Back from the Dead #12

Justin Proper’s path to the Council was a little unusual.

He was thirteen years old when he talked himself into membership in the Council.  He was able to do so because he was a genius whose intellect could not be estimated by any existing standards.  He solved Alpha Dog’s longstanding feud with an extra-dimensional being in a matter of minutes, and that effectively served as his entrance exam.  He’d already brought about peace in thirteen countries, completely unsolicited, and brought a hundred criminals to justice from throughout the United States, even though he was born and raised in England and had no formal experience on the North American continent at the time of his first investigation.

To say that his abilities were unprecedented would have been an understatement, but Proper would have been the first one to explain that to assume that anyone as young as he was at the time would only have been expected to serve in a supporting capacity not only devalued the concept of ability but also responsibility, which in many cultures expected boys to be men well before the limited standards being considered against him.  And if you asked him nicely, he might even explain that again.

Needless to say, he was a boy wonder and a full-fledged partner in the Council, and the world accepted him because they accepted the rest of the Council, and he accepted their rules because he saw a greater chance at succeeding in his long-term goals with the kind of support it provided than attempting to continue on his own.  People grow tired of individuals, not ideas.  The Council was an idea, and that fascinated Justin Proper more than anything else, its intangible quality, because that was the world he existed in, manipulating hard facts and making them malleable.  He was lucky enough that his contributions were recognized.  A champion cannot be a champion unless they are championed.  Such are the paradoxes of life.

The problem was, the more time he spent with the Council, the less effective he became.  He began hedging his instincts, to better align with the interests of the group.  He accepted compromise without questioning the ramifications.  He may have been a genius, but even he was foolish enough to trust those who said they had his best interests in mind when they sabotaged his efforts.  That’s human nature.  He was aware of it, of course, and became increasingly pragmatic.  When the time came to choose his squires, he was more careful than he’d been in years.  At fifteen he fell in love with Ellen Encanto.  She was dead by the time he was seventeen, and returned when he hit nineteen.  In terms of increments, the six years it took for him to have joined the Council and to see the rise of a rebellion against it was an eternity.  He alone was prepared to deal with it.

That was why he had selected Meme as his second squire.  Meme was his own act of rebellion, a moment of irony and subversion the Council could never have anticipated.  It was just assumed that their original impression of him would always be true, that he was in essence predictable, owing to the fact that they still thought of him as a boy, even if an extraordinary one, who could be controlled.  In fact, he had been biding his time.

Meme’s function was to assimilate the basic role of the squire, something the Witch Doctor would never be able to do, and unwittingly serve as Proper’s agent within the circle of friends he knew to exist well before the later alliance.  No matter the pressure the Council would exert, no matter the expectations, Meme could be trusted to do the expected, which was follow whatever subliminal instructions were necessary.

The rebirth of the Witch Doctor, and the careful placement of the Biker to discover it, was something Proper had counted on from the start.  He knew that she would never love him, but had used her affections to guide her in the right direction.  The Widowmaker incident was unfortunate, but had to happen.  The squires would always fight the battles for the Council, until the day something happened that would change that.

Justin Proper sat back and awaited the moment where he could return to action.

Back from the Dead #11

The world outside of any bubble can look very different.  It’s something to do with perspective.  For instance, anyone looking from the outside in had a different interpretation of the return of the Witch Doctor.  Anyone who knew what was going on had a lot more information than those participating could have appreciated, caught up in the emotion of it.

For instance, the Witch Doctor’s return was significant, in that there had been those predicting it ever since her battle with Widowmaker, when reports came back that she vowed revenge at the moment of her death.  Now, that might be hearsay and legend and nothing to do with what might have actually been said, but superheroes being a very public concern, and many corroborating statements to the effect that this indeed happened, it’s at least possible.  There was always fascination with the Witch Doctor, as there always is with the occult, from the moment of her first appearance at the side of Justin Proper.  There was a great deal of speculation as to why he’d chosen her as his squire, whether or not he was grooming her for a specific purpose.  Of course, the Council didn’t particularly care what civilians thought of them, because their approval ratings only shot up when they first came together, each of them already famous, already groomed for the spotlight, natural-born heirs to the throne of public approval, because they dictated the course of social progress.  What else do superheroes do?

