The Missile 1
Copyright© 2025 by Zen Master
Chapter 1: Who, What, and Why?
Three days before my 16th birthday, I was rolling over in bed when my hand hit something. Hard. Hard enough to cut the skin and make a mess. Whatever it was, was gone before I opened my eyes, though, so I had no idea what it was.
Still, whatever it was made me hurt all over. My left hand, now bleeding from whatever-it-was. My old broken nose, from that fight in the 4th grade. My right ankle, from getting caught up in an opponent’s legs during a soccer game in the 6th grade. My left pinkie toe, which I broke in the shower room at the “Y” one year.
I couldn’t even tell you what most of the aches and pains were from, but I pretty much hurt all over. And, sorry, but my yelp of pain woke up my Mom and my sister. Mom ran in from her room to ask what the problem was. How would _I_ know?
All I knew was that I hurt all over, from old injuries I could remember and a bunch more that I couldn’t remember. And now, my left hand which was dribbling blood all over me and my undies. And the sheets, yeah.
That was Mom. I’m bleeding to death, here, and Mom wants me to stop ruining the sheets. What the heck, Mom? So, I got up and stumbled to the bathroom so Mom could wash my hand clean, put Mercurochrome solution on it, and then something like seven Band-aids on top to protect it.
I read the label once after Mom used it on, yeah, my knee, that’s why THAT hurts, I jammed it in football last year, then looked it up. It doesn’t have any Mercury in it any more, that stuff was banned as poisonous, it’s all Iodine now, but it’s still called “Mercurochrome” and it’s the go-to thing Mom uses for any injury. If she sees blood, it gets covered in Mercurochrome.
Oh, hi! I’m Sam McGowan, Samuel Alfred McGowan, but most of my buddies call me “missile” for my initials. At the time this happened I was just short of my 16th birthday and trying to not think about having to go back to school in another month. Next week I’d go with Mom to Gadsden and get my driver’s license if I didn’t do too bad on the test. I didn’t see how I could fail the driving test, we had 90-year-old grandmas who were totally blind driving around causing wrecks and I had to be a better driver than them, right?
We lived in Atalla, Alabama, which, I know, no one has ever heard of. It’s right next to Gadsden, which at least shows up on a map. Both cities are in Etowah County. Okay, how about Birmingham? Not the one in England, the one in Alabama? How about Chattanooga, Tennessee? Right. Well, THOSE two cities have an interstate going between them, I-59, and Etowah County is pretty much in the middle between them. I-59 actually goes through Attalla, although not by much. Don’t blink twice, ya know?
We lived on the north side of ‘upper Attalla’, which meant absolutely nothing but it was something to hassle the poor disadvantaged ‘lower Attalla’ natives about. Attalla’s city limits were shaped like an hourglass with one part northeast and the other part southwest. Right in the middle at Big Will’s Creek there was a stretch of the town along US-11 that was only about six hundred feet wide. There was nothing but forest on either side, so that never made any sense to me, but the county people in Gadsden probably had a reason.
Anyway, in another month I was going to go back to Etowah High School, yeah, I was a proud Blue Devil, down in ‘lower Attalla’ and “go get me sum more ‘o thet edumakashun”. I’d be a Junior, at least. Today, though, I wanted to just stay in bed. I hurt all over, like I had the flu or something. Then, on top of that, every little injury I’d ever had was acting up.
We all went back to bed and I slept until Mom got me up for breakfast. I went back to bed after that, too.
I woke up again with Mom screaming my name, telling me to ‘come in here’. Apparently she’d gone online trying to figure out what I had this time, and she’d keyed in on something about those Portals that had been appearing everywhere for the last year. According to the news, last night, high-school kids all over the world had been granted their own weapons.
When the kids woke up this morning, they had their weapons hanging in the air. When they touched them, they disappeared again, just like when all the original ‘Weapons’ got theirs last year.
And, just like the original ‘Weapons’ last year, a lot of the kids had been injured when they touched their razor-sharp swords, axes, and spears this morning. And, even if they didn’t get cut up, they all were in a lot of pain from any old injury they’d had before, too. Oh. Oh, shit.
I was a ‘Weapon’! Or I was a ‘Hunter’. Or a ‘Diver’. Some people used the three terms interchangeably. Others insisted that you were a ‘Weapon’ if you were selected by the ‘System’, but you were only a ‘Hunter’ if you actually went into a Portal and did your job, and a ‘Dive’ into a Portal was what Hunters did; a ‘Diver’ was someone who liked water. It had never made enough difference to me to care. I’d seen some of them on TV and the ‘net but I didn’t actually know them.
No way. I was a high-school kid. I wanted to get my license, get a car, get an easy part-time job somewhere that paid well, and take girls out on dates. I wanted to go to high school, finish it, and get my diploma.
Maybe, if I made the varsity baseball team this next year I could get a scholarship to go to college in two years. I mean, I’d decided to NOT play football this year so I wouldn’t get beat up, I’d stay healthy and maybe make varsity this time. Not that I was any great loss to the football team, I was strictly a backup tight end. I could run okay, I could block okay, and I could catch okay, but I wasn’t great at any of it. Backup tight end.
