A few days ago, I asked you guys to help me select which of several works I should adapt for an audio version next. While there wasn’t really a consensus about which book I should do, it was clear what not to do — nobody said they wanted Lost in Silver next. I’m going to assume that’s because you all just finished reading it, and you want something new, right?
So in the interest of generating a few more thoughts, and helping me select between the two remaining candidates, I’m going to post the first chapters of the two projects I’m trying to decide between. Today I’ll post the first chapter of my “superhero Altman film,” Cross-Purposes. Tomorrow, come back for the beginning of the zombie fantasy The Last Portal.
As always, comments would be greatly appreciated.
PROLOGUE
ANGELA MONTESSI
Over two dozen superheroes responded to the Red Ball alert that day – not a crisis-level of response, but pretty impressive nonetheless. Angela Montessi wasn’t particularly surprised, though. Certain supervillains simply drew that level of response, and Doomsayre was certainly one of them. She’d seen that lunatic put behind bars nearly half a dozen times already, and every time there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would break out again. One time he’d managed to secrete a microscopic teleporter homing beacon inside a false tooth – he beamed himself right out of jail. Another time he used tools from the metal shop and a chunk of a strange meteor he found in the yard to shrink between the atoms of the walls. Once he actually managed to simply hypnotize everyone in the prison. The guards actually smiled and waved at him as he walked straight out without so much as a finger raised to stop him.
This last breakout was different, though. Doomsayre was firmly ensconced as one of the most effective mad scientist types on the eastern seaboard, but he was never a physical threat. You always needed to worry about what new weapon he had invented, what new disease he cultivated from spores discovered in the grout in the bathroom tile, and you never – never – ate or drank anything he offered you. But he was still considered a manageable danger because virtually any superhero could take him down in seconds if they could strip him of his toys and face off with him one-on-one. As Midknight had once observed, “a little leaguer with whiffle bat could take him down if he doesn’t have his weapons.”
Today, Angela observed as a Honda with the hood smashed in flew over her head, he had finally wised up and turned his genius on his own body. While Doomsayre was a skinny little man with wild eyes and long, unruly white hair, the Upsilon Rays he’d managed to focus in on his body with the help of a pair of spectacles he’d managed to convince the prison eye doctor he needed had a drastic and dangerous effect. The tiny man was now nearly nine feet tall, bursting with muscle. The wild hair was replaced by a strange, horned rim that wrapped around his skull like a crown, and his wild eyes were now glowing red, blazing with a malevolent intelligence and a fierce will. His outside was finally as nasty as his inside.
When the word went out that his prison escape this time around took the form of a giant, indestructible beast simply ripping the walls off the facility and marching out, the Red Ball alert went up across Centerville. In a town with as many superheroes as this one, most of the time the heroes simply made an effort to stay out of each others’ way. They respected each others’ territory, didn’t hog one another’s foes, and most importantly, watched each others’ backs when the rumbles they got into did spill over. When a Red Ball went out, though, all those thoughts of territoriality and professional distance went out the window. It was an unspoken bond. Some threats were simply too big for anyone to get petty over who got credit for the collar, and teamwork became the rule of the day. Even the heroes who didn’t like each other still respected each other, at least publically, and that was enough to work with.
The alert about Doomsayre went out at 3:22 p.m. By 3:35, the prison site was overrun with superheroes: Midknight, Helen of Troy, Speedburn, Catalyst, and (of course) Pendragon. Always Pendragon. Montessi remembered being in high school when he first appeared, claiming to be the resurrection of King Arthur and intending to fill the void left by the recent loss of the world’s biggest hero, Lionheart. People were skeptical of him at first, as his high-tech suit of armor didn’t reveal any of his face and his voice was obviously modulated, but over time his actions in the field began to prove his good intentions. Now, nearly ten years later, Montessi was not only lucky enough to have worked with him a few times, but she was relatively certain she worked with him every day.
