The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 15

By Aladdin

Edited by Christopher Leeson

The Wounded World

Originally written 2006

Posted November 21, 2019






CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Blackbird"

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

 
                                                        William Blake 

Evie and I hurried away from the magic shop. Around us, the strange play of lights across the sky was still making the shadows of the night pulse strangely. A little way from Mrs. Fisher's door, we paused, cloaked by the darkness of a moon shadow.  

The way I saw it, protecting Evie meant everything , but if I knew magic, Gus could psychically hone in on his family's location. He could arrive at any second and, unable to give ground for my daughter's sake, it would lock us into a power duel -- and that hadn't worked out so well for me before.  In the midst of my quandary, a van came from west to east -- a van that looked disconcertingly familiar.

It was Aladdin again!

As much as I wanted to avoid its agents, it wasn't a good idea. The Company, I knew, had come into Canoga Park to check on me. To give it credit, Aladdin protected its own.  In a crisis like this one, I had to think of what was best for Evie.

I sprang out of the darkness waving my arms. The vehicle skidded to a halt; a bald young black man leaned out the window. "What is it, lady?" Greg Tunney asked.

"You're from Aladdin, aren't you?" I inquired, pretending not to recognize him.

"From where?"

"Please! I know what the A-Team's van looks like," I explained, trying hard not to show agitation.

"A-Team? Do you mean that old TV series?" Wrath was stonewalling, like a good company man.

"Can the comedy, fella. We've never met, but we work for the same organization. Maybe you've heard the name 'Eden Blake'."

He frowned. "Eden Blake?! Well, if that doesn't.... We were heading for your house."

"Why?" I asked ingenuously.

He shrugged. "There was some kind of energy spike at this end of Canoga Park. I guess it was pretty unnatural. Colonel Smekes knew that you live around here and so gave you a call for an on-site report. When neither your land line nor your cell phone would pick up, he got worried.  We all know that Aladdin agents have been targeted by hostiles before.  He knew you'd made a lot of enemies in Europe. How did it feel when the surge hit?"

"Surge? I didn't feel even a tickle. But if something weird came down, it might explain what happened to my son Gus."

I hated bringing up Gus's name, but what choice did I have? The boy was running wild, something that Aladdin would find out soon enough. Then, once they knew the score, they'd be suspicious as to why I hadn't come clean from the start. 

"What do you mean? What happened to your boy?"

"All I know is what I saw. He turned violent, like he'd gone out of his mind. He was angry at everybody. He started using world-class magic.  That's when I grabbed Evie and ran for it. We were looking for some place safe, just in case he came after us. That's when we saw your van."

“You should have called in for help!”

“Unfortunately, I didn't have my cell on me, and how does a person find a public phone in this day and age?”

"Well, magic or not, I don't think there's any kid alive who'll be able to stand up to the A-Team."

"Easy, Wrath," I admonished. "It's my son we're talking about, not some super-criminal. He's just a grade-schooler. Something we don't understand took hold of him and he can't help himself."

"I'm with you, ma'am; we'll be careful. But how did you know my code-name was Wrath?"

Sharpen up, Lukasz. You're making mistakes.

"Well, you've heard about me. It so happens that I've heard about you, too. Your evaluation reports are impressive, by the way." A little flattery can sometimes sweeten an otherwise sour situation. I hoped that Wrath was no by-the-book type that who'd be looking to nail every leaker he came across.   I had no one I could name as my informer.

But Tunney remained amiable. "Yeah? Then I guess the suits aren't half as good at keeping secrets as they think they are."

I hurried to change the subject. "I'm worried. It was like Gus's liked and dislikes have been turned upside down. He talked like he hated us. This is bad. Some ultras can automatically find people, you know. Even a police station wouldn't be a safe place, not against that kind of power. Remember that precinct-house that got trashed in the Terminator movie?"

He nodded. "Street cops aren't trained to face down ultras, but we are. You and the little girl can ride with us."

"Yes, by all means take Evie, but as for me...."

"Why not you? You surely can't go home; that's the first place the boy'll look."

"I know the risk, but maybe if I found him alone he wouldn't feel so threatened. I might be able to calm him down." I didn't believe that, but I wanted to be out of Aladdin's sight before Strike and the other ultras showed up looking for me.

