Anniversary Special 1: Accountability
By Nova
August 15th, 2002. Inglewood, California.
An arrow flew less than an inch above Mr. F’s head, skipping right off his skull. It did not penetrate his skin because almost nothing could penetrate his skin. Rebounding off his head, the arrow ricocheted off the wall, then flew right around the corner. Mr. F heard a sharp cry of pain and—rounding the corner—saw a man struggling for breath, an arrow embedded in his side.
Mr. F spun around. He shot a glare at Archer behind him, who just grinned. “Did I hit him?” he asked, as if there had ever been any doubt. He spread his arms wide—as if to say “nothing up my sleeve”—though he was still clutching his black bow in his left hand. Thanks to years of use, Archer’s black leather costume was now frayed and patched, but remained quite functional. It clung tightly to his body, and only barely concealed the armored plating hidden just under the surface. A nearly full quiver of arrows hung over his back, while a red and black helmet hid the top half of his face.
Mr. F didn’t say anything because he usually didn’t say anything.
Mr. F roughly grabbed the man on the ground and dragged him back around the corner. Pushing him up against the wall, he was careful to keep pressure on the arrow wound in his side. It was simple for Mr. F, since he was built like a truck and was easily six and a half feet tall. Still, some blood soaked into Mr. F’s outfit; a plain and heavy denim coat over a gray hoodie, paired with blue jeans and brown boots. A gray scarf concealed the lower half of his face, which left his messy brown locks for all to see. He was silent as Archer sidled up beside him.
“Hey there buddy, how you doin’?” Archer asked the man.
He only moaned in pain as a response.
Archer shook his head. “No, no…” he said, an edge of disappointment in his voice. “We know you’re still pushing for la Patógena. Tell us where she is and maybe we’ll let you live.”
Another groan, but in this one Mr. F could hear the man’s fear. “Look,” the man said, “I don’t know you talkin’ ‘bout. You killed Pathogen, ‘member?”
Archer, unprompted, struck the man in the face. Just under his fingers, Mr. F felt a squirt of blood from the wound. It was all he could do to keep himself from punching Archer back.
“Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t. All I know is that I got a little birdie telling me that she’s up an’ about and you’re pushin’ for her. You gonna tell me what that’s all about or am I gonna have to put you down?”
“I ain’t pushin’!” the man cried, but Archer hit him again.
“I’ve been following you for three days! Don’t fuckin’ lie to me!” Archer screamed into the man’s face.
“A-alright, alright,” the man gasped. “It ain’t her, alright? It ain’t her.”
Mr. F braced for Archer to hit the man again, but instead Archer just raised an eyebrow, looking confused. “Explain,” he ordered.
“I-it’s some cartel from down south. They just showed up in town, started sayin’ Pathogen’s back. She’s not, but they’re rebuildin’ what she had.”
“And they got you as a dealer?” Archer scoffed. “Sounds like they’re desperate.”
“I ain’t the only one! They got others, and I got faces and names for you if you won’t fuckin’ kill me!” The man teetered on the verge of tears, weakly struggling under Mr. F’s grip.
“I’m interested in heavy hitters, not little pushers like you,” Archer said. “You got any of those names?”
“I-I…” The man looked around wildly. “There’s a new villain in town! I know that!”
Archer sighed. “We know that. I asked for names.”
“I-I…”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Archer muttered.
Mr. F loosened his grip on the man, which was a mistake. Before he could even slump to the side, Archer had knocked an arrow into his bow and shot it right between the man’s eyes. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Mr. F lashed toward Archer with a backhand, but the bowman was too fast and ducked out of the way. “Whoa, whoa, whoa…” Archer said. “What’s the problem?”
“We said no more killin’,” Mr. F hissed.
Archer rolled his eyes. “Who’s gonna miss just another dirtbag?”
Mr. F didn’t respond, because he usually didn’t respond. He stormed out of the warehouse, Archer close behind.
“We’ve done good work,” he said, “and you didn’t used to be so squeamish. What happened? Tired of cleaning up the city?”
Mr. F didn’t respond as he pushed the door open, emerging into the bright and hot LA afternoon. Archer quickly danced in front of him, blocking his path. “Come on, ‘F, we’ve been doing this for ten years. Why stop now?”
