The Crown

LiveJournal Tags: writing,super hero,comics

    I was familiar with Captain Victory’s reputation before we met. How could I not? The man was a legend and the subject of numerous films and merchandising, none of which he’d agreed to. It would be impossible for him to refuse this unwanted profiteering off of his likeness, however, since he’d become so ingrained in the culture. It’d be like trying to stop people from making bad movies about Dracula. No one was certain what his reaction to it all would be: the kids with light-up Captain Victory sneakers; the prequels to the trilogies raking in box office gold; and the hundreds of comic books lined up in cardboard boxes. No one had ever asked him. Sure, they’d walk up to him and say, “I liked your new movie,” but he wouldn’t acknowledge them. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t. No one knew which.
    For nearly twenty-years, he’d remained rooted to the spot, as still as a statue, kneeling before nothing, with a look of absolute defeat frozen to his face.
    It all happened after his last battle with the Stalanites, the terrorist cell from the former U.S.S.R.. No one ever took them seriously enough to chase after them behind the Iron Curtain, but they had a habit of cropping up within larger conflicts. They’d supplied arms to the Vietcong and North Korea, and were believed to be involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis. No one knew their numbers, and their own government labelled them as rogues agents, a splinter cell from the K.G.B.. More than anything, they were Soviet Boogiemen used to justify things like the McCarthy Act in the good ol’ U.S.A.
    That changed during the closing days of the Cold War. When it became apparent that the U.S.S.R. was on the brink of collapse, they made a  final push. They targeted their own government and wrestled control away for a few weeks until they were brought down by the remains of the Red Army. Meanwhile, they launched an attack against the U.S.. For years, they had sleeper agents living amongst regular Americas, building connections and gathering resources for a  sneak attack. The attack took place in the Main Square in Heron City. They tried to seize control of the city and use it as a base of operations. Police stations were firebombed, and bridges were sabotaged. Millions of people were trapped inside the city with no way of getting to the mainland. Nuclear subs were used to discourage an aquatic assault to take back the island city, and the government wasn’t willing to risk hurting the native citizens in an air raid. It was a stalemate for three days.
    Then the heroes came.
    Military photographers and local news crews caught most of the action, giving historians a fairly clear picture of what happened.
    Captain Victory led the charge with the Union. Regan had lifted the ban on the vigilante group only a day earlier, and they were hastily reassembled and airlifted to the site in the dead of night.
    Which was exactly what the Stalanites were expecting. To them, the once-though defunct Union was the only obstacle in their conquest of the United States. No sooner had Captain Victory set foot in Heron City then they released the Dreadnaught, a doomsday weapon  the U.S.S.R. had seized from Germany forty-years earlier and kept under lock and key. It was a mobile suit built from ten-inch thick steel lined with lead and powered by it’s own atomic reactor. Where it should have hands, it had channels that vented off radiation, burning everything in it’s path. Captain Victory had faced it once before, and nearly lost his life. The Stalanites had  renamed it, “Scorched Earth,” and added a few improvements. It was now nuclear, not only in it’s reactor core, but with twin missiles strapped to it’s back. General Trotsky, having faked his own storied death years earlier, went underground and oversaw it’s upgrades. He now helmed the metal beast, facing off against the heroes.
    In Middle Square, the two factions clashed. A handful of super heroes against a forty-foot tall behemoth. The Cube was the first to fall. A sniper was hidden in the skyscraper behind Scorched Earth. He fell, lifeless, and in the confusion caused  the metal construct unleashed it’s nuclear fire. Athena protected the others with her Aegis shield, but the strain was obvious. Captain Victory and the others flanked the machine. He was familiar with it’s weak spots, but these had been strengthened by the Stalanites. It was only vulnerable to a rear-assault, but it was being protected by a turret guns mounted in the surrounding buildings.
`    Fleet-Foot, as the fastest of the group, used her super-speed to clear out the buildings, but  the Stalanites had rigged one of the turrets to explode via remote. The entire building collapsed around her, but her remains were never found.
    Captain Victory gained purchase on the machine’s back while Trotsky was distracted by Skirmish, the acrobatic crime-fighter. As he leapt about, he was suddenly incinerated by the hand cannon. Only ashes remained, blowing in the harsh wind.
    Captain Victory had found the vents on the machine’s shoulders, which opened between blasts to vent off excess steam. He put his hands inside and pried off the cover, only to be knocked off by a R.P.G. from the rear guard.  Trotsky caught him mid-air with his claw hand and slammed him four-feet into the ground. Useless in the main fight Dragono and the Fisher pursued the scattered groups of soldiers , but was never seen again.
    Back-up arrived in the form of Apache helicopters, which rained down on Scorched Earth now that Captain Victory was clear. Steam billowed up from the machine’s shoulder, and Trotsky realised he couldn’t activate the cannon with the vent pulled open. He took this as his cue to launch the nukes.
    Athena caught the sudden flare of the rockets and erected her shield across the Square. It was her last act. The square was left a smouldering craters, contain within a shimmering bubble that  lasted three days. As a mysterious effect of Aegis shield, the radiation surrounding the area dissipated, leaving it safe. Athena was gone, however, leaving people to wonder if she had been the true Goddess. No one knew how many had died in the conflict. It was as if everything whine the dome had been erased, leaving a perfectly smooth pit  about a kilometre wide.
    In the middle of that pit, they found Captain Victory, frozen in the same pose he had now. His hands were upturned, as if he had been holding something. His clothes had been burned away, along with his hair, but already the stubble was growing in. The military Haz-Mat team sent to investigate the area threw a reflective blanket around him to cover his nakedness and tried to revive him. Medics were brought in to check him, as he neither blinked, nor reacted to their presence. His skin was too hard to get a pulse off of, but a stethoscope was held up to his chest. His heart was still beating, slowly but surely. Hundreds of medical experts would come to the site to diagnose him, but no one could explain his inanimate state. No one even knew what he was. He couldn’t be pried from the spot, even by crane. It was as if he was subtly resisting them. Since they couldn’t take him to a facility, they brought whatever equipment they needed to study him. X-Rays came back blurry and indistinct, leaving his inner-working as mystery. In the end, they simply accepted that something inside him had broken, and he was now a shell of a man.
    Over the years, as they rebuilt the Square, they designed the streets circles around him. Everything sloped down towards Captain Victory, whose hair had grown longer as his beard as he remained immobile. Drains were installed under him to keep the area from becoming a lake. Statues went up  around him to commemorate the heroes who had given their lives. They’d put the statues across from him in the Square, in case he would ever care to look up and remember his friends. Buildings and businesses went up. Life returned to normal. Captain Victory became one of the world’s biggest attractions. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions visited the site to look at a real life super-hero and thank him. Guards were posted to keep his dignity intact. They’d build a shelter above him to keep him dry and sewed clothes onto him. People would come and lay flowers at his monument. Under careful watch, people were allowed to come up and talk to him. Most were children, though many were adults. Some would break down crying and turn away.
    One day, though, an old enemy came. No one recognized Prospero until his was standing directly in front of Captain Victory with a smug look upon his face and his head held high in disregard. The security cameras picked up the monologue given that day. “Look at you,” he smirked at his old nemesis. “Sitting here, wallowing in self-pity. Oh, this is grand to see you here upon your knees. It’s appropriate, after the way you left me. Twenty long years. That’s what you took from me, you monster,” he gripped his bony fists before the hero.
    “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back,” one of the blue uniformed guards stepped forward to confront the man. He was immediately flung back by what was suspected to be Prospero’s force belt. The other guard brought out his truncheon, but Prospero brought out his ray gun.
    “Try it, you rent-a-pig,” Prospero told him coldly. “I’ve been putting down demigods since before you were born. Do you think you can stop me with a stick? Ask him,” he waved his gun towards Captain Victory. “Ask him what I’ve done to people like you.. Remember?” he asked Victory. “That time in Texas, with the State Trooper? There we were, having it out, and he butts in and tries to arrest me. Me! The audacity of it. I melted his legs off. Remember him lying there, screaming for you to help him? But would you put him out of his misery? No, you took him to a hospital where he could spend the next four hours in the worst agony of his life before he died. You could have ended it all right then and there and given that man some peace, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. You were weak then, and you’re weak now.
    “I’m here because I know a thing or two about pain, Vic, and I’m here to share it with you. Twenty years I wasted away in a cell, because of you.. Trapped. That’s real pain. All I could think about was getting back at you, and then this,” he waved to encompass the Square, “this happened, and I realized I could never top this. You’re broken. You’re just a thing now. An empty shell. There’s nothing left for me to hurt, is there?
    “Or is there?” Going into the crowd, Prospero snatched away a young girl and dragged her towards Captain Victory. The crowd tried to stop him, but they were pushed back by his force belt. “Maybe this is all just an act? Maybe there’s enough of a man in you left to stop me from doing this,” he put the gun against the girl’s head and squeezed his finger on the trigger. “Say goodbye to your fan here, Vic.”
    A gasp went out from the crowd, but nothing happened. “You think I’m joking? You know what I am, Vic. I will kill this girl, right here before you, these people and their misguided God. Then they’ll see you for the worthless pile of garbage you really are, and that’s what really scares you, isn’t it, Vic? Losing their love. You’re pathetic, Vic.” His fingered tightened again, but still he hesitated. “What…?” his eyes darted between Captain Victory and the girl, who was reduced to sobbing tears. “What’s wrong with you?” he licked his lips nervously. “Why won’t you stop me? Are you scared? Is that it? Are you finally willing to admit you’re scared of me, Vic? Well you’re right to be. You were always right. Now watch her die!” Again, he  flexed his finger, but Captain Victory didn’t move.
    “You!” Prospero screamed as he flung the girl away. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you? You!” he fired several shots in rapid succession. The rays blinded the cameras, but when the afterimage disappeared, Captain Victory was still kneeling in the same position, his clothes burned away by the rays. “You! Why won’t you die? Die, die, die!” Prospero fired again and again, but his ray gun could have been a squirt gun for all it did. “No! You can’t deny me this. I’ve waited years. Years! This…” he fell down, crying. The guards tried to apprehend him again, but he raised his gun and fired a final shot.
    Prospero’s headless body fell limp, his blood pooling beneath Captain Victory’s knees and dripping down the drains. Captain Victory hadn’t moved.