Talyesin's Tales

After a long night of crimefighting, Squirrelman and the Crimefighters' League headed back to their unfinished headquarters for a celebration. In a display of trust and camaraderie, they revealed their true identities to each other. But when they unmasked, Physique attacked Phenom, accusing him of being an imposter...



Starring!

Matt Mattheson ......... as Squirrelman
Kimmy Sinclair ................ as Ragdoll
Rick Duncan ........................... as Ace
Lisa Dumont ................... as Physique
Anna Kimble ................. as Darklight
Stephanie Cooke ............. as Blue Jay
Jay Allen ........................ as Red Bolt
Mike Washington ............. as Dragon
Trevor Andrews ............... as Phenom
Jessica Wagner .............. as Rapunzel
Katie McCormick ............ as Superia



I turn to Trevor.

"Trevor? You okay?"

"I'm alright," he says.

"He's not Trevor Andrews!"

"Lisa, calm down!" I yell at her. She makes a visible effort to calm herself. When she looks halfway rational again, Mike lets go of her and I say, "Now what's this all about?"

"I watched him die."

"So you said. Start from the beginning."

She takes a deep breath and says, "Trevor Andrews was Wonderman. He and I... well... anyhow, we got close. I was with him when he died."

Wonderman. He'd been Wonder Boy back in the sixties, had grown up to be Wonderman. He'd disappeared in the alien invasion of 1986. Everyone assumed he was dead. There was a funeral, which my predecessor had skipped school to attend. I had memory-flashes of the event.

"Oh Lisa," Stephanie says, putting a hand on Lisa's arm. "How terrible for you."

"Everyone thinks he died in the Big Invasion," Lisa says. "We weren't even around for the Big Invasion. He and I had been on the Travellin Man's trail when we got... sent into the future. I dunno, he snuck up on us, blasted us with chronotrons or something, sent Trev and I five years ahead, right in the middle of a big fight. Denver."

Everyone remembers what happened in Denver in 1991.

Harvest.

"Oh God, Lisa," Rick says, "You were there?"

She just nods.

"Harvest got Wonderman?" Jay asks, looking like he's ready to puke.

"Yeah," Lisa says, jaw clenched. She wipes the tears off her cheeks.

"How did you survive?" Jay asks.

"Harvest broke both my legs, was about to feed when Trev jumped in the way," she explains. "Sucked him dry. Then Psi-Fi froze Harvest on the spot. Redeemer shook off its psi-probe and slashed it to ribbons while Sizemaster pounded it to shit and Fahrenheit burned it to a crisp."

"I never knew," Trevor says. We look at him.

"Lisa's right," he says quietly. "I'm not Trevor Andrews. Not the Trevor Andrews she knew, anyway." He looks at us and crosses his arms. "I'm his clone."

"His clone?" Lisa asks.

Trevor nods "Yeah. My... the actual term is 'donor' but I tend to think of him as my father... My father's will specified that his body be donated to science. Metahuman donors always wind up in a government facility first for classification before being released to medical schools for study. Anyhow, WOLFEN attacked the lab where I was being gestated and... When I woke up there was no one left. My gestation chamber had been in a secret part of the lab and WOLFEN never found me, but the attack woke me up prematurely. That's why I'm not as strong or as tough as Wonderman, why I can't fly.

"Of course it took me a couple years to find all this out. I found a computer terminal that explained to me who my donor had been, but that was pretty much all I could get out of it. The facility had been so secret no one came to investigate for a month. A month's head start for me to get out, get away. I decided something had to be done about WOLFEN, so I went after them.

"Government caught up with me eventually. We cleared things up. I was legally declared a free-willed sentient and given a choice of names. I chose my father's." He pauses, looking at us. "If there are WOLFEN cells in Action City, I want a piece of them."

"You look just like him," Lisa says. "Hair's different, though."

"I'm not him, Lisa. I never was, and I never will be."

"I know. I just needed to say it," she says, sticking out her hand. "Sorry I freaked out."

"No problem," he says, shaking her hand.

"Of course, you turn out to be a Doppelite or a Simulator, I'll tear your arms off," she jokes.

Trevor laughs. "Sure. I'll understand."

Crisis averted, we get back to partying. It's a bit different now, we're all unmasked and chatting about our civilian lives. Kimmy's asking Jessica for the recipe for some sauce she uses in her restaurant. Jay is talking baseball with Mike and Lisa. Trevor and Stephanie and Rick are talking about the latest episode of Captain Cosmos and Whatta Woman. Anna and Katie are closest to me, I hear their conversation a little better.