“It ain’t about cleaning up the city for you. Not now, maybe not ever,” Mr. F muttered.
Archer rolled his eyes again. “Simon didn’t care ‘bout this stuff.”
“Simon is dead,” Mr. F hissed.
“And that changes things how?”
Mr. F opened his mouth for an uncharacteristic rebuttal when a brilliant burst of violet light immersed them both. It boiled the skin like a bad sunburn—but, most notably, the energy from the blast rushed straight through Mr. F’s nervous system like an electric charge. If his neurons were remotely normal, the blast would have instantly knocked him unconscious.
Mr. F did not have a remotely normal nervous system. But Archer did. The light faded as quickly as it arrived, the blacktop below them sizzling from the blast. Mr. F was merely disoriented, but Archer crumpled—unconscious when he hit the ground.
Raising his fists, Mr. F glanced around for their attacker. No one was to the right, left, in front, or behind. But, looking upward, he saw the last person he wanted to see. A woman hovered about a hundred feet into the air. She glowed violet and wore a deep purple, latex costume with a pattern of stars and galaxies on it. She didn’t wear a mask, but the way her eyes glowed brilliantly—also violet—worked well enough at concealing her identity. Her long brown hair blew in the wind. Two brilliantly bright points of violet light floated above each of her shoulders, like miniature stars.
It was Asteria. Daughter of Professor Cosmo, second-in-command of Starlight, and a symbol of the new millennium. Someone like her was also a visitor Mr. F had been expecting for a while.
Uncertain what to do, he raised his fists. Instantly, a brilliant beam of violet energy lanced out from the miniature star above her right shoulder. It struck Mr. F dead in the chest, knocking him backwards onto the ground. The beam intensified, setting his jacket and hoodie alight as it pushed him deeper into a crater. Around him, the blacktop became superheated by the energy, and molten pavement began to run over his body.
But, beyond the scorched clothing—which would have to be replaced—Mr. F was not particularly the worse for wear. He had a serious burn forming on his chest, but was otherwise intact because he was always pretty much intact. He slowly clambered out of the boiling crater Asteria’s beam had made. She hovered just outside it, about five feet in the air.
“Done resisting?” Asteria asked, her voice stern and commanding. Up close, Mr. F was surprised to see how young she looked. She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties.
But he still didn’t respond, because Mr. F usually didn’t respond. Instead, he dropped his arms to his side.
Asteria raised an eyebrow as she looked him over. The nasty burn on Mr. F’s chest had already healed, but his outfit was completely destroyed and still smoldered in a few places. It had revealed the bulging muscles underneath, which glistened with sweat in the afternoon sun. For a moment, Mr. F could swear he saw Asteria bite her lip as she stared at his pecs—before quickly composing herself. But it wasn’t of any concern to him. He didn’t swing that way anyways.
They stared at each other in silence—only the roar of the nearby highway audible—for a few moments. Then, Asteria cleared her throat. “I-I think you know why I’m here,” she said.
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
Asteria jerked a thumb back at Archer, who still lay unconscious on the blacktop. “I’m arresting your friend on forty-two counts of murder, and that’s just what we can prove.”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
She cast her gaze back at the warehouse Mr. F and Archer had come out of. “I hope that I don’t have to make it forty-three?”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
Asteria sighed, placing her hand on her forehead in exasperation. “Don’t you realize what this means for you?”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
“You’re in trouble, too. Big trouble. Not as much as your friend there, but-”
Mr. F turned away from her as she was speaking.
She floated back into his line of sight. “But,” she said, “you’re not innocent.”
“I ain’t kill no one,” Mr. F said, finally breaking his silence.
“Maybe. But how many times did you just stand and watch your friends carve a trail of blood through LA these past ten years?”
Mr. F didn’t say anything, but glanced back at Archer’s unconscious body. If he looked carefully, he could see the man’s shallow breaths. Asteria had knocked him out good, which was still much more of a kindness than Archer would have afforded for her.
“And that’s just Archer. If we include the Tar Pit Monster’s actions-”
“His name’s Simon,” Mr. F insisted.
