Adventures of Superguy

August 19, 2010 - Salem, MA

Derby Square

20:28:23

The glittering lights of the city skyline on the western horizon held Connor’s attention despite the way it made him feel hollow. There was a yearning there that knew it could never be fulfilled, and it sucked everything out of him like a leak in a barrel. The skyline was identical to his own city, and that made it worse. He could finally bite the bullet and go back, wander its streets. See how familiar they would be. Find out if his favorite restaurants were still there, if his comic book shop existed here.

Walk the familiar path from Back Bay Station to Cortez Street, and find the apartment.

Mom wouldn’t be waiting for me.

She’s not here. I’m being stupid. She never existed here. 

But what if she was?

He looked away from the viewport, burying his feelings again. Packing them down into a neat little box and filing the box away with the others. The way the counselors had told him he shouldn’t, but they didn’t have to live with dying, so what did they know? 

Hope really was the worst of the evils in Pandora’s Box, sometimes.

Boston’s skyline was already out of normal visual range, but not his super vision. He had to force himself to look away and focus on the bickering that had been going on continually since they departed Happy Harbor in Ship. Massachusetts Bay sprawled beneath them, the dark waters reflecting the moonlight overhead as they skirted Boston’s airspace to fly north towards Salem. 

“I just can’t believe someone who can break the sound barrier in her sneakers can’t accept magic is real!” Apollo cried out as he threw his hands up from his crash seat.

“Hey, my powers are perfectly explained by science! I discovered the Speed Formula my aunt and her mom used to understand and unlock the Speed Force! 3X2(9YZ)4A!” Walli replied, and zipped out of her seat and to Apollo’s, a blur except for a brief moment she spent flicking Apollo’s forehead, before returning to her seat. 

“I spent months working out the Formula and practicing it until I really understood it. Now I can just say it and turn my powers on, and with the reverse formula, Z25Y(2AB)6, I can turn it off.” She said smugly, but sitting still, there was no apparent effect of the reverse formula.

Apollo rubbed his forehead where Walli had flicked him, irritation clear on his face. A cunning look passed over his face after a moment.

“So you just say the formula, and it just works?” He asked.

“Yeah, but only if you understand it first, duh.” Walli replied.

“Kind of like a magic spell, wouldn’t you say?” Apollo asked with a wide and satisfied grin.

Walli sputtered, getting red in the face but couldn’t get a retort out before they were interrupted by a long suffering M’gann.

“We’ve reached Black Canary’s coordinates… but there’s nothing here.” She announced as she brought Ship down into a tumbledown part of Salem, boarded up brick buildings lining one side of the street with the other being an empty lot. The only notable buildings were a red brick building with a faded sign reading ‘Derby Square and Marketplace’ and a crumbling Depression era movie palace. M’gann landed the bio-ship, still in camouflage, and the ramp extended. The team filed out into the cool night air.

The empty lot side of the street was lined with mature trees, but every building on that side had apparently been demolished some time ago, leaving only an open gravel and dirt rectangle. There was no one on the street, which was fine by the team. They weren’t in costume, as this wasn’t an official mission, but a favor for Black Canary to check on Nelson. That didn’t mean they wanted any more attention than necessary; especially when looking for a hidden, mystic tower.

“Sooo… now what?” Walli asked as they took in the empty lot and ramshackle buildings.

“Spread out in a search pattern.” Kaldura ordered, and the team spread out. Apollo took to the roofs, Kaldura searched for clues in the empty lot, Walli swiftly ran a search grid across the entire area, M’gann took to the skies and looked for minds telepathically. All according to their training sessions, each using their skills and abilities for an investigation. 

Connor turned all his attention to his super senses. He examined the entire area with his various vision modes, but nothing jumped out from his telescopic or microscopic vision. Looking into the infrared spectrum, he saw the heat of electrical boxes here and there, but most of the street was dead. No heat signatures that matched a human body stood out, though he was briefly surprised by a heat blob that popped onto a garbage can in an alley. Dismissing his infrared vision, he saw it was just a cat.

A ginger stray, which hissed at him once it saw he had seen it, glaring at him with its luminescent eyes. After asserting its dominance, it then leapt away back into the darkness of the alley with a slight metallic tinkle. He watched it go until it disappeared around a corner towards the back of the movie theater.

