Chapter 15

Chances were, if I could help it ... that not a single bullet was going hurt me or any of my mortal friends! As for most of the three dozen or so assembled super-powered heroines, there wasn’t one of them really that was the least bit frightened by gaggles of gunsels spewing lead! Some, especially the mightiest ones on the front line, were innately bullet-proof and others had protective armor in their costumes or else were just too fast to be hit either in flight or on the run.

A cameraman from the Gazette caught the scene perfectly in a photo that graced half of that newspaper’s ‘Special Edition’ front page the next day. Ms. Marvelous walking serenely at my right side with the stern-faced Mighty Maid mirrored to my left, as together they just chuckled at the bullets that harmless bounced off of them. Behind us, shown in that classic black & white photo, was the vast costumed parade of heroines that followed us onwards to glory! Just as the screaming 72 point headline stated, the ‘War for the Westside’ had begun.

The one hundred or so other pictures that were published later, in the Gazette’s Sunday edition twenty page glossy insert, aptly depicted every bit of the action from that long afternoon and evening, but no other single image quite caught the whole sense of that entire experience that this first photo had. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that picture and their news coverage soon wins Ron Cohen, the famous editor of the Gazette, a long overdue Pulitzer Prize! The other papers, the Times particularly, hadn’t even bothered to send over their junior cub reporters or flash-men to cover the conflict, at least not until a big chunk of the city had already gone up in flames!

As our mighty throng began to approach the Arcade and began to meet gangster opposition, Skulda appeared on her magical winged horse and grabbed up Pilsner with his pair of extinguishers, letting him ride behind her as she cried out her Norse songs of battle, her magic spear flashing through the air blasting away muggs and thugs by the handful with lethal accuracy. Like my troublesome Murder Mansion, our Valkyrie didn’t much believe in leaving behind any wounded, and men facing her either ran or were slain where they stood. I doubted if any of the dead gangsters was worthy of selection to join the hallowed ranks of brave heroes in Valhalla, though.

“You’re still a cow!” Mighty Maid muttered, half in jest, to Ms. Marvelous as we neared W .32^nd, just two blocks away from our goal. The numbers of gangsters opposing us had significantly increased to the point where my gift was taxed in avoiding the massive hail of bullet lead flying through the air. I was already tired, nearly wrung out due to lack of sleep this week, but the adrenaline from people trying to kill me and my friends was helping to keep me awake and focused.

“And you’re still a moronic Girl Scout!” Marvelous retorted, now dashing hither and yon to divest all of the more visible gunmen of their weapons and then smite them down, each with a single mighty blow of her fist. Clearly, she was getting really annoyed and already losing her temper a bit. Some of those ‘love taps’ were resulting in massively violent body and skull-breaking collisions!

Looking around me at the host of flying and fighting super-heroines, dozens and dozens of them, names, costumes, and talents both familiar and unknown, one figure was rather conspicuously absent; Doc Wilma had come without her partner, Amanda Reeds, the famous Professor ‘R’. There was probably a story there, but I didn’t care to hear the details, especially right now. The angry professor had never been my friend anyway, and quite likely, just like Fire Drake, would be plenty happy to watch the whole Westside burn down to the ground. Even better if they could use me as the starter!

It was us versus an army of murderous gangsters, both minions of Westside Jonny and Drake’s new Italian mob family friends. The bastard had done it, by wit or by flaming force, and our old acquaintance had gathered the support of those independent Italian mafia families that not-so secretly wanted to tear up the Concordance, so that they could rule the island themselves, violently replacing the relatively benign and enlightened leadership of The Five.

The consequence of the demolition of organized crime would be, under their new ultra-violent rulership, disorganized crime. Every street corner and block turning into a bloody battle for supremacy with the former civilian ‘customers’ increasingly would become nothing but victims to be robbed or killed with impunity.

The Italian mob families had brought their soldiers in force, hundreds of them, now trying to seize hold over all of South Hell and fight their way inside the Arcade to take down Connor. And well ... me. Also, just as I had predicted earlier, many of the local mob organizations had remained neutral, but a few outfits had split their loyalty, some to us and some sticking with Southside Jonny. Most of the loyalists, I soon learned, had helped Connor fortify the Arcade and were making a defensive stand there. They were apparently holding out just fine for now, but the odds were still horribly against them. The cavalry, us ... were going to arrive in just about the nick of time.

As Blackwing joked sometime during the peak of battle as we fought our way up those long two blocks to reach the besieged Arcade, it was a very target rich environment. As the roar of blazing Thompson submachine guns sprayed lead bullets all around us, even the heroines least inclined to violence were starting to lose their patience and no one was bothering anymore to take prisoners.

Handy-Andi had certainly lost her cool and like a large deranged eight-limbed orangutan, she was leaping about all over the place bashing skulls and ripping arms and legs entirely off. Lady Firefly too was enjoying the thrill of mortal combat, blasting, burning and torching entire groups of gunmen with gleeful laughter. The mother and daughter team of Atomic Girl and Starlite-Starbrite were also turning vast swathes of the street and surrounding buildings to nuclear flaming ruin with their massive energy blasts and buildings were being incinerated all around us, entirely without the assistance of the as-yet unseen master villain Fire Drake.

Soon, much to our amusement, the Mighty Maid at last found a foe worthy of her extraterrestrial talents. Some monstrous creature, a full ten yards tall at the very minimum, seeming composed entirely of massive living red rock, staggered towards us with a bellow of challenge, and the ever-heroic Maid of Steel flew forth to battle it. Admittedly, it was an impressive combat, but right from the start it wasn’t at all safe for those of us that were mere mortals to hang too closely anywhere near them!