Most squires were easy to interpret, so very little thought was put into them.  The Witch Doctor was different.  She said very little, so when she spoke it was a significant occasion, and she was always saying things that could be interpreted as prophecy, whether or not she actually meant it that way.  People tend to take meaning the way they want to.  She had a cult following immediately.  Even her secret identity was said to be a fabrication, and had been made common knowledge years ago, just another element of the mystique.  She was said to possess the ability to bring others back from the dead, and although this was never confirmed, it opened the door to speculation that even her own death could never be permanent.  Thus, when she said something like, “I will cause your ruin,” in a pool of her own blood, it was assumed that she meant personal retribution.

Her relationship with Justin Proper was a major part of it.  It was assumed that she must have been a family friend, perhaps even related directly to him, and since Proper himself was always something of a bafflement, it was not inconceivable that the explanation for the Witch Doctor had necessarily in some way already been deduced by him.  If Justin Proper expressed confidence in someone, that was endorsement enough.  Something about his other squire, Meme, seemed to make even logic this flimsy hold weight.  Proper was not the major force of the Council, but he was the most respected, an outsider who was a cipher, the perfect combination.

That was the sum evaluation of the Witch Doctor as well.  Her return painted her as a savior, someone who would solve every problem.  Those who wondered why even the mighty Council had never managed to establish perfect order now came to believe that the mysterious daughter of dark arts had known the secret of the universe all along.  What further proof did they need than the Witch Doctor’s own words?

The gathering of allies was seen as proof that she was transcending the previous order and making way for a new one.  Her victory over Widowmaker was seen to be assured before it ever happened, and thus no one was surprised when the first reports came in, the corpse of her assassin delivered to the doorstep of the UN, a warning that the existence of such evil would no longer be tolerated.  She was not threatening to become a tyrant so much as serving notice.  There was no change in her personality, and thus could not be said to have changed since her return.

The Council, and especially Alpha Dog, tried to denounce her, and there was an official notice that all their squires had been replaced, and that the heroes who had once served that function were disavowed, no longer sanctioned agents of the public good.  For some, that was enough.  For others, it meant nothing at all.  The Council lost a share of its authority that day, but in many ways, nothing changed, because those who believed in them kept the faith, and those who didn’t could not be said, after all, to matter.

Back from the Dead #10

They’d cornered Orion’s Belt.

Finally, Alpha Dog had had enough, and he demanded answers, and his pride demanded the ones he wanted answered for himself first, and that was how the Council finally confronted Orion’s Belt.

“You want answers?” he said back, to no one in particular, ignoring the glare of Alpha Dog, ignoring all of them, really, a sad, distant look on his face.  He looked just like the rest of them, the same glorious, ridiculous costume, all alone, cut off from the Red Dean, cut off from the rest of the Witch Doctor’s budding alliance, or conspiracy, depending who you asked.

The one element of that costume that everyone always took note of was the collar, the one so huge that it looked more like a necklace, or a belt.  Hence his name.

“I’ll give you answers,” he continued.  He didn’t look at any of them, just reached his hand upward, toward that belt, the one that glowed all the time, even when all the heroes were sitting around, like they were right now.  He clicked the center, what would have been a belt buckle, if it had actually been a belt.  At first, nothing happened.  The belt simply fell off.

You could hear Alpha Dog grunt derisively, but then, the Council, and certainly Orion’s Belt, was used to that.

But then Orion’s Belt started to fade, to glimmer actually.  No one knew what was happening.  He’d never done that before.  Then space seemed to shift around him.  No, that’s not right.  The space didn’t shift.  He shifted, from one to three separate forms.  Each of the three forms that emerged from this transformation was a male, about thirty years old, all the same height, all just under six feet.  One of them had a beard.  Two of them were clearly brothers.  And they were all naked.

The one with a beard spoke: “So, now you know.  The name’s Jake Remus.  These are Norris and Joe Browne.”

Alpha Dog grunted again.

“Fascinating,” the Boolean said.  “This is not unheard of, but still.  Fascinating.”

“There’s more to it,” Ajax concluded.

“There is,” Jake Remus said.  “You’re not going to know what it is.”

The two brothers beside him nodded as if there was no question about it.