I had no business going inside those Portals and killing goblins and getting eaten by ghouls. No, way, man! I was no hero like the “Black Axe” up in Chicago. I’d seen some of his interviews and news conferences, and everyone had seen that demonstration with all the hanging logs. Oh, hell, no. Fuck that, man!
I didn’t even know what my weapon was supposed to be! I touched it while I was asleep and I never saw it.
It took a couple of days before I was up to going to get my license. Naturally, when I went to fill out their forms I had to admit I was a Weapon. I was supposed to also say what my weapon was, but I didn’t know. They wanted it filled in, but they finally agreed that putting “(unknown)” was the best they were going to get.
According to all the real Weapons, you didn’t get your weapon until you entered your first Portal. How was I supposed to practice and be ready to fight, when I didn’t even know what my weapon was going to be? Fu ... uh, screw that!
I got better fast, and by the time school started I was pretty much at full health. Actually, I was healthier than I’d ever been before. That, at least, was something good that had come out of that day. Other than that, though, I didn’t think much about being a Weapon for the next month
I did start paying more attention to all the news about Hunters. There was something weird going on up north. First, according to the PRA in Chicago, the Black Axe went to Washington for a conference of some sort. Then, he never went home again. There were witnesses that said they saw him enter the Pentagon, but the Pentagon said they had no idea where he was. They didn’t have him.
Then, the news out of Washington was that the Black Axe was an evil man, and probably a devil-worshiper if not a real demon himself. He had escaped and all law enforcement officials everywhere were directed to capture him wherever and whenever he was found. Uh, if they didn’t know why he never went home and didn’t have him, why were they saying he had escaped?
And, escaped from where? If they never had him imprisoned, why were they saying he had escaped? If they wanted him captured, what was he charged with? Treason, okay, but exactly what did he do while he absolutely WASN’T imprisoned in the Pentagon before he escaped?
The press had a field day. Something was seriously wrong inside the Pentagon, if they were holding civilians who didn’t even WORK for the Pentagon, and charging them with treason for, apparently, the crime of escaping after being held for no reason.
Apparently, there was some sort of power struggle between the PRA and the military over who controlled the Hunters and the Gates. Apparently, the Pentagon had imprisoned the Black Axe for refusing to join the military. Apparently, that counted, as far as the Pentagon was concerned, as treason against the United States, and they were going to keep him in prison until he agreed to join the military.
Come on! How much would you trust someone who put you in prison until you agreed to work with them? I had no idea how the Black Axe escaped, but he went on the news a couple of times saying that, yes he had escaped from the Pentagon, and no he had no idea why they put him in that cell. They had never given him a lawyer, a phone call, or even just told him what he was being charged with.
He also said that he would absolutely refuse to work with the Pentagon in the future. If they ever wanted something from him again, they could politely ask his bosses in the PRA. Who would almost certainly politely tell those generals to fuck off. For some of those conferences, he had some of his System titles turned on so other Hunters could read them. I didn’t know what all of them meant, but he said that “Earth’s First Gate Walker” let him enter whatever gate he wanted, whenever he wanted. “Earth’s First Hero” made sense, too. The real one was “Earth’s Strongest Gate Walker”. If the system gave him that title, why would ANYONE challenge him to a duel after imprisoning him on false -or even no- charges? Whoever that Navy Seal was that he’d dueled, he had to know he’d fucked up.
When all the dust had settled, the President had asked Congress to send him a bill specifically stripping the Department of Defense of any authority over, and any responsibility for, any Gate anywhere. If there were Gates in the Pentagon or in a secret missile base, well, they belonged to the PRA now.
And, the PRA would be DAMNED before they allowed an active-duty serviceman working for those generals to enter a Portal without registering a team with all required personal information, reserving it, and paying the correct fees -in System Silver!- before entering.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough fuss, once things had settled down it turned out that they were also holding a member of his old Gate-Diving team. Still holding, I mean. They’d been holding her since they first put him in his cell.
They said that she was a serving officer and they could do that to her, but someone in the PRA produced Pentagon orders detaching her to the PRA to serve as one of the Black Axe’s teammates as a liaison and spy, so no she did NOT belong to them until they sent the PRA orders transferring her back. And, as of that press conference, the PRA had not yet received such transfer orders. And the woman had been missing for two months so far.
By the time Congress and the President were done with them, the Department of Defence was no longer allowed to deal with Weapons, either. They had been forced to discharge -with full retirement benefits, mind you- every Weapon they had. In uniform, civil service working for them, enlisted, officer, it didn’t matter.
The DoD had proven that they couldn’t play nicely with Weapons, so they weren’t allowed to have Weapons any more. They weren’t allowed to have anything to do with them any more. If those Weapons still wanted to serve our nation, they could work for the PRA, which had not tried a power-grab, and go back to quelling Portals, earning Experience, and gaining levels.
The PRA was pissed about what had happened to their pet hero, the Black Axe, and they kept an eye on those discharged soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. Any DoD employee caught talking to an ex-DoD Weapon was tried, found guilty of direct disobedience of a Federal law and a Presidential Order, and promptly put in prison for a period “to end when they can no longer disobey their own orders” which sounded to me like ‘until you are too old and decrepit to cause any more trouble’. If it could be proven, everyone up their chain of command who had given or passed on those orders joined them.