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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 78: Cooper 25
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 309
As Brian headed down the street--quite literally, following the slope toward the river--he pondered his situation. These two grocery bags were going to be an issue if he was going to walk several miles up into the mountains to retrieve his property. He should leave them somewhere-- a hotel room, perhaps, or a bus locker. The problem was that he had no money.
That wasn’t quite true. He was wearing a belt containing a small fortune in gold. The price of gold fluctuated quite a bit over time, but generally increased in value; that meant, given the look of this place, it was going to be a lot less valuable than he might have hoped; on the other hand, there was the problem of inflation. Money would buy a lot more.
Two police cars, black-and-whites, passed him, headed the opposite direction. He guessed they were responding to his phone call announcing the death of Mister Justice.
He seemed to be headed into a city--not Los Angeles huge, but big like Spokane. He could find a bus station or train station there--there were tracks coming along the river, so commuter rail traffic was undoubtedly part of the economy here. However, if he wanted to use a locker, he was going to need a coin.
Wait a minute--he had coins. He checked his pocket, and found the money he’d been carrying since he left home, two quarters, three dimes, a nickel, and a penny. If he tried to spend them, he would get in trouble--the quarters and dimes were silver-plated copper, the penny copper-plated zinc, only the nickel was real, as far as he knew. In his time, many coin machines checked for things like electrical conductivity and total mass, but here he would expect that as long as they were the right size they should work. If someone looked at the date they would believe it to be bogus, but a machine wouldn’t be looking at the date.
From here there was much he couldn’t see, as the buildings hid behind each other--but he could track the directions of three rail lines to see roughly where they converged, and plot in his mind the shortest route to a bridge that would take him across near there. Since he had to pass either through or around the city to reach his destination anyway, stopping at the station wouldn’t be a problem.
Once he was inside the city it was considerably more confusing. There were plenty of street signs, but he didn’t know the address of the station, and he didn’t have a map. He rather fortuitously stumbled on a road called Bridge Street, and followed it toward the river, being rewarded with a bridge which pedestrians could cross for free. A sign informed him that he was crossing the Rio Grande River; he had not realized that there were cities that spanned the river, and wondered whether he was crossing into or out of Mexico, but his familiarity with the geography of the southwest was not adequate to draw any conclusions. Not sure where else to go, he continued on this until he struck Railroad Avenue, and although his first reaction was that he couldn’t be that lucky twice, he saw between the buildings a chain link fence beyond which were several paralleled railroad tracks. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to visualize the relationship between the bridge and where he believed the station was, then opened them and turned left.
It was another dozen blocks to a large railroad terminal. He looked up at it, and saw that this was apparently Berkeley, Colorado. He had never heard of the city, but he knew where he was a bit more clearly. He walked inside, scanned around, and spotted what he sought: a bank of luggage lockers. He moved over and examined one. It was ample for the purpose, and he settled his two bags into it.
He was about to close it when it struck him that it would be easier to find his way back if he tagged this somehow. He was going to leave his nickel in the locker, but didn’t the people at Nagaworld say something about disowning possessions? Once he paid for the locker, the coin would no longer be his.
Removing the penny from his pocket, he dropped it in one of the bags.
As he was about to close the locker, the doors burst open and a man in a business suit and fedora gasped out a warning.
“Blackmasks!”
Cooper looked about, and saw a few others, suited men or ladies garbed in dresses with medium heels who gaped, and then started to move out of the way. I’m a superhero now, I should do something, Cooper thought. He reached into his locker. Inside one of the bags were two union suits. He pulled out one, along with the belt complete with sword and gun, closed and locked the locker, putting the key in his pants pocket, and dashed to the men’s bathroom. Thankfully it was empty. The suit went on over his clothes, looser than he liked, and he saw it had straps inside to tighten it up, but he heard shouts from outside. There was no time. Belting up with his face fully covered, his dart pistol in his left hand, and his now flaming sword in his right, he ran for the door and smashed it open.
There were four men in black jumpsuits and black masks with red painted eyes holding pistols on the people in the lobby, and one of them had been shouting for the station agent to open his safe, “--or I’ll kill everyone in the room!”
All four maked men turned to face him, and he heard at least two say in unison with fear in their voices, “It’s Mister Justice!”