"We came this way to find you, Mrs. Blake, but now taking that youngster of yours off the street has to be our new priority. For the little girl's sake, you should come with us. When we meet up with your son, you might just be able to talk him into surrendering quietly."

"What do you plan to do with Gus?" As if I didn't know.

"Get him some medical attention, of course."

Yeah, by strapping him down and letting mad scientists experiment on him. But the way that he'd tendered his appeal made it hard to argue -- without arousing suspicion.

"And if the lad does want to come looking for his family," Tunney went on, "that's good. It will save us the trouble of scouring the city looking for him."

That was cold. "So Evie and I will be the Judas goats?"

He stepped down to the asphalt opened the van's rear door. "Mrs. Blake, you know how the Company works and you know what it expects of us.  Besides that, think about the boy's welfare. If he's got ultra powers and he's out of control, sooner rather than later someone is going to start sending bullets his way. It'll come down to kill or be killed for one of them. Think about it. We've got to take the little fellow out of the line of fire." He patted the van. "Come on now; you and the tyke should get inside. That's an order."

I raised my chin. "I'm not sure you're authorized to be giving me any orders, mister."

He grinned. "Whatever the pecking order, the A-Team has a job to do, and you two seem to be in serious danger.  This is one hell of a time to stand around arguing."

That was logic I couldn't talk around. I cursed myself for not switching into my Blackbird outfit before stepping into view. Blackbird, as a mystery ultra, could have left Evie in Wrath's care and then flown off to do whatever she needed to. As things stood, I was pinned down. The best idea seemed to be to go with the flow, and then slip away as soon as possible.

The red-garbed ultra helped Evie and Mr. Paws into a passenger seat. I got in after them, noting that the vehicle held five agents besides Wrath, all of them, except the driver, wearing toe-to-neck body armor. They were obviously armed for war, toting along an impressive array of weaponry fitted into compact racks. Compared to Wrath, the soldiers were silent types. The woman among them and one of the men gave us nods of welcome, but neither said anything.

Evie wriggled in close against me, intimidated by the fiercely-caparisoned warriors. Her eyes were full of worry, full of hope. I put my arm around her and touched my cheek to hers. It was so easy to forget that this wasn't my own Evie.

The driver spoke up, saying, "Wrath, we've just intercepted a police call. There's a flying ultra burning down the Canoga Park Elementary School, and -- get this -- he's doing battle with Hardcase!"

My heart did a double-flip.

"Get the coordinates and take us there fast!" the team leader barked. Then he looked back at me. "Elementary school? Does that sound like something your boy might want to do?"

"Maybe. I --"

Words failed. He would very well like to burn down the school. Gus had  been lonely, ostracized, and resented the way that the staff, the child psychologists -- and even the students -- didn't want him attending regular classes.

"Ow, Mommy!" Evie blurted. "You're squeezing too hard!"

I let her go and stared ahead, into the darkness beyond the headlights.  Out there, my son was locked in a duel against one of the world's most seasoned ultras. Would Hardcase realize that he was up against a boy of twelve?

Gus versus Hardcase? The world really had gone insane.

#

Hardcase had been one of Gus's favorite heroes. He claimed to have all of the man's collector cards, and had coaxed me into buying him the most expensive action figure to boot. But the boy wasn't in his right mind and he'd probably be throwing out all stops to defeat and destroy the famous crime-fighter.

How hard would Hardcase fight back? I hoped that he had gotten enough information from Strike to know what he was up against.

Hardcase -- Tom Hawke -- and I were not well acquainted. At the time that I'd shared a case with the UltraForce, Hawke had been away on a mission of his own. One difference between this local Hardcase and the one back  home was that he had quit the UltraForce in anger, opposed to its growing involvement with the federal Deep State, the same power block that had had the President besieged in the White House for years. I would have given the members the same advice, too, if anyone had asked.

"If Gus burns down the school, where will I go on Monday?" Evie suddenly asked. "And aren't the people at school getting hurt?"

I hugged her close. "Easy, Button. The school let out hours ago.  If anyone was inside, janitors or somebody else, we'll just have to pray that they were able to escape in time."

