Mission Report: Day Three

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In the morning, once we had all risen, we peeked our heads back out of the gift shop. Whatever message Tin Soldier had sent, it didn’t seem like there had been a response yet. We were free to search.

We were free to search, but we were hardly in the mood. Look everybody; this is the hardest part to write. For the most part I don’t want to write it. This Justice Backer thing is a commitment to honesty though. It’s a commitment to a certain degree of openness. I can’t pretend I’m a statue without any cracks dispensing perfect penalties to the crimes I cross. If Alpha Dog was right about anything, it’s that the money comes when you bleed honesty.

We had a fight in the boat before resting the prior night. I know you’re already thinking the Fastest Food, and boy did we let her have it over something, but what hurt more were the issues Telephony and I got into.

Okay, chronological order. The major plot twist happened first. Once we were down we asked the Fastest Food about Tin Soldier not being able to find the threat from the Livefeed Thieves. It’s because there never was one. We weren’t there stopping a crime; we were just committing one.

I might’ve throttled her, but she told us that it was Cocoa Solid’s idea in the first place. They thought we needed to do something truly radical to really commit to the hero lifestyle. (If you remember your history Alpha Dog started his team with the theft of an awful lot of property.)

Destroying a weapon that the establishment was insisting on showing off was a good angle for that approach. I admit I dropped my opposition pretty quickly; I trust Cocoa Solid. I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for them. In fact, it was my instant shift to acceptance that started the next argument. Telephony was still raging all over Food while I was digging out my supply of chocolates.

This sucks. I wanted to write something about these new ones the same way I did my unboxing, but the mood isn’t right. Nobody wants to hear silly names right now. Telephony was dead set on ruining them for me.

My hands were a little shaky, just the day getting to me, and I pulled one out of its wrapper. It was a nice combination of effects according to the tag: calming of the mind, slight relaxation of the muscles, just something to help me sleep… It was an inch from my gaping mouth when he said it… the bodiless him anyway. Right in my ear.

“We think you have a drug problem,” he said. The blue sugar-dusted bonbon hung there in front of my tongue. My brain froze for a moment while the giant mountain of shit in my head started an avalanche. Telephony was looking right at me. He was looking at my uvula like I was some neurotic picking at her own scabs and he didn’t even realize what he was thinking straight into my ear. He should have. I smashed the chocolate back down into the wrapper, cracking its shell. Some of its precious filling escaped into the box.

“These aren’t fucking drugs!” I screamed at him. Yes, technically they are, but he knows they’re not goddamned heroin. His chubby face drained of color.

“What?”

“You’re fucking sitting there judging me! Judging me over chocolates!”

“Look, whatever the other me said, I’m sorry! I swear I wasn’t even thinking about that!”

“Don’t give me that other me bullshit,” I went on. “It’s not another you. He’s not you in a cloak and twirled mustache. He’s not out to ruin your reputation. He’s just you! And all of you looks at me, sees my face, sees what’s in my hand, and proclaims me a drug addict. All while wanting to fuck me too. Good for you Telephony; you found a way to be the most infuriating person ever. You demand pity over your fucking curse and then you turn and pity me because at least neither half of you is a drug addict right?”

“I… I don’t…” he stammered. Vincent Van woke from his slumber; his remaining ear flopped over one of his eyes. He sensed the tension in my voice, placed his paws on my crossed legs, and immediately started barking at Telephony. I didn’t mean to have him surrounded by a miniature furry mob, but I certainly wasn’t calling them off either. If he was going to claim he couldn’t control it, I was going to act the same way in turn.

“You want to know?” I spat. Then came the tears. I wasn’t yelling at him anymore.

“You don’t need them,” his subconscious said. Not even a whisper. Not even slow. Just as if it was a fact.

“You want to know why I take these things? It’s because they’re strong; it’s because they’re unpredictable. It’s because there’s always the tiniest little chance they might hurt me. Because I’ve been fucking hurt Telephony. I hurt myself to contain it. I don’t do that anymore, but I need something that can hurt me in my life to be the floodgates. It’s a small hurt that holds back all the big ones, a tiny little wrestler who can take a guy ten weight classes above him. So shut the fuck up!”

I shoved the chocolate in my mouth. My fingers raked across my arm immediately after, reddening my skin. Tracy and the birds were looking at me. Vincent Van was confused. Saintly knew to look away. I always tell myself that I can’t fall apart in front of them, but when I have fucking people pushing my buttons…

“That was spicy!” the Fastest Food declared. “Damn girl, I wish you were like that all the time! Speak your furious mind!”