As she watched from the sidelines, Pendragon and his frequent partner Midknight double-teamed Doomsayre. Midknight didn’t have any known super-powers, but his fighting prowess was usually enough to make him on a level with the heavy hitters like Catalyst. She wasn’t sure what good he would be against the new, monstrous Doomsayre, though. The most impressive archer in the world couldn’t put a dent in the side of an armored tank, and that’s more or less what Doomsayre amounted to now: a walking, destructive tank.
To make matters worse, when he tore apart the prison, Doomsayre didn’t merely free himself. He broke out every other super-criminal being held at Crittenden’s Island in the process. While Pendragon led the fight against Doomsayre himself, a lot of the b-stringers were desperately attempting to round up the b-string villains that were even at the moment flocking away from the island and creating havoc on the streets of Centerville. The part that sucked the worse for Montessi was that she and the rest of the CPD were thrown into crowd control mode when stuff like this went down. Montessi wasn’t one of those cops who resented the fact that the Capes so often “did their job for them,” but she also hated that she was standing there trying to keep the lookie-loos from walking straight into the line of fire (and literally at that – evidently Doomsayre’s new body came with flamethrower eyes as a standard feature) while her partner, Luke Leeds, was nowhere to be found.
She had never been able to prove that Leeds was, in fact, the man beneath Pendragon’s helmet, but she had tons of circumstantial evidence that had accumulated over the years. Sadly, it was all circumstantial, and that wouldn’t even be enough to get him to resign, let alone come clean in the arena of public opinion. But everything about the man screamed “superhero”: his confident demeanor, his calm presence, the way he seemed to inspire everybody in the department, and the way he always, always friggin’ vanished whenever there was a Red Ball situation. Montessi was, at the moment, crouched behind a police cruiser, waiting for the assembled heroes to finish mopping up town square with Doomsayre, along with three or four dozen other cops in a ring around the battle zone. As far as she could tell, though, Leeds wasn’t among them.
When the explosion rocked the street, she ventured a peek over the hood of the car. Speedburn had made a perimeter around the monster, pounding it several thousand times per second. Unfortunately, while her powers made her one of the fastest women on the planet, it didn’t enhance her strength at all. The jackhammer tactic was usually enough to subdue a normal opponent, but Doomsayre was no longer normal.
There was an enormous scream and a “BOOM” from the battlezone, and Montessi was hurled from her feet, sprawling face-down on the concrete. Her jaw hit the pavement hard and jarred her right through to her brain. For a few moments, she was dazzled, until a hand wrapped around her arms.
“Montessi! Montessi, you still with us?”
Terry Raimondi helped pull her to her feet, and her senses slowly started to return. “What’s going on?” she moaned. “What happened?”
“It’s Catalyst!” Raimondi screamed. “He’s down! Catalyst is down!”
CHAPTER ONE
Shootout
SLEUTH
When Catalyst was consumed by Doomsayre’s fire, falling down in a rain of shattered blacktop and powdered bricks, Sleuth was nearly rocked from his perch. He was standing on a fire escape, peering down at the battle from above, staring daggers into Doomsayre’s new monstrous form. Taking him down was easy in the past, Sleuth even managed to do it himself once, but he was a whole different animal now. The monster-man was towering even over Red Rock, and he was eight feet tall when he was fully armored up. He was also currently getting his head cracked by Doomsayre’s mallet-like fists.
Through Sleuth’s eyes, Doomsayre looked like a humongous blue grid now. It was how his powers worked – he broke down whatever he was looking at into its component elements, then managed to locate and zero in on whatever it was Sleuth needed to find. It made him the perfect superhero to search for missing persons, locate supervillain hideouts, find stolen goods, and – for cases like this one – determine the weak spot of a seemingly unstoppable killing machine.
The only trouble this time? His power wasn’t locating anything weak.
“How’s it going up there?” chirped a voice in his ear.
“Not great,” he said back. “I can’t find anything. Any ideas on the ground?”
“I just punched him 150,000 times in thirty seconds,” his partner replied. “If that doesn’t take him down, I start to run out of options.”
