Post by redsycorax on Jul 21, 2019 0:45:10 GMT
On Earth-109. the events of the Cuban missile crisis escalated into a devastating nuclear war which obliterated the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Warsaw Pact nations, as well as much of the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, Canada and the United States. The Justice Guild of America, that Earth's foremost superhero ensemble, valiantly sacrificed their lives to save Seaboard City, their eastern coastal headquarters and operational centre, from damage after a Soviet nuclear missile was targeted at an adjacent airbase. But what about their sworn enemies, the Injustice Guild of America? What did happen to Sir Swami, Music Master, Dr Blizzard and Sportsman? Note: Given that the Injustice Guild is based on Earth-2's Injustice Society, I've given the IGA names akin to them- so Sir Swami is Bill Ward, Sportsman is Paul Brookes, Dr Blizzard is Joshua Martin and Music Master is Zac Bowen, given that they're analogues of Wizard, Sportsmaster, Icicle and Fiddler. Although they weren't in the animated Justice League two-part episode "Legends" on which this is partially based, Columbine (Mandy Major) is an analogue of the Golden Age Harlequin (Molly Mayne). Similarly, Lioness (Theresa Crocker) is Earth-109's analogue of Earth-Two's Huntress/Tigress (Paula Brooks).
+++
"Why are we doing this, remind me again?" Sportsman asked, feeling lost as the others loaded up their aircar
"It's the end of the world, and we might as well go out with a bang-" Music Master began to riposte, then saw Sportsman's bleak expression
"I think we're all sorry about Terry, Paul. As the Lioness, she would have made an excellent foil for Black Siren." Sir Swami said, trying to comfort his long-time comrade. Theresa Crocker- Lioness- had begun her supervillainy career as an opponent of Catman before the coalescence of the Justice Guild of America had led to analogous networking amongst Earth-109's supervillain community and the formation of the Injustice Guild. Her athleticism and prowess had led to a bond between Sportsman and herself. Sportsman had been temporarily incapacitated after Green Guardsman had interrupted a recent bank robbery in Seacoast City, so a planned joint excursion to Los Angeles and a detour visit to Las Vegas later for their planned marriage had been overtaken by events. Terry had gone alone to Los Angeles and was trapped there when the Cuban War went nuclear. With jammed airports and gridlocked freeways, it was impossible for her to leave in time. Her last phonecall to Sportsman had ended in a shrill whistle on the other end as Los Angeles had been incinerated by a Soviet ICBM.
"Why are we bothering about the Justice Guild now in any case? Sooner or later, someone will target Seaboard City. And they're small pickings anyway." Music Master said, gazing as the nuclear bombardment lit up the night.
"It doesn't bother you that we might be obliterated at any moment?" Sportsman asked the others.
"If it happens, it happens. At least the do-gooders die at the same time, more or less." Doctor Blizzard shrugged, sending wisps and tendrils of his icy breath into the October night.
"That's the spirit. We can run amok, without any of them around to stop us." Music Master grinned.
"Except something else will. Do none of you want to survive this?" Sportsman queried.
"Come on, Paul, you're more animated than this. It's a shame Terry died when Los Angeles went up, but at least it happened quickly. She was near the epicentre, so she wouldn't have felt anything, anyway." Music Master tried to reassure the other man.
"When did we turn into nihilists, guys?" Sportsman asked.
"If you want to opt out, Brooks, fine with us. But don't drag the rest of us down with you." Music Master snapped.
"It's just that...my whole life seems to have been full of dead ends. Not being able to become a pro athlete because of my car accident when I was seventeen, our endless scraps with Green Guardsman and Catman. Terry Crocker was the best thing to happen to me. We were going to get married, have kids. Only that can never happen now."
"Really, Nick, that's uncalled for. Come on, Paul. For old times sake." Sportsman relented, as Sir Swami slapped him on his back.
"Thanks, Bill. For your friendship for all these years."
"I have your back, my friend, and you have mine. Now, let's get moving."
