The Earth could not hope to contain their fury. Two light speed comets hurtled through the Solar System until Jupiter loomed over the pair. There aren’t words for its size. At their distance, neither could tell how far they were from the raging planet. All sense of perspective and proportion were lost in its planet sized storms. Small black specks wandered across its surface, the shadows of moons a thousand miles wide. It dominated their view like a tyrant of panoramic conquest. Somehow the very galaxy that hung between in the balance seemed to shirk from the raw size of Jupiter.
Nuklear Man had lost sight of his foe when he finally came to a stop. A maze of moons and rocks spun about him like a star system all its own. He turned to see one of Jupiter’s moons racing toward him, Ganymede, a madman’s mosaic of rock and ice. The Hero braced himself for impact.
Hands clamped around his ankles. “Nihel!” he barked in the ancient language. But before he could act, the monster wheeled him around and tossed him into oncoming Ganymede. The two bodies struck with earth shattering force. Ganymede exploded, Nihel shielded himself from the rock and refreezing ice as huge slabs shot past him. Nihel raced through the debris and mused that Ganymede’s remains probably wouldn’t even have enough time to properly form a ring before he’d lay waste to the Solar System.
Nihel’s knee rammed into Nuklear Man’s ribs at nearly half the speed of light. The Hero was stunned for less than a second but it was enough time for Nihel to grapple him. “This has gone on long enough, Arel,” he snarled in the ancient tongue. “I have come too far in my quest for freedom to be stopped now!” They plunged into Jupiter. They struck it so fast its gaseous atmosphere was like a slab of concrete a hundred thousand miles thick. Nihel made sure Nuklear Man’s face took the brunt of the impact. They dove through layers of churning, angry clouds. Thunder and lightning loud and big enough to destroy entire worlds crashed all around them. Thousand year old storms howled as they pierced deeper into Jupiter’s center. Cloud bands and great storms were obliterated in their wake and a giant dark spot expanded across Jupiter’s surface from the force of their entry. It was like an ink blot spreading across the page, like the universe swallowing up Jupiter from the inside out. At last the giant’s core was revealed. Amidst the darkness and the unimaginable pressure was a single massive crystalline ball that dwarfed the Earth. It cracked and fussed itself back together as Nuklear Man’s head was slammed into it from their Jovian descent. Jupiter shook. Its orbit would be a little wider from now on.
A flash erupted from the center of the still expanding splotch and Nihel rocketed out of Jupiter borne on wings of Nova fire. He spun through space while desperately trying to regain control over himself.
Jupiter dominated his sight once again, his blood black cape settled itself over his shoulders. It flapped against his back and legs. Nuklear Man emerged from Jupiter like lightning, a living bolt of energy that split the vacuum of space, rending it as he passed. It swirled itself together once more behind him, mending back into some stable continuum.
Nihel caught a glimpse of the Hero’s eyes. Energy poured from them like tears. His eyes burned with golden radiance fueled by hate. He smiled. “Ah, this is not the pathetic shell I’d met on Earth. This is Arel as I knew him so long ago.” The monster steeled himself. The heavens shook with their impact and they careened back toward the Sun nearly as fast as its rays were reaching them.
“Why do you insist on fighting me, Arel? What I am doing is for the good of us all!”
“You are a murderer,” Nuklear Man said plainly.
“Murderer! These common things, these bundles of proteins, these disposable creatures who don’t deserve—don’t even
know
—what they’ve been given! Murder? These are corrective measures. I am erasing Odin’s mistakes. Making amends for Odin’s crimes!”
“Not if I stop you,” his voice was as cold as the depths that surrounded them.
“Could you truly have become so righteous in a scant ten years with the Earthim? You who boiled entire worlds in their own atmospheres for no other reason than the contempt and jealousy you felt for what they had and what we were denied. What right have you to accuse me of murder!”
They raced through the vast interplanetary expanse. The sun, slowly yet inexorably, grew closer as Jupiter receded behind them.
“Maybe I have no right. I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t care about fate or free will or the billions you and I have killed in the past. I take full responsibility for all that I have done. Whether it was right or wrong, I don’t care. We were acting on our natures, for good or evil, it’s arbitrary. But know this. You killed my friends. You killed Sparky. You even killed me. You took my friends from me. Now I'm going to kill you.”