On the ground, he saw Speedburn grab shards of broken glass and hurl them at the monster as fast as she could. It was a desperate maneuver, one she didn’t do often because it would invariably prove fatal for whoever was on the other end of the super-speed volley. Doomsayre had reached the point where he was a big enough threat to justify the attack. Not that it did any good. The glass splintered and bounced off the monster’s skin as though she’d hurled it into a rock face, and Doomsayre simply laughed.
“Keep laughing, uglyboy,” she said. “This is for Catalyst!”
“Catalyst?” Doomsayre said, his voice now immeasurably deep and rumbling. He looked over at where the hero had fallen, as if it hadn’t even registered to him before. Sleuth couldn’t believe what had happened to Catalyst, one of his oldest friends in the superhero game. He lay on the side of the rumble, his body hideously deformed by the cascade of energy Doomsayre had bathed him in. One half of his body was perfectly human – small, but muscular, and that half of his face was contorted in agony. The other half was huge – big and bloated and thick, with blue rubberized skin and sharp protrusions at the shoulder, knuckles, and eyebrows. That half of his face was frozen in an expression of despair.
“C’mon, Erin,” he said to Speedburn. “We’re not hitting him nearly hard enough. Look at what he did to Catalyst.”
“If you’ve got a suggestion,” she said, “I’d be happy to entertain it.”
Pendragon landed on the ground then, aiming his Excalibur Gauntlets at the monster. “Down!” he shouted. The rest of the heroes in the area promptly complied, hitting the dirt as a pair of heavy red energy-lances erupted from his gauntlets and sizzled against Doomsayre’s skin. The monster staggered then, actually seeming to feel the burst, but rumbled back to his upright position without falling down. He looked at Pendragon then, and he growled.
“I can’t see anything from up here,” he said through the radio. “I’m coming down.”
“What? Chris, no–”
“I’m coming down.”
HELEN OF TROY
Helen knew she was behaving like a giddy teenager, but she couldn’t help it. When she saw Pendragon take charge, ordering the rest of the heroes down, opening fire, her heart actually fluttered a bit in her chest. He was powerful, he was brave, he was the most incredible superhero she’d ever met. Watching him in action must have been like watching the real King Arthur, or even the old superhero Lionheart. He had that kind of presence, that way of inspiring people. It made her want to be better.
The enormous creature that used to be Doomsayre launched itself at Pendragon, leaving two deep pits in the concrete behind it. Each step the thing took seemed to pulverize the ground below its feet, and when he leapt, it almost carved out its path. Pendragon didn’t flinch at the charging beast. Instead, he just fired the rockets in his boots, timing his launch precisely so that the monster wouldn’t make contact, but instead would get blasted by the rockets themselves. There were twin streaks of charred flesh running down its back, but the creature didn’t show any sign of pain. Instead, it roared, snapped a parking meter out of the ground, and hurled it at Pendragon.
Helen flew after the projectile, catching it and hurling it back at the monster. She had a vision in her mind of the meter smashing Doomsayre’s face in, as if his secret weakness would turn out to be Rhode Island quarters, and watching him crumble back to his old, spindly, easily-beatable Mad Scientist self. It didn’t quite work that way. The meter did smash into the creature’s face, exploding in a rain of quarters that fell about it, rolling away and bouncing into the gutter. It didn’t seem to hurt it, but it at least it was distracted for the moment.
“Thanks for the assist, luv,” Pendragon said, sending her pulse racing. How was this possible? How did she feel so giddy about a man whose face was always hidden behind a helmet? Pendragon had showed up a few years ago wearing his high-tech suit of battle armor (an armor, Helen had noticed, with no visible power source to charge up its various functions), claiming to be the reincarnation of King Arthur. She never really believed that story, but when you’re dealing with a man so totally inspiring, you have to be prepared to accept a few minor eccentricities.
She tossed Pendragon a wink (one she hoped had the appropriate sultry effect) and turned back to Doomsayre. Drawing back, she flew in ready to punch his head in. Her mystical strength was far greater than the servomotors in Pendragon’s armor… in fact, with all due humility, she was pretty certain she was physically the strongest hero here.
