When Flashes Clash, Chapter Three

Figures were moving, hastening along the tunnel towards the shaft. Most of their faces were those of friends, but this did not stop Phoenix and Phoenix Prime immediately training an energy-weapon and a blazing hand on the one exception.

“It’s OK! D’Carthage is with us!” 4-H-N cried at once. “We sent Carrie ahead to let you know he’s…”

The end of this sentence became a squeak of dread as 4-H-N’s eyes fell on the girl who was its subject. She rushed to Carrie’s side as Kumiko had done, while into the steep-sided trappings proceeded handsome D’Carthage, Dr. James Neetkins, the rock-man Kral-it-Gor and the trundling life-support tank that housed Dylan Cook of The Four Heroes. Phoenix lowered her gauntlet.

“Ze caves are unsealed, Papa, but Carrie ’as been seriously injured,” she reported to James. “Some of us must bear ’er to ze surface right away.”

Her father nodded gravely. “That group wid need tae aim fuir the cave-exit at the foot o’ the hill by the castle,” said he. “Solidity robots are doon at that point – nae time fuir details – and Earth-troops will hae taken back the terrain by noo. Juist get the lassie there and they’ll be able tae gie her the help she needs.”

“But those of us who stay to complete our errand, sage one, may yet require defenders on leaving this place,” D’Carthage added warily. “Every instinct I boast of as tracker and frontiersman informs me our enemies press us close.”

4-H-N shivered. “For once I agree,” she declared. “All the way over here I had the creepiest feeling we were being followed.”

“Looks like we’ll hae tae divide-up oor combat operatives once again – it’s getting like a Highland fling,” commented James. “Half o’ them tae the city, and half tae stop here.”

In unspoken concurrence Phoenix Prime lifted Carrie in her arms, easily supporting the tiny birdlike weight with her anti-matter infused strength. “This is clearly a Four Heroes affair,” she explained, “which also means you’re with me, Kral-it-Gor. Good to see you again, by the way.”

As the faithful captain lumbered to his old leader, Kumiko made ready to do likewise and complete the division that was to turn back. She could not honestly admit to any feeling but sadness. Phoenix Prime was correct, though – this was about The Four Heroes’ cause and the mysterious secrets of Nottingham itself, a matter for that city’s creators if ever there was one. The party that stayed to address it should be made up of they themselves or those they most dearly and intimately loved, and there was one here whose right to stand beside The Four Heroes’ present representative was greater than Kumiko’s. Knowing that now was not the time to sigh, or otherwise betray any of these sentiments, she started out rolling slowly away.

Then that same one of whom Kumiko thought stopped her with a gauntleted hand on her arm.

“What scientist would abandon a project ’alf way through, especially aftair such an encouraging beginning?” Phoenix inquired. “Considair zis a substitution. I am with you too, Phoenix Prime.”

Suddenly Kumiko’s heart was starting to pound. She barely understood what had prompted the other girl to make such a choice, but knew well enough that Phoenix’s words had loosed within her a euphoric rising hope where there had been only emptiness before. Kumiko tried her hardest to fight it back, still mindful of what was decent and proper, and in the name of those considerations made a flurried attempt to protest:

“But, Phoenix, what about…you should be with…because I can go just as easily and, I mean…Dylan!”

Phoenix looked to Kumiko, and smiled.

“What safer ’ands, zan zose which were prepared to shed in ’is name ze blood zat made me?” she asked her gently. “And, in addition…”

The eyes behind the glasses were luminous and warm.

“…zere is no-one I trust more.”

Kumiko was blinking back tears. “I…I won’t let anything happen to him, Phoenix,” she beamed joyously to her friend. “I’ll keep him safe, I promise!”

Phoenix gave her one last squeeze and then the rescuers were off, two matching slender backs vanishing down the passage with Kral-it-Gor’s granite bulk at their heels. Kumiko skated to the four who remained and together they turned from the tunnelmouth to their road.

“Seems ye’ll be joining us then, laddie,” James remarked to D’Carthage, having told him earlier that day he could see no reason to regard him as anything other than a dangerous threat to this same mission. Phoenix and Phoenix Prime were apparently not the only pair of foes this extraordinary journey had drawn into fellowship. D’Carthage, at any rate, greeted James’s wry words with nothing less than a dazzling smile and a courtly bow, for he had always taken social impasses in his stride.

