IT’S A TWO-page splash as Chamber and Hermes open up and Twilight leaps like the Wolfman at Seeker, battering her aside, raking with newfound talons. Zephyr slams into him, blue sparks dancing around his body, and they pile into and through one of the nearest stone pillars.
I look at Streethawk. The dude doesn’t look too good. I’m just done registering that when the ‘hawk keels over from his studied kneeling posture and goes into some kind of seizure. I scamper over calling to Seeker, but she’s out cold as well. Manticore and I converge on the body as it goes still and we kneel and exchange wordless stares as the tumult continues around us.
“Is there anything you can. . . ?”
“No, man,” Manticore says helplessly.
Our eyes return to the body as Streethawk gives one more nervous kick and it is too noisy to hear the death rattle, otherwise I am damned sure we would.
I crab-walk across to Seeker. She’s breathing steadily, which I can confirm in the best way possible as I admire those perfectly-formed lungs for a moment, their outer expression in her totally cowabunga girl-flesh pressing against the torn white lycra, genuine claw marks down her side exposing succulent tanned flesh with her usual gentle glow. I don’t know why there is no blood, as Twilight’s clearly savaged her and she’s not known for her invulnerability. I recall one of the mid-model Crimson Cowls knocking Seeker out once when his kung fu kick failed and a boot came off, catching the heroine unawares. Possibly it was cracking her skull on a plinth on the way down, but Aquanaut and I rode her on that one for weeks.
Oh those were the days.
Or were they? I dunno. Already my past life is acquiring an illusory quality which the present surrealism only contributes to undermine. For what it’s worth, and my own minimal contribution, I am standing shoulder-to-shoulder again with brave comrades, yet my life as a Sentinel is receding like a black cab getting the fuck out of Dodge.
“A little help over here!”
Zephyr’s call succeeds in arresting my gaze a moment before the leather-clad know-it-all flies bodily, not of his own free will, through the air and lands hard on the stone steps before us. He rolls over, plaster dust masking the cuts and bruises to his face and hands.
“The guy fights like a tomcat,” he gasps, struggling to one knee. “What’s up with that?”
No-one answers because the brief pause is replaced by the sound of Twilight roaring like a mad WWF wrestler and throwing himself from the top of the stage toward Zephyr again. Just as the demonic shadow looms over us all, Hermes comes from nowhere like a veritable Buick and tackles Twilight in mid-air. The two of them go crashing down like a pair of tanks fucking, more plaster and Fuller’s earth exploding into the air like the shockwave from a small atom bomb.
“Jesus,” I remark. “Look at that guy go!”
Sure enough, the tussling twosome exchange solid punches without either giving in. Each time one of Twilight’s big fits carom into the robot there’s a sound like thunder inside a barrel. I’m frankly astonished either of them can keep it up.
“All power to ‘em,” Zephyr says and hawks up blood along with his Queens drawl.
“And all the better for us,” he says. “Gives us time for you to explain exactly what the heck’s goin’ on here, Nightwind.”
I feel the others’ eyes palpably descend on me and I gulp.
“Okay,” I say, “but this is gonna sound weird.”
IN A RUSH of words, I explain to Zephyr that I used to be him. That we are the child of two mothers, I had thought, conceived by in vitro means, our father an unknown family friend who perhaps carried a latent gene triggered, in our adolescence, by a stupid prank atop a wind turbine in the face of a growing thunderstorm. While his slack face betrays little reaction I hurry on, telling him how after years of listening to my complaints, billionaire playboy and dark magic philanthropist Twilight decided to take pity on me, conceiving some harebrained scheme and offering me the chance to somehow cosmically pare down my existence to a single strain, a straight line, I hoped, that hurt no-one, least of all my daughter and the mother of my child.
Zephyr actually slaps himself lightly to put some life back into his face. Then he lets out a long and slightly exaggerated sigh, grins painfully, and turns to include the spectators in his remarks.
“I hope none of you folks are taking this dude too seriously,” he says. “That was the single biggest load of horse-shit since, I dunno, the stable boy put the moves on Mr Ed.”
“You sure, homes?” Chamber asks. I can practically hear the sceptical frown, though it is directed at my former alter ego. “Man sounds like he knows a heap o’ your shit, motherfucker.”
“I don’t fucking think so, homes,” Zephyr comes back. “I mean, sure, there’s some similarities. I’m not saying what. But there’s no way I have children. None that I know about. And that’s the same for a wife. I mean, seriously?”
“You married Elisabeth O’Shaughnessy. From high school. Remember?”
“Never heard of the bitch.”
I pale, and not just because he’s insulted my wife. It’s because I believe him. It’s a real WTF moment for both of us.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “You tell me what the hell’s going on here. Twilight had you captive.”
“Listen up, Ass-wind,” my doppelganger sneers.
“No, Zephyr,” a voice comes – and it belongs to Seeker.
She walks slowly in her well-ventilated suit to where we’ve gathered, shoulders turned to the ruckus between demon and robot.
“Man’s got a point,” Chamber says.
“It’s critical we know what transpired here,” Seeker says. “Clearly, Zephyr, you were at the genesis of this disaster. You have to tell us what happened.”
The tough guy looks at us like we just spoiled the end of his favourite film. He tugs at his leathers fiercely and growls.
“We had a falling out,” he says.
“That’s it?” Manticore says from the side.
“That’s the Twitter version,” Zephyr shrugs. “So what? Somehow in the crush I mighta fucked up one of his little magic amulets or something.” He looks at us a moment, then something in his gaze drifts. “Dude went ape-shit, said I’d doomed us both.”
“As I suspected,” Seeker says. Her sense of self-superiority isn’t undermined at all by being dressed in head-to-toe white lycra that is slowly coming apart. “Twilight is as much a victim in this as the rest.”
“He doesn’t look like a victim,” I say softly.
“Why the fight?” Manticore asks Zephyr, but he just shrugs.
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Shit, he really is as bad as people say, isn’t he?”
I hold my former self in my narrowed gaze.
“Worse.”
And that’s about when I conceive that the only solution to my woes may be to kill him.
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