"It's a shame that some of our other absent friends can't be here too. Cerebrator, Barbarian, Chancer and Nightshadow, this one's for you!" Doctor Blizzard said, as the Injustice Guild laid waste to a bank's defences in Pivot City, stepping through the hole that his icegun had made for them. With the surrounding apocalypse, its erstwhile security staff had understandably gone to be with their families at such a dark time. In any case, repeated electromagnetic pulses had rendered alarm systems inoperative or erratic. Sir Swami stepped through the gaping hole in the bank and remembered their fallen associates as he carried the loot to their shuttle back to the dirigible. Cerebrator...Hal Regal...had died due to neurological damage from overuse of his psionic powers, having fallen over during one bank raid too many. Barbarian... Boriz Brutaal...had left Earth altogether, but in conflict with an alien species, he had been imprisoned within the event horizon of a black hole. Chancer...Simon Schaefer...had been cursed with an obsession with games of chance, despite his deadly skill with guns and knives. At times, Doctor Blizzard had voiced his concern that Simon was behaving like an addict when it came to gambling. In the end, Schaefer lost his house, his family and his occupation and ended his own life one cold Las Vegas night. Nightshadow...Richard Black...had been eaten alive by the predatory shadowdemons at his command after he lost control of the associated thaumaturgy. At times, Sir Swami, Sportsman and Doctor Blizzard wondered if they would end up the same way.
A distinctive female voice rang across the clearing: "Is this just for you, boys, or can anyone join in?"
Music Master wolfwhistled in delight: "Columbine!!! Mandy Major, get over here!"
"It's good to see you too, Zach." Columbine and Music Master had often worked together against their particular nemesis, Green Guardsman, in the past, and although Columbine had a crush on the Guardsman, their powerset made Zac (Music Master) Bowen and Columbine a logical partnership and one which had previously run Green Guardsman and the Justice Guild ragged.
Sportsman turned away, moving to help Doctor Blizzard and Sir Swami with the loot they sought:
"If you want to help, Mandy, then be our guest."
"Oh, Paul. I heard about what happened to Terry. I'm so sorry."
Sportsman managed a smile: "Thanks, Mandy. It's good to have someone else close to her around."
"She was my best friend too. I was going to be your Matron of Honour. I miss her so much."
"Hell, we've made a good nights earnings." Sir Swami said, as Sportsman and Columbine counted the proceeds of crime while Music Master got merrily drunk:
"Don't drink too much tonight, Zach. We might have to weigh in with the JGA one last time." Doctor Blizzard warned.
"Hardly likely. Didn't you hear? Seaboard City got nuked last night. Pivot's located in an area of no strategic significance. Those dumb hicks here panicked over nothing."
Columbine said nothing, brushing a tear away from her eye, but Music Master misinterpreted her reaction:
"Yeah, I know, Mandy, I'll miss the big green boyscout too."
"Problem is, where do we spend all this loot? Most of the eastern and western coastal cities are blazing ruins and the Russkies are even nuking the more obscure state capitals now. I mean, Montgomery? Little Rock? Dover? Boise? Springfield? Des Moines? Lansing? Helena? Bismarck? Pierre? I'm surprised the Soviets have the kilotons to waste-"
"Please, Zac, just shut up." Doctor Blizzard snapped.
"Okay, okay. Why is everyone so touchy?" Music Master had limited horizons, only intent on when his next heist would occur. The scale of the October night's tragedy was beyond both his intellectual and emotional capabilities. Annoyed, he lurched away into the dirigible's bar. Sir Swami crossed over:
"I'm sorry about that, Paul. We should have booted that idiot from the Guild when we had the chance, but it's too late now- although his enhanced musical instruments compensate for that.'
"I know you had feelings for the Guardsman, Mandy, and I'm sorry too. Bowen doesn't speak for all of us."
"We're all reacting to this in different ways, aren't we? I'm Catholic. I'll be down on my knees praying for my immortal soul."
Sportsman sighed: "I wish I had some sort of religion, but Terry didn't like it all that much. She was more an admirer of that Ayn Rand, the libertarian author."
Doctor Blizzard grimaced: "Well, at least that's one of the bright spots of this armageddon. Her books may not survive this evening and posterity will be spared her turgid prose."