Each of the company was aware that nothing but Four Heroes powers were capable of granting them access through the cliff-face ahead, but just as they were making ready to steer Dylan’s mobile life-support unit in that direction, they were spared the task. It began to move without any external command, rumbling over the stones all by itself and slewing to a halt before the rocky wall. Then while the four bystanders watched wide-eyed that solid surface began to warp into golden radiance once more, somewhat as it had done minutes ago when it was freed, only this time the crags were disappearing from sight as if shading into the aura until only brilliance was left.

James, Kumiko, D’Carthage and 4-H-N each needed a moment to collect themselves. They were going where none but The Four Heroes had ever stepped.

The tank’s motors kicked in again, and Dylan’s companions followed him into the light.

Storm-Sky alighted elegantly on kerbside, concluding the motion with a turn and kick that snapped a stop-sign at the base of its stem and dropped the iron pole into his waiting hands. Lightning, arriving moments later, wrenched a zone-ends from the pavement and held it likewise. Turning their weapons round and round the pair began walking towards each other.

It was when they closed that the twin lengths of dead metal came alive. Suddenly each was describing awesome arcs across that Nottingham street, curving against the windshear on every swing in what to appearances was an almost liquid motion, though the almighty ringing of the impacts and rebounds was solid enough to shake the very buildings nearby. Then a slicing slash from Storm-Sky’s hexagonal blade or Lightning’s circular business-end would part the duellists, setting them to thrusts and parries as they gained or gave ground, before one negotiated his way back into close-quarters and iron met iron again. But no Flash would keep his feet on terra firma for such a reckoning as this, and soon enough Lightning and Storm-Sky were traversing city skies in rooftop-to-rooftop bounds bearing their spinning staffs with them. These, though they were ever by their respective wielders, seemed no longer to rest in their grip. Sometimes a perfect propellor-like circle, sometimes an orbiting forcefield and sometimes a scimitar ranging for the foe, but mere road-signs no longer. It was as if some supernal potency had been imparted to dull Earthly ores by the godlike warring duo whose final confrontation spanned the clouds.

Flashtease stayed abreast of them, though the effort had by now left him out of breath and pink under his freckles. He was fast, but seldom had he witnessed such a demonstration of the far greater speed and power commanded by adults of his kind. Panting but dauntless the boy scampered full-pelt along Nottingham’s summits in determined tumbles and tunic-blooms, grey continually disclosing and concealing vivid yellow until the flicking hemline was finally still, as Lightning and Storm-Sky ceased their frenetic activities mid-air and Flashtease atop a tower-block did the same.

The two men faced each other, holding their weapons before them in defence. Both knew that the time had come. The next pass would also be the last for one of them.

“You are as strong as I remember, Lightning,” Storm-Sky said. “Only that about you has not changed.”

“I’m glad you’re still alive,” was Lightning’s reply. “I wanted this opportunity to tell you the end of our friendship is the one part of this I regret. Nothing else though, Storm- Sky. And that alone is a sacrifice I can and must make.”

“Planets have lain at The Flash Club’s mercy before, and then I persuaded you to show mercy!” cried Storm-Sky.

“Not now,” came back the grim response. “Not when it’s our whole galaxy. The only way you’ll stop me this time is the way you’ve already chosen.”

Storm-Sky closed his eyes. “So be it,” he said quietly.

Flashtease, looking on with heart in mouth, was wise not to blink. He would have missed more than half of what happened next.

It was Lightning who made the first move, upending his road-sign over his shoulder then hurling it base-first like a javelin, twenty mangled rusty razor-jags its lethal point. Storm-Sky was forced to release his own weapon, letting it fall to the streets below as he threw both arms in front of him. His palms clapped together around the iron pole and arrested its flight, such that the twisted barbs held steady an inch from his eyes. Lightning was barrelling at him and seconds remained, but Storm-sky began to turn, his purple robes flaring out horizontally even while he corrected his grasp on the ensnared dart. As if to overshadow the world The Flash Club’s erstwhile leader rose before him, lifting his fist high to deliver the decisive crushing blow. Then Storm-Sky whirled back about with both sets of knuckles wrapped around the base-end of his opponent’s staff, and with all the force of his spin dashed it against Lightning’s exposed ribs.