“Fuck you Food.”

“Fuck you too Gorgeous,” she fired right back. Of course she enjoyed it. That didn’t matter. What mattered was what Telephony had to say for himself.

“I’m sorry,” he started. I expected him to start crying like I was, but he didn’t. He looked like he’d swallowed a tombstone. “I want to shut up, but I can’t. You’re right; it’s me. I think those things. I can’t even say it only comes from a place of concern, because I know the other guy would just tell you the truth. I like you, I find you attractive, and as a result I want you to be a person who doesn’t need those things.”

“It’s none of your fucking business!” I screeched. Took another chocolate. I wasn’t even looking at the labels anymore. My animals didn’t try to stop me. They knew. They knew that self-destruction had to be self-contained. Support was for after it was handled. Support was the ray of sun that congratulated you for surviving.

“I know it isn’t!” he squealed right back. “I feel entitled to an opinion on your lives because on the inside, I’m just kind of shitty. I know that. You don’t think I know I’m the type of guy who only ever gets heard about on the news after he shows up to whatever building represents his greatest failing and guns down eight people?”

“Why are you even here?”

“It’s the only road that isn’t that one! I used to think of myself as a nice guy. Hey, I might be a loser, but at least I’m nice. Except now, the nice guy is the one everybody watches out for. The nice guys are the ones who snap! I have all these thoughts, and they’re just leaking everywhere like my brain isn’t toilet-trained! I’m sorry! I’m here because I had to preempt that news story with another one. I had to go all in on something crazy before the crazy got worse. But you agreed to be here with me. You both agreed to be on my team when you knew about my problem. I am sorry, but I’m doing everything I can to get this done and I didn’t say that shit about the chocolates out loud.”

“Whatever,” was all I had to say in response. I was too busy trying to focus on the tingling in my throat. I got a little light-headed. Obviously you’re not supposed to mix too much of Cocoa Solid’s work. I went straight to sleep, still crying, with hardly time to lie down and face away from them before the inside of my head went black.

That takes us back to the morning after. We didn’t exactly make up once we were awake and out of the boat, but we did all agree that the shit needed a lid until the flame sling was destroyed and we were on our way back.

“Now how do we find the sling?” Telephony asked. We were standing near a frozen Tin Soldier, looking for footprints or any other sign of where he had stashed it. Vincent Van was sniffing about, but they were just two sterile machines, so there wasn’t anything for him to find.

“We have to think like a 1970’s robot ashamed of his past white supremacy,” Food suggested.

“How do we do that?”

“I guess we’ll just have to think like meaty former white supremacists for the best approximation.”

“Oh shit,” I hissed. “Guys. Look there.” I pointed to a shape in the sky that rapidly drew closer. A moment later we all heard its spinning blades. A helicopter. A big weird-looking one with a long tail. Its paint job was the same color scheme as the park’s buildings, so we guessed it was official. I whistled and got Vincent Van and Saintly to find us a hiding spot both out of sight and downwind. Their answer was a row of bushes up a mulch-covered hill.

We all hunkered down behind it and shared the bush’s one bald spot like a telescope, for it provided a clear view of where Tin Soldier was frozen and where the helicopter was setting down. It didn’t even need a landing pad.

Its door slid open as its blades slowed. Out stepped a quadrupedal metal creature with a long snout. A new robot. That could mean only one person: Alpha Dog himself. The creator of Justice Backers. The owner of the park. The chief sellout. Once his robotic dog cleared the area, he stepped out himself.

“I fucking knew it,” the Fastest Food whispered. “I knew he’d gotten fat. How could he not? This whole place is a greasy capitalist glut.” She wasn’t wrong. Alpha Dog was in his sixties now and he had a gut like a cauldron. Rather than his uniform from his Backer days, he wore some kind of blue tracksuit. It looked like he’d just come from a locker room or something.

He went around the back of the helicopter and opened another door. Out poured more robotic dogs in a variety of sizes, colors, and specialties. Back in the day his inventions were his super power. Even at the height of their popularity he rarely used more than a pack of five of them. Ten came out of the helicopter. He issued an order and they immediately fanned out, alternately sniffing the ground or scanning the area. Chances were their chemical detectors were stronger than Vincent Van’s natural sniffer.

“We can’t stay here,” Telephony warned. “They’ll be on us any minute and we can’t take those things.”