"What about you, Josh?"
Doctor Blizzard shrugged: "When it happens, it happens. I doubt whether any of us will even have time to feel anything."
"If we're lucky. If we're not, it'll be third degree burns, broken limbs, no hope of rescue or medical care and a prolonged period of suffering." Sportsman observed.
"You never struck me as an existentialist, Paul."
Sportsman nodded:
"In any case, our old HQ back in Seaboard is probably rockfall territory by now. However much we detested the Justice Guild, I have no wish to return to a charnel house."
"Apparently, they spent their last moments trying to save people." Columbine called from her makeshift space, where she had produced a rosary and was earnestly requesting their spiritual welfare, whatever came after.
"Should we have done that, do you think?" Sir Swami asked.
Doctor Blizzard shook his head: "They're dead and we're alive. Survival of the fittest."
"For how much longer? I think Mandy might have the right idea."
"How does a devout Catholic like you become a supervillain anyway, Mandy?" Sportsman asked.
"A few missed confessions and the sins of vanity and pride. And a lot of good old fashioned Catholic guilt. Every time after we did a heist, I used to go to Confession. None of the Fathers turned me in.
Behind the bar compartment, Music Master had drunken himself into a stupor. Unfortunately, he hadn't calculated on his low body weight, around nine and a half stone. At such levels, it took only two-thirds of a pound of ingested cumulative alcohol to cause nausea, vomiting, an obstructed airway and he choked to death in his sleep. Nobody heard their erstwhile companion expiring until Doctor Blizzard walked in to try to rouse him. As a medical practitioner, he knew what had happened practically at once. He shook his head and lowered a tarpaulin over the first Injustice Guild member to perish that night, by his own hand and his own negligence.
He stepped back into the main foyer of the dirigible:
"Zac's dead. He drank too much alcohol for his bodyweight, choked to death on his own vomit."
"Dear god, what a way to go." Sportsman muttered.
"And so meaningless." Columbine added.
"So, what do we do now? Divide the loot up amongst us and go our seperate ways?" Sir Swami asked.
"Look, isn't that why the Justice Guild always prevailed over us? Because we never had the sense of co-ordination, teamwork and strategy that they had?" Columbine responded.
"And is there anywhere left to run? According to what Zac said before he passed away, the Russians are even targeting small state capitals."
"So what do you suggest? Hide away somewhere until it's all over? Live as regional warlords?" Doctor Blizzard interjected.
"How long could we live like that? It'll be anarchy after the war has finished. People will be starving, dying, desperate. It'll turn into something out of Thomas Hobbes. We wouldn't last long. Even if we did manage to survive incursions from other would-be warlords, there'd still be the radioactivity to worry about." Sportsman had apparently come to a decision on his own. Columbine nodded her head in agreement:
"So we're dead no matter what we do." Doctor Blizzard concluded.
"Sooner or later, yes. The question is, how do we die? I don't know about you boys, but I want some redemption-" Columbine's reply was cut off by a collision alert from the long-range radar console:
"Trouble. It looks as if there's an oncoming iCBM en route for the town we just robbed."
"I'm not going to say 'but there were no police around to stop it happening. Bill, how are your teleport capabilities?"
"How many will I have to transport?"
"About 600,000."
"Then I will."
"Are you sure about this, Bill? That much energy...?"
"Never surer, Joshua. And so what if I die afterward? At least I'll have accomplished something other than petty larceny in my life."
"All right, then. How long do we have?"
"The missile will take about half an hour to get there, given its trajectory, velocity and current distance."
And thus, in one of the unrecorded miracles of Doomsnight, the inhabitants of a large Wisconsin city were spared from the worst of the Cuban War's depredations. At the end, almost four hundred and fifty thousand people thronged the Pivot City square. But they were cutting it fine- when everyone that could be contacted or notified was assembled, the town's personal doomsday clock read five minutes to oblivion. And then Columbine heard it- a child's frantic cry for help:
"There's still a child trapped there! Bill, Josh, Paul, go on without me. I need to try to get her to safety."
"Not without me, you aren't, Mandy."
