When Gods Fall

Hercules fell into consciousness. Though only seconds passed, it seemed like an eternity. Awakening was a gradual, slowly growing awareness. It was difficult, given the situation. He was in free fall, could feel wind roaring by, see blue sky and puffy white clouds, and felt weightless and tingly all over. This lent a dreamy feeling to reality so for a moment he was confused if he was truly awake or still dreaming. Because he’d been having the strangest dream about a beautiful woman he’d rather die for than lose.

He blinked. Took stock of things. Then he spun. Turning over the view changed horribly. Concrete and glass walls of a building whipped past. He caught the fleeting glimpse of a figure reflected in the windows, a falling man, himself.

Hercules came instantly to his senses. He was falling out of a building, but could only remember why as if it were a fading dream. He realized it was all due to Seductress’s powers. They clouded his senses and took over his mind. He’d been fighting his own teammates and then somehow fallen, or been thrown, from the skyscraper. Now, falling out of her immediate range he was freed from her control. He looked down.

Cold, hard concrete raced to meet him.

It was no dream. It was a nightmare. He was taking a death plunge into the street beside the skyscraper.

*****

Raven was high above flying in a perfect circular pattern. She was circling the skyscraper, trying to keep an eye on all possible exits, and alerting Guardians headquarters.

Raven was very angry. They had bumbled into a trap like amateurs and it’d turned into a complete route down there. Well, she had been routed. Her teammates had been captured. Failure did not suit her at all. Given her personality, her drive, failure was not an option.

“Raven,” Sumo’s gravely, slightly accented voice scraped her ears. Sumo was a teammate back at headquarters. Though an alien to earth, he’d been on the team far longer than Raven and was one of the most respected members of the team.

“Here,” she acknowledged. “We have a situation.”

She could here Sumo chew and swallow. He had been eating when she put in the priority alert. “all right. Find Pirate? Brothers?”

“No. I wish. We walked into a trap. Wildchild and Seductress were waiting for us at the headquarters.”

Sumo, whose real name was Ihten Uled, grunted. “Wildchild ain’t all that. Hercules can kick his ass into next week. What happened?”

“Seductress happened. She put the hoodoo on Hercules and Nucleus. I barely escaped.”

Sumo clucked his tongue. “Herc and Nuke? Lucky you ain’t toast.”

Raven nodded even though he could not see her. “Acknowledged. I am hovering over the building now, waiting for them to exit. However, I may need backup. Hercules is bad enough. But Nucleus being under her control worries me gravely.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Thanks.” She terminated the link.

The com link reopened. Sumo added, “Raven, try not to leave the area. If you do, let me know where the hell to find ya. I don’t want to be stumbling round downtown like a moron.”

“Will do.” Something caught her eye far below. She saw movement from one side of the building. But not at street level. Midway down the building. And object had come out of the skyscraper. It was falling. She stopped and stared. It was a body. She zoomed in her optics. The shape blossomed into perfect view through the lenses of her helmet.

It was Hercules.

“Oh my God!”

“What?” rasped Sumo.

“Hercules! He’s been thrown from the building! Raven out!” Her jets roared to life. She plummeted towards the tumbling man. Her black armored figure arced into the canyon between the buildings. Though she maxed out her suit’s acceleration she knew instinctually she could not reach Hercules in time.

Hercules hit the street like a meteor striking the earth. His trajectory has carried him out beyond the sidewalk, and thus safely beyond pedestrians, midway into the street. Luckily he hit in a gap between automobiles, caused by a slow truck coming slow off the light at the corner.

Hercules was thankful for the small miracle of no casualties other than himself. Not that it would matter, but he instinctively rolled and hit back first.

Hercules dug a significant hole. The street buckled. Rock chips sprayed and asphalt rippled up to half a block away as the substratum of concrete split and cracked in a wide radius around the impact crater. The sound of the impact slapped the surrounding buildings.