She looked up into my face. Those big blue eyes were the very image of Eden Blake's.  “I think I should pray for them, Mommy,” she whispered.

“That's a very good idea,” I said.

She placed her fingertips together, her head bowed. I did likewise, but it was hard for me to find the words I needed with so many  sirens sounding off from the direction of the school. If Gus was responsible for arson, it was much worse than anything he had carried in the other time-line. My earnest attempts to keep him from making trouble had -- so far -- been very disappointing.

#

The wide, two-story building was blazing furiously. Squadrons of emergency vehicles were drawn up close-in; their crews were setting up frantically. Sensation-seeking throngs were already pouring out of the surrounding neighborhood, pressing avidly against the emergency cordons. The van slowed to a roll and our driver started honking rhythmically, warning the crowd to get out of our way.

A policeman hailed us to a stop and demanded identification. Wrath shoved some sort of document at him -- which had to be a phony, seeing as how Aladdin was a secret agency. But whatever nonsense the thing imparted, it did the trick and the uniformed man backed off. Just then, a bolt of green energy streaked to the ground from somewhere overhead. Looking up, I made out a stubby, manlike being outlined by a lurid emerald luminescence.

My fists tensed. Now that we had found Gus, my next question was, where was Hardcase?

"Stop here," Tunney ordered his driver. The vehicle turned into the curb and its tires met it with a bounce. Wrath was first out, with the rest of the heavily armored A-Team, except for the driver, clattering after him. I whispered to Evie, telling her to remain inside the van. “If I don't come right back, stay inside with the nice policeman until I return for you.” Then, with a dash, I followed in the wake of the other Aladdin agents.

I knew that the anti-ultra  hit squad would be less interested in combating the fire than in capturing the arsonist. That would put Hardcase himself in danger, considering the list of grudges that Aladdin bore against him. I doubted that Wrath would order an assassination on his own authority, but these hardcore agents with him had been trained by others -- black ops scoundrels through and through. Would they let an opportunity shot go by?

When no one was looking, I ducked down and rolled under a television news van, flashing into my “Blackbird” garb. Hardly anyone on Earth had ever seen me wearing that an outfit and local observers wouldn't know who I was -- as long as I wasn't too obvious about doing Mantra-type things. Out of sight, I ghosted away through the subsoil, coming up a couple of blocks away. Without my magically-charged, burlesque-style golden armor, I wouldn't be so powerful.  But I'd mess myself up if I appeared as Mantra in front of Aladdin agents.  Mantra was supposed to be in lock-up.  I was in need of a new public identity.  Let them open up a file on someone called Blackbird, if they wanted to.

Ignoring the noise, smoke, and fire all around, I kept my mind fixed on the game.  It was dangerous to get attacked by Gus while in an under-powered state. The boy could probably crack Blackbird's best defenses like a chocolate Easter egg. If he got me cornered, I would have to switch costumes and power-up, regardless of who saw me afterwards.

The air above the burning school was bad and so I summoned up a force-field to serve as an air filter to help myself breathe.  Suddenly, I again spotted the glowing outline of my deranged son. He was ignoring the firemen teeming below, while concentrating on something else, something I still couldn't see due to the smoke.

"Look! Is that Mantra?!" someone shouted.

Not wanting Gus to be alerted, I cloaked myself under a dark mist to stop people from talking. It was then that I caught sight of Tom Hawke – darting around the cluttered, hose-strewn ground, dodging like a ricocheting pinball. The fight with Gus was still in progress and the ultra looked like he was playing it defensively. The boy, all spleen and aggression, was shooting magical blasts, as if the world was his video game. Did the pipsqueak wizard even grasp the enormity of playing with the life of another human creature -- one whom he had actually hero-worshiped not so long ago? I wondered how Hardcase could have spared with him for so long with no magic of his own.  Was the boy going easy on his opponent because this fight was a dream of a lifetime and he didn't want to end it too quickly?