"We're almost out of time." Doctor Blizzard said, as the second hand swept closer to certain death, like Death's own scythe of mortality ready to mow any comers down.
Ultimately, though, there was a crackle of light and heat and the smell of something like cordite. On the other side of the world, in Australia, forty five thousand people materialised on a wide verdant pasture in rural Victoria. But sadly, it was at heart-rending cost. Sir Swami was bleeding profusely and collapsed onto the ground. Doctor Blizzard gathered the prone mage in his arms and ran toward a startled group of Australian onlookers. Soon, an ambulance was on its way. But in Pivot City, in Wisconsin, Columbine and Sportsman had found their child- a little girl in a wheelchair. As they raced toward the assembly point, the sound of the oncoming missile was now plainly audible:
"Oh hell."
"Hold me, Paul. It'll be all right, honey. It'll be
Columbine didn't have time to finish the sentence. In a microsecond, far less time than it takes an electrical impulse to travel from neuron to synapse, or to trigger a neurohormonal 'pain' response, the one-kiloton thermonuclear device detonated immediately overhead. Sportsman, Columbine and the nameless little girl were incinerated instantly, passing from existence without pain or trauma, obliterated within a localised furnace whose heat was greater than that of the sun. But despite the futility of their sacrifice, they may have at least found some redemption. When they had the chance to choose between safety or sacrifice, faced with the possible death of an innocent child, they had chosen sacrifice without hesitation.
In Melbourne Hospital, three days later, Sir Swami's seriously injured body finally gave up, and his heart stopped, destroyed by the effort of teleporting nearly half a million people away from the devastation about to befall Pivot City . Josh Martin paid for the funeral and was the sole survivor of what had once been the Injustice Guild of America. Ironically, though, the latter had redeemed itself from their earlier petty venalities and larceny. When faced with a greater challenge than any they had faced, and without their former enemies arraigned against them, they had acted selflessly and with considerable sacrifice to themselves. Five years later, no longer "Doctor Blizzard", Joshua Martin stood as a memorial statue was unveiled. When a local Melbourne newspaper asked him if it had been worth it and if he would have done it again, Martin replied:
"Yes. Without question."
Joshua Martin passed away in 1992, thirty years after the nuclear holocaust that erupted from the Cuban War. He had long since abandoned his former "Doctor Blizzard" identity or metahuman villainy. He put his knowledge of advanced cryogenics to good and noble use trying to save collateral casualties of the nuclear holocaust. He saved thousands of lives and was awarded the Order of Australia by that nation's president in the mid-seventies. When he did die, he received a state funeral for the good work he did. Half a world away, yellowed fragments of newspaper blew around devastated and uninhabited cities, illegible and forgotten.
Redemption is possible for us all.
THE END
+++
"Why are we doing this, remind me again?" Sportsman asked, feeling lost as the others loaded up their aircar
"It's the end of the world, and we might as well go out with a bang-" Music Master began to riposte, then saw Sportsman's bleak expression
"I think we're all sorry about Terry, Paul. As the Lioness, she would have made an excellent foil for Black Siren." Sir Swami said, trying to comfort his long-time comrade. Theresa Crocker- Lioness- had begun her supervillainy career as an opponent of Catman before the coalescence of the Justice Guild of America had led to analogous networking amongst Earth-109's supervillain community and the formation of the Injustice Guild. Her athleticism and prowess had led to a bond between Sportsman and herself. Sportsman had been temporarily incapacitated after Green Guardsman had interrupted a recent bank robbery in Seacoast City, so a planned joint excursion to Los Angeles and a detour visit to Las Vegas later for their planned marriage had been overtaken by events. Terry had gone alone to Los Angeles and was trapped there when the Cuban War went nuclear. With jammed airports and gridlocked freeways, it was impossible for her to leave in time. Her last phonecall to Sportsman had ended in a shrill whistle on the other end as Los Angeles had been incinerated by a Soviet ICBM.
"Why are we bothering about the Justice Guild now in any case? Sooner or later, someone will target Seaboard City. And they're small pickings anyway." Music Master said, gazing as the nuclear bombardment lit up the night.
