The trunk had Wobbler shaped doorways behind each platform, hidden from Joe's sight from the ground. He looked into one, and saw the tree was hollow with ladder rungs descending far below ground level.
Joe did not like dark places. He would do what needed done; that's what bravery meant, but he did not have to like it. He decided to make his way to the top platform of the tree, in order to get a better idea of an exit strategy. While making his way up between patrol watches, Joe began to wonder just how many of the enemy was below his feet. A dozen Wobblers left the tree every ten minutes, and so far, none had returned.
He pulled himself over the lip of the uppermost platform and dropped back just as quickly. In that fraction of a second, he saw the baby lying against the trunk, but also saw a Wobbler on duty at the edge of a small crow’s nest platform. Luckily, it had been looking away. After taking a moment to let his adrenaline run its course, he popped a quick glance to confirm the Wobbler had not moved, then noiselessly padded over and put the bullet-shaped head into a rear choke-hold. The Wobbler struggled, under control, but the near lack of a neck kept it from passing out as planned. Out of desperation, Joe finally flexed his massive forearm up and to the side, breaking the Wobbler's neck with a sharp crack.
Joe did not like to take life unnecessarily and always felt as if he lost when forced to. That difference from Star Captain Rock, who delighted in mass-destruction and carnage, was the only thing that kept them from forming a permanent partnership.
The baby was lying quietly, content with a hand-smoothed wooden pacifier. Joe bundled the tiny body into the crook of one arm, cut loose a strand of rope from a walkway, and began to rappel directly to the ground. He kept his feet, but in the dark he slightly misjudged and hit hard, bouncing just enough to shoot the pacifier out of sight. The baby transformed into an air-raid siren.
Joe started running, the time for stealth over. He could feel the ground shake from the number of Wobblers making their way up through the inside of the tree. He turned back for one look at the cacophonous wobble-wobble-WOBBLE's, wishing he had not as countless Wobblers poured into the space behind him.
He jumped to a full sprint, hoping to vanish into the woods, but his hopes disappeared as the roving patrols started to enter the clearing from the woods. He stopped, trapped between the anvil and the hammer. There was nothing left but to go out with honor. He placed the baby at his feet, checked the slide on his sidearm, adjusted the sling of his rifle to balance in his other hand, and waited.
High above, he heard a familiar and welcome sound. It was Star Captain Rock, firing his retro-rockets! All the Wobblers stood frozen, watching the magnificently sleek, famous flagship of the Pentel line, "Technika-X" proudly emblazoned on her side. The ship hovered, advanced engineering allowing her to separate in two, revealing the most feared burrowing missile in existence. As the two halves of the Technika-X continued to separate, the missile slowly oriented until it pointed straight down at the Wobbler tree, whistling gleefully as it reached maximum velocity. A small bright star detached from the rear of the ship, racing under power to land next to Sergeant Joe.
Star Captain Rock, smaller but more heavily muscled than Joe, stepped out of his small silver shuttle with a graveled "Hey brother, need a ride?" The two old friends embraced left forearms in a manly version of a hug, high-fiving with their right. Joe grabbed the baby, and the three escaped just as the missile hit, scattering Wobblers and pieces of their tree to the winds.
Back at the house, Zee took the baby to go find a bottle, leaving the men to say their good-byes. As Star Captain rock turned to enter his shuttle, Zee came screaming towards them.
"Settle down, woman!” said Rock in his no-nonsense tone, "With us two here there's nothing to fear.”
The entire left wing of the house collapsed as a twenty-foot tall T-Rex came roaring at them. Sergeant Joe unthinkingly emptied both clips into the beast, but the bullets had no effect on the thick-skinned monster, except to anger it further. Zee ran away with the baby as fast as possible, so the T-Rex chose the closest target first, and chomped off Star Captain Rock's head.
It rolled to a stop at Joe's feet, but still seemed to be alive as the mouth tried to talk. Joe bent down to where he could make out the whispered words.
"Save the girl, Joe. She likes you, and you know you like her."
