 |  JAN 2007 - #17 |
Visitation Rights
by Toby Kernan
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Visitation Rights by Toby Kernan |
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At the mention, Pantu Hurageb rubbed his left arm, then looked up at the beautiful young woman that stood before him. Tandy Bowen was a sight to behold-her long flowing blond hair, crystal blue eyes, and thin yet shapely form. She made Pantu’s blood boil with fire and lust. He was proud with himself, she had been quite an acquisition, when he had found her on the streets of New York City.
“Still hurts some baby,” said Pantu, smiling, “but it is mending, getting better every day. Hopefully, real soon, I will be able to get out of this complex and finally get back into some action. So, baby, tell me, did you have an exciting day…”
Tandy’s smile spread far and wide, and she bounded into the room, throwing herself onto the bed next to Pantu.
“Oh, I sure did honey. We fought this butch chick with a sword named called Gladiatrix and her partner, some dude named Razorblade or something. We fought them in downtown Detroit and infiltrated their base and retrieved some stolen jewels and the press was there and they took our pictures and…”
Pantu put his arm up to try and stop Tandy’s non-stop rambling.
“Whoa, baby,” he said, “slow down a little before you hurt yourself. Get a little excited, why don’t you? You are really getting into John Proudstar’s little team of heroes, aren’t you?”
Tandy looked him in the yes, kissed his forehead, then crawled down and snuggled into his chest.
“I actually kinda’ am honey. It is nice to be on the good guy side, for once. It is nice to make some money, good money, without having to skip town and make enemies out of everybody. It is nice to see someone snapping my photo, and not worrying that some thug is going to sneak up on us in our sleep and shoot us. I think we have hatched ourselves onto something good here baby…”
Pantu shrugged, “Well, Proudstar isn’t some purely altruistic superman out to save the world. He did allow Triumph and his cronies to escape, just for trade of those disks. Keep your eyes open, baby, this guy is no Ghandi or Mother Teresa…”
Tandy elbowed Pantu lightly in the ribs.
“Do you always have to be such a party-pooper Pantu? We have a good thing here, so don’t let that stubborn pessimism of yours ruin it…”
Tandy rolled her eyes, and noticed a laptop sitting upon the end table beside the bed, lying open and full of information. She turned her attention to see what was on the screen, but, with uncanny speed, Pantu quickly pushed over her and shut the screen, then turning the machine off.
“Wow,” said Tandy, surprised, “what were you doing on there? Were you surfing for porn on the web?”
“It was now Pantu’s turn to lay out a big smile, “Yes you found me out baby. I was on ‘Midgets and Farm Animals Dot Com’, checking out all the fine bovine and dwarf action…”
Pantu began to tickle Tandy, and the two began to roll around on the bed.
“Oh, you are such a bad, bad boy…”
“You can come out from those shadows,” said Ted, between blows, “I know you are standing there…”
Kristan was shocked, and a little embarrassed. He had actually seen her there, in the shadows. Nobody had ever been able to do that before.
“How did you…” asked Kristan, shocked, as she stepped from the darkness she stood in.
“Girl,” said Ted, “I have been in this business since before your mother was born. I have made a lot of enemies. After all this time, I can tell you when a flea farts, and what he had for dinner…”
“Eloquent choice of words,” said Kristan, finding it impossible to suppress a smile.
“Well,” said Ted, stopping his assault upon the bag, “I never was much for eloquence. That was the job of Wesley or Alan or some of the other boys…”
Kristan walked up, admiring a wall of pictures and medals and trophies and other articles of memorabilia that filled the history of Ted Grant’s past. Several of his boxing championship belts were there. There were also awards of valor and a picture next to it of President Nixon handing it to him. There were also pictures of many of the heroes and teams Ted grant associated with. Kristan found several fascinating in particular. She pointed at one.
“Hey,” she said, “that one standing there next to you and Captain America, that is the President isn’t it?”