"It doesn't bother you that we might be obliterated at any moment?" Sportsman asked the others.
"If it happens, it happens. At least the do-gooders die at the same time, more or less." Doctor Blizzard shrugged, sending wisps and tendrils of his icy breath into the October night.
"That's the spirit. We can run amok, without any of them around to stop us." Music Master grinned.
"Except something else will. Do none of you want to survive this?" Sportsman queried.
"Come on, Paul, you're more animated than this. It's a shame Terry died when Los Angeles went up, but at least it happened quickly. She was near the epicentre, so she wouldn't have felt anything, anyway." Music Master tried to reassure the other man.
"When did we turn into nihilists, guys?" Sportsman asked.
"If you want to opt out, Brooks, fine with us. But don't drag the rest of us down with you." Music Master snapped.
"It's just that...my whole life seems to have been full of dead ends. Not being able to become a pro athlete because of my car accident when I was seventeen, our endless scraps with Green Guardsman and Catman. Terry Crocker was the best thing to happen to me. We were going to get married, have kids. Only that can never happen now."
"Really, Nick, that's uncalled for. Come on, Paul. For old times sake." Sportsman relented, as Sir Swami slapped him on his back.
"Thanks, Bill. For your friendship for all these years."
"I have your back, my friend, and you have mine. Now, let's get moving."
"It's a shame that some of our other absent friends can't be here too. Cerebrator, Barbarian, Chancer and Nightshadow, this one's for you!" Doctor Blizzard said, as the Injustice Guild laid waste to a bank's defences in Pivot City, stepping through the hole that his icegun had made for them. With the surrounding apocalypse, its erstwhile security staff had understandably gone to be with their families at such a dark time. In any case, repeated electromagnetic pulses had rendered alarm systems inoperative or erratic. Sir Swami stepped through the gaping hole in the bank and remembered their fallen associates as he carried the loot to their shuttle back to the dirigible. Cerebrator...Hal Regal...had died due to neurological damage from overuse of his psionic powers, having fallen over during one bank raid too many. Barbarian... Boriz Brutaal...had left Earth altogether, but in conflict with an alien species, he had been imprisoned within the event horizon of a black hole. Chancer...Simon Schaefer...had been cursed with an obsession with games of chance, despite his deadly skill with guns and knives. At times, Doctor Blizzard had voiced his concern that Simon was behaving like an addict when it came to gambling. In the end, Schaefer lost his house, his family and his occupation and ended his own life one cold Las Vegas night. Nightshadow...Richard Black...had been eaten alive by the predatory shadowdemons at his command after he lost control of the associated thaumaturgy. At times, Sir Swami, Sportsman and Doctor Blizzard wondered if they would end up the same way.
A distinctive female voice rang across the clearing: "Is this just for you, boys, or can anyone join in?"
Music Master wolfwhistled in delight: "Columbine!!! Mandy Major, get over here!"
"It's good to see you too, Zach." Columbine and Music Master had often worked together against their particular nemesis, Green Guardsman, in the past, and although Columbine had a crush on the Guardsman, their powerset made Zac (Music Master) Bowen and Columbine a logical partnership and one which had previously run Green Guardsman and the Justice Guild ragged.
Sportsman turned away, moving to help Doctor Blizzard and Sir Swami with the loot they sought:
"If you want to help, Mandy, then be our guest."
"Oh, Paul. I heard about what happened to Terry. I'm so sorry."
Sportsman managed a smile: "Thanks, Mandy. It's good to have someone else close to her around."
"She was my best friend too. I was going to be your Matron of Honour. I miss her so much."
"Hell, we've made a good nights earnings." Sir Swami said, as Sportsman and Columbine counted the proceeds of crime while Music Master got merrily drunk:
"Don't drink too much tonight, Zach. We might have to weigh in with the JGA one last time." Doctor Blizzard warned.
"Hardly likely. Didn't you hear? Seaboard City got nuked last night. Pivot's located in an area of no strategic significance. Those dumb hicks here panicked over nothing."
Columbine said nothing, brushing a tear away from her eye, but Music Master misinterpreted her reaction:
"Yeah, I know, Mandy, I'll miss the big green boyscout too."