Joe knew he was right, but he had always thought girls were at best silly creatures, or just irritating like his little sister, but lately he'd been having confused feelings.
"But how am I going to defeat a T-Rex, especially without you at my side?"
"Take the cape off my body; I certainly don't need it any longer. Now, remember who you used to be."
With that final advice, he died; a hero to the end. The T-Rex had started after Zee. Knowing his weapons were useless, Joe took the shimmering space cloak off his friend's body and tied it around his shoulders. And with that, he remembered his life before he was Sergeant Joe.
With a mighty leap, silver cape fluttering behind, he flew to place himself between the ravening beast and the cowering maiden. He slapped it twice just for fun, once on the snout and once on the bum, laughing as the fearsome teeth ground uselessly against his indestructible skin. As a final flourish, he grabbed the T-Rex by its tail, spun around three times, leaned back to counter-balance, and flung it out of sight. Zee stood and placed a gentle hand on his cheek, her wide eyes full of wonder.
"You, You're really super..."
"Why, yes I am! I forgot how fun it is to be a super-hero. Hey, you want to get married? We already seem to have a baby."
"That sounds so cool! Where will we live? "
The former, and present, super-hero grabbed Zee in one hand and baby in the other and flew them all to his Fortress of Solid Tunes high on a mountain. Zee was quite impressed when the remote-control door automatically slid open.
"I wonder," he thought, "if she'll take off her clothes once we're married?"
His bedroom door burst open un-expectantly, accidentally causing Johnny to push his cassette player/radio off the shelf and drop his action figures.
"Susie!" he yelled, "You little sh..."
The forbidden expletive died on his tongue as he noticed Mom standing behind his little sister.
"See Mommy?! I told you he was playing with my toys again. He broke my dolly house too!" said Susie, somehow managing to convey accusation, outrage, moral superiority, and a sniffle all in one brief outburst.
"I warned you, young man, about consequences." Mom said sternly, "So did you give your sister's Barbie to the dog? And don't dare lie to me, or it will just get worse."
"Nooo...well, I mean I accidentally...I didn't mean to...” Johnny replied, licking his lips in a subconscious-tell that made mothers seem like magic mind readers.
"Fine. Since you destroyed her toy, she gets to choose any one of yours to replace it."
Rather than joy or vindictiveness, her tiny face took on an aloof, calculating look more suited to an I.R.S. auditor than a little girl.
"I'll take...this one!"
Johnny started to ask for the cape back, since it really belonged to Star Captain Rock, but then he remembered he broke him earlier, so instead he said, "Fine! Take them all. I'm too old to play with stupid baby toys anyway!"
"Do whatever you think is right, but don't even think about coming to dinner until this mess is cleaned up."
True to his word, and still a little embarrassed about the way he'd been treating his baby sister lately, Johnny packed his childhood toys in a cardboard box and left them by her bedroom door. All except for Star Captain Rock, whom he interred in an old chocolate tin under his bed, where it shared a lifetime with other cherished memories for the next eighty years.
Joe, now known as Brad, lost something that day, but he also somehow gained. Never again exotic adventures of conquest, violence, and mayhem, lost to the past were glories of heroism and honor. He did, however, host many elegant tea parties and fancy balls, and even learned
to pilot a private jet to take his new friends on romantic far away holidays. And his wardrobe improved dramatically, which came in handy as best man at T-Rex and Gorilla-Ann's grand wedding.
~end~
Chapter 6: Faerie Glen
Glen was sweaty, stinky, scratched and bit, and no longer bothered to remove leeches. His tiny Amazonian guide assured him they were near their destination. Glen saw a clearing ahead through the entangled vegetation, but the guide refused to go further and stated he would return to the split tree in one week. Glen continued alone and quietly entered a Wonderland.
He had earned three doctorates while tracing his lifelong obsession and now weeped with affirmation and joy over his success. The clearing was abuzz with two-inch winged creatures that sparkled in the sunlight or shone gently luminescent in the shade. They stayed mostly in the canopy level high above, but at they descended and sat in the center of the glade and rested on the ground. He Glen tried to approach ever so gently, but the timorous creatures flittered off at every movement and sound.