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Asteria looked at him incredulously, then sighed. “Fine,” she said, “Simon. You know how many people he killed? He ate?”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
“You might not be a murderer, but you’re an accomplice.”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
“You stood by and did nothing while the two of them filled the gutters with blood.”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
She crossed her hands over her chest. “Well, we’re not tolerating it any longer.”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
Asteria glared at him. “You going to say anything-”
“Am I under arrest?” Mr. F simply asked, his expression as neutral as his voice.
Asteria was silent for a few moments, her brow furrowed in thought. “No,” she said, “not necessarily.”
“Meanin’?”
“While you’re friends with killers and monsters, you did good work for this city. You brought down Pathogen, Johnny Yen, kept order in this city after my father left to found Starlight. But times are changing. We aren’t in the nineties anymore. People need accountability from their heroes.”
He was again quiet for a moment. A plane filled in the silence—roaring low overhead, heading in for a landing at nearby LAX. “Accountability?” Mr. F muttered. “You mean a fuckin’ leash on us.”
Asteria rolled her eyes. “Oh, so is politics your fucking ‘on button’ or something? Well let me tell you something: this country is bringing heroes back. Real heroes, like my father, Champion… Not people who fight in the gutter like you. America needs heroes if we’re going to move on from 9/11.”
“No,” Mr. F said, a note of bitterness in his voice. “America wants heroes like you, but its the last fuckin’ thing we need. You know your pop only kept afloat thanks to corporate sponsors after the military pulled the plug in ‘91? You think that’s gonna go away now that Bush wants to cash-in, too?”
Anger washed over Asteria’s face for a moment before she composed herself again. “Look, I’m telling you this because—despite your associations—you seem like a good person. You’ve done your best to do the right thing in a tough world. We want people like you in the new world we’re building.”
“You don’t want people like me,” Mr. F said, glaring. “You want people who will tow the line, let the cops and feds and generals and CEOs walk all over them.”
“Come on, we’re trying to help you!” Asteria groaned. “All we’re asking for is that you allow for some fucking accountability, alright? You agree to a plea deal, we sentence you for five years, you get out in one with good behavior. We get you licensed and back in LA to-”
“Hold on, licensed?” Mr. F asked.
Asteria nodded. “The bill’s been in the works since last year, but just passed the senate. From now on, States are given the ability to license heroes, make our activities legal. Plus, you’ll get a monthly stipend to cover living expenses. This is huge! Every State’s already pledged support for the program—except Rhode Island—but this is huge!” She bobbed up and down in the air now, the excitement in her voice bleeding into her movement.
Mr. F crossed his arms. “So you’re tryin’ turn superheroes into… what? Give them licenses to kill now?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” Asteria said.
“Then what the fuck you plan on doin’?”
“Create a legal avenue for people like you to become heroes! Imagine if you didn’t have to spend half your time running from the cops instead of fighting villains. Imagine how much better you could make this city!”
“For what? My face? A promise to only drink Pepsi? Suck a cop’s dick every Saturday?”
“Obviously not,” Asteria scoffed.
“I think you mean not yet.”
“Not yet. Not ever! We’re trying to build a better world!”
“No,” Mr. F muttered, “you’re tryin’ to build a more controlled world.”
Asteria sighed. “I’m going to guess that you aren’t going to cooperate.”
Mr. F didn’t say anything.
Asteria floated higher into the sky. “Maybe a day or two in a jail cell will change your mind.”
Mr. F just raised his fists as Asteria smote him with two beams fired from two of her miniature stars. They both struck true, knocking him backwards through the wall of the warehouse. Mr. F stood back on his feet, and dusted the rubble off of him. The bruise on his chest was already fully healed when the ceiling of the warehouse exploded. “I’ll make this simple!” Asteria shouted, descending through the hole in the roof she made. “Put your hands over your head if you give up. Don’t if you want me to keep beating the shit out of you.”
Mr. F did not put his hands over his head.
Asteria shot three of her stars at him. Instead of firing beams, however, each star flew at him like a missile—whistling as they whizzed through the air. The first one reached Mr. F in an instant, and detonated with the force of a bomb. The impact threw Mr. F backwards in a flash of violet light and fire—the shockwave shattering all the windows in the warehouse. The second star intercepted Mr. F in his upward arc and exploded, pushing him back down towards the ground with an earth-cracking blast. The third wasted no time and homed in on Mr. F while he was down. It exploded right over his back, bringing the entire warehouse down on top of him with a deafening crash of rubble and dust.