“Drop your guns, now.” He used his vocal training to make his voice bounce off the walls, to try to overwhelm them with noise. He felt energy leave him, as if he had just walked a few miles. His voice did indeed fill the area, causing several of the Blackmasks at whom it was directed to fall to the ground, but he saw several others in the room do so as well. Superpowers, he realized. He had almost ripped the bathroom door off its hinges, and now he had done some sort of sonic attack. It must be the Sword, he decided, realizing that he had also felt energy leave him when he hit the door.
However, the last of them, who had been standing out of the direct line shouting at the station agent, was still on his feet. He turned, and opened fire. The bullets hit the gray metal lockers to Cooper’s right, and there was not a lot of cover. Sprinting across the smooth tiled stone floor, he tried to think of something other than ‘run really fast’ to avoid getting shot. A bullet went past him, and he tried to lightsaber it, but his block was too late, and he was in truth clumsy with a sword.
The enemy gunman was now taking more time to make sure of the shot. Cooper was halfway across the room, and he wondered what it would feel like to be shot in the chest.
He reviewed what powers the Sword had shown so far: glowing; flaming to produce more light; summoning a successor; boosting his strength, amplifying his sonic skills. Something occurred to him. He held his Sword forward and willed more light. This did not cost him energy--perhaps it was a natural function of the Sword. A bright flash filled the room, affecting everyone but him. Grunts, screams from all around, and he wanted to apologize--but the enemy leader was shooting his last two bullets. Cooper came up to him, and instinctively swung the Sword.
It passed through the man, and Cooper suddenly felt sick. He had cut a man in half. A superhero was not supposed to kill anyone. The man slumped, and Cooper was startled to see the man was just lying there, his eyes open, but very passive. He heard some noise behind him, and turned around to see two of the Blackmasks trying to get up. They were bleeding at the ears, and blinded. Not sure what the Sword did to the leader, he shot a dart at one of them. A line of fluorescing blue gas ran from his gun, almost like a rocket exhaust, and the dart went past the man.
Switching hands, he shot one, and then the other, and finally the third who now was also trying to rise. They all fell unconscious. He turned his attention to the other people present; they were blinking back sight to their eyes, and so he went outside looking to see if anyone else needed help. No one did, although he did see four motorbikes in the parking lot, all black, all with the word “Blackmask” in red on their engines along with a number, eight, nine, eleven, and four. He turned off the erstwhile getaway vehicles and went back inside.
In five minutes the local police had arrived and took custody of the prisoners. “Thanks, sir,’ one said, and when he just nodded, the man looked sad, and stepped closer, asking quietly, “Timothy, is that you?”
Not able to trust his own voice, Cooper just shook his head. The policeman just bit his own lip, and wiped a single tear from his eye. “You stand in big shoes, friend. But you got a good start today. The Blackmask Gang is a continual threat to the good citizens of Berkeley. My name is Kipling. Like the poet.” He tagged his badge. “If you need anything, ask for me.”
Cooper nodded, and the police left. He realized that unlike his own world, he was not going to be hauled in to fill in fifty sheets of paperwork. He was free to go. Turning toward the back door he continued his journey through the station to get the rest of his goods from up on the mountainside. Not able to reopen his locker and stow his outfit and then relock it without another nickel which he did not have, he just kept the costume on and headed toward the opposite side of the terminal to continue out of the city and into the mountains.
As he walked uphill, he considered the fight. Use of strength and the sonic shout had drained him. Even now he could feel it. He felt as if he had walked not five miles but a dozen so far today. This was not insuperable. He had hiked twenty miles in a day over mountainous terrain before. Ten miles of city and suburb streets followed by a three thousand foot climb was not a big thing. However, he could tell that if he got into an extended fight it might be a problem.
The flash of light and the slash with the sword had not drained him. Neither, he realized, had his failed attempt to block a bullet. To no great surprise, the dart pistol had not drained him either. That seemed to be some sort of cold rocket exhaust-driven dart delivering a powerful sedative. The dart had taken down a muscular thug in less than a second. He was still uncertain what the sword did. It seemed to pass harmlessly through the villain, but rendered him docile.
He had a lot of figuring to do about this whole superhero thing.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #509: Character Challenges. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
