BLOGS

Jackson shoved the Goddess aside and turned in the direction of the source just as a streak of blue grazed him. The contact was peripheral but imbued with enough force to send Jackson spinning to the ground.
Marty Buckles, also known as the Blue Blur, the fastest man in the universe, stopped on a dime. He wore wind resistant head to toe blue spandex with blue-tinted wraparound sunglasses.
He threw a frat boy grin at the Nile Goddess. “Boy, I wish I could have recorded what I just saw. Ace nearly had you down for the count, lady!”
Candace straightened, rubbing her throat, murder burning a ruby light in her eyes. “If you don’t shut your insufferable trap, I’ll put you down!”
The speedster raised a lewd brow. “I think I’d like that.” Then he was off.
“I’ll bet you would,” the Goddess murmured irately.
The Blue Blur bowled into Jackson at a speed that most certainly earned him his sobriquet, and held on tight. “How ‘bout a quick ride, Ace?”
The Blur held Jackson for little over two seconds, which in distance translated to six long blocks. He let go and halted, but Jackson kept going, sailing across a park, through a playground until he collided with a tree, rupturing its trunk to splinters. Jackson lay curled on the grass, emergency bells and whistles again filling his helmet with a low key racket.
The Blue Blur was far from the strongest member of the Guardian Protectors. Still, even a rabbit, moving at supersonic speed, could cause considerable damage if it bumped into something.
Jackson stood shakily, orienting himself. He spotted the Blue Blur standing on the other end of the park wearing a cocky smirk. The next second the speedster was gone…in motion!
Jackson didn’t think. He acted. He powered his foot repulsers. Tiny thrusters in the soles of his metal boots lifted him straight up. At the same time he ejected a dark gray marble size object from his lower torso harness. The object fell in the Blue Blur’s path and detonated. The impending blast threw the speedster back as if he’d bounced off a steel wall. Clods of dirt and grass, mixed with a bubbling froth of black smoke, bloomed from a ten-yard diameter crater gouged by the explosion.
The Blue Blur flopped limply on his back, the wind knocked out of him.
“Surprise, surprise,” Jackson taunted. He switched his thrusts to flight mode and glided out of the park. The mayor had evacuated the entire southern district of Valor City at Jackson’s request. He needed to keep the battle within its bounds.
Something struck his right shoulder as he zipped over a wide avenue. Jackson spiraled out of control before regaining enough of his bearings to manage an off balance landing. He cast his gaze about until his threat sensor locked onto a red Ford Taurus 30 to 40 yards in the direction from which he came.
The car suddenly disassembled. Its parts shifted and shuffled in a dizzying array of motion that resolved into a man. At least from all appearances.
George Kennan, aka MachineWare, always had more of an affinity for gadgets than people. His psychic ability to manipulate machines made him a valuable asset to the Guardian Protectors. But as Kennan, little by little, converted himself into a gadget, that’s when the corruption set in. It could be said that his humanity and all the compassion and empathy it entailed diminished with his imbibing of a new cybernetic component.
Ropes of super hardened overlapping metal coils, connected to metal plates, layered MachineWare’s guant frame. Only his face remained bare of any markers denoting his bizarre transformation. He raised his right arm and it reconfigured into gatling gun. The gun’s eight barrels rotated and a flaming chatter of titanium bullets ripped forth.
Jackson staggered backwards as a sleet of hot metal pounded his suit. He pushed outward with his mind, extending the range of his shield to approximately seven feet in front of him. Waves of bullets deflected off the shield.
MachineWare raised his other arm. It lengthened and thickened in a clanking whir of adjustable parts, forming a long-barreled cannon. A black missile whisked out of the cannon’s maw, plunging into the shield. A scorching shower of released energy gushed from the shattered missile, winking the shield out of existence propelling Jackson into a brick walled corner drug store.
MachineWare hurled five more missiles after the first, and the entire storefront, along with a good chunk of the building that housed it disappeared in a fiery, demolition collapse.
An ashen cloud belched from the flame-smothered ruin, encroaching on daylight like a horde of demon wraiths springing from the underworld.