"So you harness the power of a goddess?" Anna asks.

"Not quite," Katie answers. "It's more the tapping of a universal goddess energy inherent in everything female, the Divine Femininity."

Jay's sitting next to her, turns around.

"Here, pause the vid," he says to Katie. "I thought all the ancient gods and goddesses had been proved to be aliens, like Aesir and Olympian and Isis."

"That's what Aesir said back in the seventies, anyway," Katie answers. "But Superia isn't an actual goddess herself, she's the living representation of a divine energy."

"The difference being?"

"Well, Superia's never had temples built to her, or legions of worshipping faithful," Katie jokes.

"I dunno, your fan club is pretty rabid," Kimmy says, giving up on trying to get Jessica's secret recipe out of her.

Katie smiles and rolls her eyes. "Tell me about it."

"Uh guys?" Mike says from the glass balcony doors. We all look up. "What's the date? It's still August, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"If it's August, then why's it snowing?"

We rush to the windows. Yep. Snowing. We head outside and the temperature drops about forty degrees.

"Well, this is decidedly odd," Trevor says.

There's a burst of light and Steph has changed into Blue Jay. She jumps off the balcony and does a little loop-de-loop, this huge grin on her face.

"It's so magical!"she says, then an updraft grabs her and she soars way, way up.

Trevor starts singing White Christmas in this eerily accurate Bing Crosby impersonation.

Anna takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, concentrating. When she breathes out again, the mist is bright blue.

"It's not natural," she tells us.

"No shit," Mike rumbles, his arms crossed and his fists in his armpits for heat, shivering. When a four hundred pound, seven foot tall scaly green guy is shivering, you can feel it in the floor. "I'm heading back in."

"Me too," Kimmy says, following him.

"What does she do in the winter?" Rick asks me.

"She's got another costume. Arms and legs are invisibicloth."

"You're shitting me. That stuff is a fortune!"

"It's her money."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Lisa says. Beside her, Trevor's nodding.

Blue Jay lands on the balcony.

"I don't like the looks of this," she says. "It's all over the city. And that's not all." She points over to the Shooter Skyway. The aircars are all stopped, in hover mode. Slowly getting coated with ice and snow.

Behind me, Katie says, in that two-voice voice of hers, "Injustice calls, the time has come - Our two parts make a greater sum - Now shed this form inferior - And transform into Superia!"

I turn around and the mousy college kid is gone, replaced by the gorgeous crimefighter my predecessor had developed a little crush on in his late teens. She might not be an actual goddess, but the word sure applies to her looks.

Superia's looking around, seeing something way off. She looks at me and says, "The entire city is asleep!"

"Who do you think?" Rick asks. Everyone starts talking.

"Icemaiden?"

"She just got parole... But this is way beyond her."

"Jack Frost?"

"Retired."

"Coldwave could maybe-"

"He got caught in Knight City last week."

"Dumbass."

"Yeah."

"Freon?"

"That two-bit? No way."

"Who's left?"

"I know who," Anna says. "There's only one person who could do this, on this scale, cast a hibernation spell of this magnitude, freeze the city."

"Aw damn," Rick says.

"Everybody inside," I say, and we head in.

"Who, Anna?" I ask, closing the balcony door.

"Aurora."

"The Winterqueen?" Ragdoll asks. Kimmy's put her wig and mask back on.

"Aw shit," Mike rumbles.

"I thought she only strikes in, like, January," Red Bolt says.

"Guess she decided Christmas was coming early this year," Physique says.

"And everyone gets the same gift, a long cold sleep," Superia adds.

"When I went up, I saw something odd at City Hall," Blue Jay says. "The whole building was encased in ice, and it was growing. Looked like a castle."

"That's the Winterqueen, alright," Ace nods.

"Why weren't we affected by the sleep spell?" I ask Anna. She thinks for a second.

"The only reason I can think of is because we were dim," she answers. "Aurora's spell couldn't 'see' us to affect us."

"Okay. I'm going to pretend I understood that and say, everybody suit up," I say, but everyone already has.

"What's the plan, Squirrelly?" Ragdoll asks.

"We head to City Hall and stop the Winterqueen from freezing the city solid."

"And we'd better do this quickly," Superia adds. "There will be deaths soon."