So why was Doomsayre smiling?
As she approached him at top speed, she was the nine-foot monster suddenly collapse in on himself. His body shrank, shriveling back to the tiny little mad scientist she’d defeated so many times before. He grabbed the pants that now dangled, shredded, from his tiny form, and cowered in anticipation of her blow. His tiny human body looked incredibly frail compared to the monster he was just seconds ago, and at this speed, her attack would almost certainly decapitate him. Helen bucked in midair, narrowly avoiding him, hurtling past the scientist and smashing into an appliance storefront. She crashed through the brick façade of the building, and the shockwave shattered the huge plate glass window next to her. She smashed right through a display of refrigerators, crushing four different units and sliding into a washing machine before finally coming to a stop. When she looked out through the gap in the front of the building, Doomsayre had reverted back to his monstrous form. Twin beams of pure white force erupted from his eyes, blasting Helen in the face and taking her out of the fight.
KEVIN ABBOTT
It wasn’t as good as catching one of these “heroes” with a call girl or walking out of a nightclub drunk, but pictures of a battle like this one would pay quite a few bills. Kevin Abbott was lying across a rooftop, changing out the lenses of his camera to one that would accommodate the wider shots better. He kept the telephoto lens on his spare camera, ready to switch out if it looked like something interesting was happening far away, but for taking snaps of this monster-thing beating the tar out of Helen of Troy, the wide-angle would do just fine.
He heard Pendragon shout something, then zoom in to try punching the monster. Kevin chuckled. Even he knew that wouldn’t work. He was willing to bet he knew more about these heroes than anyone else in the city, and if Catalyst wasn’t strong enough to punch Doomsayre out in this form, Pendragon didn’t stand a chance. The tin-plated dork would be better off just shouting orders. The rest of the sheeple heroes would jump at the chance to do whatever he told them anyway.
From below, he heard someone else shouting. He looked down to see someone scrambling down the fire escape, a guy in a dark grey suit, wearing a long trenchcoat. He laughed at the costume. “The nineties called, dude,” Kevin said, turning his attention back to the battle scene in front of him.
He kept snapping pictures, but the voice from below distracted him again. The guy in the trenchcoat shouted something about “the laundromat! Check the laundromat!”
“What’s happenin’ at the laundry?” Kevin asked, looking around the battle scene. He saw the laundromat on the other end of the plaza. There was a huge hole in the side of the building, and it looked like it was going to collapse. There was a green and blue blur in the air in front of the building, and Kevin grabbed his telephoto camera. “Well, well,” he said. “What do we have here?” There was another blur a few seconds later, and two kids appeared on the sidewalk. Another blur and one of them was holding a kitten. The blur slowed down and solidified – Speedburn. He should have known. He’d taken enough pictures of her over the years to recognize that fuzzy color scheme as a telltale sign that she was up so some super-speed shenanigans.
Just a few moments after she dropped the kids off outside of the laundry, the supports in the front of the building collapsed. Speedburn grabbed the kids again and rushed them across the street, keeping them clear of the crumbling building. There was an enormous cloud of dust and the entire laundromat disappeared in an explosion of mortar and soap powder. Soon there was nothing left of the building but a pile of bricks, smashed machinery, and ruined clothing. Kevin smiled. “Well look at that, big bad Speedburn, savin’ the day. Good to know someone around here is pulling her weight.”
He turned back to the main battle, where Helen of Troy was still sprawled out in a pile of Maytags. Funny how that little toga of hers never ripped in battle… eh. Guess she had some sort of magical modesty power too. Oh well. Kevin would catch her sooner or later. Sooner or later, he caught all of them.
Catalyst was still down, still not moving, still stuck in that half-transformed state. Kevin coldly aimed his camera and continued snapping.
