|
#5
SEP 08 |
 |
“Bullet With a Name”
D,
Amazingly enough I have another job for you. I’m not too sure how interested you are in this hit as you’ve ignored the past offers on the table but trust me this is fucking huge. So, if you’re looking to take a chance your next target is: Superboy.
Spy Reports have been hot with rumors that Superboy’s been spotted in Smallville too frequently recently to be coincidence when before last year he’s never been seen in Kansas more than four fucking times. Don’t ask me why he’d hang around that shit hole, as I don’t have a fucking clue. He’s probably there hiding under a secret identity and I don’t know what it would be either. So, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.
The contractor has offered double your normal fare and the Zod offer still stands too. I really think this time the reward is worth the risk. Then again I just sit behind a computer all day so what the fuck do I know, right?
Oh! Before I forget. Sorry about the James thing. I didn’t know he was former CIA. Anyway, I’m glad things worked out even though I’m catching Hell over you knocking off Weeper and Matter Master. It’s not good for business to bump off your partners so don’t be surprised if nobody wants to work with you. With that in mind I hope you don’t mind if I suggest you stick with TM and Catman. They’re the only partners you’ve had that haven’t ended up dead yet. That and I can’t deny your success with them, though I don’t get how you tolerate the dolt.
T.
New York City
Two Days Ago
“No, shit! Superboy!” Abel Tarrant, the Tattooed Man, exclaimed with excitement in his half-drunken blood shot eyes. “I mean, fuck, it’s no Green Lantern, but this’ll do.”
Thomas Blake grinned as he looked away from the laptop. “Well, after the Green Lantern handed you your --” the Tattooed Man jabbed a threatening finger at him, warning Catman to shut his mouth. Blake flung his hands in the air acting as if the accusing finger was a gun. “What? I wasn’t gonna say anything about the Green Lantern knocking your ass out! Seriously!”
Blake quickly ducked to avoid the silver, semi-full, beer can that whiffed above his head; a comets tail of amber liquid followed the cans path and sprinkled down on the feline themed villain. The can smacked against a wall and fell to the floor where the rest of its contents emptied on the expensive Berber carpet.
“Oh, c’mon!” Blake complained exasperated at the growing spill.
Floyd watched with disinterest as Thomas stormed off in a huff to clean up the spot, mumbling a string of curses under his breath the whole time. The assassin had no desire to know what he had missed while he was gone. “We leave for JFK in the morning,” he directed to Abe. “We’ll fly to Topeka and then take a bus into Smallville.”
“That’s fine with me,” Abe replied as he fetched a beer from the mini-fridge. “All I need is what I’ve got on me,” hinting to the many various tattoos that decorated his skin that came to life with a light touch and a lot of willpower. “It’s moments like this I’m glad I travel light.”
Blake re-entered the room after cleaning the carpet. “I know a couple girls in Kansas - y’know the real ‘farmers daughters’ type girls! I know they’d love to see me again.” Blake was sure to emphasis his point by adding, “They probably can’t wait to tear my clothes off. I bet they could bring some friends and we’ll party like rap stars!”
Silence lingered in the air like a mummy elephant’s fart as Lawton and Tarrant stared at Blake with blank expressions. It was just too absurd to laugh at.
“Tommy, the last woman who wanted to tear your clothes off didn’t so much want to fuck you as she wanted to tear your internal organs out,” Floyd retorted with a smirk as Abe burst out into laughter, drawing an unappreciative look from Blake. “The sad part is that I can’t even qualify Pantha as a woman! She’s more like an overgrown cat!” he stopped long enough to ponder his words. “Come to think of it, you should’ve sued her for copyright infringement or did you lose your rights to trademark ‘Catwoman’ to Selina?”
Floyd pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and counted the cash inside. “Anyway, if I were you I’d start packing now. We’ve got a morning flight and it’ll take you all night just to pack your costumes.”
The former world-famous jungle cat trapper muttered another string of curses at the memory of his destroyed closet. “That bitch shredded all but what was at the dry cleaners. Now, I only have four costumes left. How the Hell am I gonna fight the forces of good with only rotating between four damned costumes?! It’s gonna take months for my tailor to replace what I lost.” His anger rose with his mini-rant.