“Spare me your sentimental drivel!” Nihel spat. “You know that you cannot stop me. Though you are the strength of a hundred billion stars, I am the fortitude of the reality that holds them together! We are the same, you and I. We are tied to this sea of stars, this speck of the cosmos. We are locked and bound to it by the shackles of fate!”
Nuklear Man shook his head. “Not any more.” he pushed Nihel forward as they rocketed past the asteroid belt.
The monster tumbled through space as Nuklear Man came to an immediate halt. The red planet hung motionless far out in front of him as a crimson dot on the left half of space. He gathered his Nova power into his hands. They glowed white hot, the very space around them burbled into incandescence from the concentration of energy.
Nihel willed himself to a stop some million miles away from the Hero. A smug smile spread across Nihel’s face stony face.
Nuklear Man closed his eyes. Little wisps of fusion hot plasma trailed away from the corners. He took a deep breath of void. He emptied his mind and searched for one thing, one pure thing Nihel couldn’t touch. He hurled a mile wide Nova Beam at the monster and reached for a dream of God.
Nihel watched as light exploded from Nuklear Man’s hands like the first sparks of a new born star. He cackled across the emptiness, “Have you not been paying attention?! Your attacks are nothing to me!” The Nova Beam overtook him and suddenly Nihel’s world was one of fire. “I am inevitability!” He screamed against the ravaging blaze and laughed.
Nuklear Man focused his consciousness upon itself, through it, beyond it. His senses soared through the galaxy and he saw it with a hundred billion fiery eyes. He felt the exquisite myriad of harmonies that made the great Symphony of existence. It coalesced into one song, and again into one note, a singular vibration across twelve dimensions.
It was Fire.
Every star in the Milky Way dimmed simultaneously. For nine seconds, fifty percent of the energy output of the galaxy was redirected through Nuklear Man’s will. The Nova Beam tore through the binds of reality and vaporized the very idea of stability like a shadow in its light. It pierced the void and split it apart revealing a greater nothingness beneath: the infinite subconscious of the universe, an endless dream, an eternal dance of all that never was and all that never can be.
It was unreality.
It hit Nihel like a bursting star. His cackle was twisted into the screams of a madman. He was surrounded by the unreal, severed from his own life’s blood. He could feel himself falling apart. His body, his mind, his soul, everything folded in upon itself and disappeared. “I cannot be stopped! Not now! So close, so close to freedom! How could you do this, Arel! Your own freedom! All we lived for, it dies with me!”
Nine seconds.
An eternity.
The Monster is slain.
The Hero is triumphant.
The universe mends his tear as effortlessly as a human body mends a damaged capillary.
He floats among the dead rocks of the asteroid belt, the last material barrier between the inner worlds and the inhuman enormity of the gas giants and the chasms of nothing between them. And beyond that a darkness so huge and incomprehensible that even a being such as he would be driven mad if he could understand the scope of it.
He concentrated and the Earth was within his sight. He could clearly make out huge black splotches of smoke where cities should have been, vast plains of brown and black earth where forests once thrived.
“Civilization is in ruin. Catastrophes are erupting around the globe. There is no time to mourn,” he told himself.
Nuklear Man lanced the darkness like living light.
“I must be their Hero again.”
__________
Issue 58 – Epilogue
One year later.
The Silo of Solitude.
Danger: Katkat’s Room.
10:03 AM.
John and Rachel were laying on each other on the Danger: Couch. They were watching a movie they’d rented wrap itself up. His back was against the Danger: Couch, her back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her, their hands interlocked. Her long black hair was draped over their shared pillow. He caressed his cheek against the silken strands of her hair and released a long, contented sigh. She squeezed his hands and snuggled up closer to him.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Nowhere important, I’ll tell ya that much,” she answered.
“Promise me you’ll stay this time.”
“I’ll never go away, John. You’re stuck with me.”
“Forever, huh?”
“Thereabouts.”
“Eh, I guess I could think of a worse fate.”
She turned around in his arms to face him with a look of mock offense. “I can think of one.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he retorted while unsuccessfully hiding a smile.
