Leaving the League, Part 6

Jack Valence had made the leap from musical tastemaker to celebrity superhero after admitting to having powers and forming the Orthodoxy. Of course I was under the impression that the Orthodoxy, for all its rebellious attitude, still functioned under the aegis of the SLA. I voiced these concerns to Boros, who sighed and shook his…

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Jack’s Devil #3: &

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“Look, Jack. You’re a good guy and I like you, genuinely, and I know this that is probably just a big, stupid mix-up. But rules are rules. I can’t let them slide for you. That’s the shitty side of being the boss…” I nod and smile, thank Melanie for at least considering giving me my…

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lust.exe

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I first saw the strangers behind reinforced glass and from a safe distance, but even then I felt the danger of them, the awful, hazy heat of them. Our Chicago tour guide pointed them out with a bored flick of her wrist and mentioned them as an afterthought: degenerate executables, rogue infectious software, nothing to…

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Jack’s Devil #2: ?

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I wake up to a knock at my door. It takes me a second to clarify the world into things that make sense again. The bits and pieces of my dream slip through my fingers as I try to recall them. There was a trumpet that played a beautiful sound… Then there’s another knock at…

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Jack’s Devil #1: !

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We’ve all seen cartoons where some well-meaning schlub is going about his daily business of being a generic fuck-up and up on the shoulder, of the shirt he never changes, pops an angel. On the other shoulder comes the devil. The two argue for a while, cartoon hijinks ensue. They disappear. Not all of us…

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Pratt, the Adventurer

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You know my name, and you’ve heard my legend many many times. I won’t apologize for my fame or the long shadow I’ve cast over lesser adventurers. Why should I? I am Pratt. You’ve heard of my recent rescue of the Lady of Lilacs from the clutches of a sorcerer? Well, the storytellers have completely ruined…

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Impasse

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Salover gave his traveling companion another loaded look. The fifth of the hour. Kerin didn’t look up from his wood carving. The whistle was coming along. “What?” “You said the pass would be a shortcut. The bounty’s probably halfway across the kingdom by now.” Kerin’s knife notched another groove. “It is a shortcut though, isn’t…

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Leaving the League, Part 5

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I apologized to Ray, sitting in the back seat of my car, for all the shit he had to share it with. I hadn’t been expecting passengers. “It’s fine, sir,” Ray replied. “Sir?” I said. When had I become a sir? “A well-mannered young man if I ever saw one,” Akma said. “I’m betting you…

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Dancing on Mars

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Zeb brought the oxygen. It was imported from Earth and Syl said that she could taste the toxicity of it. She was full of shit, of course, but there was something about imported O2 that left you with a mild buzz. I brought the harder stuff: rock candy, fluppers, concatenates, and a hand full of zips…

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1000 Words: The Ravisher

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I have led nineteen campaigns of wars. I had crushed whole civilizations before my first gray hair. I have seen sunrise through the haze of smoke, the light indistinguishable from that of the fires burning across cities. I have heard the sound of prayers sent up as the people begged for their deliverance. I gave…

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Practicum

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Alessandro rubbed his forehead. It was a nervous gesture, something that he was half-conscious of and too irritated to rein in. “I’m convinced professor Norquist didn’t even read the edits I’ve made to my thesis proposal. I get the sense he doesn’t care at all. It’s like he’s actively ignoring the fact that I exist….

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DRM-Free[2]

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Darius entered the apartment and rested his shoulder-bag on the table by the door. He tapped the side of his headset and a few notifications popped into his field of vision, one at a time he dismissed them: there was a message from his mother and a charge to his account for last night’s takeout….

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Leaving the League, Part 4

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I followed the GPS coordinates out of the city and drove until I started to get concerned I was chasing a lark. I didn’t think Akma would send me on a merry chase just for kicks, but first I watched the city fall away and then the roads turned from asphalt to gravel. The elevation…

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Leaving the League, Part 3

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My first day off in over a month and I ended up on the couch in sweats and a tank-top I “borrowed” from the SLA gym. I scrolled through twenty pages of news stories on my laptop, watched a sitcom without paying much attention to it, and made myself pasta which I then proceeded to…

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Leaving the League, Part 2

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Rich Huerta lived in a quiet suburb a stone’s throw outside of the city that ran along a creek, had a middle school, a high school, one or two supermarkets, a few restaurants and not much else. That quiet suburb had become a war zone by the time I arrived. The police had cordoned off…

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Leaving the League, Part 1

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Six Months Later…  “I understand your concerns, Mr. Jones, but is there really a reason for you to be this upset with the Fields family?” I said gently, careful to underscore that I was taking issue with the extent of his complaint without trivializing it. The older man paused, squinted at me and sighed. “You…

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Joining the League, Epilogue

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The six of us met up at a coffee shop downtown. Directly across from us sat a woman with pink and purple hair furiously dictating an email to her assistant. The mousey brunette tried and mostly succeeded in keeping up with the vitrolic screed to the printer of the pink/purple haired woman’s zine, berating the…

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Joining the League, Part 9

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It took a few hours for Arthur and his brothers to trace their captured fourth via his unique empathic signature. In that time I had my own trouble to sort out after the incident in the SLA fitness center so I was somewhat glad for the reprieve. It gave me time to find Devon and…