“Sounds like you have a real moral conundrum on your hands. I wish there was a way I could help you out during your troubled times, but I’m going down to the bar. Can I leave you here by yourself, or are you gonna commit suicide in memory of your late wardrobe?” Lawton mocked as he flipped his wallet shut and stuffed it back into his jeans.
Blake huffed and went about his business. Tattooed Man joined Deadshot down at the bar off the lobby, leaving Catman in the suite to spend the next three hours packing his bags.
Smallville, Kansas
Now
They sat at a round table outside of a local coffee shop in what passed for downtown, which was really nothing more than a row of aging brick buildings that lined Main Street with the only one taller than six-stories being the fifteen story town hall. After spending so much time in places like New York and Chicago it was hard for Floyd to think of Smallville as anything more advanced than one of those wooden towns he saw in western movies like A Fistful of Dollars with dirt roads and horse drawn carriages. The brand new Corvette that drove passed looked oddly out of place to him.
“Is this really necessary?” Tattooed Man complained as he pulled the white cardboard cup away from his face. He looked down in disgust at the horrible brown liquid inside oblivious to the similar looks he received by older passer-bys on the street. All the younger kids muttered to each other about how cool the one snake tattoo was that coiled around his left arm and ended on the top of his shaved bald head. “Why don’t we just start wrecking shit and draw Superboy to us? What’s with this sneaking around bullshit?”
Floyd was studying a group of teenagers across the street at a hole in the wall pizza joint that had a few arcade games older than the kids that played them. “I met the kid once on the Squad. He seemed decent enough and held up his end of the bargain. So I figured I’d do him the courtesy of keeping the casualties to a minimum.”
It was that encounter the assassin was hoping would help identify the disguised hero when he saw him. So far nobody in the group he visually stalked resembled the hero’s face or physique.
“Maybe you have some respect for the kid, but I think the fact this coffee fucking sucks is good enough a reason to burn this hick town down,” Abe complained as he dumped the remaining drink on the sidewalk.
“I dunno, I think this cappuccino is pretty dec--” Blake started to say as he rose the cup to his lips, but something from behind unexpectedly bumped into him forcing him to spill the cappuccino down his chin and the front of his brand new yellow IZOD sweater. “DAMMIT!” Blake swore as Tarrant chuckled at the spectacle of his pal throwing the cup down and flailing his arms angrily.
“Oh, shit! I’m sorry dude,” a blonde haired kid stated apologetically after accidentally bumping into the guy as he left the coffee shop with his friend. “I didn’t see you.”
Floyd turned his attention to the kid at the sound of his familiar voice. Except for the dyed hair the kid was exactly as the hitman remembered. He hoped the kid wouldn’t recognize him under his dark sunglasses. Fortunately, the teen’s attention was focused elsewhere.
“I can never have anything nice can I?!” Thomas kicked at the cup. “This was a brand new $220 sweater! You got that kinda money?” he directed towards the offender.
The blonde smirked and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t get paid hardly the amount I deserve for what I do. Why do you think I’m looking for a job?”
Blake sighed and shook his head. The anger subsided as he accepted his fate of having everything in his life go to shit. This sweater was supposed to make him feel better about his lost wardrobe and trashed apartment.
“Whatever…don’t worry about it,” the villain said.
The kid looked confused. “You sure?”
“Yeah…just go,” Blake dropped back into his chair, defeated.
The kid’s brown shaggy haired friend tugged his arm. “C’mon, we better get going.”
Floyd never took his eyes off the kid as he shrugged and proceeded away from the terrible trio. He ignored the teasing Tattooed Man was giving their coffee stained partner until the two teens were roughly fifty-yards away. Then he stood, drawing the attention of the two he sat with.
“Let’s go,” the hitman ordered.
“Why, what’s up?” Abe asked.
Floyd replied. “That’s him…”
Deadshot and Tattooed Man looked at each other; their hostile eyes revealed the mutual intent to kill. Their gaze separated and drifted over to Catman in an understanding that if the feline themed villain repeated the hook from Katey Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ one more time he was getting tossed off the top of the tall wheat silo they were perched on. Catman had his back turned towards the aggravated pair oblivious to the precarious predicament he was in as he spied the landscape through a pair of burnt orange catnoculars on the look out for their target. It was bad enough that frustrations were near a boiling point after it took an hour of stalking Superboy all around town from shop to shop and wait another half an hour outside of some ice cream joint so the teen hero could suck down a milkshake, but Blake’s out of tune repetitious singing threatened to blow the whole thing up.