Weird cat. Cute, in a back alley scrapper kind of way. It had a collar on though, so I guess it belongs to somebody…

Looking up at the darkened buildings down the block, he saw no lights on anywhere. 

Must be roaming pretty far from home. Shouldn’t let a cat like that roam the city, it could be dangerous.

Connor focused on his hearing, letting the sounds of the city fill his ear, closing his eyes to focus on each part. It was like tuning a radio, at least partly. Different sounds were on the same ‘band’ and he could follow them back to their origins if he focused hard enough. But nothing seemed out of ordinary; light traffic, TVs blaring in apartments, the distant howl of an ambulance. Nothing that suggested a magical, secret tower or a wizard lived in this neighborhood.

Dr. Strange’s house is a lot easier to find. Which I guess might be kind of the point. From what Black Canary said, Nelson hasn’t been Dr. Fate in decades. He’s a sorcerer in his own right, but Terra hasn’t had its own ‘sorcerer supreme’ in a long time. There’s no way this is just Nelson going on vacation without telling anybody…

A foreboding feeling filled his guts. Once more, the narrative nature of the world around him seemed more real than reality. If he and the team were called somewhere, it would have to be for some kind of adventure. 

But what is the story here? I don’t know any comic like this.  Dr. Fate is a heavy hitter. Its definitely a magic thing. But we aren’t heavy on the magic side of things. Kaldura is a fighter/mage; she only spent a year at the Conservatory of Sorcery. I’m not going to be very invulnerable to magic, either. Kryptonian powers are ‘scientific’ and magic cheats. And Walli doesn’t even believe in magic…

He snorted and rolled his eyes as the team reconvened with the results of their investigations.

“Bubkis.” Apollo stated flatly, hands on his hips.

“I can’t feel any human minds in the area.” M’gann reported.

“My own mystic senses are not the most developed, but I cannot detect anything either. Conor?” Kaldura asked.

“I saw a cat?” He offered, shrugging as he spoke.

“You didn’t hear anything, either?” Kaldura inquired.

“Just the usual in the city. Nobody lives on this block, I can tell you that.” He finished.

“Nothing.” Walli added as she skidded to a stop, looking about suspiciously. “This isn’t simple camouflage.”

“So what do you think?” Apollo asked. “Adaptive micro-opto electronics combined with phase shifting?”

Walli’s mouth hung open as Connor could see the wheels turning in her head as she processed what Apollo had said. Connor could only stare flabbergasted as he tried to parse any part of it.

Is that real stuff here, or is he messing with her?

“Yeah… that is what I was thinking.” Walli admitted, taken aback. Apollo raised one blonde eyebrow at the speedster as she mentally scrambled. 

Connor turned to M’gann and Kaldura with a raised eyebrow, and both shrugged.

“Riiight… or maybe its magic?” Connor suggested, and once again, Walli scoffed.

“Please, we’ve been over this-” Walli began, before Kaldura raised a hand to stop her. She turned to Connor and held out her hand. It took Connor a moment to realize what she wanted, and he shoved a hand into his pocket and withdrew the ornate golden key. While handing it over, he noticed an inscription he hadn’t before, engraved down the barrel of the key.

‘INSERT’

Yeah, no kidding…

Kaldura took it, and examined it, taking the time to read the inscription with a thoughtful look on her face. She held a finger to her lips for a moment as she thought, and then spoke.

“Magic is a force that responds to symbols and intent. Magical objects are more than mere physical items, they are also potent symbols. What is a key without a door?” She asked them all, and Walli snappily answered.

“Useless.” She remarked, which earned an eyeroll from Apollo.

“No. It is a test.” Kaldura answered, and stepped forward into the empty lot, holding the key before her. She advanced only a few steps, the key held out at waist level as if she were about to unlock a door, and they all started in surprise when she suddenly stopped, there was a metallic clank, and the end of the key disappeared. With a quick turn and a click, there was suddenly an old iron banded wooden door in front of them, the key inserted into the lock in the middle, just below a pull ring. 

“A test of faith.”

Around that door there was now a stone tower reaching several stories tall, looming over them. Connor gasped and took an involuntary step back, his jaw slack. 

That… was fucking magic.