Any one of Asteria’s explosive stars would have been enough to vaporize a normal human. Mr. F was not a normal human. While he had a few cracked ribs and bruises—not to mention a handful of scrapes and scratches—his wounds were growing smaller every second. He had managed to throw off the debris trapping him and sprinted for the street. The huge dust cloud created by the collapsing building gave him some cover and he was planning on using it. Mr. F dashed through the chaos, not stopping to check on Archer who—he vaguely hoped—wasn’t killed by flying debris. He vaulted a chain link fence, charged through some bushes, and dodged through a traffic jam on the 405 before Asteria noticed him.
“No you fucking don’t!” Asteria shouted above him, flying through the sky like a violet comet. Even from this distance, he could see that she only had one star remaining over her left shoulder. Though, if he looked carefully, he noticed a sparking in the air above her right side as a new star was born.
Mr. F knew he didn’t have a lot of options. She was faster and stronger than him, and there was nothing he could do to hurt her. While she couldn’t really hurt him, and definitely couldn’t kill him, he wasn’t immediately worried for his own safety—though he had grown increasingly concerned about the safety of the civilians around them. However, he also knew that if she wised up and used her powers to trap him—rather than try to hurt him directly—there’d be nothing he could do.
So, instead, Mr. F made the last decision of his ten year long career as a superhero. He scrambled over the fence on the edge of the highway and made it onto some commercial street. As kids pointed at him from the McDonald’s playground to his left, he grabbed a manhole cover, and—spinning like an Olympic discus thrower—hurled it at Asteria. He could have sworn he heard her scoff as the sole remaining star over her left shoulder flew out to intercept it, turning into a violent rectangular shield that easily deflected the manhole missile. “Is that the best-” Asteria started to say, but Mr. F had already jumped into the sewer.
Instantly, Asteria tried to fire off a shot down the open manhole. But the miniature star over her right shoulder was still charging. With a groan, she rocketed down the manhole herself and landed right in the flowing sewage. Clearly trying to ignore the smell, she looked down the sewer and spied Mr. F knee-deep in waste. He charged down the slimy, tight corridor.
“Mr. F,” Asteria coughed, “stop!”
Mr. F did not stop.
“Please stop, or else!” Asteria coughed again. The sewer fumes were beginning to overpower her, and it took her entire willpower not to vomit.
Still, Mr. F did not stop.
It was at that moment that Asteria’s rightmost star had finished charging. She fired it at Mr. F and, just above him, it detonated. Concrete came crashing down on top of him, and Asteria—unable to take the smell any longer—rocketed out of the sewer.
Just in time to see the street collapse. Two cars, too close to stop, drove headlong into the crater that was rapidly forming in front of them. Asteria could hear the cars smashing into each other on the ground, a cacophony of shrieking and honking below her.
Asteria vomited while she was hovering two-hundred feet in the air.
***
The worst part about this whole affair was that Asteria also had to be present for the groundbreaking ceremony of Starlight’s LA headquarters the same day. Three showers later and she still stank like shit. She was unhappily stewing in a sea of her own thoughts as she and her entourage disembarked the limos they arrived in. They were, very politely, pretending like they couldn’t smell her as they babbled a constant stream of information at her regarding the ceremony.
Asteria hoped the smell of the nearby ocean would hide the stench of sewage, but—judging by the reactions of her entourage around her—that was unlikely. Still, the nice beachside street, while touristy, had potential that Asteria couldn’t squander here—even if she needed another three showers. She was already daydreaming about how the whole area could become a miniature district, all for Starlight.
“Phone call, Ms. Asteria,” her secretary—Marco—said to her, shaking her out of her daydream. He was a handsome man, a little older than she was, and wore an immaculately tailored business suit. He held out a mobile phone expectantly.
Asteria shot him a glare, but didn’t say anything. Marco was the best, and he knew not to bother her with unimportant calls in a time like this. Still, as she glanced to the empty, beachside lot ahead where construction equipment were already beginning to gather—diggers rumbled into position alongside dump-trucks and a host of yellow-jacketed construction workers—he could have chosen a better time. “Hello?” she said, taking the phone.