“Just hang on,” Food said, holding down his shoulder with one hand. We watched as Alpha Dog noticed his frozen friend and lumbered over to him. He grabbed the robot’s key and gave it several complete turns. Tin Soldier sprang back to life. They spoke. A bit of mulch cracked. There was a green dog barely thirty feet away.

“Can you access his earpiece?” I asked Telephony. “He might be saying where the sling is.”

“I can’t,” he answered. “He knows I messed with it and he turned it off. I think he’s telling Alpha Dog to do the same thing. Look.” Alpha Dog did rip something out of his ear and pocket it. He gave a verbal order to one of the dogs. It ran off.

“Let’s go!” The hound was twenty feet away. Luckily we were on the edge of the mulch and it was just dirt behind us. That facilitated some silent sneaking. Once we were sure we were out of earshot we got back onto some pavement and offered any ideas we had. There was only one, courtesy of the Fastest Food.

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“I think I know where he hid the sling,” she said. “Who does Tin Soldier love?”

“Minorities.”

“Well yeah, but who’s his favorite minority?”

“Stop calling people minorities and just tell us who it is,” I growled.

“Electric Eel. He was always trying to be best friends with that guy on account of nearly killing him and calling him the N-word a bunch of times. I think he’s still sentimental for the guy.”

“Why do you say that?” She pointed. Between two rollercoasters stood a tower with a ring of seats around its midsection. It was topped with an eel statue tying itself in knots and puking lightning bolts. It was the ride called Electric Eel’s Shocking Drop. You’ve all probably been on one just like it. You put on a harness, it raises you slowly to the top, and then it drops you. I asked how she knew the flame sling was there.

“We passed by that before we found Tin Soldier. The seats were at the bottom, not the middle. He said he could control the park with his earpiece right? He must’ve turned the ride on when he was running from us, put the sling in one of the seats, and sent it up.”

“That… actually makes sense,” Telephony said, “but how are we going to get up there? We don’t have any rope or anything and Ernest isn’t strong enough to carry it down.” Just as he finished, like a lightning bolt of luck, the Shocking Drop lit up. Blue lightbulbs across it blinked and spun. The seats started to rise. It wasn’t the only thing in the park that had come to life; everything else joined in. Music suddenly blared from every direction. Fountains and misters went off. Justice Isle was up and running.

“Alpha Dog must have turned everything on,” I guessed. “Maybe he thinks it will flush us out.”

“No,” Food asserted, “he just wants to see all the pretty lights he bought. Either way it’s good for us. Let’s go.” The three of us rushed towards the tower. The occasional robot bark could be heard behind us, the sound nipping at our heels. We reached it just as the seats approached the ground, but it was wider than we anticipated. We searched about five seats, and at that point it was already rising again. We didn’t have a minute and a half to wait for it to come back down.

We hauled ourselves up into the seats. This was necessary, but that didn’t stop it from being a very bad idea. I looked down and watched ten feet turn into twenty. Ernest and Bridget flew in a circle below us. We needed the sling and we needed it now.

“I’ve got it!” Telephony exclaimed through the earpiece. He was on the opposite side of the tower from me, but I was glad to hear it because we were rapidly approaching the drop height, marked by a painted bit of lightning around the tower.

“Strap yourselves in,” I warned as I dropped into a seat and did so myself. About six seconds later the ride emitted some showy sound like Frankenstein’s monster getting his first taste of juice and we started to plummet. My stomach had nothing but chocolates in it, and I felt what was left of them smack against the bottom of my throat. The wind threatened to tear Tracy away from me, but I cupped him in my hands and hugged him to my chest. His tail whipped back and forth between my thumb and index finger like a loose shoelace.

“I might throw up, I might throw up, I might throw up,” Telephony’s subconscious repeated in my ear. Finally it slowed near the ground, giving us the perfect view of five robotic hounds waiting patiently like we were scraps from the dinner table. As soon as they could reach they were jumping up on us and trying to pull us out. Alpha Dog, being a hero as opposed to a villain, had designed them as nonlethal, so at least they weren’t digging their metal teeth into my shoulders.

We couldn’t really disembark like that, so the ride started going back up again. Most of the dogs hopped off or fell back down, but one of them was still on me. Its mouth was open and I could see a nozzle. I think it was going to try and spray me with tear gas or pepper spray or something. I called for help.

Pthok! A frozen nugget struck its muzzle and caused it to flinch. I looked over to see the Fastest Food leaning out of her seat and holding the safety strap with one arm so she could get a good angle of fire. She emptied an entire clip of nuggets into its side, distracting it long enough for me to kick it off. We heard it crash against the ground. I angled my head down as far as I could. It was already getting back up. They would be on us again as soon as we dropped.