Nonetheless, Hardcase was a formidable gladiator -- as strong as Hercules and possessed of an astounding leaping ability. The ultra was holding a four-foot-wide hunk of sidewalk over his head and this he hurled at Gus with all his strength. My heart skipped a beat; it was all I could do to keep from knocking that slab out of the air. But if I interfered, it might throw Hardcase off his game and let Gus take him out. If I didn't, how could the child fend off that kind of hit? What was I supposed to do when I didn't want either one of the combatants to be injured? Fortunately, before the concrete weapon struck its mark, the youngster intercepted the thing with a magical flash, instantly pulverizing it into a spray of  sand and lime. The debris rained down on the fire-fighters beneath us.

I had to stop underestimating Gus. My son was appallingly good at being bad.

At that instant, while the lad's attention was fixed on Hardcase, I threw my mightiest burst of force at his back -- meant to stun, not kill. It struck home and Gus tumbled earthward. On impulse, I dove in close, hoping to soften his landing if he was too stunned to react.

That was a mistake. Gus's changed his trajectory by force of will and alighted on the grass, feet-first. He veered my way, his fists clenched, his brutal face a mask of rage. As quick as thought, incandescent bolts arced between his hands and the boy seemed primed to unleash a megabolt of death.

At me!

#

That's when another cement projectile glanced off Gus's protective shield, its impact startling the boy enough to spoil his aim. His laser-like attack sizzled past my face, but the assault redirected the child's attnetion toward his other foe.

"You're cheating!" Gus shouted at Hardcase. "Two on one isn't fair!" Unhappy with the odds, he launched himself into the sky, leaving behind a viridian trail of flame. I could have followed, but didn't want to force a serious confrontation with his caliber of super-wizard until I had my backup. Anyway, the most pressing concern had to be controlling the fire, which blazed so close by my family's home and neighbors.

A quick bio-scan of the inferno warned me that there were still living people inside the school building -- firefighters and maybe even trapped victims. Still cloaked in mist, I projected force capsules into the worst parts of the conflagration, isolating several of its centers, while yet leaving paths open for the human beings to escape. The areas I'd sealed up would be starved for oxygen. Time was not on my side; to speed things along, I drew down the air pressure within my barrier. For a couple minutes, I maintained what amounted to a mystical "death grip" on the combustion, until its most threatening parts started to go out.

It looked like the firemen had taken heart from the smothering of a large part of the fire and were rallying. But my intervention had cost me a good part of the extra "umph" that I'd acquired through vampirizing Lauren. I had to link up with Hardcase, and so darted toward the source of his bio-trace – making a wary approach upon what was Earth's senior and, arguably, most famous ultra.

I really didn't want him to mistake me for an enemy, so I thinned my smokescreen enough to let him see “Blackbird.” Whatever his reaction, he at least didn't throw any concrete my way.

"I've been waiting for you,” I said as I alighted in front of the muscle-bound ultra.  “We can't talk here. Can I carry you off to some place that's more private?"

"Okay," he said, warily – no doubt at a loss to know what to make of me.

He was a hard mass of muscle in my arms. I negated enough gravity to make the two of us as light as helium balloons. Then a conjured air-stream swept us swiftly away from the smoke and steam.

A dozen blocks away, I brought the two of us down in some local resident's backyard. When I released Hardcase, he backed off.  I noted that he still wore the same costume that the god Ogma had conjured for him back on the Godwheel. One difference, fortunately, was that the face-mask that he'd been using to cover his scarred features was discarded. His movie-star good looks had made a triumphant comeback. I'd earlier learned that one of his abilities was fast-healing.

"T-Thanks," I panted, the smell of smoke making me want to choke, “for not swinging a hay-maker at me when I first dropped in."

He smiled tightly. "I always try to avoid hitting pretty ladies. Anyway, I was guessing that you might be Mantra in disguise.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's complex. While I'm dressed this way, you can call me Blackbird.”

“Nice code name. Strike told me that this get-together was your idea, Eden." His grin grew more genuine.

I did a double take. How in hell had he come across my real name? My real inherited name, I mean. Where was the leak? The Warstrike I knew would never have outed me, not to anyone.  Did this mean that Hardcase and Mantra were better friends on this world than we had been back --?

Then the stark truth dawned on me.