"Problem is, where do we spend all this loot? Most of the eastern and western coastal cities are blazing ruins and the Russkies are even nuking the more obscure state capitals now. I mean, Montgomery? Little Rock? Dover? Boise? Springfield? Des Moines? Lansing? Helena? Bismarck? Pierre? I'm surprised the Soviets have the kilotons to waste-"
"Please, Zac, just shut up." Doctor Blizzard snapped.
"Okay, okay. Why is everyone so touchy?" Music Master had limited horizons, only intent on when his next heist would occur. The scale of the October night's tragedy was beyond both his intellectual and emotional capabilities. Annoyed, he lurched away into the dirigible's bar. Sir Swami crossed over:
"I'm sorry about that, Paul. We should have booted that idiot from the Guild when we had the chance, but it's too late now- although his enhanced musical instruments compensate for that.'
"I know you had feelings for the Guardsman, Mandy, and I'm sorry too. Bowen doesn't speak for all of us."
"We're all reacting to this in different ways, aren't we? I'm Catholic. I'll be down on my knees praying for my immortal soul."
Sportsman sighed: "I wish I had some sort of religion, but Terry didn't like it all that much. She was more an admirer of that Ayn Rand, the libertarian author."
Doctor Blizzard grimaced: "Well, at least that's one of the bright spots of this armageddon. Her books may not survive this evening and posterity will be spared her turgid prose."
"What about you, Josh?"
Doctor Blizzard shrugged: "When it happens, it happens. I doubt whether any of us will even have time to feel anything."
"If we're lucky. If we're not, it'll be third degree burns, broken limbs, no hope of rescue or medical care and a prolonged period of suffering." Sportsman observed.
"You never struck me as an existentialist, Paul."
Sportsman nodded:
"In any case, our old HQ back in Seaboard is probably rockfall territory by now. However much we detested the Justice Guild, I have no wish to return to a charnel house."
"Apparently, they spent their last moments trying to save people." Columbine called from her makeshift space, where she had produced a rosary and was earnestly requesting their spiritual welfare, whatever came after.
"Should we have done that, do you think?" Sir Swami asked.
Doctor Blizzard shook his head: "They're dead and we're alive. Survival of the fittest."
"For how much longer? I think Mandy might have the right idea."
"How does a devout Catholic like you become a supervillain anyway, Mandy?" Sportsman asked.
"A few missed confessions and the sins of vanity and pride. And a lot of good old fashioned Catholic guilt. Every time after we did a heist, I used to go to Confession. None of the Fathers turned me in.
Behind the bar compartment, Music Master had drunken himself into a stupor. Unfortunately, he hadn't calculated on his low body weight, around nine and a half stone. At such levels, it took only two-thirds of a pound of ingested cumulative alcohol to cause nausea, vomiting, an obstructed airway and he choked to death in his sleep. Nobody heard their erstwhile companion expiring until Doctor Blizzard walked in to try to rouse him. As a medical practitioner, he knew what had happened practically at once. He shook his head and lowered a tarpaulin over the first Injustice Guild member to perish that night, by his own hand and his own negligence.
He stepped back into the main foyer of the dirigible:
"Zac's dead. He drank too much alcohol for his bodyweight, choked to death on his own vomit."
"Dear god, what a way to go." Sportsman muttered.
"And so meaningless." Columbine added.
"So, what do we do now? Divide the loot up amongst us and go our seperate ways?" Sir Swami asked.
"Look, isn't that why the Justice Guild always prevailed over us? Because we never had the sense of co-ordination, teamwork and strategy that they had?" Columbine responded.
"And is there anywhere left to run? According to what Zac said before he passed away, the Russians are even targeting small state capitals."
"So what do you suggest? Hide away somewhere until it's all over? Live as regional warlords?" Doctor Blizzard interjected.
"How long could we live like that? It'll be anarchy after the war has finished. People will be starving, dying, desperate. It'll turn into something out of Thomas Hobbes. We wouldn't last long. Even if we did manage to survive incursions from other would-be warlords, there'd still be the radioactivity to worry about." Sportsman had apparently come to a decision on his own. Columbine nodded her head in agreement:
"So we're dead no matter what we do." Doctor Blizzard concluded.