“What do we do?” I asked nobody in particular. Saintly and Vincent Van were off in the bushes below us, and they couldn’t do a thing about robots anyway.

“I… I might have an idea,” Telephony said.

“We’re all ears,” Food encouraged.

“Advocate, can Ernest copy new voices?”

“More or less,” I answered.

“Have him find Alpha Dog fast. Get him to say something and come right back. If we even have time.” With the hounds on us I was sure both Alpha Dog and Tin Soldier weren’t far behind, so I whistled the orders to Ernest. He immediately flew off in the direction the hounds had approached from. The next forty seconds were probably the most stressful of my life. It wasn’t fear exactly; I saved that for other things. This was just a tight spot: the difference between a couple years in jail and an entirely new life. I did not want to get caught. I didn’t want any of us getting caught.

Ernest and Bridget returned. I whistled, asking for confirmation of success. Ernest whistled back. He had a voice sample. I sent him over to Telephony. He’s good with simple orders, so I was confident Telephony could make it clear what he wanted. We didn’t have time for me to act as the middleman.

We dropped. This time the chocolate hit the middle of my throat. My heart skipped about five beats. I couldn’t take riding the damn thing again, so as soon as I was low enough I took off the straps and hopped to the ground to face the hounds. They were there, but they were sitting on their haunches with their heads cocked at various angles. All that mattered was that they weren’t attacking. Telephony and the Fastest Food circled around once they were out and met up with me.

“Let’s go,” Telephony’s subconscious ordered while his body hoisted the flame sling over his shoulder.

“Wait, what happened?” I asked in a whisper, not sure how much the hounds could understand.

“Those dogs take verbal commands from Alpha Dog,” his subconscious explained. “We think Ernest briefly attacked the man’s head and got him to shout a few things. One of those words was stop. We had him repeat it into our headset and redirected it to his dogs’ communication systems. They think they’re getting an order to stop directly from him. Let’s get back to the boat before they figure it out.”

There was no argument from me. We headed straight for the gift shop, with all my pets either directly in front of or behind us. All we had to do was get in and start her up; we’d be long gone before Alpha Dog could make it back to his helicopter and chase us down. The gift shop doors opened for us automatically now that the power was on. We passed the Woman’s Touch Tank and descended into Sportfish Bay.

The boat was still there… but not exactly in one piece. There was an array of small mechanical parts arranged on the ground in front of it. They were all lined up and categorized by size as if someone was about to assemble something.

“I have disassembled your engine,” Tin Soldier said. The robot popped up from inside our boat and stepped out into the midst of his handiwork. “There is no escape now. Please put down the flame sling and turn yourselves in. Since you are aspiring heroes, I believe Alpha Dog will be lenient.”

“No surrender!” the Fastest Food cried. She started emptying her crispy clip in the robot’s direction. He sidestepped every shot, expertly navigated his own field of engine parts without knocking one of them away, and picked her up by the shirt again.

“Perhaps lenience is not appropriate.” He raised his metal hand, I think to give her a good smack across the face.

“Wait! Don’t! I’m black!” He actually paused. Now, I don’t know if the Fastest Food is black, thanks to her gloves and mask we never saw an inch of skin, but knowing her I would have to guess it was a lie. Either way it worked. He dropped her. Even after all these years he’s still compensating for his racism in all the dumbest ways. It did give us an opportunity to actually talk to him, but we had to hurry; I could hear the hounds approaching.

“Tin Soldier,” I started, trying to impart plenty of respect, “We’re trying to carry on the Justice Backers name. We’re trying to reclaim it. We want to destroy something dangerous. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Why does the name need reclaiming?” he asked simply. “Many of the Backers still live. They have the claim to the name, not you.”

“Look around you man!” the Fastest Food chimed in. She rose to her feet and brushed off her jacket. “Merchandise. High fructose corn syrup stands. Photo booths for kids and losers wearing mass-produced plastic masks of you. Is that your name? Is that what you stood for?”

“The climate has changed,” the robot said after a momentary pause. “Literally and Figuratively. When Act-of-Goddess protected the world’s vulnerable environments from exploitation, the world decided it would no longer tolerate us.”

“That was you. The lichen was your struggle,” I said. “You might not want to hear it, but you’re part of our struggle. You’re part of the old creaking machine now. People look to us and say we’re nothing. We’re young, we’re entitled, we’re lazy, and we’re sensitive. All the things people say when they’ve stopped caring about giving and started taking things back.”

