Two Scenes 01

Title: Two Scenes
Subtitle: Kanon vs Canon: Behemoth
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: science fiction, superhero, action

TWO SCENES
Kanon vs Canon: Behemoth
By Harper Kingsley

The team was still one member short with the death of Sonic Pulse. They’d had to switch up their offense/defense strategies to accommodate her absence. It left things feeling a bit lopsided and they hadn’t yet become used to the new arrangement. Which made it the perfect time for them to answer an emergency call.

“What exactly are we headed into?” Seth asked, pulling on his armored undersuit.

“They’re being a bit shady with the info,” Powergirl said. She’d already changed and was sitting sideways on the bench, a tablet resting on her bent knees. “They say we’ll be briefed once we reach Star City.”

Seth exchanged a glance with Teen Steel. “You’re making me nervous. I don’t like the idea of heading into deadly situations blindly.”

Teen Steel pulled his uniform shirt out of his locker. “I feel like we’re about to be screwed over.”

“Royally,” Seth said.

“You’re not the only ones,” Powergirl said. “I’m trying to get some solid intel, but it looks like someone arranged a media blackout around Star City. More evidence that we’re not going to like what we find when we get there.”

“Who ordered the blackout?” Teen Steel asked. “Was it the CMPF or the local politicians?”

“I can’t tell from my end,” Powergirl said. “Looks like they want us to head into deadly danger and find out what’s happening after the fact.”

Seth grimaced and finished dressing in his white bodysuit and yellow cape. He had a bad feeling.

It is not ours to reason why, he thought. It’s up to us to do and die.

Disturbed by his own morbid thoughts, he hastily pulled on his headstocking, turning his face away when he removed the casual black eye mask he wore around the Lair.

It felt ridiculous to pretend the small masks protected anyone’s secret identity, but it was a polite fiction they all stuck to. At some point, once the shock and loss wore off, they would be adding new members to the group.

He wasn’t looking forward to that initial period of wary distrust that accompanied every new face. It took time for trust to develop in a superhero group, especially one as exclusive as the Teen Demis. All of their secret identities were worth quite a lot of money on the black market. There had been infiltrators before, thankfully not since he’d been a member.

Seth looked at himself in the small locker mirror, and Sunfire stared back at him through the yellow face mask that covered him from forehead to nose tip and contoured around his mouth to hide his cheeks.

Leaving his lips exposed was one of the risks he’d taken, unable to stand breathing against plastic. Having his own moist breath trapped against his face was not something he’d been able to do. His constant complaining had infuriated his teachers at the Training Center.

“Are you ready?”

Seth gave Teen Steel a nod. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s kick some ass, take some names, and make it back with no one dying.”

Teen Steel bumped Seth’s fist. “No dying, just victory.”

“It’s great that you boys are bonding, because I think we’re about to be dropped headfirst in it.” Powergirl rose from the bench with catlike ease, the leather skirt of her armored top swaying around her thighs.

“What do you mean?” Teen Steel asked. He crossed to the weapons locker and tapped the 16-digit code into the pad. The door gave two electronic beeps and Teen Steel waited the five seconds for the third beep before opening the door. Too soon and he would have received close to one million volts of direct current.

“They may have blacked things out, but not before a trickle of news escaped. There’s some clips on the internet and it looks bad,” she said. “It’s some kind of Cloverfield situation.”

“What does that mean?” Seth asked.

“It means some giant something or other is trashing the city and no one’s gotten a clear shot of it. There’s just a lot of wreckage everywhere and squished bodies.” Powergirl folded the tablet and stuck it into her utility belt. She started pulling her own weapons out of the locker, loading her gauss gun with a sharp clack. “I hate giants.”

“When have you ever faced a giant?” Teen Steel asked. He stepped out of the way so Seth could gather his own weapons.

“It was during that whole Krandasaki thing,” Powergirl said. “She created those thirty foot tall projections of direwolves.”

“I wasn’t there for that,” Teen Steel said. “I was on a training trip with Fortunas Spool. Didn’t you get eaten?”

Powergirl grimaced. “Don’t remind me. If I hadn’t cut my way out I would have ended up in a pile of imaginary monster poo like Captain Ferocious.”