During the Godwheel incident, I had thoughtlessly blurted out Mantra's identity in front of witnesses. The incident had slipped from mind, mostly because so many trials and tragedies had dogged me during the months that followed. Now I was choking down a big gulp of dread.  It hadn't only been good guys within earshot back then.  Unknown to any of us until later, there had been a very evil enemy lurking nearby, mingling among the rest of us in disguise -- a superior being who stood high on my short list of most-dangerous foes. I'd been left vulnerable to a surprise attack without even knowing it.  The danger was still real. I would have preferred to go up against Boneyard, or even NM-E, than to be cornered into another death-match with that monster from a realm of evil.

If he came after me again, no one anywhere around me would be safe.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 16



AFTERWARD by Aladdin

I want to thank Christopher Leeson again for the fantastic job he's been doing as an editor-polisher of my old novel. But Christopher has asked me to explain to the readers the reason why Hardcase appears in a Black September story, though most people who remember the BS (which is an apt anagram) would say that he was one of the characters that ceased to exist, just as Contrary had. My reason for bringing in Hardcase is to illustrate a theory I have about how the world of Black September really works.

The issue arises from the fact that few of the great Malibu writers (mostly long-standing professionals with years of experience elsewhere) were able to remain after BS. Mantra's Mike Barr stayed on for 5 issues, but for good reasons soon left.  After Steve Englehart's NIGHTMAN miniseries was finished, he departed, also. The continuing comics were mainly written by newcomers and unknowns -- and edited by people who had not edited Ultraverse books before. A discerning reader will soon decide that these new people lacked any detailed knowledge about the Ultraverse. They apparently didn't even know the minutia regarding the details that had been established for the world after Black September. 

As it turned out, many favorite heroes like Hardcase, the Jimmy Ruiz Prototype, and the Strangers lost their comics. But clues in the stories indicate that most of the missing still existed post-Black September. Hardcase's footprints, for instance, were pictured after BS, set into concrete at the TLC Chinese Theater (or a similar place). But later stories dropped all reference to Hardcase, until there was a very late UltraForce story where the hero returned. He told people that when the disaster had struck, he had been hurled into an alien dimension. When he came back, he found that people couldn't recall that he had ever existed. What is this?  How can he exist but not exist at the same time?

Why was the internal history of the Black September universe done in such a sloppy manner? Well, as we have said, everyone who knew the Ultraverse inside and out were gone.  A fan writer needs make sense of this tangle. But I haven't wanted to pick and choose what is real. Instead, the author has preferred to treat everything that appears on the pages of Malibu comics, even after BS, as being true. But trying to make sense of the senseless has forced us to be bold. 

For example, before BS, Gus was a normal boy. In the changes of BS, he became a strange-looking dwarf. But, get this, not his mother, his sister, or his baby sitter ever react to seeing that the child has been grotesquely transformed. Why not? This was a puzzle that I had to solve. [In reality, according to my information, Mike wrote the story and its dialogue w/o a change in Gus, but the artist was told by his editor to jazz up the story by making Gus into a freak.] I decided that the heroines didn't see Gus's change as something surprising, because it had happened months earlier. Their history had been changed. I allude in “Wounded World” to an unwritten back-story about how "trolls" captured Gus months before and magically changed him to look like themselves. (Chris has encouraged me to write that story, suggesting the name “The Garden of Eden” and also offering to collaborate with me. "Maybe we can do that," I've told him).

But back to Hardcase. Clearly, if history is continually changing inside the “wounded world”, then everything about that reality has to be unstable. As I see it, from one hour to the next, the inhabitants can't be sure what the world will be like; they won't notice any change, because their memories will change along with the reality. The Hardcase presented in "Wounded World" I believe really was on Earth after that terrible night. But he would be fated to be erased from the memory of the world some short time afterwards (as reality makes another hiccup).

Despite the slick razzle-dazzle that this author has been forced to perform, he is the first to admit that the world of the post-Black September is a hot mess not worth saving. Everything new that was introduced into it was bad (look at the pathetic new characters instantly added to Ultraforce), and everything that was preserved from the great original Ultraverse was cheapened and corrupted (like exchanging the real Mantra for Lauren? Ugh.) To fix this ruination, people who love the Ultraverse have to step forward and do something really major. And that is what Chris and I intend to do soon, in our sequel to Wounded World, “The Twilight of the Gods.”