Mighty Maid started with a flying wallop that ought to have launched any other weaker object right into space, but it didn’t even dent or phase the creature. Flying steel lamp posts and large hunks of thrown cement didn’t even annoy it either, and pretty soon the bizarre creature was meting out more than equal damage with her, blow for blow.

Chances were that this creature was another poor victim of Doctor Fate’s corrupted golden man virus, damaged and tainted just like Drake had been, but perhaps to a slightly lessor extent. This creature possessed little, if any, remaining human or alien intellect and it just a creature of elemental passions, like the monstrous urge to crush, crumble and chomp everyone and everything around it! Probably, this had been one of the transformed victims that Drake had rescued from the research institute on North Island when he escaped. Perhaps, somewhere nearby, were more of these sad victims, each with dangerous and unknown powers, waiting to yet confront us.

Pretty quickly, it seemed obvious that the mightiest heroine of Megatropolis was both outsized and perhaps outmatched. One vicious haymaker punch from the creature struck her hard and clobbered her like a slowly hanging curveball way out of the ballpark! Mighty Maid flew ass over elbows south, high over the buildings and far out of sight. The angry red monster then bounded high in the sky, leaping after her in pursuit, unwilling to let its enemy escape so easily.

“Fuuuuck... ,”Ms Marvelous muttered slowly, “I need to go rescue that stupid twat now. Are you going to be alright, left alone here? I know Blackwing said that you’re lucky and can fend for yourself, but it’s starting to get ugly around here!”

“Go, help her out ... and take the Lumpette with you! I think you’re going to need all of the brawn helping you that you can get. I should be fine and Skulda’s babysitting Pilsner nicely. Wings and Commander Grimm are also right here, both close at hand and looking after me too, I think, so I shouldn’t get into any trouble I can’t handle, at least until we can find Fire Drake. Then, I hope, he’ll have an extremely unlucky and unfortunate evening! Also, I can see The Revenant hovering just behind you also, so we’re all good here ... so go kick some rock monster ass!”

She flew off, holding on to the cumbersome mass of the Lumpette, who was helpfully changing forms into something more aerodynamic, resembling a child’s kite for the flight. She glanced back at me twice with visible reluctance at leaving me behind, now somewhat less protected without her by my side. She needn’t have worried ... now flying in like a pair of green streaks of lightning, the last two absent members of our happy company had at last finally arrived!

“Sorry we’re so fucking late, but we were looking over some magical stage equipment up for auction soon at a warehouse damn near in Yonkers when Wilma sent the alarm out!” The Green Canary gasped, clearly nearly out of breath, “Sure we both fly, with these flight disc pads, but they’re not much faster really than driving and it still nearly took us an hour to get here!” The Miracle Maid nodded her head in brief agreement and then became quite preoccupied by the effort of tracking and knocking down a long series of incoming bazooka rounds and other flying heavy missiles with her force field bolts fired from her wrists. I was pretty sure that processing this battleground using Link’s sensors was going to keep her quite busy and completely distracted from now on.

The bad guys had wised up and were bringing in all of the heavy weapons that they had stashed away for a rainy day from their arsenals. A few bazookas and a couple of portable anti-tank weapons had joined the host of machine guns steadily plinking away at us. All they were lacking were tanks! Even the swifter, but less bullet-proof heroines, now had to retreat for cover and mostly stay put there. Our steady advance soon became a house-to-house crawl, as we had to clear out each nest of attackers’ one group at a time.

Gangsters were dying by the dozens now but there always seemed to be more, lurking in wait for us a few buildings further onwards.

Soon, as my gift became increasingly exhausted and slowed by the strain of exertion, I could barely restrain my fury watching, nearly helplessly, as lesser heroines began falling to minor wounds and injuries. Luckily, thanks to the concentrated application of my weakened gift, none were mortal or serious. The mightier heroines were quickly losing what fractional reserves of patience they had left.

Atomic Girl began demonstrating to a new dismayed audience exactly what she had done during the war to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with her flaming nuclear fury she began melting down scores of buildings, scorching her enemies inside their lairs with the very heat of the sun itself, turning entire city blocks around the Arcade into puddles of molten brick and stone.

Even her friends and long-time associates were horrified. Thank goodness that there were still, as of yet, no television cameras present, but a pair of fearless Gazette photographers did take a couple of disturbing photographs we all cringed over later.

In her crazed fury, she probably would have torched down the Arcade as well, if Ice Lady hadn’t surrounded her in a mass of frozen ice. She burned through it in moments, but Wilma had other assistance by then in restraining their overwrought friend. The Revenant used her mental powers to block off Atomic Girl’s abilities just barely long enough for Commander Grimm to smack the back of her unsuspecting head with her invulnerable flying shield and knock her down senseless for a few minutes, until she had fully regained her self-control once more.

“That’s why I had to quit,” she quietly explained to me a few minutes later, while we both hiding for shelter behind a mostly destroyed car further back from the carnage, “the military, the war and especially the occupations and endless police actions afterwards in Korea, Manchuria, and China. I had to quit everything! After what I did in Japan to those cities in a vain useless attempt to frighten them into surrendering, I couldn’t stand to use my powers anymore ... and sometime I can’t control myself anymore on the rare times that I do use them. I just can’t do this anymore! The killing, the destruction, the utter waste of it all. Sorry ... but I’ve got to go! For your sake, as well as mine!”

Without another word, Atomic Girl flew off and a moment later her daughter left us as well to join her, obviously with reluctance. Starlite-Starbrite had inherited her mother’s killing fury, and much of her powers as well ... but perhaps she lacked her mom’s conscience to use them carefully, and with restraint.

Now the rest of the road to the Arcade was clear for us and we faced virtually no opposition for that last half block. Everything around us was burning rubble, but still we saw no sign of Fire Drake!