“Okay, that’s it.” Tattooed Man went to touch the winged monkey tattoo ready to will it to life and push Catman over the side…and possibly throw poo at him.
“I think I see them!” Catman reported as he refocused the catnoculars. Tattooed Man’s hand paused. “They’re coming around the bend, roughly thirty yards from position.”
Deadshot took one last drag off his Marlboro then tossed it onto the tin roof, crushed it under his boot, and pulled his silver mask over his face. He hefted the powerful long rifle (that took him all of twenty-four seconds to assemble) that was required to make a shot from this far away. The silo wasn’t the assassin’s ideal location, but it did have its advantages. Considering there weren’t any potential interferences around him for nearly five miles to complicate the angle Deadshot had hoped that by increasing the distance of the shot, in this case two miles, that it would increase the difficulty of the shot necessary enough to make the shot worth it. Otherwise, what’d be the point if there weren’t any challenges left to make in life?
What other snipers had to calculate and consider before pulling the trigger Deadshot knew immediately. His suit had sensors sewn into it that filtered information to his eyepiece listing and updating the range to target, wind velocity, altitude and elevation of himself in relation to target and the temperate of the environment and gun barrel.
“Let’s hope the friend’s smart enough to run,” Deadshot muttered as he zeroed the crosshairs of the scope on the blonde teen. He was now ten yards from position and clearly in the middle of an animated discussion. Five yards. That’s when the teen pulled off a red collared shirt to reveal a black t-shirt with what made the teen a target to begin with: a hollow diamond with an ‘S’ in the middle. Floyd smiled as his instincts were confirmed.
The single Kryptonite bullet he had managed to get his hands on, at the cost of a considerable chunk of cash, was loaded into the chamber. He would only need one bullet.
One yard.
Zero yards.
BANG!
2.76 seconds later the bullet struck Superboy in the shoulder, dropping him to the ground like a sac of bricks. Floyd frowned; he was aiming at his head. Maybe two miles was a bit of a stretch.
Deadshot dropped the rifle and spun to where Abel was last standing. “Tattooed --” he started but found it was too late; Tattooed Man was already gone. He cursed then motioned to Blake. “C’mon Catwoman, we’ve got a hero to bag.”
They raced down the ladder bolted on the side of the silo.
*Continued from Superboy #20
The pain was absolutely incredible. Devastating. It hurt with an overwhelming intensity that Superboy hadn’t even thought would be possible for him to experience. Over the course of his career he had thrown down with some of the most powerful villains in the universe and charged into battle face first without consideration to his personal safety. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t feel some sort of ache or pain. He had figured he had already felt the worse it’d ever get, but he knew now he was wrong. This was different. Powerful. It felt as it God had punched him in the shoulder. Superboy almost thought, for a moment, that He had.
The bullet that had pierced his invulnerable skin like it was Jell-O leaked dangerous radiation in his body, weakening him progressively. It was buried under cartilage, muscle and bone, drowned in blood and burned like a tiny star.
Some voice in the back of his mind cut clearly through the angry dissonance and screamed at him to get up. He began to stir for the first time after the shot.
“Shit!” his friend, Kenny, yelled. The boy was careful about where to touch his wounded friend. “You gotta stay still --”
“No. Time.” Superboy forced himself onto his shaking feet through considerable force of will reacting to a primal instinct that warned of impending danger.
Kenny saw the threat first: a ferocious Velociraptor charging directly at them! Superboy failed to hear his friend’s profane comment before he pushed the surprised teen into the roadside ditch and met the dinosaur head-on. He didn’t even dedicate a single brain cell to the absurdity of this.
The prehistoric beast charged as fast as its powerfully muscled manufactured legs could propel its body down the road. It snarled in glee and clicked in primitive communication, its tongue sliding in hunger over sharp teeth with reptilian eyes focused intently on its helpless prey unaware that its actions weren’t of its own will but those of another.