“Is that so? Well allow me to illustrate.” She proceeded to attack him with a flurry of tickles to his ribs and belly.
He laughed, deep and loud, and only half fought against her onslaught. She could tell, and it only served to increase her fervor. He was starting to tear up from laughter. She’d gone for the throat. Or rather the armpits. Heartless wench. He desperately wanted to get away but was too weak from laughter to muster an effective counter attack. His whole body convulsed as he laughed and—
—I’m awake. And for a second, just a brief flash of time, I’m truly happy.
No matter how many times I have that dream it takes me a minute to remember that’s all it is. Just a dream. I’m not sure which one I hate more. That one, or the one where we’re making love and in the middle of it my Field kicks in and she explodes all over me. Neither one is terribly pleasant once I’m awake. I never would’ve thought I’d come to hate sleep. But God, every night is a hideous reminder of how much I’ve lost. But I have learned something out of it.
Listen:
Every love story with a happy ending is a lie. Real love can only end in suffering. In the end, it comes down to either betrayal or death. At least in death, we can be angry at some faceless omnipresent force; God, Fate, chance, whatever. It’s easier to hate your God for betraying you than it is to hate your loved ones for it. At least in my suffering, there is no regret for having known her. I try to convince myself that’s something I can take some solace in.
It’s times like this I wish Nuke had never rescued me from the Antarctic. Eh. Enough self loathing and brooding. Waking up always does that to me.
I roll over.
“Mreowr?” Katkat half wakes up, yawns and stretches while rolling over to expose his belly. It’s pink between the tufts of gray and white fur. That there is a belly made for rubbin’. So I do. “Mew.” His body contracts around my hand like a soft, pudgy, fuzzy, lazy, warm bear trap of belly love. I try to pull away but it doesn’t quite work.
“Heh. Okay, Katkat. Sparky needs his hand back.” I’ve got to do it slowly so it doesn’t wake him up. Ah yes, free at last.
I shamble out of bed and into the Danger: Bathroom. My God, I look like the living dead when I wake up. I lean forward on the sink for a closer look. Pasty face, bags under the eyes, hair sticking out in every direction. I run my hand through it and only have to tug my way through a few knots. It’s too long, I haven’t bothered with a cut in over a year now. I can see my scar. It’s on my forehead right along my hairline. I can’t believe I got hit with a blast so strong it could kill God and I just walk away with a little cut on my forehead. It’s from when I finally landed after being knocked half way around the world. It must've been quite a ride. Too bad the sheer force of the blast knocked me unconscious before rocketing me across the curvature of the Earth until gravity brought me down and I landed not too far from the South Pole, or so they tell me. Damn Field somehow stopped the beam from erasing me along the way, absorbed most of the impact, and protected me from the freezing cold until Nuke found me.
I still haven’t figured out how or
why
it did all that since according to what Doc Genius says, my Field can’t work unless I’m awake. Just my luck, I guess.
Hm. I’ve got to get a move on if I’m going to meet Nuke this afternoon. I haven’t seen him since he started his Sahara Project. He called me yesterday telling me to meet him today. I made a joke about him slacking off on the more important aspects of rebuilding the world in favor of putting up cell phone satellites for his own personal use. He didn’t laugh. He just told me about how he could tap into already established telecom systems using his powers. I miss the old Nuke.
__________
Eating breakfast now. Waffles of course. The paper is lying on the Danger: Kitchen Table but I never bother picking it up. It’s been the same paper for six months. It’s the first paper printed by the Metroville Sun since Nihel. Dr. Genius felt that establishing a form of news media was of the utmost importance to the reconstruction efforts. It’s supposed to be a symbol, something people can hold onto and talk about, something to make them feel united, to let them know what they can do, let them know what we’re doing for them. I’ve never picked up another paper. Why bother reading about what I did the day before?
But I had to get this first one. It has this huge picture on the front. Nuklear Man towering over the lens with a bus or semi-truck or something hefted over his head. Behind him, sunlight filtered between the missing windows of the shell of an office building. What always strikes me about this picture is his gaze. He’s looking off to the right with an intensity I never knew he possessed. It’s like, I don’t know. Like he was already thinking about the next rescue just over the horizon. There’s a weariness there too, like he knows he can’t be everywhere at once.