Car alarms went off and people began screaming. A few people actually had seen him falling and thus saw him hit. Most were frozen, stunned by the horror of the event. Gaps and screams erupted, and one lady began crying hysterically thinking she’d seen a suicide. One businessman, having witnessed Hercules plunge to the street and realizing who he was, simply dropped his briefcase and sat down slackly on the curb. He was overwhelmed, believing he had just watched the death of a superhero.

But others, startled by the sudden impact but unaware of its cause, became frightened. Unsure exactly what had happened and thinking it might be an attack or explosion of some kind, many people fled and a mini stampede flowed down the sidewalks in both directions away from the crater. Some were shoving others aside, an elderly couple went down, a lady cut her knees and hands when she tripped, tensions rose, and a few shoving altercations broke out.

*****

A young couple were very startled as the elevator in the lobby opened. Seductress, Nucleus, and Wildchild pushed past their gawking silence. Wildchild snarled at the young man and his wife grabbed his arms tightly as they shrank back.

Seductress had cursed Wildchild out all the way down. He wasn’t in the happiest of moods.

“You damned oaf!” she’d screamed. “I had Hercules and Nucleus under my control. All you had to do was take out Raven. That’s it! But even that was too hard for you. You let her escape and then instead of bringing Justice the ultimate in prizes you go and kill Hercules! Why’d you shove him out that window, you baboon?”

Wildchild had thought about making up a tale of defending himself. Or simply telling her the truth, that he was jealous and wanted the stronger hero she was mooning over out of the way. But instead he sulked in silence and let her rant. Seductress screamed at him, insulted him, and generally cursed him for ten floors. His hair stood up along his back and he had to bite his lip to keep from yelling back. It was totally against every fiber in his being to take such abuse. But he took it. She’d eventually figure out who was on her side and who had always stood by her. Besides, you could never trust a hero and it was foolish to bring them all back alive as captives. Sooner or later they might break free and then there’d be the devil to pay. Better that Hercules was dead and gone. Better for all of them. They’d be safer in the end.

Seductress raced through the lobby of the skyscraper with Nucleus and Wildchild in tow. Though they had originally planned to use a back freight area to escape unnoticed -- the way they had entered the building -- Seductress has decided on the way down to leave through the front so she could see the fate of Hercules. It didn’t seem to matter now, though. Because of the horror occurring in the street people were running and shouting and pointing and they were largely ignored.

Seductress left the building just as Raven was landing beside the crater in the street. With all her attention on the prone figure of Hercules in the pit, Raven did not see her through the throngs of people. Seductress swiftly eased through the growing ring of people to the edge of the crater. Something underground had broken with the impact and now steam was rising out of the pit and water was filling its bottom.

“Hercules!” Raven’s metallic voice boomed out, amplified and echoing off the surrounding buildings. The ebony armored hero began clambering down the bowl of broken concrete towards the man the entire world knew as a hero and now feared was dead. Pebbles clattered away from her heels and concrete dust puffed up as she stepped.

Hercules stirred. Then he sat up. Raven reached him as he began to stand.

“Oh my God!” someone gasped from the surrounding citizens.

“He’s alive!” a man shouted.

“Hercules?” Raven asked, much more softly. She reached out to help him up.

Hercules accepted her gauntlet. He would have pulled her off balance if not for her suit’s auto-balancing musculature.

“I think I ruined a nice leather jacket,” he grunted. Hercules pulled the tattered garment off and flung it on the ground. The jacket’s back was shredded and one side had split in half from the impact. His T-shirt beneath was slightly less damaged, with several large rents in the back, but he left it on. He rose to his full height and looked up at the ring of faces above him. He waved with his left hand and gave a wry smile. “Morning, folks. I must have tripped while cleaning that window.”

Nervous laughter broke out.