“This is unacceptable,” Alpha Dog.  It was his favorite refrain.  Everyone had heard him say it, everyone had had it addressed to them.  It didn’t mean he didn’t believe it every time.  “You’re to return to quarters for further questioning.  No questions.”

The three members of the Orion’s Belt matrix didn’t think to question him, not with the entire Council present, except for Sky Fox.

Justin Proper was the only one who didn’t speak in that moment, besides the Browne brothers.  He alone seemed to understand the gravity of what had just occurred.  The Council had just forced a most intimate secret into the open, from one of their own squires.  Yes, they had just succeeded in reasserting their authority.  But the cost would be greater than any of them could yet realize.  The Witch Doctor would be displeased.  Was he really the only one who understood what that meant?

Back from the Dead #9

When he was thirteen, the boy who would one day become known as the Biker asked a classmate why he was such an outcast, and this other boy was basically an outcast, too, and the classmate said that it was because he didn’t conform.  The boy knew why he didn’t conform, and it was mostly because his parents couldn’t afford to let him, and that was basically when he realized that it didn’t really matter, and that even if it could sometimes make him miserable, that’s exactly what he wanted to be, an outcast.

That made a number of things difficult, not the least because he was an outcast among outcasts, too, and so could not even count on a fringe element to support him when he fell, which was often, but eventually, it all paid off, and he became exactly what he wanted to become.  But he soon discovered that even that wouldn’t be the end of it.

It was the realization that superheroes weren’t just superheroes but part of their own hierarchy that really bothered him, out of everything else.  It didn’t make any sense to him, that it wasn’t simply being a superhero that was enough, the will and the ability to do the good that others were incapable of, that there were artificial rules that superheroes were expected to follow, not for the benefit of it, but rather to appease other superheroes.

Superheroes with egos.  Who would’ve thought?

Not the Biker, but luckily, along the way of his life’s journey, he’d developed an ability to ignore small hiccups like this.  It might be assumed that, with a name like the Biker, he represented an almost supernatural version of the biker cliché, but the truth was, he didn’t, and he did at the same time.  He was more Zen than that.  He was a loner, always had been and always would be.

That’s why he was the first one to walk away from the Witch Doctor’s alliance.  Even though he was basically the reason it existed in the first place, he decided he wanted nothing to do with it.  And he wanted was what he’d always wanted, the ability to be himself.

Ellen Encanto actually took it as a betrayal, took it personally, and all he wanted to do was reassure her that it wasn’t, that he never meant to hurt her, and that in truth, he was madly in love with her, and it had nothing to do with seeing her naked or accepting or rejecting her ambitions, but that he knew a kindred spirit when he saw one and that what he really wanted to do was help her, and when he figured that out, that’s when he knew he had to walk away, because it was not his place to do any such thing, not unless she wanted it herself.  He was not on this earth to cause pain, only alleviate it.

That’s what he wished everyone understood, especially his fellows in the superhero community, and why he wanted more badly than he’d ever admit to anyone to stick around the alliance, to be the one who saw it succeed, but to do so would violate everything he believed in, and that was something he couldn’t do, the one thing he could never do.

He’d made plenty of mistakes in his life, but mistakes are things that happen by accident, or otherwise they aren’t mistakes.  If he willfully made one, then it wasn’t a mistake but rather a regret, and he didn’t believe in those.

If he didn’t have everything he wanted then that was a fact and as close to a regret as he came, because he wanted so badly to remain at the side of the Witch Doctor.  He was one of the few people who called her Ellen, and fewer still who knew her as Jane, in fact the only one who called her that.  She had many names; he only had one, and maybe that was another reason to put some distance between them, for now.

Because he still hoped that he could have it both ways, because that’s what everyone wanted, the mistake and flaw in the construct of society.  The Biker was a loner for a reason.  He stood apart, even though he wished he didn’t have to.  Just a few changes, so minor yet so cataclysmic…

Star Trek '12: 1712 AD

The doors of Chez Sandrine were due to be opened, but its proprietor hesitated, for just a moment.  In moments the culmination of her dream was about to be fulfilled.  She had envisioned a hangout where it wouldn’t matter where you came from, who you were, but rather that you could just have a good time.  It was certainly a time in French history where everything seemed possible, and that there would never be an end to it…but the proprietor wondered.