When they clashed Superboy unbelievably stood his ground. Even he would’ve been amazed if he had time to think. His good arm rose to block the dinosaur from running him over. Instead the raptor clamped down on the boys forearm with his massive jaws. Rotten, stained teeth attempted to render, yet barely leaving scratches on, the increasingly vulnerable flesh.
“Who…let you…off your leash?” Superboy spat with labored breath through clenched teeth to the mindless reptile. The raptor swung its head back and forth; Superboy struggled with the ravenous animal as he drudged up the will and feelings necessary to consciously recreate what he only did twice without really knowing how.
He could sense it working.
Suddenly his eyes flared red and with a surge of floundering energy invisible streams of heat flared from his eyes and struck the raptor. The beast screamed as the heat vision tore through the animated illusion and, in its death, it vanished into nothingness.
Superboy’s head swam as he fell to his knees, exhausted; he prayed he had the strength remaining for one last effort. The weird emerald spider webbing under his skin had grown up his neck and stretched across his chest.
The steel-toed boot that kicked the side of his head would deny the rest he desperately needed.
“Get up, asshole! I’m not through with you, yet!” Tattooed Man challenged, fuming at the migraine that stabbed his brain upon his creation’s forced destruction.
Tattooed Man’s fingers pressed the green ink of the long anaconda tattoo that started with the tailed coiled around his wrist, wrapped up around his muscled arm and ended with its triangular face on top of the villains shaved head. The snake magically appeared to inflate off his skin, the vivid ink morphed into the slimy scales of the real live reptile. The lifeless dots of black ink took on a shiny glare as the forked tongue flickered out of its mouth to taste the air. Abe lifted the twenty-foot snake off his body and dropped it onto the kneeling hero.
It reacted upon contact and coiled itself around its prey’s torso, pinning Superboy’s arms to his side. Then it squeezed with a supremacy not normal to its kind. Its muscles, fueled by its Master’s will, were determined to crush the life out of the boy.
Superboy mentally cursed the Kryptonite bullet, for that surely was what had to be stuck in him. His weak arms lacked the strength needed to break free. Drawing in precious oxygen was all but impossible now and it took every ounce of will left in his body to fight the urge to black out, but with every half-second that passed the seductive call of oblivion became harder to ignore as the reptile’s grip tightened. Superboy knew that if he passed out he was as good as dead.
Tattooed Man laughed at the teen’s peril. This was easily the most fun he’d had in months. “Sucks to be you, doesn’t it, mother fucker?!” he taunted. That’s when he noticed something different in the hero’s face that made him pause: grim determination.
It was difficult, Kryptonite poisoning aside, to apply his tactile-telekinesis internally on an object he couldn’t see to manipulate. But he’d be damned if he went down like this at the mercy to some stand-in reject from a bad Jon Voight movie. Superboy howled in rage and his shoulder throbbed as invisible forces prodded at it. Exhausting the last of his solar spawned power in one final push, the extraterrestrial bullet exploded out of the back of his shoulder and burst through the anaconda. Like the Velociraptor before it, the snake vanished in its demise.
Tattooed Man’s hands slapped against the sides of his head from what felt like his skull exploding in all directions. When he committed a fair amount of willpower into a creation, the feedback from its forceful destruction spiked his brain like a hot ice pick.
Free and taking the Tattooed Man’s distraction to his advantage, Superboy fell forward onto his good hand. The wounded arm simply hung limp and useless from the damaged socket, attached to his body by nothing more than a few strands of muscle that retained enough might to hang on. The lingering radiation prevented the wound from healing even though his flagging stamina leveled off. He needed time to recoup and gather his bearing; his body just wasn’t as efficient in processing the sun’s energy as it could have been had he been a full-blooded Kryptonian.
The teen hero was fortunate in that his mixed heritage lessened the immediate affects of the Kryptonite, as opposed to his full-blooded mentor who suffered severely upon every exposure. The downside, however, meant it would take longer for his body to recover from those affects. It would take days to convalesce.
Of course, as he quickly learned, today was not his day.
“Fall, Superman Jr., under the might of the feline fury of the Catman!” Thomas Blake proudly proclaimed as he pounced on Superboy’s back. He popped his claws and tried to bury them into the hero’s head. They failed and bent. “Oh damn, and I just sharpened this set,” he complained.