Ted smiled, “Yep, that is Mr. U.S. President himself, Alan Scott. He is one of my closest friends, has been for a good long time. He even asked me to come on board his Cabinet, as the Secretary on Physical Fitness, some trumped up position that would help deal with the fact that one in every five person in this country is way too fat. I had to pass though…”
“Why?” asked Kristan, slightly stunned. She figured when the President of the United States, arguable the most powerful man on the planet, asked you to join his Cabinet, you did just that.
“Well,” said Ted, “I made a promise a while back, and I intend to make good on that promise…”
“A man of honor,” replied Kristan, in her best southern belle accent, smiling all the way.
“Besides,” said Ted, a wicked smile crawling across his face, “the whole world thinks I am dead anyways, and it is a little hard to be on Alan’s Cabinet as a dead man…”
Ted started to laugh, and Kristan just stared. She began to ask the obvious question, but he stopped her before she began by starting to walk away.
“Well kid,” said Ted, “my workout is done. I guess I better go hit the showers. I’ll see you at dinner…”
Tandy slipped out the bedroom door into the hall. It was very quiet, and Tandy wasn’t all that surprised. Ted Grant had left earlier for a date with a very attractive woman. Tandy believed her name was Alyssa. Tao had left as well, out for a wild night of drinking and dancing, and he had dragged a reluctant Kristan out with him, claiming she needed a little more ‘wild’ in her life. John was probably where he usually was, sitting in his control room, watching news, running companies, and doing whatever it was he did in there. That just left Malcolm Cage. Tandy was sure he was doing something dull-probably reading a book or listening to his old jazz records or something like that.
Tandy shrugged, and continued her descent down the long hall towards the crew’s kitchen facility. She pushed through the door and headed straight for the freezer, where she pulled a pint of ice cream from it. She then went to the cupboards, grabbing an open bag of Oreos, a spoon, and sat down at the nearby table, intent to gorge herself on quality junk food.
As she sat there eating, she thought of the conversation she had earlier with Pantu. She had to admit, she was very happy here, on Warpride’s Titan team. She liked being able to sit there at night, eating ice cream, without having to be cautious because at any moment, some assassin was there to exact payback for some criminal you wronged. She liked the security this arrangement brought to her.
She also enjoyed the sense of friendship and family she got on the team. Before, for years, it had just been her and Pantu. Not that Pantu was a bad companion, he had always done his best to care for her, but his best meant robbing criminals and always being on the run. Before Pantu, her family had been the rabble of the streets, the orphans and cast-offs and runaways, which inhabited the seedier side of New York City streets. Those friendships were fleeting at best. This felt real here. She felt close to Tao and Kristan. She felt like she belonged.
“Hello child.”
Tandy looked up from her ice cream and contemplation with a start. There was a man standing before her. He was tall and thin, Caucasian, with short blond hair. He wore sunglasses and a strange black suit, which looked like a mini-universe on a tuxedo, complete with stars and a comet streaking across. He had a crooked smile upon his face, which made Tandy’s skin crawl.
Without another thought, Tandy quickly raised her hands and fired a dagger of white light directly at the man’s chest. She was shocked to see the bolt of pure white energy brushed away by a flick of his wrist, vanishing into nothingness.
“That was rude,” said the man, “does this planet not teach its children any manners. I wouldn’t bother again child, your white-lighter powers have no effect on The Advance Man…”
“What do you want?” asked Tandy. She was a little scared now. Nobody had ever brushed away one of her daggers before. She contemplated screaming, or pushing the table and making a run, or even another volley of white light. What if this was an assassin? If he was he was a very good one, as he got past all the heavy security that surrounded this facility. Could she escape him?
“Settle down child,” said the man, pulling up a chair, and sitting down, “you look like a…um…cornered rat, I believe the expression is. I am not here to harm you in any way…”
Tandy stared at the man. She had a plan formulated, in preparation for attack. She would release a huge blast of energy, then quickly run from the room, screaming, to attract Pantu and Malcolm and anybody else present.
“I am here, child,” said The Advance Man, “to test you…”
“Test me?” asked Tandy, confused, “Test me for what?”
“I am here,” said the man, standing once again, “to test your preparedness as one of The Chosen.”
Tandy was confused, “Who are the Chosen? The Titans?”
