Joseph 1.7 “The Unsilent Mouth”

STREETHAWK IS CARTWHEELING away from another of the monstrous servitors as we turn the corner of Long Island Avenue and Star Street. In his wrestling boots, denim vest and breeches and bleached Mohawk, he makes a curious sight diving between and over the parked vehicles as another of the inhuman Gugs brings its double-fisted arm down onto a vintage Vauxhall station wagon and glass explodes across the street.
            Like Tinkerbell or something, Seeker hovers in mid-air over the creature and raises her arms.
            “Begone!” the madwoman cries.
            A flood of celestial light pours from her and her arms like a geyser and the massive creature draws back. Streethawk reappears with a metal rod in his hands.
            “God-damned Nazis,” he splutters. “Let me at ‘em.”
            “You’ll probably find this works better,” I say as I coast down to the street from a position roughly posterior to Seeker and let rip with the disruptor. A tight beam of violently dissected air particles shears through the monster’s crotch and it comes free from one of its legs and falls upon the sidewalk pretty hard. Ichor pisses from the wound and the gigantic Venus fly trap head cries with a sound like an abattoir full of retarded children. You know, or something like that.
            Streethawk flips forward, thrusts the steel rod into the macadam and springs off its end, coming down on one hand and vaulting into a cartwheel again before landing to bring the heavy rod clubbing down across the creature’s head, which promptly explodes like a rotten cactus to send gouts of congealing green gravy across the sidewalk.
            “That’s disgusting,” Manticore says.
            “You’ve got a thing about dogs?” I ask.
            “Um, not particularly,” the other guy replies and reddens slightly.
            “Purveyors of hate,” Streethawk grimaces and spits. “I don’t know why I don’t do this more often.”
            “Because murder is still illegal in this city, even for skinheads,” I say and prise the rusty bar from his hands and toss it away. “Lucky for you this ain’t no ordinary Nazi.”
            “That’s no Nazi at all –”
            “Yes thank you, enough of that,” I snap.
            “Streethawk, come with us,” Seeker says and gestures vaguely. “There is another around here?”
            “I saw Grasshopper on Maiden,” the gay hero says and spits again. “I don’t know where he went. There’s some really good-looking robot guy untangling traffic on James Elroy Avenue.”
            Seeker gives me the nod. “You look over there. We’ll regroup in five.”
            I turn to Manticore. “Shall we?”
            “Shall we what?” he scowls, looking embarrassed. “You think we’re a couple of fruits here or something?”
            “Gee, lovely,” Streethawk says. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
            “Yeah have some sensitivity, Manticore. If anyone looks like a stripper here it’s you, Mr Manpower.”
            “Well we can’t all dress up like ninjas,” the long-haired hero replies.
            “There’s something gay about male strippers?” Streethawk asks. “Clue me in here.”
            “Oh shut up,” I snap and sigh tightly, again glad for the concealing mask. “Come help me get the fucking robot.”
            Streethawk follows at a discreet distance, like I’m bad for his street cred or something. I hate to tell him no-one’s watching, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Every few yards there’s a motorist or late-night pedestrian now crouching in alleyways or behind parked cars, eyes wide as saucers in their fearfulness.
            “Hey it’s okay, folks,” I say and wave and try and look cheerful. I may as well be carrying a banner that reads ‘WE EAT PEOPLE’ propped on the end of a chainsaw.
            The moment we are past, the grey-faced creatures scuttle away. I hope somewhere there is a coffee shop or a Net café open to take them.
            Streethawk and I continue on toward the crunching sounds.

 

