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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 90: Cooper 29
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 313
Mister Justice was waiting for the knock on the door, and so when it came he opened the door immediately, wanting to attract as little attention as possible to his costumed departure. “You’re Mister Keller?” he asked.
“You, obviously, are Mister Justice. William Tell sent me. Ready?”
He locked the door and stowed the key in one of the pockets in what he was calling the utility belt. Coming outside he saw that they would be traveling in a Cadillac, not a limousine but a rather nice big gas guzzler. Nineteen fifties, he thought. Gasoline was, what, ten cents a gallon? Of course, dimes then were made of silver, and worth quite a bit more in buying power than in his time. Still, based on the prices of other things he had seen, that was probably around the equivalent of a dollar, maybe twenty to twenty-five percent of what it would cost in his time.
“Where do you want me?” he asked the driver.
“Oh, wherever you’re comfortable,” he said as he opened the driver’s door and started to get in. Hesitating only a moment, Cooper got in on the passenger side. The car sped off immediately.
He noticed that there were no seatbelts. It made him uncomfortable, but he guessed that were he to mention it Keller wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He looked for something else to say.
“Have you known Mister Tell long?” he asked.
Keller chuckled, and said, “You could say that. Pretty much since birth, I would say.”
“Oh--childhood friends?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “I lost touch with most of my earliest friends probably when I went to college. Sometimes I wonder what became of them.”
“I don’t think William had many real friends growing up, at least, not around here. His parents sent him to boarding school fairly early in his life.”
“I guess that can be rough.”
“I suppose. But then, I think had he stayed here he wouldn’t have fit in well anyway.”
“No?”
“No.”
That seemed to be the end of the conversation, and the ride went another twenty minutes out of the city until the car came to a gate in a stone wall. The gate opened itself, and the car drove through onto a long tree-lined drive that led to what Cooper could only describe as a mansion.
“This is where you live?”
“I inherited several major companies, and I’ve managed to keep them all profitable. It funds other interests.” Pulling up to the front door, he parked in the drive and got out. “Come. My wife will get you settled while I let William know you’re here.”
He followed Keller up the steps into a spacious front hall. “Belle, we’re here.”
An elegant lady emerged from somewhere, gave Keller a kiss on the cheek and said, “Welcome home.” Then she turned her attention to the costumed Cooper, saying, “Right this way, Mister Justice. Can I get you anything?--something to drink perhaps?”
“Oh, no thank you--Belle, is it?”
“Yes, Belle is fine. What do I call you?”
“I’m kind of new at this, but I think people call me Justice, or sometimes Mister Justice. Not a particularly good name, but I didn’t choose it.”
She led him into what he thought might be a sitting room, or a drawing room, too small to be a living room in a house this size, and told him to have a seat and William would be here in a moment. Before she finished speaking, he was.
William Tell Junior looked nothing like his supposed ancestor other than the blond hair and slim muscular build. His outfit looked more like that attributed to a fictional version of Robin Hood, complete with feather in the cap, but he appeared to be wearing lederhosen. He had a crossbow strapped on his back, and a quiver of quarrels on the outside of his right leg. He wore a simple mask over his eyes, resting on his nose.
“Greetings, Mister Justice. I’m William Tell, Junior, distant descendant of the original Swiss hero of the same name. I’m glad to make your acquaintance.” He extended a hand.
Cooper rose and accepted the handshake, but suddenly stopped in the middle of it.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “You’re Keller; I just met you.”
“No, no, I’m William Tell. Keller--Keller works for me.”
That tied it. “You’re going to have to keep your story straight,” he said. “When you were Keller, you told me you owned all this. But it’s actually you who own it all, and Keller is your secret identity.”
He turned to the lady. “Unless I miss my guess, that means you’re really Belle Tell, William’s wife, and you also have a secret identity.”
Glancing at her husband, she nodded. “Dear, you should have known that Mister Justice would be able to see through your disguise.”
It didn’t seem to him as if it had been all that good a disguise. He wondered whether there was something about this world that meant that the people in it could not recognize superheroes in their secret identities, or the other way around, even if the disguise wasn’t all that impressive. After all, as ridiculous as it seemed, no one recognized that Clark Kent was Superman as long as he was wearing those silly glasses.
“It’s not a problem,” Cooper said. “I don’t expect to tell anyone; and it’s unlikely anyone would ever ask me, isn’t it? We keep our identities secret for the safety of ourselves and our loved ones. So, tell me about yourself.”
Tell sat and removed the mask, revealing that he was indeed Keller. Cooper also sat, and then so did Belle.
“The family has been quite wealthy for several generations. It turns out that we actually are descended from William Tell. I became fascinated by him, and learned to use the crossbow, eventually having one custom made to my own specifications. I also used part of my fortune to work on developing things that would help me fight crime. I created the William Keller identity, and worked out a rather elaborate way of making it appear that Tell sold the estates to Keller. Then I joined the ranks of the superheroes. I work out, and practice acrobatics. And I’m a good enough shot that I can pin a criminal to a wall by his clothes without hurting him.”
That indeed was a remarkable shot. Remembering both the way he had escaped from the library and the miraculous shot that hit the apple, he wondered whether there might be a lot of divine intervention in this world.
“I’ve also developed some specialized quarrels--smoke bombs, knockout gas, flashbangs, grappling hooks and barbed points with cables, and explosive ones for doors and walls and other obstacles. So, tell me about you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about me yet,” Cooper said. “I met the previous Mister Justice as he was dying, and I couldn’t save him, but he insisted that I replace him. He gave me the sword, and his dart gun and utility belt, a couple outfits, and a few more things, but he didn’t tell me how any of it worked. I’ve learned that the darts are rocket powered tranquilizers, and the sword flames or glows, but when I attacked someone with it it passed through them harmlessly and left them docile. I’m also aware that Jesus is taking care of me, as even before I was Mister Justice he miraculously delivered me from an imprisonment, and then He did so again when I was locked in with the dead Mister Justice. But for the moment I’m staying in a motel and getting around on foot while I try to figure out how to make this work.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Much of Berkeley’s criminal activity is Downtown. Some you can plan ahead for, as for example if you are going to attack a supervillain in his lair, or stop some world destroying device.” The casual way Tell said these made Cooper’s mind scream a bit, but he held it in. “But having some means of moving about is helpful. The Eagle has his very fast Eaglebike, and his Eaglejet Wings, and he can get to trouble faster than most of us. I tend to run a regular patrol with some variety to throw off anyone who is planning on me being in a particular place at a particular time. My house is far enough out of town that I can’t really do rapid response. So you need to think about what you’re trying to do, and how to do it. One way is to get a townhouse downtown.”
Cooper considered. Much of what Tell was talking about was mobility and reaction time to get to the scene of the crime. The rest was, what type of superhero did he want to be? If he were a detective who came by later and tracked down the criminal, that was a whole different thing than what he would call a first responder superhero who might stop the supervillain in the commission of the crime. Obviously, it would be better to stop the crime, but could he?
“All right, what are your powers?”
“I was hoping you’d know.” Cooper replied.
“I think there was some overlap, but I also think the Mister Justices over the years had different powers. I know that Timothy could cause a flash, and use the Sword to slash through someone, to suppress their spirit, he called it. He could point the sword at someone and find out if they had committed a certain crime he was investigating. He called it his Justice Sight. He was a good swordfighter before, but the Sword made him superhuman. I personally saw him, as I was tied up to a rocket at the time, cut through nearly fifty Cards who worked for Punch Card.”
“I’m not much of a swordsman,” Cooper confessed. Tell frowned, and then whispered to Belle. She nodded. He got up and left the room and came back with a broom stick.
“OK, draw your sword, but in its scabbard. I’ll use the handleside of the broom. I’m not good with a sword, but I have a little training.” They attempted to engage blades for a few minutes, then Tell called a halt.
“You’re not kidding. Good thing is you don’t have any bad habits you need to be cured of.” Cooper saw through this ‘good news’ approach to saying ‘you’re absolutely terrible’, but he could not object. He was terrible. He could swing and he could poke. Tell had been able to hit him at will, even though he had clearly been going slowly.
“I’m not sure what to do. I know some Marines, but that would be bayonet training, which is not really what you need, I think.”
“Mmmm.” The sound attracted the attention of both men to Belle, who was sitting there watching them spar. “It’s an odd idea, but the Red Swashbuckler might teach him.”
Tell looked at her incredulously.
“We don’t know that many other swordfighters personally, and the one we can get into contact with, he’s laid up for a couple months as he recovers from getting ray blasted,” Belle explained.
“There are a couple others.”
“We’ve not met them. We can easily get access to the Red Swashbuckler.”
“What’s so bad about the Red Swashbuckler?” Cooper’s curiosity was getting to him.
“Well, he’s a filthy Commie, and he’s a guest of the state. In the clink,” Tell explained.
Belle expanded, “But he doesn’t like other supervillains. He says they are, quote, ‘figures who epitomize the parasitical nature of the Capitalist System, and reveal its innate contradictions by their reactionary, predatory behavior.’”
“He does have a way with words. I particularly liked it when he called me a ‘reactionary running dog lackey of the imperialists’,” Tell grunted--“right before I punched him in the gut, and slapped my crossbow across his Commie skull.”
Cooper was still flailing a bit, but he smiled at the reminiscences. “Which means?”
“It means my wife is right again. The Red Swashbuckler would love to train you to swordfight as long as you fight supervillains, and consent to listening to his diatribes against the evil warmonger Eisenhower.”
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 #510: Versers Debate. 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:
