The Four Heroes, Chapter Two

“Bret Stevens, back for more!” the singer laughed in cheerful amazement, as she beheld the sole rider speeding for the square. “Here we were thinking we weren’t going to get any audience at all, and we end up playing for The Four Heroes themselves. Well, he’s going to need some fighting music, and there’s only one that’ll do!”

She signalled to her bandmates to begin, and as the first strident strains reverberated boldly across Nottingham City Centre, Bret smiled. Now there was a song to remind him of home. He and Max a pair of up-and-coming prizefighters, together on the wooded shores of Lake Ontario to train and drink and seek whatever it was young men sought at that age, while in the tingling night-time heavens roamed the wild luminescent mysteries of St. Elmo’s Fire.

Bret made an entry-ramp of the nearest fountain-side, and rearing almost perpendicular he soared into the war-zone. Tyres squealed on paving-slabs as before the glowering eyes of bloodthirsty demons he began to accelerate, circling the expanse, dividing the monster-mob into parties that struck out in pursuit and others that swarmed back about to intercept. Outstripping the former Bret screeched into a U-turn at the base of the stage, skimming the pavement with his knee and shoulder, then blasted off again to bear down upon the ranks hulking in his path.

There was so much truth in those lyrics too, our hero reflected to himself, as raking talons and gnashing fangs neared by the second. That kid from the wrong side of the tracks, making his name in the underground ring, really hadn’t read the writing on the wall. More than once he’d found himself all alone as well, running from the changes instead of facing them, failing his friends and loved ones. But there’d also been this. The Four Heroes. Saving the world. The times he broke free.

As the chorus kicked in Bret plunged into the demon-mass, scattering its front lines. The beasts who bore the brunt were still flailing though open skies as Bret swung a leg over the engine-block and slid from his saddle, keeping a grip on the handlebars until the whole hunk of steel and ceramic was horizontal to the pavement and flying ahead of him, whereat he loosed his hold and slid rolling to his feet while a thousand CCs of heavy projectile pulverized enemy formations and exploded into flying cylinders and a pair of wheels.

The hunters had caught up to Bret by now, and they came on breathing fire and venting spore-gas and spitting poison-needles and spewing slime. All this our hero tackled hand-to-hand, bounding and somersaulting from engagement to engagement in a blur of blue to fell the fiends, then whipping out his katana-blade he locked with thrusting horns and sliced club-tails and toxic tendrils clean away. Soon be home. Bret hoped so. Waiting for him those few miles down the road was all that had ever been precious to him, which now included happiness not yet realized and still beyond his imagination.

He’d considered quitting before the game was won. Bret knew that fear and uncertainty, not these tentacled sparring-partners, were the real demons he’d wrestled with. What right had he to protect this planet, when it was fated to play an instrumental role in the coming intergalactic dark age? And how could he consider bringing a child into such a universe, especially one whose prophesized prospects were so bleak? Here though, borne on orchestral accompaniment and the tumult of war Bret knew so well, was only the certainty that they could make it. Nothing in the Prophecy was expressed in plain terms, and our hero knew for sure no son of his was going down without a fight. Let Harbin and the forces of destiny do their worst. Maybe the demons and doubts had power to break the boy in you, but the singer knew the second half of that sentence. And if once in his life a man had his time, then this time, alongside Amy and Ned and the others who were family too, Bret meant to be his.

Recovering the bike-chain which was still attached to part of the braking-mechanism, our hero whirled this weapon round and bashed foes from one end of the square to the other. He was back again, and hope was riding high. Finishing off the last of the stragglers with a length of exhaust-pipe, Bret dropped to one knee and in a Herculean hammer-blow upon the earth itself delivered the finishing touch. Flagstones cracked apart amid spurts of fire as beneath fallen demon-bodies opened a yawning black crevasse, into whose maw the vanquished ones tumbled while Bret sailed safely to the rim. Nottingham’s network of subterranean caverns would hold that collection long enough for the many innocents who had been trapped in the City Centre to wend their way to less dangerous climes.

Our hero headed over to the musicians on their stage. “Appreciate the support!” he grinned to the golden-haired singer. “You’ve got to be Canadian too, right?”

“Close,” she replied. “We can lead the evacuation from here. Think I saw Neetra vanishing off into some trouble over that way, right?”

“Oh, yeah, not much changes,” said the world-weary Bret. “And she’s going to be furious about what I did to that bike. Anyway, you guys keep at it, you’ve got a future!”

So saying Bret sheathed his sword, and with a final salute to the band turned from the carnage behind him and set off again into the streets.

Joe and Dylan sat silent in the belly of Empress Ungus’s ship as the distant sprawl of Nottingham dropped further and further beneath them. That city had been only half-reconstructed when the invaders arrived, wide expanses still desolate from the damage inflicted by Dimension Borg’s second attack. Between him, and the Solidity, and the Martians, it had been a continual cycle of devastation and rebuilding throughout The Four Heroes’ era. Neither spectator staring down on this urban palimpsest through the clear membranous windshield needed such a view to set them pondering whether the land they created with their powers long ago could even be said to exist anymore.

“Dylan,” Joe commenced at length. “We have not spoken of what passed between us, but I know this Empress Ungus. Her skill at exploiting the pain and unrest of others is considerable. She won The Chancellor’s loyalty that way, and attempted to subvert Gala likewise. I can conceive of no reason for her summoning we two to this depraved conference other than to rekindle our enmity, thereby undermining The Four Heroes’ united front.”

“Then we don’t play into her hands,” Dylan responded. “But Joe, don’t start thinking that’s the same thing as settling our differences. Bret was wrong, this isn’t the old days. Getting thrown together in the same fight isn’t going to be enough to patch up a lost friendship like it would have been then.”

“What makes you so certain of that?” Joe implored him. “If I am to be denied all hope of redemption, then surely you have already abandoned those principles we defended in the beginning.”

“Don’t make this about my failure to uphold the cause,” Dylan warned him. “When Phoenix and I were roughing it in the unrestored sector, waging guerilla campaigns against the Next Four, you were living in a castle shacked up with their leader. And just look at what that little romance has been responsible for. I don’t possess the sum total of knowledge anymore, Joe, so I don’t know all the reasons. I can only tell you what feels to me like The Four Heroes and what doesn’t. And what you’ve done sure as heck feels like something straight from one of the bad guys.”

“Anger and blame were also the ways of our enemies,” Joe put in quietly. “You yourself, when last we talked, alluded to the day I introduced you to our cause. Perhaps since then I have failed in your eyes, but if you cannot separate duty from feelings of personal betrayal, where will that path lead you?”

Dylan’s expression was set.

“We’re in luck,” he resumed briskly, “because this one’s going to be as old-school as they come. We’ve been up against enough villains who tried to pit us against each other. The solution that’s worked dozens of times will work here too. As for what happens after that…”

But on these words, silence fell again.

END OF CHAPTER TWO