THERE ARE THREE of them attacking the robot. Hermes looks just like what you’d imagine a giant Greco-Roman robot would look like if it was vengeful fashion stylists rather than phantasmal hell-beasts that descended on him, determined to make their changes by force. The things from the other side of the curtain, whatever their real form, aren’t able to do more than irritate him, though by turn he appears to be not fast enough to take any of them down either.
            “Yo!” That’s me, yelling like a Dickensian street urchin.
            The robot’s big head snaps around at the sound. I can’t help wondering what it is he sees when looking at Seeker’s “minions of Hell”. Does he perceive them in their true form, as pure data, or at least something approaching a better truth than us?
            Streethawk lopes past me like an Olympic high jumper, breath sucking in and out of his taut face before he leaps into the air and scissor-grips the first of the closest rotting plant-like dog-headed monstrosities. Air explodes from the beast in a foul rush and then its neck gives a mighty crack as Streethawk flips it over him and further down the street. It’s a hell of a move.
            “Fascists!”
            “You are designated Streethawk and Nightwing?” the robot booms.
            “Uh, it’s Nightwind,” I reply. “I think Nightwing is, uh, someone else. . . .”
            “Manticore and Seeker are nearby,” Streethawk calls back. “There’s some kind of dimensional rift. That’s why these skinheads are here.”
            The denim-clad hero blinks at his own explanation and looks at me.
            “Did I miss something?”
            “Yeah, you didn’t get Manticore’s phone number.”
            “Screw him. I’ll take the robot,” Streethawk laughs and turns back to Hermes, who just keeps staring at the pair of us with his pupil-less eyes and metal mask of a face.
            The robot clouts one of the remaining two monsters with a sound like a metal pipe in a traffic accident. The second creature breaks off from the fracas and heads straight for me, but I use the suit’s vibratory powers to go intangible just before it arrives and it rushes straight through me.
            The manoeuvre tweaks more memories of how to handle this baby and I turn, swiping at the loping monster and solidifying a hand and grasping something like a studded antenna that hangs from the back of its rhomboidal head and I give it a tug until it twirls around, yellowed fangs splayed in all directions dripping grime; and when it rushes back and through me, I activate the suit again at a different density, turning my whole body into a vibrating blender that basically disintegrates the bastard and deposits about thirty litres of chunky soup onto the ground between my heavy boots as I reform, something in the process eliminating alien cells that might compromise my body, and Streethawk gives me a horrified look.
            “What the fuck do you do, man?” he asks.
            “Molecular control,” I reply steadily. “It’s, uh, yeah, like an alien suit.”
            “And you call yourself Nightwind why?”
            I blink at him for several seconds.
            “Well, Streethawk, what’s that about?”
            “Yeah look, I was busting up street gangs when you were still listening to your sister’s Michael Jackson albums, kid. Deal with it.”
            “I never knew what it is you do, exactly,” I reply.
            “I’m a perfectly evolved urban lifeform.”
            “And being gay, that’s part of it, is it?”
            “I never said that,” Streethawk mutters.
            “Gentlemen,” Hermes chimes in with a voice that brooks no distractions. He wipes monster goo from his metal arm and stalks over the unmoving horror dispatched by the queer member of our trio. “Chamber is nearby. He has been co-ordinating emergency services requests by the police. If you are familiar with the source of this situation, it would be best to remedy the disturbance at the cause, don’t you agree?”
            Streethawk shakes his head. “Jesus, he’s awesome.”
            The denim-clad hero then lifts the little toga-thing Hermes wears around his waist and makes a disappointed face when pure featureless galvanised crotch is revealed. Hermes watches the whole thing from a front-row perspective, desperately wishing he could frown, I imagine, as his perpetually passive face tilts down from his seven-foot height advantage.
            “Please refrain from touching my uniform,” he says.
            “Hehe, he likes you, doofus,” I laugh.
            Hermes looks away and lifts his hand and I suspect he makes a call and within moments, metal-chested Chamber is descending from the darkness overhead with his jet-boots kicking up clouds of dust and dirt.
            “What’s the situation?” a distinctly Afro-American voice comes from behind the helmet.
            “We’re meant to meet Seeker back this way,” I gesture, and unknowingly begin leading our merry band back to the crossroads.

 

“HEY, I’M NIGHTWIND,” I say to Chamber as we jog in a tight group across the block.
            “Yeah I know, man,” the armoured guy replies. “I met you at that big fire thing when the Serpent God guy exploded after fighting with those evil Sentinels guys from that parallel Earth. You dig?”
            “Uh, look, if you say so. I think I was on medication at the time.”
            “Well to be honest, you didn’t do much. You kinda got yourself a bit of a reputation as a camera whore, my friend. You gonna be any good to us here?”
            I’m taken aback by this alter ego Chamber’s frank assessment, even though it gels with everything I ever felt about Nightwind. Problem is now the shit is sticking to me.
            “I’ll let you in on a secret, actually,” I say as we continue to pound the pavement back to where I can see Seeker talking to some police and Manticore totally checking out her rear end while she does it.
            “What’s that, friend?”
            “I’m actually, like, new to this body. I gather the old Nightwind was kind of one of the city’s more suckass heroes,” I say. “I’m hoping I can do better than that.”
            “Well I hope he’s gone to a better place,” Chamber says, managing to inflect the statement with a degree of curiosity no man with his head in a helmet that resembles a champagne bucket has any right to exhibit. “Don’t get me wrong. He was no Zephyr or anything, but even if he was a royal pain in the ass, that doesn’t mean I hope he’s roasting in Hell.”
            “What do you mean about Zephyr. . . ?”
            “So here’s to hoping you can make amends, my friend,” Chamber finishes, ignoring my question and pounding me unhelpfully on the shoulder as we arrive near the others.
            Streethawk and Hermes make their way over too and the moment Seeker has finished with the police, she turns back to us with her face a mask of seriousness.
            “Very well, gentlemen. Now comes the difficult part.”
            “Namely?”
            “To the Devil’s lair,” she says.
            I scratch my face mask gently and ask, “And how do we do that?”
            “First, from the air,” Seeker says and gestures obliquely.
            “And then?” comes Chamber’s deeper voice.
            Seeker gives him the nod. “You can do your trick, Chamber. Once we are within the Otherrealms, it will be safe again to open your N-dimensional portal.”
            “I’ve seen how he rolls,” Streethawk says. “Why not just hitch a ride from here?”
            “Because we first have to breach the . . . spillage.”
            “Oh boy,” I sigh. “This is going to be fun.”
            “Let’s be off,” Seeker says. “Zephyr needs us.”
            I shake my head at the irony again and Seeker and Chamber lift from the ground. Streethawk grabs a hold of Hermes’ tunic and has perhaps the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on a man. I look at Manticore and he shrugs and we follow suit, me the slowest of the lot of them as we drift up like detritus towards the fog-shrouded stars and the unsilent mouth of the Hudson.

~ by wereviking on July 10, 09.