Chez Sandrine had nothing to do with the rest of the country, the rest of the empire, but the proprietor knew that it had only been possible because of these wild, unabashed, and unprecedented successes, the culmination of other dreams and an unconquerable belief that France was the center of the world.

But was it really?

There was that endless feud with England, a rivalry that seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon and used every excuse to continue (and God only knew how it would expand in the New World).  Would an Englishmen be welcomed in Chez Sandrine?  The proprietor, now that she supposed, hadn’t really thought of that.  But hadn’t her vision been all-inclusive?  Had she really considered qualifiers, even if exceptions would include Englishmen?  And if she allowed that, how many more compromises?

That’s why she now hesitated.  For so many months she had pursued her vision, her dream, with a single-mindedness that had surprised even her, but she had once been told that this was the only way to succeed.  But it was also the only way to fail.

Was it really just an ill-advised mistake?  Should she close the doors before they were even opened?  And really, what would be the difference?  Who would even remember Chez Sandrine, in the grand scheme?  It was one silly little girl’s folly, probably wouldn’t even last a year, and if it did, it would be in corrupted form, no longer holding fast to her ideals, the necessary blight that all victories must bear.  Utopias only exist in the past, in someone’s imagination, where they belong.

She was about to walk away, turn her back on the whole enterprise, ignore the journey that had brought her to this moment, when she heard something just on the other side of the door.  Curious, she looked outside the window, and was surprised to see a crowd waiting.  One of the impatient would-be patrons had thrown a rock, and she could only guess how seriously.  It had caused no damage that she could see from the inside.  To further investigate, she would have to go outside.  And, effectively, open Chez Sandrine.

Curiosity got the best of her.

She graciously bowed to her customers, remaining silent, a fairly curious greeting for a passion project, and let each of them enter, closing the door behind them.  There were waiters to take orders, after all, so it wouldn’t be considered too rude, and games to pass the time, including a pool table that seemed to sit at the center of the floor.  She heard the tell-tale crack in moments, while she stooped to examine the building for a ding.  She saw nothing.

She stepped back in minutes later, after catching her breath, pretending that everything was fine, and maybe it was.  She let her worries evaporate in the smoky air being filled by all those who were enjoying Chez Sandrine, as if nothing at all had just occurred, just another moment in a long series of them, and her dream had always existed.

And maybe it had.

Back from the Dead #8

In his prime, Ajax would never have abided any of this nonsense.

This statement should be clarified: “Any of this nonsense” should be understood to mean not just the business with the resurrection of the Witch Doctor and her growing rebellion against the system, but also the system itself.

That, too, needs clarification.  Ajax fully understood the concept of the Council itself, but he never quite got the handle of the need for squires.  Of all the Council, he still believed in fighting his own battles.  This was probably due to the fact that he was easily its senior member, a generation older than his next oldest ally, which would be Alpha Dog (not that the general public thought of Alpha Dog as old).

Perhaps he had such difficulties because his squire was nearly the opposite of what Ajax had always understood himself to be, much in the same mold as Alpha Dog, a strong and confident and very obvious warrior who was easy to understand and did not need interpreting.  The Quiet Man was none of these things.

This caused a great deal of contention between them, and was the reason why Ajax held the system in contempt, complaining bitterly about it at every Council meeting (first Monday of every month, except in emergency situations).

It was actually Ajax who had originally imposed the rules, once it was clear that he was not going to be able to talk his allies out of their decision, on the selection of squires.  Out of the available pool, he had personally selected the Quiet Man, believing that his experience and guidance could mold the younger hero into something he could better comprehend.

After six months Ajax was disabused of this belief.

He could never bring himself to understand, first of all, why a superhero would choose the name “Quiet Man” in the first place.  In his worldview, there was no room for subtlety.  If something needed to be done, it needed to be done in the most obvious and forthright way possible, otherwise the point would not be made and nothing would be achieved.  He tried to make this plain to the Quiet Man.  He could never abide the methods of the Cold War, for one thing, something his father had instilled in him, a warrior from a different time but at least someone Ajax could understand.

He knew well enough that different tactics could be useful in a strategy, even in a fight, but the Quiet Man represented an entirely separate ideology, and for some reason, that was always the most difficult obstacle to surmount.  It was a fight, then, that he could not win, and he tried not believe that it was a matter of intellect, because he knew that it was not his strong suit, and he secretly loathed anyone for whom it was.