DR. MAGGIE ROME
As soon as she saw Catalyst hit the ground on the news, Maggie Rome went into crisis management mode. People didn’t really understand how Catalyst’s power worked like she did. Although he was, physically, an imposing man, his true ability was in the way could change things, spark a transformation that would leave someone stronger, weaker, braver, happier… somehow different. It was an incredibly useful power when he had it under control, but the very nature of his abilities left him very vulnerable to transformations himself.
Her assistant, Theresa, wasn’t in the lab this morning, so Maggie started to turn on all the equipment herself. The imaging chamber was the most important. With that device, a sort of combination CAT Scan/MRI, only far more advanced, she should be able to determine exactly what happened to Catalyst this time. Just like the last time. And the time before. Then, once she knew what triggered this transformation, she could probably figure out how to reverse it.
The chamber was warming up, the computers were on, and she was accumulating data on Doomsayre’s transformation via a direct download link to the computer systems in Pendragon’s armor. It was almost routine for her at this point. She didn’t know how many times she’d done this, and she constantly found herself wondering how many times she would have to do it in the future – not just for Catalyst, but for all of them. She was practically famous in her own right: Maggie Rome, the top doc for all the superheroes in the city. It was safe to call her the foremost expert in superhuman medicine.
The chamber’s hum slowly built up, filling the room. A series of purple lights started to activate, illuminating the room in a soft violet glow. The UV rays were least likely to disrupt Catalyst’s body during the initial scan, she had learned. Following the first diagnostic, she would know what sorts of electromagnetic rays she could use to examine him without causing any further transformations.
She didn’t stop moving, didn’t stop working, even for a second, even after any practical application of her talents ran out and there was really nothing left to do except wait for someone to deliver Catalyst to her care. She had to keep working so she didn’t think about it.
She’d saved Catalyst a dozen times before. She could do it again.
Really. She could do it again.
SPEEDBURN
Sure enough, Chris was on the ground now. No matter how many times she tried warning him off, tried reminding him that he had no super-strength, no super-speed, and that even with his reinforced costume his exposed head still had the same allergy to bullets as anybody else’s, he still insisted on trying to jump into the thick of battles like this one. Chris was a good partner, and a great friend, but at times like this one, she remembered how stupid he could be.
Speedburn had to slow herself down again when the laundry collapsed behind her. Her natural state was one of incredible speed. She moved so fast the entire world seemed to stand still around her. While that could come in handy sometimes, at other times it could be incredibly tedious, even in the thick of battle. With all her speed, no matter how many times she pounded on this creature she couldn’t make a dent in his hide. She might have been able to take him out during those few seconds he’d switched back to his human form, but she had been distracted at that point by Chris shouting in her ear that he’d spotted two kids trapped in the laundromat, and that it wouldn’t be standing much longer. Now, as the building fell apart, chunks of brick and machine parts were flying through the air. She went a bit slower, getting the kids to safety, then snapped back to full speed.
The pieces of the dying building filled the air around her. They looked like they were suspended, frozen in mid-flight, but Speedburn knew better. She was moving at such an accelerated rate that it merely appeared like things were frozen. She started to walk around, deflecting chunks of flying debris away from people they were about to hit, aiming them at Doomsayre when practical. She could turn the chunks away, she could point them in another direction, but there was nothing she could do about the momentum they would regain when she slowed herself back down again.
There was a big chunk floating through the air – a piece of what looked like a washing machine motor – drifting leisurely towards Chris. She shook her head. That Sleuth costume of his snappy, all right, but it wasn’t going to provide the slightest bit of protection. She considered for a moment, as she often did, simply allowing the debris to strike him. Maybe that would be enough, maybe that would teach him a lesson. Then she shook her head. If there was one thing she knew about her partner, it was that he was too damn stubborn to learn anything from something so pedestrian as a brain injury. The chunk was too large to deflect effectively, so she instead grabbed Chris and pulled him to the side. When she slowed down and caught up to the world, he would feel something yanking him hard to the right, followed by the whizzing sound and burst of wind that would tell him she’d saved him yet again from something that could have taken his head off. It was just her lot in life, she supposed.