On the fifth night, he camped in the clearing and staying as quiet and still as possible. As the sun warmed, he picked a flower and held it in his open palm. One of the tiny creatures landed on his hand and ate a bit of pollen off the stamens. The eyes were wide set and the nose very flat, but it was clearly hominid.
Glen was holding the reality behind fairy myths and perhaps those of all little peoples. He slowly moved his finger to stroke the adorable head. The fairy looked him squarely in the eye and without warning bit his finger. It drew blood and flew away to join the others, but Glen could never bring himself to retaliate in any way.
That evening, after nausea and fever, Glen’s body began to change. He fell into a deep coma, which was a good thing. His skin hardened into a chitinous covering while his internal cells, including bones, muscles, and organs, liquefied to initiate his metamorphosis.
On a fine spring day, the desiccated body began to rock and the mouth split into a morbid similitude of a smile. Glen, or at least as much of him as fit into the pea size brain, crawled out and lay across the bridge of his former nose, exhausted. His knurled wing buds slowly expanded and firmed in the warm sun as blood pumped to the tips. Four of his new adopted family un-expectantly swooped in, grabbed a limb each, and soared above the treetops. Before he could orient, they let go amidst piping laughter.
The new version of Glen floundered in panic. Arms, legs, and wings thrashed independently as he let out a peep of a scream. He actually fainted for a second, but awoke as his body instinctually hovered, face to the wind. His strong new dorsoventral muscles firmly beat his wings, and with just a little experimentation Glen soared, dove and danced with all the others. He could not exactly remember his former life, but he knew on a primal level that he had arrived home.
The native guide did not bother returning to the split tree. The area would remain taboo until the next foolish outsider insisted and threw his life away as he chased ridiculous dreams. Still, it was better to guide them individually rather than put up with whole herds of searchers as they trampled around their sacred grounds. Just so long as they paid in advance.
~end~
Chapter 7: Domino
It was third and goal at the nine-yard line. The capacity crowd of fifty thousand remained quiet as the home team, behind by three points, lined up in field-goal formation. The kicker had not missed from within the forty-yard line in his last three seasons, and this chip shot would put the game into overtime. East coast teams grumble about late-night games, but tonight they wouldn't mind, as long as their team could pull out a win.
The long snapper chucked the ball between his legs in a perfect arc, which fell right into the ball holder’s hands. He set the point firmly into the ground, immediately spun the ball so the stitching faced correctly. He turned his eyes and peripherally tracked the kicker, who loped in from the side and executed his patented soccer style kick. Just as the kicker planted his left foot and swung his right, the holder pulled the ball into his chest and dashed towards the right sideline.
The crowd erupted after a heartbeat’s silence and shouted their approval of the fake play. This was their team's final chance to win the divisional playoff. The defense double-teamed the star running back, as usual. He dodged to the left, pirouetted in a counter spin as if to move right and somehow changed momentum in mid-air. He continued to the left as both defenders lost a crucial half step as they readjusted.
In his rookie year, the ball holder was a record-breaking quarterback out of USC. He zinged the ball in a perfect spiral and aimed to intersect the receiver cross-field. The screaming crowd shook the stadium in anticipation the victory celebration. The silence was abrupt as the entire stadium went black as the lights all turned off. After an initial mass gasp, the quiet was as deep as the darkness.
It was not just that the lights went out A total ink-black gloom descended to suck out even the memory of sight. A few screams of panic preceded a growing murmur, but total quiet returned as the jumbo LED screens above either end zone glowed to life. They showed, in forty-foot-high images, the same split screen scenes that appeared on all broadcast stations throughout the city.
The left half of the split showed a wide-shot of the packed stadium itself, focused on Center field. The camera zoomed in to show an instantly recognizable five-hundred-pound bomb. A large digital timer was counting down by the second and showed less than two minutes remaining to 0:00. The other side of the screen showed a scene in the middle of the deserted Cross Harbor Bridge. That half-screen featured the well-known black with white-dotted leotard uniform of local superhero Domino as her similarly colored hair blew haphazardly from the on-shore breeze.
~One Hour Earlier~
Complete darkness enveloped the downtown Metro National Bank, but light-sensing triggers alerted both the police and the region’s super-heroes. Another Night-Ghost-lead robbery was in progress. His modus operandi was to employ a meticulously trained cadre that used recently developed echo location headsets for the blind. He applied his innate ability to suppress all light within an area of his choice, which rendered everyone in the bank sightless and helpless during a robbery. The previous robberies had netted three million dollars American.
Within minutes of the alarm, Bounce, The Kineticist, and Domino met across the street from the main entrance behind a parked delivery truck for partial protection. Domino was usually the dominant personality, which made her peers wonder if that was not the origin of her name.
"How do you want to handle this, boys, slow and easy or hard and quick?"
Bounce and The K grinned at each other. After a nod from Bounce, The K answered, "You know how we like it, Domino!"
She just rolled her eyes and made allowances since she would expect the same juvenile answer from her hubby back home. She closed her eyes and reached out with her hyper-senses. She had the thought, "F = ma = m(dv/dt) = d(mv)/dt = dp/dt, and F + u(dm/dt) = m(dv/dt)." At least, that is what she would have told her doctoral candidate advisor as she defended her thesis on Newton's laws of motion. Before college, she would have said she just had a knack.
What she understood on an intuitive level, was the mass and potential momentum of every object within reach of her senses, and the cascading events they could force on each other. For instance, she knew they could interrupt the robbery by throwing Bounce through the front plate-glass window. Everything just bounced off him, or if something was heavier than him, he bounced. She could also foretell where he would bowl into the five bad guys that stood in a group at the entrance to the main vault, fire-brigading sacks of cash. Fortunately, her senses did not require sight.
However, in every projected scenario, she calculated that glass shards from the window would fly out and seriously injure bystanders. Her group of heroes did everything in their power to keep everyone involved in an operation alive and unhurt if possible. They were careful with the innocent because they deserved
it, and the perpetrators so they could face justice.
Domino concentrated a few more moments and then laid out the best option.
"Hey K, see that elevator shaft running along the outside of the parking garage next door? If you target the third-floor section at exactly forty-two degrees from street level at thirty miles per hour we can all go home early."
"I'll need to gather some energy first. Just a moment."
The Kineticist stepped out from around the van into the middle of the street and addressed the two occupants of the idling getaway vehicle.
"Hey, you two, give yourselves up now before something bad happens!"
The curb-side door banged open as the two occupants jumped to the street and fired three-round bursts from rather antiquated AK-47's. The first three bullets slammed into the UPS truck’s back tire with a loud hiss. Every bullet after that made contact with K’s skin and stopped abruptly as they imparted their momentum to him.
His body glowed with a bright light as he daintily picked two of the bullets from where they had struck. He sighted along his pointed finger, said “bang!”, then flicked them back to their point of origin. The two machine guns shattered into shards while the gunmen yelped in surprise and pain. They screamed even louder as two more cones of lead drilled through the meaty part of their thighs. The K grinned at called the other two to the middle of the street.
"Some people just never learn! OK, Bounce, you ready to make like a squash ball?"
The smallish superhero squatted in place, tucked his head into his curled arms, and nodded. The Kineticist looked back to Domino for confirmation. He squatted behind his impromptu munition and gently placed his palms on Bounce's back.
With a sudden flash of light, Bounce streaked towards the reinforced elevator shaft, bounced off at a relative forty-eight-degree angle, smashed through the bank lobby's upper foyer window. He then bounced off the ceiling into the opposite wall and straightened his arms and legs to maximize reach. He slammed into the perps and the impact forced them into the vault. Bounce closed the vault door and waited for proper law enforcement to take custody.