“Ous!” The air rushed out of Catman’s lungs when something heavy slammed against his chest. He fell off Superboy and landed hard on his back on the road.
Kenny Klutter had recovered from the shock of finding himself suddenly flung into the ditch and managed to untangle his lanky limbs from the tall dry weeds. He had climbed out to see some goof in an orange and yellow costume attacking his friend. Swallowing his fear he’d grabbed his discarded backpack, full with books for homework that night, and slammed it against the aggressor. “Get off!”
Too bad that’s about as far as his plan went.
“You’ve got some balls kid,” an amused Deadshot stated from behind.
Kenny was ready to bring down his almighty canvas mace upon the hitman, but Deadshot knocked him the fuck out with a solid right cross to the face before he could inflict any damage.
“Don’t you dare --” Superboy stood; his limp arm cradled. He wasn’t sure what would happen next, but he was reasonably sure that whatever did happen next wouldn’t be up to him.
“Hey, kid, long time no see,” Deadshot greeted with both wrist magnums pointed at Superboy’s face. “How’s tricks?”
Superboy glared at both magnums with contempt. His heat vision failed. “You know if you wanted to get together and reminisce about the Squad all you needed to do was phone first.”
Deadshot chuckled. “You know, there was something I was curious about: did you tag Knockout? ‘Cause for a chick who wasn’t getting it hard, she seemed pretty sweet on you.”
Off to the side, maybe ten feet away, Tattooed Man looked down at the fallen Catman and offered an open hand. “What’s the matter, Blake, not used to it when the boys fight back?”
Catman winced as he pulled himself up. “Blow me,” he responded with far more humor than intended. Abel’s grin made it difficult to stay angry at the slam.
The Kent Farm
Martha Kent looked at the cherry wood pendulum wall clock for the fifth time in as many seconds. Connor was late coming home by twenty minutes. She grabbed her husband Jonathan by the arm and guided him through the living room and the dozen or more teens gathered there, eating all of the finger foods and chatting amongst each other to kill time until the birthday party started, and into the nearly empty kitchen. There were two more kids pouring themselves a fresh cup of Sprite.
“Kenny should’ve had Connor home by now,” the concern was apparent in her voice. “Can you go out and see if they’re on their way?”
Jonathan nodded, knowing that if his wife was worried there normally was a reason to be. “Yeah, sure. Though, knowing Connor and his obsession with vanilla milkshakes they’re probably stuck at ‘Stewarts’,” he said to alleviate his wife’s anxiety as he gathered his keys and wallet.
“I’ll be right back.” Jonathan exited through the back door.
BLAM!
BLAM!
Superboy barely dodged the pair of bullets Deadshot tried to put in his face by nudging them away with a last second blast of TTK. As a third bullet skated by closer than the last two he knew that the odds certainly weren’t in his favor; there was just too much going on to avoid.
A pair of cat toys flew over Superboy’s head and dropped to the ground by his feet. Deadshot had quickly dashed to the side before they exploded. Superboy was thrown back and landed in a tangled mess, disorientated from the extremely close blasts.
Tattooed Man grinned as he touched a small black tattoo and suddenly a black ACME anvil appeared over Superboy and dropped on his chest. On the second drop Superboy felt a rib crack.
“Stop it!” a recovered Kenny charged Tattooed Man and bounced off the muscled man. While not as successful as he’d intended, his effort broke Abe’s concentration and the anvil disappeared.
“That’s it! I’m tired of you!” an angry Tattooed Man grabbed Kenny and wrapped his muscular arm around the boy’s torso and neck, threatening to strangle the life out of him.
Deadshot was quick to level his wrist magnum on his inked partner and coolly warned, “Let the kid go. I told you there’d be no collateral damage.”
“Fuck you!” Tattooed Man flexed his grip on Kenny whose face was already turning blue. “This twerps gotten in the way too many times. We’re here to do a job.”
Kenny struggled against Abe’s chokehold to no avail; he felt his world slipping away. Sure, Abe figured he could have used any of his lethal tattoos to kill Kenny, but then again he also figured that some things were better to do with your own bare hands.