Turning her attention back to the battle in front of them, to the monster attacking her friends, to the thing that had brought Catalyst down – by her reckoning – several hours ago, she jumped back into the battle, and started to slow down.
STAT
The torrent of energy flowing from the battle was taking its toll on more than just Catalyst. STAT, the medical marvel, watched from afar when the bolts of eye-fire tore through Pendragon’s armor, nearly incinerating his arm. Before the monster could open fire again, Speedburn rejoined the battle, distracting him (if not really hurting him) with a torrent of flailing fists, hundreds of thousands every second. STAT jumped to his feet, red cape flapping behind him, and controlled his flight into the battle with steady bursts of bioelectric energy. STAT’s powers were the result of a long-ago experiment that was intended to control the growth of cells in an effort to thwart cancerous growths. Unfortunately for the world, the experiment was a failure. Fortunately for Pendragon, when Dr. Mike Edison fell into the machine, he not only survived, but gained the ability to greatly accelerate the healing process.
With insulated gloves, he pulled aside the slagged remains of Pendragon’s gauntlet. The would-be king was still conscious, and somehow, still cognizant. As STAT grabbed his arm, Pendragon cheerfully said, “Well done, lad. I knew I could count on you.”
“Of course, your highness,” STAT said, and if Pendragon noticed the trace of sarcasm in his voice, he didn’t notice it. STAT’s power flowed down into the blackened arm, and before his eyes, it began to fill out. Charred, burnt chunks of flesh fell away, revealing healthy new growth underneath. Within seconds, Pendragon practically had a brand-new arm, strong and smooth, without any hair upon it. That’s how the power worked – STAT could regrow tissue, but things like hair and nails would have to grow back on their own. A small price to pay, he thought, considering that if he weren’t there Pendragon would be known as the one-armed monarch.
“What about the others?” Pengradon asked, flexing his new arm. “Helen? Catalyst?”
“I’ll see what I can do for Helen of Troy,” STAT agreed. “I’m afraid to touch Catalyst. His body chemistry is so bizarre there’s no telling what will happen if I use my powers on him. The last time he temporarily grew a second head.”
Pendragon nodded. “I understand, son. Well, do what you can for the rest of us, and leave the task of taking down this beast to us.” He saluted the medic and rushed back into battle, even with his right arm exposed and unarmed. STAT wondered how many times he would be called upon to re-grow that arm before the day was out.
“Sure, sure, I’ll do what I can,” he muttered. “I always do what I can.”
Helen of Troy was lying in the rubble of the appliance store, her body conforming perfectly to the dent in the side of the washing machine she lay against. STAT walked through the remains of several refrigerators to get to her, then looked her over. She was a beautiful woman, there was no way to deny that, but STAT barely noticed. He hadn’t had a date in three years, hadn’t had many friends in almost two. With a power like his, he was the most in-demand superhero in the city.
He was lucky he had time to put his cape on in the morning.
Helen was barely scraped, and her head was lolling against the machine. Probably a concussion, STAT decided. She was a pretty resilient woman, she’d probably be fine in a little while without his help. The explosion of a pickup truck being hurled at Pendragon, then destroyed in midair, reminded STAT that he didn’t really have time to let Helen heal on her own. These super-resilient heroes were always tough on him. It was hard to hurt them, but healing them was no neat trick either, their tissues were naturally resistant to outside energies. STAT touched Helen’s forehead and began to work. It was almost like he had to convince her body to accept his energy, to allow him to do his work. STAT healed dozens of people every day, and healing one Helen of Troy was almost enough to take him out of it.
He fell back, breaking the connection and settling down on his haunches. Her eyes were opening and she was sitting up. Blinking, she looked at her rescuer. “STAT?” she said. “Was that you?”
He nodded, gasping for breath. “Yeah… it was me, Helen.”
“I love how you’re always here for us,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. “You’re our own little guardian angel. Really, what would we do without you?”