Seth laughed. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” He grinned at Teen Steel. “Those direwolves may only have been mental projections, but the poop was real. I heard from Pyremaker that the rest of the Youngbloods voted and Captain Ferocious had to sleep outside.”

“Hah. I wish I could have seen that,” Teen Steel said.

Powergirl straightened her shoulders, and suddenly she was the no-nonsense leader of the Teen Demis. “There’s video on the internet. For now, we have a job of work to do.”

Seth settled his cape. “I’m ready,” he said.

Powergirl led the way and they followed after her.

There was a job of work to do today and they were going to get it done, just like Teen Demis had been doing for years.

He wondered where the term “job of work” had come from. It had been part of Teen Demi history since before old-timers like Caspian Dukes and Blue Ice had been in the group. It was a thread drawing them all tight together, a standard to follow.

Teen Demis went out and got the job done, come hell or high water. They risked their lives, took out the baddies, and proved that valor still existed in the world.

Seth hoped he wasn’t about to disappoint everyone that had ever come before him.

I don’t want to die, he thought, but I don’t want to fail either.

He shoved the fear down deep and followed Powergirl into battle. They were the Teen Demis. They lived together. They died together. And when it came down to it, they never gave up, never surrendered, and never let fear stand in their way.

Not everyone can be a hero.

* * *

The movie Cloverfield was something Seth had only seen once. He could have done without living the real life experience.

“At least this monster’s not a let down,” he muttered.

“What?” Queen Midnight shouted. Her hands were raised, tendrils of expanding shadow responding to every twitch of her fingers.

“Nothing,” Seth hastened to say. He didn’t want to distract her, not when the action was heading straight toward them.

The current threat was a once average supervillain named Behemoth. Somehow the man had expanded to gigantic proportions and seemed to be throwing a rage-fit about it. Buildings toppled with every smash of his gargantuan fists. It was horrifying.

Queen Midnight used her shadows to catch rubble before it could land on anyone’s head. The fleeing civilians didn’t pause to wonder at the miracle protecting them from being crushed. They just ran as fast as they could.

Seth flew after the civilians, gathering up stragglers two at a time and carrying them to the already packed shelters. He didn’t have time for grateful thanks as he tried to save as many people as he could. The public service officials would handle getting them settled.

The more survival-oriented civilians had already gotten off the street, but there were groups of stragglers tearing around in a panic as they avoided being crushed. Behemoth had popped up with very little warning, not giving Star City’s emergency services much time to respond.

Seth’s eye was caught by a large group of small bodies being hustled down the street by three terrified adults–two women and one man. The children looked elementary age, ranging from five to twelve years old.

“Shit.” He tabbed his comm. “Command, this is Sunfire. I’ve got what looks to be a busload of elementary kids heading on foot toward the Sector Five shelter. I will assist them, please make sure the shelter commander is aware of incoming.”

“Copy that Sunfire. Be advised, from your GPS coordinates, you’re on Behemoth’s track. His ETA to your position is 17.4 minutes.”

“Roger that. Sunfire out.”

There was no time for a hysterical freak out, but he was tempted to throw a fit anyway. There were a lot of little kids that were never going to make it to safety on their own. They needed him to save them, but he only had two hands.

Once again since they’d arrived in Star City he cursed the lack of preparation. He never wanted to be sent into another dangerous situation without some kind of warning again. At the very least there should have been a better support structure in place. People were dying and the League of Superheroes hadn’t even shown up yet.

It’s up to me, he thought, which led to a few seconds lost to panicked breathing. Then he got to work.

First he looked around for some way to carry the kids at one time. He had superstrength, but only two arms. He needed something he could pack them into that would be safe for him to carry. They might not appreciate the sardine experience, but they’d be alive.

Spotting an orangish-red van, Seth broke the lock on the passenger side and reached in to open the sliding door. It was the seven-seat model, but he didn’t care about that.

Metal screeched and fabric tore as he ripped out the front and back seats and as much of the dashboard console as he could get at without exposing the engine. When he was done gutting the van, it was a large metal box.

It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would work.

He reached underneath the wheels and jerked the brake cables free. Then with his hands gripping finger impressions into the roof, he pushed the car in the direction the children had gone.