“You care only about giving?” he asked after another pause.

“Giving what we can. Right now what we have to give is a kick in the pants. Figurative language.” I hoped he would like throwing that in. “The flame sling is a hurtful thing. The world will be better without it.” Silence… except for metal paws. They were in the gift shop. He could process the situation a little bit faster. Just saying. You know old computers though.

“Do you promise to defend the underprivileged and vulnerable?” he asked. “Including people of all ethnicities, ages, ability level, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and socioeconomic status?”

“We absolutely do!” I assured him. Tin Soldier pulled the rifle off his back, and after a brief terrifying moment, tossed it onto the organized engine parts. Screws rolled in every direction. He raised a fist and swiftly punched himself in the cheek, leaving a small dent. Then he dropped to the ground as if all the power had been cut off from his legs.

“It appears those processed meat bullets were moving at a greater velocity than I anticipated,” he said. “One of them temporarily disrupted my operations.” The lights in one of his eyes flickered for a second. I think it was his attempt at a wink. “Take this and go.” He reactivated the device on the side of his head and used it to power up one of the robotic whales for the ride. Its back popped open and revealed just enough room for all of us. Cocoa Solid would have to accept the boat as collateral damage.

“Thank you sir. It’s really been an honor,” Telephony assured the robot as we headed towards our escape submersible. If we had to run into any of the Backers, I’m glad it was him. I think most of them would’ve told us some kind of ‘grow up’ shit. We’re pretty much over anyone else’s ideas of what that means.

“You, with the nugget gun,” Soldier called to us as we were climbing onto the fake blue leather seats inside the whale. The Fastest Food looked at him. “Don’t pretend to be African-American, especially when dealing with the authorities. That group suffers from exaggerated hostility on the part of many officials. It is an injustice I never corrected. If you are African-American then I apologize for my insensitivity.”

“Okay. Gotcha,” was all she had to say. Luckily the whales were built for idiots to pilot, so I had an easy time getting us submerged and out of the bay. As we descended Food caught a glimpse of Alpha Dog entering the bay. He came careening in on a robotic dog sled.

“Son of a bitch,” she said. “He’s sitting on that thing too. He used to stand on that sled. Fat fuck.”

I think there were safeguards in place that kept the sub rides from leaving the borders of Justice Isle, but Tin Soldier must have disabled them for us. We were out in the middle of the ocean, far below the surface, before we all took a moment to breathe. I set the controls to something labeled tread water. We all looked at each other.

Despite everything, we smiled. My joints all felt like they were falling apart and my jaw ached from the tension, but we did it. We even did it with the approval of a Justice Backer, not that we needed it. Now came the culmination of the mission: the controlled burn.

There’s something we haven’t shared with all of you until now. There was an additional reason for this particular mission. There were several other dangerous things we could have taken from Justice Isle and destroyed. We chose the flame sling because we intended to use it. Well, Cocoa and Food chose it, we thought there was a threat to steal it out there, but once we were all onboard with the object itself we knew what our course of action was. The flame sling destroys one’s online presence. It’s perfect for cleansing someone of their old self, their infected chrysalis, and letting them be reborn as a superhero. Nobody will ever figure out who we are now. We’ll never have a Deckard situation on our hands like the original Backers did.

I went first, standing hunched against the whale-back ceiling with my arms out. My pets watched curiously. The Fastest Food switched the flame sling on. Its tacky red plastic lit up. It sounded like… nothing at all. The hologram flames that emerged from its tip were intense and beautiful. They struck through my ankles and moved up my body. I felt a tingle, but it was just my mind slowly accepting what I was doing.

Every piece of me in this digital world crumbled to ash. I had to rebuild this site as well as rewrite and repost several things afterward. It was a small price to pay. Just like most people on the internet, I had made myself vulnerable to tracking for basically no good reason. I accepted the fire. I embraced it. It hit my eyes. Good riddance past. Hello heroism.

The others went next. After that we did what we had set out to do. We disassembled the flame sling and dropped the pieces in the ocean, miles apart. We left the whale on the dock where we had first picked up the boat. Somebody would eventually find it and return it, especially since we put in a call on some passing person’s phone saying where it was. Thanks random person (they liked our costumes).

That’s it boys and girls. The new Justice Backers have asserted themselves. We’re not like the old. We’re weaker and we’re stronger. We’re weirder and we’re more open. We’re also one. We’re also nothing but heroes, because everything else is ash.

If you’d like to give to our cause, click below. You don’t have to go anywhere to be a part of something powerful. All it takes is your attention.