The Advance Man laughed, “This rabble you associate with, the other members of The Chosen? Hardly child. Most of them are just fodder shuffling through life, their destinies unimportant. But you, oh you child, you are one of the very special ones, the most special ones of your breed. You are pivotal. Soon you, along with the eight others, will get a chance to decide the fate of every single miserable human on this mudball…”
Okay, Tandy decided, this guy isn’t an assassin. He is a total head case, crazy through and through, Tandy wasn’t a Chosen anything, just a street kid with a little mutant power, trying to survive. She wasn’t all that special, and she certainly wasn’t ‘pivotal’ to the existence of humankind.
“Oh,” said The Advance Man, “I see skepticism in those pretty eyes. You doubt my sincerity. You probably think I am…unstable…as the case may be. That, child, is why I am here. I am going to give you a test. Perhaps you will see it as a gift…”
“A gift?” said Tandy, confused.
“Yes,” said The Advance Man, “I am going to give you a glimpse of the future. About six months from now, to be exact…”
Now, Tandy knew the man was quite insane, “you are going to show me the future, like the Ghost of Christmas Future?”
“The Dickens tale?” asked The Advance Man, “I read it while absorbing knowledge of you planet. Indeed, like that ghost, you will see the future. Only in this version of the tale, you are Scrooge and you will be not watching the tale, you will be in the tale. Please be careful, because you won’t be a spectator, you will be you, and you can die, just as easy as you can now…”
Tandy started to ask a question, but suddenly she felt ill. The back of her head began to hurt, and she passed out, her head banging against the table as she fell.
Tandy awoke to a throbbing pain in the back of her head. Before she could even open her eyes, she rubbed the back of her head, and found she had a very sore spot, and a large knot. She had hit her head, hard, and she had a strong headache to prove it. As she sat there, eyes closed, she tried to string a line of coherent thoughts together. Slowly, regular brain functions began to seep in. She remembered the crazy man with the spacey jacket in the kitchen. She remembered his talk of Chosen people and the future and a gift. She then remembered she had fallen ill. She hoped when she opened her eyes, she wouldn’t find herself captive of some madman. Tandy opened her eyes, and found she wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, but was instead lying in her bad in her room. Were it not for the bump on her head, she might have considered the entire incident nothing more than a dream, perhaps a fabrication coaxed up by a binge of junk food. But her head did have a large bump, and something had struck it. She sat up. Everything in her room was normal. Nothing was out of place that she could tell. She attempted to stand quickly, but lost her balance and fell onto the ground. It took her several minutes to regain her composure. Eventually she stood, and balancing herself against the wall, with great effort, she pulled open the bedroom door and forced herself into the hallway. “Pantu?” she whispered, pushing open the door to his room. She flipped on the light to discover he wasn’t there. The room was empty and his bed was made. Strange, she thought, how long had she been out? He should still be in bed. Maybe, she thought to herself, she had been flung into the future, as The Advance Man had said, and he was already up and eating breakfast. She tried to laugh at the ludicrous notion, but found that it made her head hurt too much. Tandy pulled herself further down the hallway, checking bedrooms all the way. Nobody was in their rooms. Maybe, she thought to herself, she was missing something. The fact that nobody was there was perhaps due to a mission or meeting, so Tandy decided to head towards the main entertainment room, which led down the hall towards both the ‘war room’-where the team gathered before a mission, and Warpride’s control room. As Tandy slumped her way, along the wall, and entered the entertainment room, she became instantly aware that something was very, very wrong. Several of the couches were overturned. The table that normally sat in the center of the room was broken in two. The television had a giant, smoldering hole where the screen should be. There was some sort of arrow stuck in the far wall. Oh, and there was a body lying upon the floor on the other side of the couch. Tandy made her way towards the body. Slowly she walked around the couch. There was blood upon the floor, and quite a bit of it. This person was badly injured, possibly worse. It took all of Tandy’s strength the knell besides the face down body and turned it over. Normally, living the life she had, she would be immune to