“No…” Superboy dragged his body slowly across the roads surface. His fingers dug tiny trenches in the ground as he clawed at the concrete. His scuffed sneakers slid as they pushed forward, kicking at loose gravel with each stroke. The front of his black t-shirt wore away with friction as it brushed against the rough pavement, tiny stones digging into his clothes. “Let him…go,” he warned almost too quietly to hear at the towering villain.
Tattooed Man smirked at the pathetic teen hero that inched closer to him. “What’re you gonna do, asshole? Pull at my bootlaces? Give me a sneaker wedgie? This isn’t high school, fucker!” he taunted. “You’ve got nothing left!”
“That’s…where…you’re…wrong!” Superboy spat with as much gusto his voice could muster as his hand weakly wrapped around Tattooed Man’s ankle. His eyelids dropped closed involuntarily as he silently prayed that there was something left buried inside his wrecked body that was nearly tapped dry of every ounce of energy it could generate, solar or otherwise. He felt tired, slow; his body was ice cold and his mind felt wrapped under a thick murkiness that clouded his thoughts, oblivious to the incredible feats he had accomplished or yet to perform. Only one thing was clear: he had to save his friend.
A weird shiver traveled up Tattooed Man’s body. He tried to kick Superboy’s hand free from his foot, but strangely discovered he couldn’t move his leg. Something had frozen his whole body in place.
“What the fuck?” an odd pressure swelled in Abe’s paralyzed body, almost like he were somehow transported to the Martian surface in Total Recall, filling him with an uncomfortable feeling from his head to his toes. It felt like his entire body was going to sneeze.
And so it did.
pfft!
The pressure exploded out of every pore in Abe’s body, spraying the air with a colorful mist of blood and ink, ridding his flesh of any type of skin art. His moniker no longer applied as his powerful tattoos scattered on the Kansas breeze. The shock smacked Abe hard and his arms flew open, dropping Kenny to the ground and, with his equilibrium shattered, Abe stumbled backwards out of control. Deadshot and Catman could only watch in amazement as Tattooed Man slipped off the side of the road and collapsed into the marshy ditch.
“Holy shit!” Catman exclaimed.
Superboy couldn’t take relief in his friend’s safety as he had passed out immediately upon expelling the last of his tactile-telekinetic power. His face mashed against the ground and blood leaked out of his nose and pooled onto the concrete, filing the divots in the porous surface as the strain proved too much for the battered teen.
“That was a neat trick, kid,” Deadshot admitted to the unconscious hero. He pointed a magnum down at the back of Superboy’s head, certain that a high velocity round would finish the job. “Everybody will know that you didn’t go down like a bitch, I promise.”
VRRRRRRRROOMMMMMM!
The unexpected roar of 360 horses forced Deadshot to quickly look up. All he saw was the color blue…replaced instantly by black. He didn’t know what hit him, but whatever it was had been damned powerful to take him out in a single strike. Deadshot would wake up nineteen minutes later roughly thirty yards away from where he had stood and barely able to move. His costume would be torn and grass stained from rolling in the open field. After four beers and five ice packs, Deadshot would finally be curious enough to ask Catman what the hell had happened. His friend would then tell him that the driver side door of a blue 1980 Ford F350 had slammed into him at around 45 mph.
Right now, the Ford locked its brakes and screeched to a halt by a startled Catman, leaving a pair of black rubber skid marks twelve feet long behind it. Jonathan Kent leapt out of the pick-up and leveled his double barrel shotgun right at Catman’s face. His eyes silently dared the villain to make a move.
“Get in the truck,” Jonathan ordered Kenny without taking his unwavering gaze off Catman.
Kenny quickly scrambled to his feet and grabbed Superboy by the shirt collar and dragged him to the truck. He crawled into the cab backwards and momentarily struggled to lift his friend’s dead weight with him. After he got Superboy completely in he reached over and pulled the door shut.
Jonathan was quick to follow and the Ford smoked its tires and peeled off, speeding away and disappearing into the horizon.
It would take several long seconds for Blake’s heart to stop thudding in his chest. When he finally calmed down he took a look around the now eerily silent road and found himself the last man standing. Something rank filled the air and Catman quizzically sniffed the air, and then twisted his torso to inspect the backside of his outfit.
“Fuck, me!” he cursed with absolute ferocity.
He was now down to three costumes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The End...
Previous Issue | Next Issue