She kissed him on the forehead, her bottom lip instead leaving a thin layer of lipstick on his white mask, and rushed out of the broken remains of the store to rejoin the fray.
STAT stayed where he was for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to catch his breath. Yeah, what would you do? he thought to himself. How did he wind up on the sidelines, patching up these careless a-list heroes, running himself ragged for no more reward that a forehead kiss? It’s not like he didn’t have offensive powers too. Okay, so his bioelectric shocks weren’t really strong enough to stop Doomsayre. They seemed to do the trick against your basic purse-snatcher, but these monsters were out of his league and he knew it.
Still… you’d think he could do something else…
“STAT!”
Sleuth was in the doorway to the store, banging on the wall, snapping him out of his reverie. “STAT, come quick, we need you! Speedburn is hurt!”
STAT couldn’t help but release a low, deep sigh. “Oh my way,” he said.
DOOMSAYRE
They were ants. Vermin. Cockroaches waiting for him to make them extinct. And now, after all these years, he was finally starting to believe he could do it.
Pendragon bounced back from the loss of his arm remarkably quickly, but Doomsayre knew to expect that sort of thing from these heroes at this point. No matter. With his armor peeled away, it would be that much easier to pulverize the man inside. Plus, Catalyst was down, and he saw some photographer on a nearby rooftop nearly drop his camera trying to dodge a piece of flying debris. It was actually a rather satisfying sight. He would have to aim higher next time.
There was a buzzing sound then, a low one that Doomsayre knew too well. In the sky, an airship was approaching. It was certainly more than an airplane, it was practically a flying building, and judging by the lion emblem stenciled on the bottom of the ship, it was clear that someone (that frustrating Pendragon, he would guess) managed to get off a distress call to nearby Siegel City. The LightCorps was racing in to play the cavalry. He could possibly take them down, one at a time, but all of them at once? Plus the native do-gooders? And, to top it off, he just saw that infuriating gnat called STAT wandering around, healing up all of their wounds?
Before he was a monster, Doomsayre was already a genius, and part of being a genius was knowing when you faced a battle you couldn’t win. He slammed his hands together, sending out a shockwave that knocked Pendragon and the rest of the ground-based heroes from their feet. All around him store windows, car windshields, any glass left that was still intact, shattered in a hail of jagged shards. Helen of Troy, recovered from his earlier attack, as in the air, and she wavered, but managed to hold her position. Once the wave passed, she turned her attention back towards him. Good. He could use this.
Doomsayre roared up at her, hissing and taunting the superheroine. He probably sounded like one of those mindless beasts. The truth was, it was simply too hard to speak clear English through his transformed mouth. When he ruled the world, the first thing he would invest in would be a decent metahuman dental plan.
“Stand your ground, beast!” Helen screamed. “You’ll pay for the destruction you’ve wrought!”
Doomsayre made a noise that was intended to sound like, “Whatever,” but instead just came out as a series of grunts and mumbles. Oh well, it wasn’t like she ever paid attention anyway. He waited as she zipped in, again working on his timing. She wouldn’t fall for the revert-to-human trick again, but he didn’t want her to. He had something better. Just seconds before she was about to pulverize him, he leapt straight up. She zoomed past him, smashing through the concrete and breaking into the city’s drainage system. He came down on her, landing both feet on the back of her head and smashing down into the sewer. He picked up her prone form, stunned again, and examined her. She was a comely thing, and no doubt in his human body he would feel certain urges that would be difficult to resist, given the situation, but in designing his new monstrous form, he had managed to purge his system of such needs. The woman was useless now. He hurled her back up through the hole and began to rush down the tunnels into the depths of the sewers that circumstances had forced him, over the years, to learn very, very well.
* * *
There you have it, folks, Chapter One. If you want to hear the rest of this story in audio form, you know what to do.*
*”What to do”=TELL ME! Use the comment button!
Twenty-eight days and 62,731 words later, I’ve crossed the finish line, my friends. I’ve completed work on the first draft of Opening Night of the Dead, my 2009 
Evertime Realms 
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