Perhaps that was why the relationship was such a hassle for him, because he could not bring himself to respect the Quiet Man, and he believed the same was true of his squire.

Still, they had been together for a long time, and despite himself Ajax felt a kinship with the Quiet Man, and didn’t like to see such a relationship put in jeopardy, because that was another thing he’d learned from his father, and in time, the value of associations.  That was the main reason why he’d joined the Council in the first place, because working in a group is always more effective than working independently, and as far as he was concerned, that was the main thrust of the Council’s imperative.  Never mind what anyone else thought.

The present situation, then, threatened everything he’d ever believed.  How to approach the Quiet Man about it?  Ajax only wished he knew.  Perhaps this was the crux of it, the thing he’d tried so long to ignore, hoping it would just go away.  Well, it hadn’t, and now it had just gotten worse.  Then again, a part of him was glad.  Things were about to become interesting again…

Back from the Dead #7

The Boolean knew Red Dean as his squire.  He knew that Red Dean was also referred to as the Bandit Dean of Canterbury, although there was some controversy using the name “Bandit” in reference to any other superhero besides the one who operated out of Bowie, TX.  He knew that Red Dean had a curious relationship with Orion’s Belt.  He knew that Red Dean, along with Orion’s Belt, Meme, Bruin, and the Biker, was part of the alliance Ellen Encanto, the Witch Doctor, had put together after returning from the dead, an unexpected development of her murder at the hands of Widowmaker.

There were many things the Boolean knew.  He was a member of the Council because he knew things.  The Council consisted mostly of superheroes who were known as fairly typical superheroes, of whom Alpha Dog was the most typical.  Justin Proper was more typical than the Boolean.  Ajax was more typical than the Boolean.  Sky Fox was more typical than the Boolean.  For one thing, the Boolean had a name that, although an obscurely familiar concept, was not a household name, except in his particular context.  But he was not in himself a household name.  He was a facilitator, and thus more familiar to the rest of the Council than to anyone else.

The Boolean didn’t particularly care.  He existed on almost pure logic.  He made connections within the database of his knowledge that enabled his teammates to be more effective.  Until the return of the Witch Doctor, the Council was most effective in its deployment of their individual squires.  The members of the Council were all recognized as exceptional superheroes, but they left most of the typical activities of a superhero to their squires.

This was not what most people thought of as superhero activity, and in fact would still have assigned all of the attention for cumulative results to the Council, but in truth, despite appearances, it was the squires who did most of the work.  Until the return of the Witch Doctor, everyone was fine with how this system worked.

The Boolean understood why the Witch Doctor wanted to change things.  Death tends to be a significant event, and return from such an experience is bound to change one’s perspective.  The Boolean had a catalog of every superhero who had ever returned from the dead, and thus knew better than anyone what to expect.  As a member of the Council, he was supposed to ignore this particular set of facts, and instead focus on the interests of his teammates, which he himself would have noted was exactly what the Witch Doctor was attempting to do, making an effort to make sure what happened to her never happened again.

He studied Red Dean to better understand what he should do next, hiding behind analysis to circumvent both the wishes of the Council and any practical concern for the league of squires.  Red Dean had always been a loose-cannon, centered on his own interests and gadgets, conducting himself in a carefree manner but otherwise submitting to the wishes of others, and more often than not his superiors.  Throwing his lot in with someone else’s wishes so completely as he was doing now was simply not in his character.  It exhibited an extreme amount of discipline, where his previous motivation was all about displaying character.

He noted that Red Dean had changed his garb, so that there was no longer, in fact, any scarlet in his wardrobe, a curious development that the Boolean was at a loss to explain.  One of the benefits of this alternation was that Red Dean now looked a lot more like his new friends.  It was a matter of conformity that the Boolean associated with misfits, which was exactly what the rest of the Council considered their squires, just not previously in direct association with one another.

If the Witch Doctor failed in her apparent mission to eliminate Widowmaker, would any of it matter?  That was what the Boolean really wanted to know.  He studied Red Dean in order to determine how much he was actually being affected by all of it.  So far, at least superficially, the Boolean had to conclude, “a great deal.”

Should he be alarmed?  Was that the conclusion he should bring to the rest of the Council?  Perhaps.