seeing somebody bloody and wounded. Maybe it was the bump on her head, and the already dizziness and pain that throbbed in her addled head, but as she turned the form over, the stench of blood was too much, and she had to turn and vomit. Slowly, she turned and looked at the body. It was a woman, Hispanic in origin. In her painful state, Tandy seemed to both recognize her, and not. She couldn’t remember meeting her, yet she felt like she knew her. It was very confusing, like her memories were all jumbled together, causing confusion and making the pain inside her throbbing head worse. Tandy looked over the woman’s form. She had several bruises on her face. She had a nasty, large cut on her left arm. She had several bullet holes in her chest, one that was located in the region of her heart. Tandy checked for a pulse, despite the obvious. It confirmed her suspicions. This woman was quite dead. Tandy wasn’t quite sure what to do. She thought to scream, and see if someone would come, but then thought better. A battle had been waged here, and this poor woman had lost. Despite her impossibility of fully recognizing the girl, she felt familiar towards her, and knew in her heart that this person had not been an enemy. This had been an ally, somehow, even though she couldn’t remember how at the moment. Someone had killed her, just rooms away, in their home. Something very bad had happened here, or worse, was still happening, and here Tandy was, caught up in it, and too messed up to figure out what was really going on. Tandy decided there was nothing more she could do for this dead girl, and she needed to find someone or something to fill in all the gaps, which fogged up her brain. She wiped some of the blood that was now upon her hands on the couch next to her and stood up. Not quickly, but she did it, and finally she was able to stand on her own. She started to make her way towards the room that led to the ‘war room’ and ‘control room’, when she saw a shadow enter the room behind her. She turned and saw a woman standing there. She was tall and lanky, with red hair. She had a strange black marking behind her right eye, resembling three claw marks. She was dressed in blue and orange, and carried a small crossbow in her right hand. “Well, well, well,” said the woman, smiling, “looks like the sleepy one decided to wake up and join the party. Thought that whack you took would keep you out quite a while longer. Not as long as poor little Wildcat there, but then, her whacks are considerably worse. Too bad for her, I guess, but then, she shouldn’t have gotten into this business anyways. It is dangerous, and she wasn’t quite up to snuff…” Tandy wasn’t about to wait to see what happened next, without much thought she flung her hands into the air and filled the room with white light. When the light vanished, the woman was, instead of pointing her crossbow at Tandy, grabbing for her wounded eyes. “Damn witch,” cried Tigress, rubbing, “…blinded me…gonna kill you for that…don’t care what he says…” Tandy didn’t wait around for Tigress to finish her sentence. She mustered all of her strength and ran out of that room, towards the ‘war room’. Running wasn’t exactly an appropriate description, more like sliding quickly against the wall. When she reached the ‘war room’, she practically fell in the room. The doors weren’t there. They were busted down and lying on the floor. She had to hold herself up, to stop her from falling on top of them. As she looked down at the doors, she noticed a strange red light emulating from the room’s center. She looked up, and was forced to briefly shield her eyes from the crimson light. Eventually, her eyes adjusted, and she found the source of the light. It was Kristan Marwan, Raven, her friend and ally. She was sitting in the middle of the room, her eyes closed, cross-legged. She was suspended five feet in the air, and surrounded by a globe of red energy. Tandy walked into the room, and up to the globe. Kristan looked as though she was asleep, a peaceful expression lay across her face. Tandy touched the crimson energy. It felt solid, but did her no harm. She slammed her fists into it, but she simply bounced off. “Raven,” she screamed, “…Kristan…Raven…wake up…dammit…what is going on here…Kristan!” Tandy screamed and punched, but neither seemed to have any effect. Whatever was holding Kristan in stasis was doing a very, very good job. She wasn’t coming out of whatever was holding her. She couldn’t help Tandy, and couldn’t provide any answers. Tandy remembered the red head in he last room and decided she better move on, hoping that Warpride’s Control Room held answers. So far, all she was getting was far too many questions. Tandy checked outside the room, and didn’t see the crossbow-woman anywhere, so she walked quickly down the hall towards