Raven shook her head. She was amazed as usual at his unfathomable strength and endurance. It was unbelievable anyone could have survived a fall from that height. But Hercules had done so and emerged laughing it off. That, though, was his usual attitude. Hercules made a point of befriending and mingling with common people every chance he got. He even liked to physically walk a beat from time to time through neighborhoods, just so the people of New York would see him and get to know him. He felt it was important. He was a superpowered being. he worked with other superpowered beings, some of whom were aliens, extradimensional, or otherwise inhuman. If heroes with their strange appearances and sometimes unimaginable or frightening superpowers stayed aloof and remained cloistered in some remote headquarters, then they would breed misunderstanding, fear, and resentment. Or they’d be like Gods coming down from Olympus when they arrived on the scene. Instead, Hercules felt it important to make people comfortable and to be accepted as a member of the community, or neighborhood, or perhaps even family. This was why Hercules was one of the most beloved and respected of all the superheroes on Earth.

Hercules glanced down at Raven. “Let’s get out of here. It’s a real pit.” He reached and grabbed the lip of the pit. Iron-like fingers dug into the pavement as if it were butter. He hauled himself out. He reached back down, grasped Raven’s black arm and hoisted her bodily out of the crater.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not to bring up a bad subject,” Hercules said, looking skyward, “but while I’ve been tearing up the street, Nucleus is missing now. What happened to our merry crooks? I owe them a favor.”

The crowd within hearing distance turned as a whole and started scanning the building, as if to find the missing hero.

Seductress, still in her regular street clothes as Christine Adams, blended easily into the crowd. She’d been standing stunned at the lip of the crater watching Hercules calmly climb out. She was amazed at this man’s strength. The fact that he had survived a ten story fall onto a street without an apparent scratch was jaw-dropping. She was suddenly aware of every muscle outlined in his arms and neck and the glimpses of his immense tanned torso beneath his torn T-shirt. She couldn’t believe how strong he was. She knew now more than ever that she had to have Hercules. But when the crowd suddenly turned and started scanning the building it broke her reverie. She backed away hastily, realizing now they needed to escape before they were noticed. They could regroup and plan a new attack elsewhere.

A woman in the crowd suddenly called out, “Look over there! It’s Nucleus!”

Seductress spun to find Wildchild and Nucleus, conspicuous in his gleaming golden armor, bulling their way through the crowd right up to the crater behind her. Hercules and Raven turned to look as well.

“The sonofabitch lived?” Lucas Wilde screamed angrily, spittle flying from his fangs. “The bastard’s alive? You yelled at me all the way down because of him and he lived? Screw this!”

His voice shattered the murmuring calm that had descended. Screams erupted as Wildchild leaped over several bystanders and slammed into the chest of Hercules. The two giants tumbled over backwards into the pit.

Raven, knowing Seductress must be near, scanned the crowd and quickly identified Seductress. She raised both armored hands, palm-blasters out. There would be no more mercy. But the swaying mass of citizens blocked her way.

“Everyone down!” Raven ordered, her voice amplified as if by a bullhorn so that the entire street reverberated with the command.

Seductress yelled at Nucleus, “Nucleus, my love, shoot her! Shoot her now before she hurts me again!”

Still under her spell and unable to control himself, Nucleus raised both arms. His hair crackled into a sparkling nimbus around his head. Searing to the eyes, neon-red and yellow radiation-based energies erupted from his arms. Twin beams lanced towards Raven, cutting through the dropping and fleeing bystanders.

“Aaggh!” Raven yelled as the nuclear energies struck her full on, blasting her off her feet. She skidded backwards and her hip caught the edge of a cab, flipping her over.

Seductress laughed. She ran over to Nucleus, but stopped before touching him, unsure if his seething energies were dangerous or perhaps lethal to the touch. He seemed to be glowing slightly, his red flesh flushed with radioactive discharge.

“You did it, my love. You stooped her. Now finish the job!” Seductress pointed at Raven, just now rising beside the fender of the car.

“Kill her!”

-- To Be Continued --