“Asteria,” came the raspy voice of her father over the phone. She gulped. If he were using her hero name, he must have been pissed.
“H-hey Dad, er… Professor Cosmo,” Asteria said, taking a few steps away from her entourage for the sake of privacy. She found an empty bus stop on the sidewalk, flanked by two palm trees.
“What the hell happened out there?” Professor Cosmo asked as she stepped under the bus stop’s glass enclosure.
“W-well, you know, things got out of hand in my arrest of Archer and Mr. F.”
“I know. I’ve seen the news. You know this nearly derailed everything?”
“W-what?”
“Bush threatened to pull support for our license bill after he saw your fiasco in LA.”
“R-really? Why?”
“Do I need to explain? Because you injured eleven people, damn near killed them, while trying to arrest one of the more popular men in LA. Plus, APL is suing us for destruction of their property and the bill isn’t in place yet to protect us!”
“I made a m-mistake,” Asteria admitted. “But it was a bad situation and not all of us can create cages out of pure energy.” She nearly spat into the speaker. Her powers were similar enough to her old man she sometimes wondered if he remembered just how different they were.
“Doesn’t matter,” Professor Cosmo said, completely ignoring her jab. “Bush thought it reinforced the idea that us heroes can’t stop a criminal without leveling a block in the process.”
“Dad, we need this bill to go through. Without it, Starlight can’t operate across state lin-”
“You think I don’t know that?” Professor Cosmo asked, the anger in his voice palpable.
“I-I… I’m sorry, Dad,” Asteria almost whimpered. She glanced through the glass bus stop and hoped the nearby police officers—who had shut down traffic for the groundbreaking ceremony—couldn’t see her.
There was a moment of silence on the line. All Asteria could hear was the squawks of the seagulls in the palm trees above her and the faint roar of crashing waves on the nearby beach.
“I’m sorry, daughter,” Professor Cosmo finally said, his voice gentle. Yet Asteria knew that he was still angry with her, since he still wasn’t using her real name. “You know, once back in ‘69 when I was cruising over Da Nang, we had a serious clusterfu-”
“Dad,” Asteria interrupted, “you know I always love to listen to your war stories, but I do have a groundbreaking to do in five minutes…”
“Sorry, just reminiscing… What I’m trying to say is that it’s not the end of the world. I still got Bush’s signature on the bill.”
“T-that’s great!” Asteria stammered, surprised. “How?”
“I told him this: Mr. F and Archer had just killed the wrong person in that warehouse, case of mistaken identity. It was just some poor guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were just figuring it out when you got there and panicked. You put down Archer easily enough, but Mr. F ran.”
“But…”
“Let me finish. Mr. F was desperate when you caught up to him. He attacked you—we have eyewitnesses of that—and went into the sewer system. You followed. He cut a methane line, lit the gas with a lighter. You barely escaped the blast. Mr. F wasn’t so lucky. He died in the explosion, no body.”
“But… that’s not…”
“That’s what I told the President. That’s what you’re telling anyone who asks, got it?”
“But… Mr. F can’t die-”
“As of now, he can. Blast destroyed the body, so we don’t have evidence.”
“T-there’s no body?”
“No.”
“So Mr. F escape-”
“He did not. He died in the blast, remember that.”
“And did the two of them really kill-”
“LAPD already found a body with an arrow in his head in the wreckage of that warehouse. Iron Will was able to wipe the man’s criminal record in the police’s database. As far as anyone knows, that man was innocent.”
“And if Archer denies it?”
“Archer was going to deny it anyways.”
“So…”
“So… remember that story,” Professor Cosmo said. “It reminds people why we need the license bill: to keep crazies like Archer and Mr. F from walking around as ‘heroes.’ From now on, unlicensed vigilantes will be arrested day one by responsible people like us. People who can be held accountable.”
“O-okay Dad.”
“I’ll talk to you later. Need to meet with the Defense Secretary, then I’m flying back to San Francisco by midnight. I’ll see you then.”
“Love you Dad,” Asteria said. She returned to her entourage and, together, strode down the street and toward the construction site. She kept a stoic expression as she handed Marco the phone without a second glance. Professor Cosmo was right. The media would be asking questions about today, so she ran over the details of her father’s story in her head. She knew he couldn’t afford for her to get it wrong.