the Control Room. Like every other room, the steel doors that secured this room were torn asunder. But unlike the other rooms, this room was full of people. A short, petite olive skinned girl, in an outfit of red and blue, was standing next to a very tall creature, which looked to be some twisted combination of a man and a bird. She thought she recognized both of them, similar to the way she recognized the dead Hispanic girl in the entertainment room. There was also a tall, muscular black man, standing over something with his arms crossed. Tandy looked down, and found that ‘something’ to be the body of Jonathan Proudstar. He looked badly beaten, but Tandy noticed he was still breathing, if just barely. Tandy Bowen couldn’t take it any more, she fell to her knees, screaming; “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?” “Maybe you should have stayed in bed and slept, ‘honey’, and you wouldn’t have had to see this…” Tandy recognized that voice, and turned her head to see him. Standing behind her was Pantu Hurageb. His arm looked healed and healthy, no longer in the cast. Standing behind him was the red-headed Tigress. “I don’t understand,” said Tandy, confused, “what is going on here Pantu?” “It is quite simple,” said Pantu, smiling, as he and Tigress stepped passed her, into the room, “I never did buy into all of Warpride’s little games. The money was okay, but I have been thinking, I’ll bet I can make much more a lot quicker. You see, that whole first mission gave me an idea. If Warpride took that kept that important information from Triumph’s disk, then it was here, along with more valuable information. It was just a matter of finding someone, like my buddy Bandit here, to help me extrapolate it, find a few connections and…presto…millions! But, as we were working it all out, it turns out John Proudstar has himself a few enemies. Eliminate him and…presto…more millions! And, if his little team of heroes happens to get in the way, too bad for them…” Tandy sobbed, “But…you were one of those heroes…” Pantu’s face contorted in disgust, “I was never part of this farce. I came along because it got us out of Miami and allowed me a place to recuperate, and plan for the future, in peace. I thought it would be real short term, then you and I would bust out, but no…you decided you liked it here. You decided you wanted to play the hero. That is why I didn’t let you in on my new plans. You see, baby, I have some new friends now. A new lease on life…and I just don’t think you fit into my EXTREMIST plans…” Tandy began to sob, realization of the situation began to sink in, “You were always a criminal Pantu…but a cold, blooded murderer…” Pantu just shrugged his shoulders, “Things change…people change…you got all goody-goody, I decided to never, ever let anybody get in my way of the things I want ever again.” Suddenly, Pantu peked up, smiled, and through his hands in the air, “Now…let us see here. Proudstar is down for the count. Both the Wildcats are dead. That frilly Tao’s luck ran out. That just leaves Raven and…you…my dear…” “Why haven’t you killed me yet?” asked Tandy, confused. “Well,” said Pantu, “maybe it is a fit of nostalgia, remembering all the good times we had, and could have been having. Maybe I wanted you to see what you would be missing. Maybe I was just a little pissed off, at you ‘turning’ on me, and thought you needed to see your little Titans team dismantled.” “You are a very sick man, Pantu…” said Tandy, between sobs and tears. Pantu laughed, as several of his cohorts joined in, “Well Tandy, I guess that is a matter of perspective. But, either way, it really doesn’t matter. This whole ‘scene’ is starting to bore me. The job is done, the money is made, and I have extracted all the revenge I needed. It was fun, and a good solid day’s work, but us Extremists are all tired, and I guess it is time to go. You know, Tandy, I am gonna miss you. We had some fun. Maybe we will see each other again so time. Bye-bye ‘love’.” With that, the five members of the Extremists gathered close together and Bandit pressed something upon his wrist, and suddenly an man, dressed completely in white, with one black circle upon his head, appeared and teleported all five criminals away. Tandy sat laid there, in tears… |
She turned and ran back down the hall, to Pantu’s room. There he sat, quietly sleeping, where she had left him, his arm still in the cast. Tandy quickly crawled back into bed with Pantu, and pulled close to him.
“What…” said Pantu, groggily, “where…did you go baby…you okay, you are shaking…”
Tandy snuggled close, “I went for snacks…fell asleep…had a bad dream…a very, very bad dream…”
Pantu used his good arm to pull her closer, and kissed the top of her head; “Don’t worry baby…I’ll protect you…everything is alright…I am here to protect you…”