high.

“I’m thinking about gettin’ rid of the yellow panels, man,” Monolith says, bringing me back to the dingy reality of the club at its zenith.

“Really? Man, you should.” I try not to sound so earnest, but it comes out of me in a rush like I’ve spent every waking hour chewing nails over Red Monolith’s costume, so I give up completely, hoping he’ll read my reaction as irony as I add, “I’ve been wanting to say something for ages, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“Zephyr, man,” Monolith answers earnestly. “We’re friends, aren’t we? You saved me from Doctor Octopus, remember?”

“Doctor Octopus is a comic book character. I’ve told you that a hundred times. It was Doctor Nefarious, OK?”

“Nefarious, OK,” Monolith half-chants to himself. “Then why did he have those mechanical arms?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh, swear beneath my breath and look away.

Drew Barrymore and her girlfriend emerge from the toilets and I know they’re big fans so I hide as quick as I can, leaving Red Monolith’s bulk as a distraction. Then, sipping my Stoli, I scan the room again wondering if Twilight has arrived while Monolith was talking shit. There’s no sign, no trace. I flex my gloved fingers and a crackle of static emanates across the room, one in five girls feeling a gentle shock, nipples hardening, hair standing up on arms. Demi Moore looks my way and I shake my head, and Black Honey, her new costume or at least her outfit for the night made of shiny PVC instead of the usual black leather, glares at me like she could make something of it. We both know her heightened agility and acrobatics won’t mean shit the day I decide to cram thirty thousand volts of lightning up her rear end. I do the sparking eyes thing, which even I have to admit looks extra cool with the domino mask, and Honey looks quickly away. I notice David Hasselhoff and the moment he sees me he flinches like a beaten dog and scurries out of sight – as well he should.

The guy comes out of nowhere, all Clark Kent with his slicked black hair, lantern jaw and wire-frame glasses. He has the nerdy dress code too. I can’t imagine how he even got in here.

“Uh, Mr Zephyr?”

“I know it’s hard when you’re dealing with someone with one name, but it’s just Zephyr, kid,” and I throw off the hand he tries put on my arm.

“I’ve got to speak to you.”

I look over my shoulder and I can’t see Twilight anywhere and I’m thinking that if he’s stayed home, maybe he made the right call. I should be at home too, but if I was Twilight, with a sixteen-bedroom mansion on the bay, I’d definitely skip Halogen if there was something better on offer.

“I’m not buying, sorry.”

I turn my back on the kid and start away and I am totally unprepared for him to grab me by the shoulder and try to turn me around. I resist the urge to flash-fry his balls and whirl back, my practised badass look made supreme in the leather bodysuit, all the static in the air congealing in my hair which is already standing straight up.

“Get your fucking hands off me.”

“But, I . . . need to speak to a hero.”

The young guy’s face is kind of lame and he’s as embarrassed as I am, knowing he nearly said the line from that song. I gesture around.

“The club’s full of ‘em. Knock yourself out.”

And I know he’s going to tell me that there’s no-one like me, that Paragon and Stiletto and Black Honey and even Red Monolith can’t match the legendary Zephyr, and he’s right, but suddenly I just don’t want to be there unless I can be drunk, and I can’t be drunk because it’s years since I even tried, playing skal with two cases of mixers and pissing like a racehorse as a result. So I just walk. The kid follows. I’m calling him a kid because he’s so clean shaven, but I’m thirty-five and in superhero years that makes me his grandpa. And he can follow all he likes because the moment I hit the chain and Leonardo inclines his shiny black head at me and parts the rope, I do the crouch thing and disappear with a whoosh into the sky.

Zephyr 1.1 “Bright Red Zed” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose

Dear folks,

The chapters some of you have been enjoying of late come from Zephyr: Phase IV, which has been for sale for a number of months (see sidebar) and its sequel Phase V. I’m working on Phase VI at the moment as well as ideas for a few other books.

In the coming weeks I am going to start posting chapters from the start of the Zephyr saga, which means hitting the reset button and going back to Phase I. There’s a variety of reasons behind my decision, including wanting to go through those earlier books with a fine tooth comb and check for inconsistencies. It’s my personal view that with the more recent volumes, the series has become stronger and bigger than I imagined it would be, and I want to ensure Phase I (as the gateway to Zephyr’s world) is up to scratch.

If you’re disappointed with the decision, understand that all the chapters you have been reading (and much more) are available for purchase on my Amazon site http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Hately/e/B00C87J798/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1.

As always, happy to get your feedback direct. If you enjoy what you read, please please consider leaving a review on Amazon and spreading the love through word of mouth. Zephyr is not so wildly successful yet that I am guaranteed to continue into the future, so encouragement is appreciated.

W

Update 14-07-14 is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose