8FOLD/ACRA: Jolt City # 23, "...Their Last Adventure!", Part 2 of 3

Tom Russell joltcity at gmail.com
Mon Sep 7 17:56:37 PDT 2015


The terrorist organization FEVER had orchestrated a global fear event
massive enough to summon the extra-dimensional Dyzen'thari, posing a
threat not only to Earth, but to the fabric of space-time. Just as all
this was going on, FEVER's twisted leader, Caracalla, activated the
body-control implant in Derek Mason's (Blue Boxer's) skull. But Derek
had anticipated this, and with Dr. Fay's help had installed a
miniature time machine linked to the implant; when it activated, he
was sent back in time-- scattered across countless alternate
timelines, along with his mentor, Martin Rock (Green Knight).
   In many of these timelines, Derek and Martin are killed, but not
before setting into motion a chain of events that clued-in the heroes
of the present day as to the nature of the threat they were facing,
and help give them some of the tools they'd need to beat it. With this
information, Bethany Clayton (Knockout Mouse), Kate Morgan (Dr.
Metronome), Dr. Fay, Roy Riddle, and Brian Clipper (formerly Darkhorse
II) managed to send the Dyzen'thari back to their own dimension. They
were assisted by the efforts of a another party in Nevada, whose
actions resulted in the destruction of Las Vegas.


          "...THEIR LAST ADVENTURE!"

   EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS THE FINAL ISSUE OF
////////////// [8F-150] TOM RUSSELL'S
    ////  //////  /// //////  ////// /// ////// \  //
// ////  //  //  ///   //    ///    ///   //     \//# 23
//////  //////  ///// //    ////// ///   //      //PART 2


Derek's first thought is that he's drowning.
   He's wet, he's cold, he feels something all around him. But he's
breathing. It hurts to breath. There's a tightness in his abdomen that
gets tighter every time he sucks in some air. Internal bleeding? He's
light-headed enough, dizzy enough. Distracted enough. Where was he?
Breathing. He's breathing, so he isn't drowning, isn't underwater.
   He opens his eyes. Snow. (He's covered in snow. Flat on his back in
the snow.) The snowfall is rapid, all he can see is the glittering
white, but the snow isn't terribly heavy, most of it melting on
impact, running down his cheeks like little tears.
   Derek starts to sit up, but the swelling in his belly is too
intense, the tightness too suffocating. So he lets himself fall back
prone again, then slowly rolls over onto one side. His cheek touches
the snowy ground, and he feels the pressure of it, faintly, but not
much else. Skin is going numb. He must have been laying here awhile.
How long, he can't tell. Laying here, bleeding on the inside, freezing
on the outside.
   He must have closed his eyes again, because everything's gone
black. He opens them, and now everything is white. Not sure how long
he had them closed. It didn't seem like a long time, but there's more
white than there was before. Losing consciousness? Blacking out? Not
great, Derek. You need medical attention. Let's find out where you
are.
   No houses, no trees, no power-lines, nothing that screams
"civilization" or "hospital". Just an endless expanse of snow. But the
air has that dirty, grimy feeling that he missed in the past. So if
he's not back in 2008, he's closer than he was. Maybe his cell phone
will work? Assuming there's a tower somewhere in the next twenty to
forty miles.
   Fingers are numb. Clumsy. Tips are burning, hurts to touch things.
He reaches into his pocket, scraping across the little felt-lined box.
(Still there. Good.) With some difficulty, he moves it aside and pulls
out his cell phone. It takes some effort to power it on. He holds it
up, blinking in a vain attempt to keep the snow out of his eyes. The
phone isn't staying in one place; his whole arm is shaking. His whole
body is shaking. Shivering from the cold. Or maybe going into shock?
Losing a lot of blood, kid. (He can feel it filling him up like a
balloon.)
  There are bars. There are bars! And his location, latitude and
longitude. Not Jolt City. Must be... Russia? Sure, why not. Russia.
   He calls Bethany.
   "Oh my God, Derek?"
   "A little bit, yeah. I need..." The words are cloudy, everything
jumbling up at once. Then, with a pained little grunt, "... help.
Medical. Medical help. Somewhere in Russia." He gives her the
coordinates.
   "Okay, I'm coming. Hang on." He hears her talking, faintly, and
then somebody else, and then, "Okay, I'm on my way, but it's going to
be awhile."
   "I don't have..."
   "I know that!" she snaps. "Let me finish. (Sorry.) Lacey is on the
phone with Whaley right now. She's going to get one of their locals to
pick you up and get you to a hospital. Sounds okay?"
   "Will she be good-looking?"
   "I don't know if he will be good-looking or not. Behave yourself."
She says something else, but he doesn't hear it.

He wakes up in a hospital bed. (The television is on. Local news. But
as he doesn't speak Russian, he doesn't have much interest.)
   His eyes are blurry and his throat is dry, but everything else
feels kinda floaty. Must have him on some of the good stuff. He
considers calling out, or looking for a big red button to push. He
feels the words forming in his head, Okay, let's give a big ol' hello,
but then finds minutes later that he still hasn't done it.
   Presently, a nurse shuffles in and notices he's awake. All at once,
there is a flurry of commotion, of doctors and visitors filing in and
out, people rushing back and forth. Time moves faster. Too fast for
Derek to keep track. Then, it slows down again, and she stands framed
in the doorway.
   For a moment, he thinks it's Bethany, but the silhouette is too
skinny, the hips too flat. She steps into the light.
   "Becky."
   She smiles, pushing the countless freckles on her cheeks upwards.
"Agent Glass to you, buddy." She sits down next to his bed. "How are
you feeling?" [1]
   "Floaty," he says blissfully.
   "You were in rough shape. It was a close call. What happened?"
   "I went back in time."
   "I know that part. What happened? And when?"
   "... I don't want to talk about it."
   She frowns, but then gives a little nod. "I'm sure you have questions."
   He does. "My stuff?"
   "Your costume and gear is ruined. We just threw it out."
   He leans forward urgently. "There was a little box..."
   She smiles knowingly. "Yeah, that's still around."
   He lets himself slide back, relieved.
   "Moving a little fast, I think."
   "It's not for that," he says, annoyed. "What's the date?"
   "Ninth of November. One week after your phone call."
   "Aught-Eight?"
   "Aught-Eight," confirms Glass.
   "November ninth. Who won?"
   "Barack Obama."
   "Great," he says, a little sourly. Then, sensing Glass's surprise:
"I was going to vote for him. I was looking forward to voting for him.
Now, years from now, when my grand-children ask me what it was like to
vote for the first black president, I get to say, hell if I know."
   "He'll be running for a second term in four years."
   "Not the same."
   "Besides, grand-children implies that you'll have children, which
implies that you'll lose your virginity. Don't see that happening."
   "You can help me out with that if you want," says Derek. "You're
kinda cute, for a redhead."
   She ignores that last bit.
   Derek clears his throat. "Dyzen'thari are gone." More a statement
than a question.
   "Yes. Knockout Mouse and some of her friends. Mostly."
   "Mostly?"
   "Something else happened. Las Vegas is gone. Imploded. All the...
all the people are gone."
   "FEVER?"
   "We don't know. I don't think so. From what we could tell, it was
more that someone sacrificed the city to stop the Dyzen'thari.
Independent of what Knockout Mouse was doing. How it all fits, what
actually did it, we have no clue."
   He nods, soberly. "FEVER is still out there?"
   "It is," says Glass. "And Caracalla, too."
   "Bah, uh, Knockout Mouse? Is she here?"
   "She was," says Glass. "But she was needed on the moon. Helping the
Extras with a psychic shark from space. Superhero stuff. You know how
it is." [2]
   Not really; for Derek, superhero stuff just means internal bleeding
and crashing into telephone poles.

Two days later, Knockout Mouse is planet-side again, and she pays
Derek a visit. She asks him how he's doing.
   "I'm alright," says Derek. "Not in much pain anymore. I guess it
was a close call, from what everyone was saying, but I came through it
all right."
   "I'm glad," says Bethany.
   "Me too," says Derek. "I heard you were on the moon."
   "Yeah," she says. "It was the moon. You kinda get over it after a
few minutes, but then you look at the Earth and, you know, wowza. I
heard you went back in time."
   "A little bit, yeah," says Derek. He frowns.
   She takes the hint. And then, softly: "Thank you."
   "I'm not sure for what, but I'd be happy to take the credit for it."
   "For, you know, believing in me."
   "Oh, totally not a problem," says Derek. "Thank you for giving me
someone to believe in."
   She blushes, purple as a plum. "I'm in Jolt City now. So I guess
we'll be seeing a lot more of each other, once you get back."
   "Trimmer make you MPH?" [3]
   She nods. "Hope you don't mind. It's really not that big of a
deal-- mostly PR stuff. Like, I had to be on hand when they let
Gallery and Chemist out." [4]
   "No, not at all. They need someone with powers to keep Councilman
Canton off our backs about Fitzwalter, and I didn't think White Ant
was going to cut it." [5]
   "Mayor Canton," she says.
   Derek frowns; that's one son-of-a-bitch he would have been happy to
vote against. [6]
   "And yes," continues Bethany, "the Fitzwalter crowd has shut up for
the time being. I'm..." She blushes again, terribly happy. "I'm out,
Derek. Out in the open. They know." She holds up her Singularity
Gauntlet. "They all know. I've had to lie about it for so long, always
worried that someone would find me out, always holding everything in,
and now it's like I can breathe again."
   "Everyone knows you don't have natural powers, and Fitzwalter shut
up anyway?"
   "Everyone knows that the world was saved by two people who don't
have natural powers," says Bethany. "Me and Dr. Metronome. Two people
that wouldn't be given the tech we have if we followed Fitzwalter.
Chicago's holding strong, and they're pretty pissed at me, but they
can't touch Metronome right now, which is good for her. But everyone
else is thinking twice about Fitzwalter." She pauses. "Well, three
people without powers. Couldn't have done it without you."
   "But you can't say that in public," says Derek. It's not a
question, not an accusation, just a statement of fact. If word got out
that time travel was really possible, and that he was basically
responsible for the founding of Jolt City, and a thousand years of
research, you'd get tons of people trying to muck around with time,
and one of them was bound to make it stick. The consequences would
just be too catastrophic.
   Derek smiles. "I don't mind, really. It's weird, but I don't. All
that time, I was so hungry for people to see what I was doing, to get
the spotlight. I was so angry when the Architect got all the credit
for taking down the Gorgon. That was my idea. I was the one that
figured it out. But, you know, he's the one that actually did it. And
it's not something that I could have done. I'm okay being the man
behind the curtain. I mean, Lord knows I'm terrible at punching
things." [7]
   "You're really good at being punched though," says Bethany. "You
just fall right over. That's a rare gift." [8]
   She leans over and kisses him on the mouth. "You know I'm right."
   "The lady is always right," he says, kissing her back. "So, uh, are
we dating yet?"
   Bethany shrugs. "I'm not seeing anyone else, if that's what you
mean. How about you? Did you expose yourself to some poor peasant girl
in the middle ages and become your own ancestor?"
   "I used protection," he says with a devious smile. "Chainmail
chafes, by the way, eff-why-eye."
   "I bet it does," says Bethany. Another kiss.
   "You know," says Derek, "I, uh, I'm not able to move around that
much, but if you wanted to, you know," he laughs a little, "reward me
for saving space and time, uh, you know, sexually..."
   "You want a blowjob," she says flatly.
   "A little bit, yeah."
   She puckers her lips together and blows twice in his face.
"Blowjob!" she sing-songs.
   "That's not a..."
   She does it again. "You got another one!"
   "But..."
   And again. "You're insatiable! You know, you're a really lucky guy,
you just got three of 'em in a row. My jaw is really tired now." She
kisses him on his cheek.

Roy Riddle visits Derek the next day. "I would have come sooner," he
explains, "but I was needed in, um, in Rome. I guess I'm an Archbishop
now? Still kinda getting used to that."
   "You deserve it," says Derek.
   Riddle blushes, his puffy boyish cheeks turning pink. "Not sure
that I do. I didn't really do anything on my own. Really, all of this
is just because I was the one priest that you happened to know. And
you only knew me because I was the only priest that you happened to
know. I never would have came to Jolt City if the Church hadn't sent
me there, and the Church never would have sent me there if you didn't
name me, and you wouldn't have named me if I wasn't in Jolt City."
He's out of breath. "Time paradoxes," he says, throwing up his hands.
   "Roy, you're getting all bent out of shape."
   "Wouldn't you?" says Riddle. "When they told me I was this, this
person, this person who was foretold for centuries, that I had some
part to play, it gave me this sense of purpose. Like I counted. But it
wasn't me at all. It wasn't that I was special. It was that you needed
a priest, and I happened to be the guy you thought of."
   With a little bit of difficulty, Derek sits up in his bed. "Roy.
You were the guy we thought of because of who you are."
   "We?"
   "Me and Martin," says Derek. "Martin told me about the first time
you met. How he just blurted out everything to you, told you his whole
story, the good and the bad. Because he just trusted you. Right from
the start. You have a face that people trust."
   Roy looks at the floor, embarrassed.
   "I always trusted you," continues Derek. "Didn't always get along
with you, or agree with you, but I always knew I could trust you. And
I guess I needed someone to talk to Bethany, someone that she would
just trust right from the get-go. And so of course you were the first
person I thought of."
   "Thank you," says Riddle quietly.
   "Thank you, Archbishop," says Derek. "You saved the world."
   "So did you. You're, uh, you're technically a Saint, by the way. Secretly."
   "Good to know," says Derek.
   "I, uh, I may have prayed, more than once, for your intercession."
   "Did it work?"
   "Not really."
   "Sounds about right."
   "Which, which one are you, if you don't mind me asking?" says Roy.
"There were a number of you in the past, popping up at different times
and places..."
   "I know," says Derek, frowning.
   Roy doesn't take the hint. "So which...?"
   "I couldn't tell you," says Derek. "When I came back, it all
jumbled together again. I can see myself in all those places and
times. There's so many of them that I can't really see any of them. I
see myself dying a lot. I guess I'm the one that didn't die."
   "Martin was with you," says Roy.
   The elephant in the room. "He was."
   "Maybe he got back, too," says Roy hopefully. "Just one of him had
to make it."
   "Maybe," says Derek. But he knows it isn't true.

It's the day before Thanksgiving by the time Derek gets back to Jolt
City. Becky Glass was kind enough to get him SCRA protection to
prevent the bank from foreclosing on his house in his absence. (He was
hoping the government might be able to take care of a couple of
mortgage payments for services rendered, but that's not the way it
works.) [9]
   He reaches for the knob, and stops. There's a bullet hole in his
door. Well, that's ominous. [10]
   He opens the door and flips the switch, and nothing happens. Glass
may have put off the bank for the time being, but had neglected to do
anything about the utilities. He had been a month behind already in
October.
   The house is dark, not pitch-black dead-of-night dark, but the
blobby browns and grays that strain the eyes. It's also cold-- end of
November without any gas. As a result, it doesn't feel particularly
welcoming. Doesn't feel like his house, the house he grew up in, the
house his father left him, the house he's been fighting for so long
and so hard to try and keep. Doesn't feel like it's worth it all.
Feels like it belongs to a stranger.
   He becomes conscious of something irritating his fingers. That's
when he realizes he has his hand in his pocket, and that he's touching
the little felt box.

He has something like seventeen-hundred emails to plow through once he
gets his electricity up and running. Toward the top of the list is the
one that gives him the most pause. The prop pres company for which
Mason & Rock is doing most of its work is back-charging them over six
hundred dollars.
   "Hello," he says once he's been transferred to his state rep. "This
is Derek Mason."
   "Mr. Mason!" she exclaims in surprise. "How nice to hear from you!"
   "I, uh, I have this email, about these back-charges..."
   "Yes, well," she begins, "we haven't heard from you in five weeks.
If you can't accept an order that is assigned to you, as you know, you
have twenty-four hours to ask that it be reassigned. If you don't ask
that it be reassigned, and if you don't complete the work in three
days, we will reassign it, and back-charge you for any delay. We had a
lot of new work coming your way. And then there were a couple of your
bids that were approved from HUD, and since you didn't do it, and we
couldn't find anyone else to do it for your price, we had to
back-charge you the difference between your approved amount and what
was justified by the cost estimate."
   "I was," what, I was thrown back in time and didn't come back for
two weeks, and spent the rest of November in a Russian hospital? "I
got caught up with everything that happened on October twenty-fourth.
I ended up... displaced. I, I almost died, and I've been in the
hospital ever since. I have, I have paperwork... Believe me, I would
have let you know, I want to work and I don't want to let you down. I
want to be successful. But this was beyond my control."
   "That's understandable, sir," she says. "But what about Mr. Rock?
Couldn't he have done the work, or ask that it be reassigned?"
   "No," he says, faltering. "Martin's gone. He's gone." Don't do
this. Not on the phone, not with some person you don't even know. "He,
he died. Protecting me. So that I could make it out alive, and he knew
that's what he was doing, and he did it anyway. And I, I'm not even
worth it. He was my, he was my friend. He was my best friend. Everyone
looks at me, and they know what he did, I didn't even tell them but
they know, and they know that I wasn't worth it. He should have been
the one to come back. He's the one they need! Not, not me. Not me."
   "I'm going to talk to my manager, and see if we can't waive these
charges given the special circumstances. Can you hold for a minute?"
   "Sure." There's silence on the other end, and suddenly Derek is
crying. It's violent, not slick trickles or streams, but bursts of
anger spraying out from his eyes, his whole body shaking. He tries to
stop himself, but it just keeps coming.
   After a few minutes, her voice returns. "Okay, Derek, we will be
waiving all those charges. And we actually have a job in your area
that we're trying to reassign. Something that needs to be done this
afternoon. Can't wait until after the holiday. Are you able to come
back to work yet?"
   "Yes, sure," he says, his voice still wet and thick. "What is it?"
   "We need someone to meet an insurance assessor and give them access
to the house."
   "That's fine," says Derek. "Sure. Send it right over."
   She sends the email. He hears her take in a deep breath, holding it
pensively. She releases it. "Derek, I don't really know you, and I
didn't really know Martin. But it seems to me that if he did that for
you, that he thought you were worth it."
   He doesn't know what to say to that. After a while, he thanks her
and hangs up.

When he first started the business, Derek was picking up table scraps.
When a property's regular contractor flaked out or didn't follow
through, the job would be reassigned to Derek and Martin. They did
enough of those jobs well enough (and cheap enough) that eventually
they were assigned regular properties of their own to maintain and
inspect. After going AWOL for the last five weeks, all of the regular
assignments for those properties were reassigned to other contractors.
Now, Derek's back to picking up scraps again.
   This is the time for it, though. For scraps. A lot of contractors
in the area are spending Thanksgiving and the long weekend with their
families. Derek doesn't mind working during the holiday.
   Last year, he spent Thanksgiving with Martin, Dani, and Pam. For
reasons Derek never quite understood, Dani had got it into her head a
long time ago that she knew how to cook, and she clung to it something
fierce despite all evidence to the contrary. Leading up to
Thanksgiving, it became apparent that Dani had decided to handle the
dinner herself, including the turkey. The week before, Derek stopped
in at Pam's place after visiting Erika-- he was still visiting her
then, like he had promised to; he meant to keep it up, but this last
year everything went to hell and he just "forgot". [11]
   Anyway, Derek asked Pam what the odds were that Dani would burn
down his house.
   "Hey," said Pam, "that takes care of your whole mortgage problem."
   "Thanks," he grumbled.
   "You'll be thanking me in a couple years," she said. "You know why
I'm not getting a house?"
   "Because you're living in mine?"
   "Because the whole thing's a bubble that's this close to getting
popped," she popped her mouth deliciously, "and a bunch of people are
going to get screwed. Everyone's talking about the market doesn't have
a bottom, but the prices have been declining the last couple of years.
Once it hits bottom, that's the time to buy. Houses will be cheaper
than cars. Gonna buy my own house then, get the hell out of yours.
Maybe buy a few. Rent them out until the market recovers, then sell
'em at a profit."
   "Bounty hunting doesn't have a future in it?" says Derek, bemused.
   "Oh, it does," says Pam. "It's called a bullet. No thanks."
   "I didn't come here to talk boring economics stuff," said Derek. "I
came here to talk turkey."
   "If a turkey goes into the oven, and Dani takes it out, is it still
a turkey?" said Pam. "Ooh. Zen."
   "I'm sure if you were to offer to cook the turkey..."
   "But why would I do that?" said Pam.
   "Because you don't want me to die of food poisoning?"
   She shrugged her shoulders. "Eh, you're okay. But you're not so
okay that I want to spend four hours cooking a God-damn turkey. You
don't want Dani to cook it, you should do it yourself."
   "Me? But I'm..."
   "The only one of us who doesn't have grown-ass shit to do during
the week? Or are you about to give me some sexist bullshit about how
Dani and me are the only people in the house who could possibly cook a
turkey?"
   "Really, I think you're giving Dani too much credit there."
   She laughed. "I was being nice."
   "Okay, let me make a deal with you."
   Pam crossed her arms against her chest. "Let's hear it, squirt."
   "You do the turkey this year," he said. "I'll help."
   "You'll help?" said Pam. "Or will you do a couple of things, then
wander off, then come back when it's almost done?"
   Derek shrugged. "But I'll do it next year. Show me how to do it
this year, and I'll do it next year."
   "That's farther ahead than I like to plan," said Pam.
   "C'mon," said Derek. "Otherwise, you're going to be eating Dani's
turkey, too."
   "Okay," said Pam. "I'll do it this year, if you do it next year, and..."
   "Yes?"
   "And you carry all my bags on Black Friday."
   "I almost prefer death-by-turkey."
   "Take it or leave it."
   "Alright, I'll take it." The turkey turned out alright, more than
alright, and Derek didn't forget his promise. The day before
Thanksgiving he called Pam, both at her office-- it went to the
machine-- and on her cell-- the number had been discontinued. He sent
her an email, but never got a response.
   Bethany had called him that night, and asked if he wanted to come
with her to Pill Hill to see her parents and family. He turned her
down, said it would just feel kinda weird. "What would you say? This
is Derek, I met him jumping on rooftops?"
   "I would say, this is Derek, he's my boyfriend mostly."
   "Mostly."
   "And we would make something up. It's part of the whole secret
identity thing. You might need to work on it." Whatever that means.
   And so he spent his long weekend working, usually ten or more hours
a day, picking up whatever jobs his state rep could throw his way. He
didn't mind it. Kept his mind off things, kept him out of his empty,
hollow house. A couple of them were pretty nice gigs, and from the
four days put together he would have enough cash to cover one of his
mortgage payments. Not enough to bring it current, but enough to stave
off foreclosure proceedings for another month. That was something,
anyway.

The next Monday: first day of December. JCU.
   Derek pops into the Kistler Building twenty minutes before class,
hoping to find Dr. Fay alone in her lab. He's in luck; it's just her
and Alistair, her Apelantian lab assistant, who is presently working
on solving a very long and complicated equation that he's scribbled on
the inside of his tank with a special water-proof marker.
   "Mr. Mason," says the good doctor.
   "Hi," he says tentatively. He had spent a fair amount of time
wondering how to explain his five weeks absence from her AATS class,
and hadn't really come up with anything that sounded particularly
convincing or would prevent him from flunking out. [12]
   Luckily, he doesn't have to. "So, how was the whole time travel thing?"
   He blinks. "You know?"
   "Duh."
   "Well, I guess that makes sense. You being a genius and all."
   "Really," says Dr. Fay, "it wasn't rocket science. You are
objectively terrible at it."
   "I."
   "Objectively. Even Trini Tran knew."
   "Trini Tran?" says Derek. "The, uh, the cute one?"
   "Yes, the cute one, because that's my primary means of identifying
other human females. Your girlfriend's a good kisser, by the way."
   "I."
   "I, I, I. Everything's always about you, isn't it?" She smiles.
"But seriously, how are you?"
   "I'm fine," says Derek. "They ran a lot of tests when I was in
Russia. Everything seems to be the way it should be, more-or-less."
   "More-or-less?"
   "Apparently I have high cholesterol for my age and body mass."
   "Well, if you want me to take a look at your implant later today,
see what's going on, I'd be happy to do that."
   "Sure, sure."
   "...Martin?"
   He shakes his head.
   "That's too bad," she says sadly.
   He doesn't much feel like letting the awkward silence hang there
between them, so he speaks up. "So, you know my secret, then you know
why I haven't been in class."
   She nods.
   "So," he says, "I probably haven't flunked?"
   She frowns. "No, I'm afraid you've well and truly flunked. Missed
classes are missed classes. You would basically need to get an A on
everything else forever to even average a C-minus. And I can't really
pass you and still flunk someone who was here for every session and
every test. They'll know right away something is up. Then you have
disgruntled mad scientist geniuses digging around in your life, and
with you, it really doesn't take much digging. Then it's good-bye to
whatever's left of your secret identity."
   "That really sucks, Dr. Fay."
   "But, if what I was told is true, you are kinda responsible for a
secret faction within the Catholic Church that funds a huge chunk of
my budget, so I guess I kinda owe you one. That same group apparently
funds a full-ride scholarship for JCU through various holdings. If you
want to apply for that scholarship, I would be happy to write you a
letter of recommendation. My understanding is that the new Archbishop
would also be quite happy to write such a letter. It's likely that my
recommendation along with his would carry a lot of weight, even if he
is lousy at bowling. Not a sure thing, but..."
   "I'll try it. Any chance I can get into next year's AATS?" (Passing
her AATS class, even on the second attempt, would be a tremendous
feather in his cap, on par with being a Rhodes scholar or graduating
summa cum laude.)
   "It's possible," says Dr. Fay. "All you have to do is amaze me. You
have the rest of the semester to do it. Should be plenty of time."

Derek probably should be happy. If it pans out, the scholarship is a
pretty sweet deal. "But it's that 'if' that's tripping me up," he
tells Bethany a few days later as they eat take-out Thai food at his
place. "Life has a way of opening doors for me, letting me take a
peak, only to slam them in my face."
   "You're being dramatic."
   "I'm being realistic," says Derek. "Good things just don't happen
to me. They never have."
   She raises an eyebrow.
   "Present company excluded, of course. And knowing my luck I'll find
a way to screw this up too."
   "Now you're just wallowing," complains Bethany. "The problem is
that you've been cooped up too long. You need to clear your head. When
was the last time you went on patrol?"
   He frowns. "October."
   "So let's go tonight."
   "Can't, not tonight," says Derek. "I don't have a costume. Ruined
it in the past."
   "So, let's make you a new one," says Bethany. "You're just using
denim now, right?"
   "Don't feel like it tonight," says Derek. "Besides, I lost all my
gear too. I need to rebuild it all. Something I'm not looking forward
to."
   "So, let's get started," says Bethany. "I can help. I'm no slouch
in that department."
   "I don't have the equipment. I don't have the money for the
equipment. And..." He frowns. "I don't know if I want the equipment. I
don't know if I should be a superhero anymore."
   "Derek," she says, "what happened? To you and the Green Knight?"
   "It's nothing that happened," says Derek. He's not sure if he's
lying or not. "At least, not that much. But, I mean. I don't have any
powers. My gadgets only work half the time. I got a glass jaw, for
crying out loud."
   "That's an insult to glass," says Bethany.
   He looks hurt.
   "Oh my God," she says, "it was a joke. Derek, you're pretty much my
favorite superhero."
   "What about Julie Ann Justice?"
   "Okay, I lied," says Bethany. "But I like you bunches and I think
you're good at what you do. You just saved the fabric of space and
time."
   "Well, you did."
   "Kate did," says Bethany. "But it all came from you. You're good at
putting things together. And you're good at making friends, you're
good with people."
   "That's not really a superpower."
   "But it is," says Bethany. "If you weren't friends with Roy Riddle
and with me, I don't know if I would have gotten your message. If I
wasn't friends with Kate, I wouldn't have thought of her powers.
Wouldn't have known they worked differently than a speedster's. Heck,
if I weren't... acquainted with Lacey Trimmer, she couldn't have
gotten Brian to get Metronome to where she needed to be. Lord knows if
I tried to ask Chicago they would have pitched a fit. If one of those
things weren't true, it might be we never would have seen the other
side of this. You're friends with somebody who's friends with
somebody, and, boom, the problem gets solved."
   "Maybe." He doesn't sound entirely convinced.
   "Derek, what is it? You've been mopey all night."
   "I don't know," says Derek. "No, I do know, but I don't know how to
say it in a way that doesn't come across all wrong. It's like,
everything's going great for everybody I care about. Roy just got
promoted to Archbishop and is probably going to be Pope next for all I
know. You, you're really successful, you're really popular, you just
got made MPH for Jolt City. And it's not that I want that, that I want
to be in the spotlight necessarily. I'm okay with the fact that people
can't know what I did. I really am. I don't care about all of that.
Maybe I wanted that before. Yeah, I did, I know I did, but I don't
really want it now."
   "What do you want?"
   "I want to feel like I'm moving, like I'm living, like I matter. I
just feel like I'm stuck, like I can't ever get anywhere. I'm always
this close, just this close to losing my house, and that hangs over me
something awful. I never have enough money. Whenever I start to feel
like I'm getting ahead, something comes around and yanks me right back
to the same place."
   "Just a run of bad luck."
   "Helluva run. All my luck is lousy, Beth. It always has been.
Everything I've had to do, everything I've got, I worked my ass off to
get it."
   "Not a bad thing, necessarily," says Bethany. "Though it's tough in
the moment, sure."
   "It'd be more impressive if I had anything to show for it," says
Derek. "I just want to catch a break once in a while, you know? I just
want to work my ass off and have it actually pay off instead of always
falling short. I want to get ahead for once. Why can't I have that?
Why do I have to stay in one place, spinning my wheels and always on
the verge of everything falling apart?"
   "You're spinning them right now, in this moment," says Bethany.
"You weren't a month ago. You were saving the universe, for crying out
loud. Travelling through mother-flipping time. You did something big,
impossibly big, and now you're feeling empty and drained, like you
always do."
   "Like I what?"
   "Every time you have a new project, every time you're working on
something, you have this energy, this drive," she says. "There's
something dynamic about it, about you, and what's more, you know how
awesome you are, how remarkable you are, you brag about it. And in
those moments, you're moving and you put everything you have into it.
Absolutely everything. And when it's done, you've got nothing left.
You just get empty and depressed (and depressing) and you stay that
way until you start working on something else. Recharges your
batteries."
   He stares at her for a moment and nods. "You're not wrong. That's
me. Always has been. Always." He sighs. "Always will be. I don't know
if that's what this is, though, not exactly."
   "Well, it's also survivor's guilt," she says gently.
   "Yeah," he says, and he nods. "Yeah, I know."
   "Do you want to talk about it?"
   "Not really. But thanks."

She stays the night. They don't make love (for the first and probably
only time in his life, he's not in the mood) but they do share his
bed, and a few tender kisses.
   In the middle of the night, he wakes in a sudden panic. He has a
premonition that the little felt box is somehow gone. He takes a
moment (only a moment) to slow down his breathing, and then, taking
care not to wake Bethany, he creeps down the stairs.
   He finds the box where he left it, and opens it to make sure it's
still inside. It is; he snaps it shut. "I'll keep your promise,
Martin," he says.
   Then he goes back upstairs.

(TO BE CONCLUDED IN JOLT CITY #23, PART THREE)


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