"Sooner or later, yes. The question is, how do we die? I don't know about you boys, but I want some redemption-" Columbine's reply was cut off by a collision alert from the long-range radar console:
"Trouble. It looks as if there's an oncoming iCBM en route for the town we just robbed."
"I'm not going to say 'but there were no police around to stop it happening. Bill, how are your teleport capabilities?"
"How many will I have to transport?"
"About 600,000."
"Then I will."
"Are you sure about this, Bill? That much energy...?"
"Never surer, Joshua. And so what if I die afterward? At least I'll have accomplished something other than petty larceny in my life."
"All right, then. How long do we have?"
"The missile will take about half an hour to get there, given its trajectory, velocity and current distance."
And thus, in one of the unrecorded miracles of Doomsnight, the inhabitants of a large Wisconsin city were spared from the worst of the Cuban War's depredations. At the end, almost four hundred and fifty thousand people thronged the Pivot City square. But they were cutting it fine- when everyone that could be contacted or notified was assembled, the town's personal doomsday clock read five minutes to oblivion. And then Columbine heard it- a child's frantic cry for help:
"There's still a child trapped there! Bill, Josh, Paul, go on without me. I need to try to get her to safety."
"Not without me, you aren't, Mandy."
"We're almost out of time." Doctor Blizzard said, as the second hand swept closer to certain death, like Death's own scythe of mortality ready to mow any comers down.
Ultimately, though, there was a crackle of light and heat and the smell of something like cordite. On the other side of the world, in Australia, forty five thousand people materialised on a wide verdant pasture in rural Victoria. But sadly, it was at heart-rending cost. Sir Swami was bleeding profusely and collapsed onto the ground. Doctor Blizzard gathered the prone mage in his arms and ran toward a startled group of Australian onlookers. Soon, an ambulance was on its way. But in Pivot City, in Wisconsin, Columbine and Sportsman had found their child- a little girl in a wheelchair. As they raced toward the assembly point, the sound of the oncoming missile was now plainly audible:
"Oh hell."
"Hold me, Paul. It'll be all right, honey. It'll be
Columbine didn't have time to finish the sentence. In a microsecond, far less time than it takes an electrical impulse to travel from neuron to synapse, or to trigger a neurohormonal 'pain' response, the one-kiloton thermonuclear device detonated immediately overhead. Sportsman, Columbine and the nameless little girl were incinerated instantly, passing from existence without pain or trauma, obliterated within a localised furnace whose heat was greater than that of the sun. But despite the futility of their sacrifice, they may have at least found some redemption. When they had the chance to choose between safety or sacrifice, faced with the possible death of an innocent child, they had chosen sacrifice without hesitation.
In Melbourne Hospital, three days later, Sir Swami's seriously injured body finally gave up, and his heart stopped, destroyed by the effort of teleporting nearly half a million people away from the devastation about to befall Pivot City . Josh Martin paid for the funeral and was the sole survivor of what had once been the Injustice Guild of America. Ironically, though, the latter had redeemed itself from their earlier petty venalities and larceny. When faced with a greater challenge than any they had faced, and without their former enemies arraigned against them, they had acted selflessly and with considerable sacrifice to themselves. Five years later, no longer "Doctor Blizzard", Joshua Martin stood as a memorial statue was unveiled. When a local Melbourne newspaper asked him if it had been worth it and if he would have done it again, Martin replied:
"Yes. Without question."
Joshua Martin passed away in 1992, thirty years after the nuclear holocaust that erupted from the Cuban War. He had long since abandoned his former "Doctor Blizzard" identity or metahuman villainy. He put his knowledge of advanced cryogenics to good and noble use trying to save collateral casualties of the nuclear holocaust. He saved thousands of lives and was awarded the Order of Australia by that nation's president in the mid-seventies. When he did die, he received a state funeral for the good work he did. Half a world away, yellowed fragments of newspaper blew around devastated and uninhabited cities, illegible and forgotten.
Redemption is possible for us all.
THE END