MachineWare’s armaments retracted into his body. He stood before this howling destruction he’d wrought, unaffected by the smoke and heat, unmoved by his action. His expression held a very machine-like dearth of emotion.
“Pity, Victor Jackson. You should never have opposed us.”
“Pity on you, George. You should never have gone rogue.”
MachineWare whirled to find Jackson standing behind him.
Before the cyborg could react, Jackson triggered a beam from his ordnance bracelet.
A crackling web of electromagnetic energy surrounded MachineWare. The cyborg quaked violently, his previously impassive face, twisted in a convulsion of agony. When the web vanished MachineWare crumpled to the pavement in a short-circuited heap.
Jackson pumped enough EM into MachineWare to plunge of all of Valor City into Stone Age darkness. It would require ten times that amount to fully and permanently disable him.
Jackson had neither the time nor the output to finish Kennan off.
A cold wind whipped around him. It was a winter-like gust in the middle of a humid summer day. Dark storm clouds boiled into sudden existence overhead. The odd weather was no natural occurrence. The wind grew more frigid, more active, becoming a raging twister.
Jackson powered his thrusts to get away, but the savage funnel snared him with irresistible force, driving him skyward.
In a wink, the twister vanished and Jackson found himself face to face with the tornado’s conjurer, a flame-haired woman called Windrider.
Valerie Hewitt had been a climatologist in a past life. Ironic.
Windrider crossed her forearms. A tendril of lightning danced from the sky, poured into her body, surging out of her hands in a pulse of linear energy directed at the armored man.
Jackson extended his contact shield, blocking the pulse. He countered with a salvo of rockets.
Windrider waved an arm, scattering the rockets with a high speed blast of wind.
“Give it up, Jackson!” Windrider derided, her crimson mane waving in a self generating breeze like flickering candle light. Her sky blue cloak vividly contrasted the yellow body suit that hugged her comely contours like a perfectly fitted glove. “You can’t beat all of us. Hell, you can’t beat one of us!”
“I’d say I’ve been holding my own pretty well so far,” Jackson retorted.
The air temperature around him dipped drastically, frosting his armor. Within seconds he was encased in a block of ice.
“It’s a cold, cold world, Jackson.”
Windrider watched with psychotic glee as the man in armor plunged ground ward from well over ten thousand feet.
Jackson didn’t doubt that he would survive the fall, even encased in a ton of ice. He just preferred not to experience it.
He ignited his shoulder emitter. The light’s coherence bored through a section of ice, providing a pocket of space for his emitter’s turret to rotate. He also powered every thruster pimple on his armor, creating a sweltering buildup of heat. The ice dissolved to the point where Jackson could apply brute strength to break out. With servo-powered arms and legs, he hammered away at his confinement until he burst free in a sparkling cloud of ice crystals.
Jackson righted himself, and boosted his thrusters beyond their maximum limit, accelerating upward as if he had been launched from a rail gun. He fired over two dozen rockets at Windrider.
The weather-manipulator batted the projectiles aside with directed wind just as she had done the first time. The rockets twirled every which way, but Jackson linked on to one. He displaced the sole rocket’s internal guidance with manual.
Windrider crossed her arms, summoning a second bolt of lightning.
Jackson stayed on his trajectory toward her, making no attempt at evasive maneuvering. He focused on the rocket, bringing it about, lining it up with its target.
Windrider must have sensed something. She glanced behind her just as lightning channeled through her body. She caught the most fleeting glimpse of the rocket and extended a hand toward it, redirecting the electrical energy pulse intended for Jackson.
Pulse and rocket met point blank.
A blinding, deafening eruption birthed from the collision. A flaming fist knocked Windrider out of the sky.
Jackson didn’t know if she was dead or alive. He didn’t try to find out. He ignored her and headed south, deeper into the district, where he needed to be. He checked his power levels and grimaced. 47 percent reading. Not good. His power plant was nearly depleted and his diagnostic screen painted a bleak picture of points of structural damage. Some of his primary functions were so busted he had to switch to auxiliary. He needed to keep this contest going until he was in a position to implement Phase Two.
A warning alert. Danger flew at him fast. Jackson pulled directional data from his AVD and banked to avoid what was coming…too late!