"Whaddaya mean?" Dragon asks.

"No one was expecting the temperature to dip this much. People went to bed with their windows open."

"And the aircars in the Skyways will run out of juice eventually," Rick adds. "If they don't ice up and suffer a hover failure before then."

"Right," Dragon says, then adds, "Listen, I should tell you. Me and the cold? Not such a good mix."

"I can help," Darklight says. "Actually, this will be good for us all. None of us is equipped for winter weather."

She puts her hands together and mutters something, then waves her hands around and points at us all in turn. There's a feeling of being wrapped in warm cotton.

"What did you do?" I ask.

"Air pockets?" Rick asks, and she nods with a little smile.

"I wrapped us in the warm late summer air of this room," she tells us. "It should keep us safe."

"Right," I say. "Okay. Ragdoll, you and Rapunzel on Physique's skycycle. I'll go with Ace on the card. Superia, can you carry Darklight? Phenom, you need a lift?"

"Nope, I'm good."

"I'll meet you there," Darklight says. "There's something I need to get first."

"Uh... yeah, okay. Hurry?"

She nods and heads out the front door. I know that if I looked out into the hall she'd be gone. Mages.

"Okay, let's go."

Red Bolt runs down the side of the building and is gone around the corner in a blur. Phenom jumps off, lands on the next building, jumps again, leaping from tall building to tall building with every jump. The rest of us head into the air.

The wind is pretty incredible up here and a couple of times we have to slow down and regroup. City Hall is this massive building built to look sort of Neo-Classical Art Deco, all stone and columns and impressive statues built into the building's support structure. And it's covered in ice, ice that's slowly turning into a Cinderella-style castle, all tall spires and towers.

"Hey Ace, let me ask you something," I say on the way.

"Shoot."

"What's up with you and Physique?"

"Aw, I dunno," he says, banking against a sudden gust. I hang on. "We get flirting, and it's going somewhere, then suddenly her attitude changes and she pulls away."

"She's a tease?"

"Nah, it's not that. We connect, then she changes the subject or she takes off or whatever. Something's up with her."

"Think it's because of Wonderman?"

He thinks about that for a couple of seconds.

"No," he says eventually. "At least, I don't think so. It's not one of those I've-been-hurt-before things. It's like she wants to, then she remembers something, and suddenly stops."

"Weird."

"Yeah. Women."

"Hey, where's Blue Jay?"

"Shit!"

We look around and see Blue Jay in the distance, flying hard against the wind. She catches up and we finally get to City Hall.

Red Bolt and Darklight are waiting for us.

"Took you long enough," Red Bolt jokes.

"Har har," I say. "Have a look around yet?"

Superia is looking at the ice castle, studying it.

"She's in there," she says.

"What I don't get is, why August?" Phenom asks.

"Nobody was expecting it," Ragdoll says.

"How do we get in?" Physique asks me.

"Mike, how much fire can you spew?" I ask.

"I get mad enough, I'll spew plenty," Dragon says with a fangy grin.

"Okay. Get mad." A plan starts to form in my head. "Phenom, Physique, Superia. You guys go in the front doors. Dragon, try and melt down the ice gate. That doesn't work, you guys smash them down.

"Red, you and Darklight go around the back way. Try to find a way in. Can't find one, Anna, you make one.

"Rapunzel, Blue Jay, Ragdoll and Ace, you guys are with me. We're going in through that tower," I say, pointing way, way up.

"What do we do when we get inside?" Phenom asks me.

"Take her out, however you can."

"Three-pronged assault?" Physique asks.

"Two-pronged," I say, then I tell them my plan.

We split up. My team heads up the tower, Ragdoll hanging onto Ace's card, Rapunzel pulling herself up by her hair. I climb up alongside them, my claws digging into the ice. I can hear the pounding at the front door as we slip inside the open window at the top of the tower.

Like I guessed, it's a huge bedroom. There's an enormous four-poster bed of ice, covered in white furs. I skate over to the door, slowing myself with my claws, pull open the door slowly. There's two guards standing there. I shut the door silently and turn to the others.

"Icemen," I whisper. "Two of them."

"No worries, son," Ace says, pulls open the door, and steps out into the hall.

The icemen don't move.

"They're only extensions of her will," he explains, waving his hand in front of an iceman's featureless face. "They only act if she wants them to act."

We sneak out the bedroom and down the hall, looking for stairs. We find them, and I tell the others to be extra careful. We're no help if we break our necks on the ice steps.

