Episode 2: The Prospero Gambit

read time: 6 minutes

Jenny

We were 2 kilometers out when I saw the explosion. Green fire shot up into the sky, lighting up the waterfront. Balwinder and Dark were already down there in the submarine, and I was scanning the lake trying to get eyes on them when the shockwave slammed into us.

“Seatbelts please” said Rourke, totally calm as he steered the Phantasmobile out of freefall.

Solomon’s voice came over the radio. “We’ve a bit of a problem down here Doctor. Rather a large chunk of masonry just tore through our hull. I’m afraid we appear to be sinking.”

Doc pushed a button and said “Sit tight old friend. Help is on the way.”

“Excellent news. Thank you Doctor.”

Doc slid open the hatch and started climbing out. We were doing Mach 1 at a 1800 feet. He looked back into the cabin, blue Eye ablaze against the night sky, and said “It looks like our errand of justice has turned into a rescue mission. Take her down Major, and see if you can get that fire put out before anyone gets hurt.”

I was pretty sure a lot of people were already hurt, but I didn’t mention it. 

“Oh, and Jenny: try to have fun down there.”

The Eye winked and he flew off into the night.

Martin

There was fire everywhere and bullets flying and my ears were ringing so bad I could barely hear myself screaming to the crew.

“Moloch? Moloch! Where are you? Get the fuck over here Danny!”

The thing about codenames is that they’re easy to forget when everything goes to shit. One example of everything going to shit is being trapped inside a collapsing chemical plant while guards are shooting at you and one of your friends is on fire. Which is exactly what was happening to me and Felix —sorry— Astaroth at that exact moment.

Moloch and Belial came crashing through the smoke, eyes bloodshot, arms full of Tritium cannisters.

“So much for stealth. Oh fuck. Is that Felix?!” Danny said, pointing at what remained of Felix.

I nodded. Two minutes prior, everything was going smoothly. We'd bypassed most of the night staff,  had the loot in hand, and we were on our way back to the Sadisticar when I heard Felix say “oops.”

He’d set off a motion detector.

The guards were on us fast. They started shooting and the boss started shooting back, laughing his creepy, hoarse cackle. He disintegrated two of them, but accidentally hit a gas line in the process, which started a chain reaction that took out the whole roof and most of the east wall.  All else was smoke, fire, and laser beams.

Spotlights flooded the building through the missing roof, but my ears were too blown out to know if it was a Science Police saucer or some kind of Hero.

The boss didn’t care who it was though. He started shooting blindly into the sky, shouting “Yessss. Come and die, basssstards!."

Then a bullet grazed his cloak and he turned to us. "Okay, time to go."

I asked Moloch to help me with Felix but the boss grabbed his shoulder and stopped him.

"Leave him. Let’sssss get out of here.”

Felix convulsed. He was breathing, but barely.

“He’s not dead, sir. He’s in bad shape but he could make it if we can get him out of—

Mister Sadistic shot him in the face before I could finish. Felix's body passed through my fingers like hot sand. Then he trained his pistol on me.

“Lazarusss. We are leaving. Now.”

Jenny

It was hard to see through all the smoke, but what I could see was a horror show. Security guards and chemical engineers lay dead or dying everywhere. I saw a woman on fire jump out of the hole in the wall and fall to the water below. I didn’t see her come up. A steel girder had fallen on a janitor, cutting him in half. Two engineers had melted together into one two-headed pile of runny, molten flesh. It was hard to breath in the acrid chemical smoke, but everyone who could breathe was screaming.

This is the stuff they don’t tell you about; the way flesh smells when it burns. The confused look on someone’s face when their arm gets shot off with a laser but there’s no blood because the wound is already cauterized. What a sonic disruptor does to human skull. How it sounds when someone knows they’re going to die, but they also know it’s going to take a while.

When you’re young, you think this job is all about visiting the moon and throwing cars at giant robots and punching evil in the face. More often than not, it’s just watching people die. Maybe you save a few, but you never save enough. In my time with the Squadron I lost track of the number of people we saved.

I’ve never forgotten a single one we didn’t.

Martin

We got out of there just in time to see the Tomorrow Squadron's UFO-looking limousine thing swoop above the parking lot. It made the Sadisticar look like a piece of junk. The Sadisticar is cool, but it’s really just a murdered out ’83 Vandura with disintegrator beams instead of headlights. The boss certainly had a fetish.

Spotlights swept over us and a loudspeaker crackled to life. 

“Drop your weapons, dipshits.”

That was the first time I heard her voice. At least she didn’t talk like the rest of them. I flipped her my middle finger and ran for it.

When confronted with uptight authoritarian bullshit like "halt" or "surrender" or "drop your weapons", any henchman worthy of the title has two choices: Start shooting, or run. I didn’t have a gun (no thanks to her), so I went with plan B. You can kick the awesome ray gun out of my hand, lady, but you ain’t ever taking the Bad Guy out of me.

I made it all of ten yards before she dropped to the pavement in one of those three point landings they always feel like they have to do. Then she kicked my ass in front of my crew.

Jenny

I beat the crap out of him that night. Seriously, I threw the book at him: Akido, Capoeira, Jeet Kun Do, even some Krav Maga with a little of my own personal brand of Tomorrow Girl spice on it. Doc did say to have fun. But it got old pretty quick, because Martin is literally the worst fighter I’ve ever seen. That being said, he can also take a punch like no one I've ever seen. One time I saw the Iron Chieftain throw him off a building and he still ended up getting away. I must have knocked him down a half dozen times and he got up after every one of them.

He thinks that’s his superpower you know. Being a stubborn jackass is not a superpower.

The rest of them surrounded me, and I was just about to take down that whole gang of d-list d-bags all by myself when the second explosion happened and we had to evacuate. Solomon conjured up a rainstorm to help with the fire, and Doc was able to get a few survivors out before the second blast, but there wasn’t much else we could do.

There wasn’t a lot of talking on the ride home. We debriefed Doc, told him it was the work of the Sadistic Six. He scolded me for cussing over the loudspeaker. Armando made calls to some of his underworld contacts and asked them to keep their eyes open for any large Tritium sales.

After a long silence Doc spoke up. “Chins up, Tomorrow Squadron. We don’t win every fight, but we always win the war. And one thing is certain:

He raised an eyebrow.

"The Sadistic Six will be brought to jusssssstice.”

We all laughed.

Martin

Viktor swung around in the Sadisticar and we got the hell out of there. I was beat up pretty bad and Henry had taken a bullet to the knee. The boss was much nicer about the whole thing than I would have expected, probably because he got to disintegrate some people. And even though we'd need to replace Felix, we still got what we went in there for. And this was just the start.

Every guy on the crew made fun of me for losing a fight to a woman, but it didn’t bother me. I just laid in the back of the van, staring into the glow of the Tritium. My abilities had gotten me through my second superhero fight. The only other person in the gang who could say that was the boss.

I slept well that night. I’d battled Tomorrow Girl. And she let me go.

That’s how I knew she liked me.

Jenny

I didn’t sleep that night. I just laid in my bed at the Seclusium, thinking about that woman jumping into the water. I tried to summon every burned face I saw that night and seal them in my memory. I thought about the guards, the janitor who probably made ten bucks an hour. I thought about all the firefighters whose families would be awake, praying for their safety while they fought that blaze.

But most of all I thought about that henchman. I thought about how all these terrible things were on his shoulders, how all that innocent blood was on his hands.

I wished I could punch his thieving, overconfident, conceited, coward’s face again, and again, and again.

✶✶✶

coming soon I swear.

Meanwhile, check out the first Tomorrow Girl fan art by Dave Neeson. This is so awesome!