He was filled both with excitement, awe and fear. He hadn’t seen anything, or heard anything. There was no pop or shimmer or gradualness to the Tower of Fate’s appearance. One second it wasn’t there, and this was only an empty lot, but the second the key clicked home it was as if the Tower had always been there, he simply hadn’t noticed it before. It was impossible, both to his old human senses and his vastly expanded Kryptonian ones. 

A thought nagged at him as the team stared in wonder, and he turned to Walli.

“Phase shifting?” He asked distractedly, staring up at the tower’s parapet high above them. Somehow he knew he could leap as high as possible, and he would never reach the top. It wasn’t like the Tower stretched into infinity, but he felt like if he tried it, he would find out that it could.

“Yeah…” Walli answered, clearly trying to contain her own surprise. “Phasing objects out of sync with the dimension around them, partially putting them in another dimension. Scientists have already proven it can be done in experiments.” 

Connor frowned as he tried to square her explanation with the wonder before them.

“...What’s the biggest thing they’ve phase shifted?” He asked, and he saw Walli’s eagerness decline.

“Some particles. A few particles.” She answered as she looked up at the Tower, which seemed to be holding back its true height out of politeness.

“That’s a lot bigger than a few particles…” Connor replied without malice, and Walli nodded slightly.

Kaldura pulled on the pull ring, and with a thematically appropriate groan, the heavy wooden door swung open. It revealed only a shadowed arch, and none of the streetlights or moonlight pierced that stygian darkness. There was no clue about what lay inside, and none of Connor’s vision modes or super hearing revealed anything. It was a perfect void.

“Keep close behind me.” She ordered as she strode boldly into the tower, and with one last look back out onto the mundane street behind them, Connor followed. 

When the door swung ponderously shut behind them with an even more thematically appropriate crash, he wasn’t able to keep himself from startling.

“God, damnit!” He shouted as he turned back to stare at the treacherous door accusingly… only to find nothing but a blank masonry wall behind them. Torches on sconces built into the four pillars supporting the room lit up at once, illuminating the room. It was a square room, fifty feet to a side, with no entrance or exit.

“Where’d the door go?” M’gann asked with a slight tremor in her voice.

Everyone’s attention was diverted from the back wall where there should have been a door, to the front of the room as a scintillating figure of golden light appeared in a flash. After a moment, it resolved into the translucent form of Kent Nelson, dapper in his three piece suit and cane. The apparition was see-through, but opaque enough to offer color and detail.

Then it spoke.

“Greetings.” It began. “You have entered with a key, but the Tower does not recognize you. Please state your purpose and identity.”

The team shared a look, and Connor tried to keep from freaking out at the ghost asking to see their ID. Walli scoffed, and waved a hand dismissively.

“Gals, relax! Its just a hologram recording of Nelson. The projectors in the Cave are almost as good as this.” Walli said confidently, waving away any concerns. She approached the projection of Nelson, which turned its head to face as she came closer. “This thing is just a glorified voicemail.” 

“No.” The projection replied, staring Walli in the eyes as she edged back. “It is not. State your purpose and identity.”

Walli quickly rallied as the projection displayed far more awareness than she had clearly expected. 

“Ahem, well I’m Walli, that’s Connor, Kaldura, M’gann and Apollo.” She said by way of introduction. She continued in a falsetto voice. “And we are true believers! Here to find Dr. Fate!” She finished with unnecessary gusto, holding out her arms like she was taking a bow.

The apparition looked at her intensely for a moment, stone faced, and it turned to regard each of them in turn. It ended on Connor, and as it stared into his eyes, he could see something in the scintillating orbs of this apparition. Just as it said, it wasn’t just a recording, magical or otherwise. There was an intellect there, something ancient and unfathomable, and its eyes bore into his. He felt a brief panic as it felt like it was stripping away his lies and obfuscations, and it saw him as he truly was.

The apparition turned back to look at Walli with a look of disapproval, and then it fizzled away. In the sudden silence, Walli lowered her arms and her face fell in disappointment. She turned to the team.

“Well, this is a bust-”

Walli was interrupted by an ominous groan beneath their feet, and suddenly the flagstone floor fell away in a rush as if all its mortar had suddenly disappeared. A rush of hot air came up to meet them as they fell, filled with a sulfurous stench. Connor looked down in that heart stopping moment to see a deep pit beneath them, and the ruddy glow of lava at the bottom. The team screamed as one as the ground disappeared and certain doom rushed up to meet them.

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