Carefully we make our way downstairs. I can hear the pounding stop with a crash and the sounds of some kind of battle starting downstairs.

Red Bolt appears next to me.

"All good?" I ask him.

"Give me a sec," he pants. "Okay."

We rush forward, following Red's lead. Or more specifically, he rushes ahead and waits for us to catch up, then rushes forward again.

It's a huge ballroom-like chamber set up in the main lobby of City Hall, a huge room with a domed ceiling maybe a hundred feet overhead. One of Ace's cards blows a hole in an ice wall and we charge through.

Aurora's standing in front of an ice throne. She's tall and curvy, wearing a long white dress, the sleeves cut with snowflake patterns, a cloak of white fur around her shoulders. She's got long white hair and ice-blue eyes, and would be gorgeous if she didn't look like a such a stone-cold bitch. Phenom and Physique are surrounded by icemen, smashing them to shards that reform and attack again. Superia and Dragon are mid-air, being attacked by things that look like bats made of wind.

"Okay Queenie," I yell, "Chill out!"

"That's the best you could do?" Ragdoll mutters beside me.

"No darling, that's my line," Aurora snarks at us, then aims an ice blast at us. We all dodge it, but it splits us up a little and suddenly I'm surrounded by icemen.

I slash and punch and kick and dodge, twitching all over, smashing the icemen into each other. Blue Jay's gone to help Superia. Dragon's spewing flames all over, melting the icemen where they stand, only to get smashed into the ice columns by the wind-bats.

We're all over the place. I catch a glimpse of Ragdoll wrapping a leg around an iceman's head and smashing him to pieces on the floor. Ace has a bunch of pyro-cards that melt the icemen as fast as they can reform.

Aurora snarls something and Red Bolt gets caught in a blast, frozen to the spot. Superia rushes over to him and carefully starts to clear from his face, only to get blasted herself. Phenom and Physique are overwhelmed in the far end of the room, Ace is out of pyro cards, Blue Jay's getting tossed around by those wind-bats, and that's when I see Darklight, behind the throne.

"Dragon, now!" I yell.

Mike turns and flies straight up, as high as he can go, and spews flames at the ceiling.

"Winterqueen," Anna says, and Aurora whirls around, her eyes going wide.

"I believe it's appropriate for me to say, freeze," Anna smirks, and tosses something at the Winterqueen's feet. Smoke bursts from the little shattered vial. Anna dives off the platform

Nothing happens.

Aurora starts to laugh, a cold harsh laugh.

"Pitiful idiot, did you actually think-" she starts to say, then the melted ceiling washes over her, freezing into a tall spire of ice.

The icemen fall to pieces. The wind-bats blow away. The room starts to melt as summer suddenly returns.

"Yes!" Phenom yells, giving Physique a high-five.

"Way to go, team!" Ace yells.

"Everyone alright?" Blue Jay asks. She's looking a little wind-blown.

"It looks like it," Rapunzel says. "Are you?" Blue Jay nods and smiles.

"What was in that vial?" I ask Darklight.

"A little something to keep all her cold localized for a moment," she answers.

"The moment that the water hit her?"

She nods with a little smile.

"How did you know that's what we'd need?"

"I didn't," she says. "But I had a feeling it might be useful."

"That's what you went to get?"

"No," she says, pulling a little fire elemental out of her pocket. "I went to fetch this."

We head outside. The sun is rising. Cops arrive in a few minutes.

The Crimefighters' League gets another collar.

"Let's see, we put down a Kane riot," Red Bolt says.

"Hey, six riots, if you please," Physique says.

"Was it six? I lost count," says Blue Jay.

"At least six," Phenom adds, "Though it never actually happened, so do they count?"

"They count," Ragdoll says.

"We caught Number Three on the Most Wanted List," Dragon rumbles.

"I can't imagine Johnny Giggles is too happy about that," Superia smiles.

"About being caught, or about not being Number Three any more?" Darklight asks.

"Both," Rapunzel smirks.

"And we saved the city from the Winterqueen," Ace says to me. "Helluva debut, son."

"I'll say," I answer.

We head our separate ways. It's been a long night.

Doesn't stop Kimmy and I from catching up on a lot of sex.

We spend the day in bed. When we eventually wake up, I get up, start packing.

"Where are you going?" Kimmy asks me.

"Got an appointment," I say. "Time for Squirrelman to get registered."