They hadn’t gotten far, little legs unable to go very fast, though he was a bit impressed with their progress.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Over here.”

Twenty faces turned his direction and he could see the recognition in the teachers’ expressions.

“Sunfire,” one of the women said, and under the desperation there was hope.

Seth pushed the van closer to them before landing and sliding open the side door. “Anyone want to get out of this place? It’ll be tight, but all of you should be able to fit.”

“Thank you.”

He kept a close watch on the time as the children scrambled into the van. Sweat trickled down his back and his mouth was dry. Behemoth could show up at any moment.

“Hurry,” he told the teachers. “We can’t stay here.”

Once everyone was in the van, Seth closed the door on them and drew in a deep, fortifying breath. Then he slid under the van and spread his arms and legs wide, wedging his hands and feet against the vehicle’s frame.

Having a van pressed along the whole length of his body wasn’t the best experience he’d ever had. Along with the discomfort as the bits of metal warped themselves to the shape of his spine as he lifted up, there was the smell of unwashed vehicle and the terror of overbalancing.

There were shrieks of startled surprise when the van rose off the ground. It forced him to remember that there were small children inside of the uncomfortable burden he carried. They were tiny fragile lives that would be snuffed out just as dead if he dropped the van as if Behemoth got to them. Crammed in as they were with no safety straps, the impact wouldn’t kill most of them. They’d be crushed together into a single screaming mass.

“Shit,” he grunted, hating the way the van wobbled through the air. He was having a hard time keeping the van from tipping to the left, and once it overbalanced that would be it. He wouldn’t have time to catch the van if it fell, and in the attempt he’d be more likely to rip the roof off than stop it from crashing against the street.

Seth kept low just to be safe, only going high enough to keep above the cars and trucks that had been abandoned in the street. If he went too high, he’d be battling wind currents. He didn’t want to imagine losing his already tenuous grip and having the van flip out of his hands.

It was a hair-raisingly slow and wobbly journey across the city. He had to keep from moving his hands and feet too much, as he could feel the metal shifting and bending. A little more strength and fragile metal would buckle and his grip would be gone.

There was a reason newer vehicles came with a Metahuman Tested label. Older vans like this one could not withstand superstrength and the undercarriage hadn’t been reinforced for emergency lifting. He hated to imagine someone trying to catch a van like this one if it fell off a bridge–the metal would bend around catching hands and it would be like a knife through butter. That or someone bursting out of a birthday cake, metal and glass going everywhere. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen to the driver or any passengers as forward momentum and falling velocity met metahuman strength and hopefully some form of invulnerability.

Seth kept his breathing slow and deep as he concentrated on not moving his arms and legs. He was using his whole body as a lift. Gripping with his hands or shifting his feet would result in already stressed metal giving out.

It was hard trying to see without moving his head. He was looking down at street signs that were positioned vertically and Star City was a mess of confusing turns and buildings that blocked the way. It was as though there’d been no city planning at all.

He’d just realized he’d made a wrong turn when there was an ear-shattering roar and he knew his 17 minutes were up.

With a van full of school children precariously balanced on his back, there was no way he’d be able to fight. He needed to get the children to safety as soon as possible.

There was another roar followed by the sounds of battle. Seth carried the van in the opposite direction.

“Crap, crap, crap,” he whispered, his neck pinching with the tenseness of his shoulders and back.

There were terrified screeches from the children as they saw Behemoth through the windows of the van and realized how close they were to dying.

Seth tabbed his com. “Command, I am currently airlifting a van full of civilians toward Sector 7. Is there any assistance available? I am currently unable to respond to threats, over.”

“Your earlier report had you heading to the Sector 5 shelter, over,” Command said.

“Change of plans,” Seth said. “I got turned around and now I’m in the direct path of Behemoth. Please send assistance asap, over.”

“I’ve got Red Flare and Jamba on approach to your position,” Command said. “They will provide support cover until you can unload the civilians, over.”

“Roger that, Command, and thank you. Please tell them to shake the dust off. I’m about to have a close encounter of the giant supervillain variety, over and out.” Seth picked up as much speed as possible without dumping the van off his back.

TBC… Part Two: https://www.kimichee.com/two-scenes-02/.

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