The bat, or club, shattered in two. Storm-Sky’s winning stroke may have been a home-run or a hole in one, but in either case, the ball exited the stadium.

Lightning, his opposite flank foremost and his cape flapping in his slipstream, plummeted like a dead weight. Straight through a concrete and steel footbridge he smashed without stopping, seconds ahead of making meteoric touchdown on a cornershop that stood hard by and demolishing it in an explosion of broken bricks and a dust-cloud of powdered mortar.

“Now I am sure of you, Lightning!” Storm-Sky hollered from above.

“Are you, old friend?” Lightning growled to himself, as he dragged his way painfully from the rubble. “Much about me then…you’ve never been sure of. You and your wisdom…your mercy and restraint…it’s all just fear, Storm-Sky. Your fear. You were always afraid…afraid to learn what the extents of our powers might be.”

He looked heavenward at his counterpart, and began to concentrate.

Flashtease first became aware of it tingling in his most sensitive extremities and making the hair on his head stand on end. He felt it, this sudden ominous change in the very atmosphere around him, but as yet could not think what was responsible for it. Glancing across the gulf at Storm-Sky, Flashtease saw from his reaction that it was the same for him.

Lightning was rising up out of the ruined shop below. Something, however, was wrong. His outline had become indistinct, such that he was shimmering like a heat-mirage. Line and grain from his chiselled lineaments to the cut of his costume were shifting in and out of focus. And every inch he climbed keyed the turbulence to a yet higher pitch, sending Flashtease almost frantic from the agitation it was working under his skirt and all across his skin and hair.

“What’s wrong, Storm-Sky?” inquired Lightning’s voice, echoing weirdly in distortions that paralleled those of his appearance. “Is it only dawning on you now? That day at the Seegs? I wouldn’t know what you’ve convinced yourself it was we saw. But do you at least recall my words to you, all those years ago?”

Storm-Sky was as close to fearless as ever a Flash had been, but there was one point at least on which Lightning had guessed correctly. Never in the former’s wildest dreams had he imagined the latter would go so far in his endless quest for power. Now as Storm-Sky looked on the travesty before him and knew it at last for a violation of every cosmic balance in which he believed, even his phenomenal might seemed to drain away.

“This cannot be…!” were all the words he could muster.

“‘We’ll make ourselves into a flash that shall illuminate the very universe!’” Lightning quoted himself resoundingly, by now little more than a silhouette of terrible unwavering brightness throwing wild thundercracks all around. “Why do you imagine I said that, Storm- Sky?”

Somewhere within the blinding nucleus glinted bared teeth and manic staring eyes, as Lightning’s demonic voice roared in triumphal summation:

“Did you think I just liked the name?”

Neither Storm-Sky nor Flashtease ever truly stood a chance. The boy, several hundred feet from the epicentre, was granted fractionally more time to attempt an escape, but even this was in vain. Nothing could hope to outstrip what erupted from Lightning as he made public at last the special ability he had kept secret even from his once best friend.

He had found a way to transform himself into his namesake. And for a split-second the resultant lightning-strike swallowed all Nottingham in stark dazzling white.

No sooner had Flashtease begun to turn than the wave of force tore into him, bowling him from his feet. Any fretfulness he had experienced on his earlier vantage- point was put very much into perspective as his tunic whipped to his armpits, revealing not only underwear but also naked midriff and back while his legs kicked helplessly above him and the rooftop vanished into distant nothingness behind. Flashtease’s last thought however had nothing to do with embarrassment, but dwelled instead on his valiant countryman who had battled so bravely only to be lost at ground zero in Lightning’s abominable attack. For if he, Flashtease, were even now whirling head-over-heels through empty space with little chance of survival, Storm-Sky’s prospects must surely be bleaker still.

Then all was washed away and Flashtease knew nothing more.

END OF CHAPTER THREE