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Joining the League, Part 8

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Zash and Akma looked at each other, while Blank, our temporary squadmate, looked like he was having an internal crisis. Our recent captive just blinked at us. “If you have information then let’s hear it,” Zash said. “I have conditions,” the sword-twin replied. “Oh, so this is a negotiation now? This day is getting better…

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Joining the League, Part 7

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Europa and Exeter arrived at the SLA medical center together. She was wearing a pair of chinos, a dark sweater and a smart trenchcoat. Exeter was wearing a light colored suit that looked great even though he seemed like he hadn’t slept in some time. We all got up to greet them: Zashir, Akma and…

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The Witch Hunter

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Even bound in iron chains the witch radiated a casual menace. Its wrists were slack at its sides, draped in the brilliant sunlit metal and its neck bore a tight iron circle as well. It looked like a lion bound. A bare chest rose and fell with measured breaths. The town’s people kept their distance,…

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Joining the League, Part 6

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TL;DR version: Sorry there’s no sex this chapter, maybe expect some next time. 😛 The greenhouse was hot and sticky, the air was close and it didn’t help that it was my first time wearing my new uniform. Because of the risk level and it being my first mission, I was assigned a prototype of…

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Joining the League, Part 5

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The simulation ended unceremoniously after we saved the prince. He was pretty much a little shit who complained all throughout our egress from the burning capital. At one point I pushed him to exhaustion and subsequently a very deep, very relaxing sleep. When we were back in the bowling alley basement we all kind of…

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Joining the League, Part 4

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“My name is Europa Evers and for those of you who don’t know me—” the CEO of the Superhero League of America gave me a significant look. “—I’ve been the steward of this organization since its inception…” I was sitting at a table along with the rest of The Checkers smelling like the hand soap…

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Joining the League, Part 3

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My first thought when I entered the conference room where I was to formally meet my new teammates was, ‘I jerked off in here.’ By some act of divine providence and out of the dozens and dozens of conference rooms in the SLA main branch, somehow this was the one they’d reserved. The group’s leader,…

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Joining the League, Part 2

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It had been nearly six weeks since I joined the SLA and so far my ‘training’ had consisted of watching a lot of instructional videos, trying (and mostly failing) to keep up with the intense gym regimen that Justin had assigned me, very occasionally practicing controlling my power, and analyzing recordings of the city’s heroes…

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Yesterday’s Kings

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I was king when the lilies were in full bloom. And as they shed their petals so too did the kingdom shed its old skin and in what amounted to a handful of instants I became a relic. I could tell you that I was a righteous king and that my deposition was a great…

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Joining the League

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I didn’t mean to become a superhero. I’d have avoided it if I could, but after I lost my job I didn’t see a lot of options. Maybe I ought to back up a few steps, no doubt you’re wondering: who the hell is this guy and what’s his problem? Everyone wants to be a…

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The Slave Prince

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‘The spacious and greatly appointed hall of a once great prince has become something less than palatial in recent days.’ This was the rumor that brought the prince Azad to his younger brother’s court. At the prince’s right hand was his champion of one dozen campaigns, the hirsute Basit. At his left was the vizier,…

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The Entirety of the Song, Pt. 1

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This is a brief history of the man who came to be known as the Singer of Sin and his Song. There have been accounts before, of what transpired and who was to blame. None of those accounts, to my knowledge, were written from a position of any real intimacy. There have been suppositions and…

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The Depths

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The first thing Lewin noticed was that people were willing to meet his gaze. In their eyes he still saw the fear and disdain of the intervening years, but at a second glance he saw only their hope. Moving between the two states was like being mad. The guards of the Aroctet lead him further…

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Gear

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My name is Cillian Hess and I haven’t been home since… I leave the thought open-ended and the on-board intelligence slides the information into my consciousness. Twenty-five hundred weeks. Maybe twelve hundred weeks ago that would have shocked me, but my tour is only half-over and I can feel the days spreading in front of…

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Hungry

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They sat on the old bridge, the one on the forest path, overlooking the water. They watched it carry the rust from decaying cars abandoned upstream. The water hadn’t been safe to drink for years. It wasn’t good for much besides watching. The sun was setting so Anthony was mostly alright. It helped that the…

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Shell

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We bought a house out on the shore of a lake with no name. We called it ‘Our Lake,’ my wife and I.We lived in the city with our adopted son, Troy, and threw ourselves completely into family. We had game night and picnics. We were a part of the neighborhood watch. Then every summer…

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Atlas

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I have held. Above me the heavens race on their interminable paths and below me the nothingness yawns, hungry and prepared to do thoughtless violence. I am the dream of living stone: a marbled chest, a sheer and rigged stomach, arms enough for worlds and worlds and worlds. On my back the strain writes an…

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Calling the Kindred

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James wrinkled his nose with blanket skepticism which Ryan was quick to shrug off. The two had been friends long enough to know when one or the other was bullshitting. “Dude, you don’t have to believe me, but my uncle swears the shit is true,” Ryan said. “What kind of asshole do I look like…

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Scions of Onan

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The shirt clung to my back and the hoe slipped under my sweat-handed grip again and again. If I felt irritation I could at least be sure that my face didn’t show it. There is something to be said about controlling one’s features; serenity can sometimes be as a mask that reflects both unto the…

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As Luck Would Have It

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To say I wasn’t doing too well is an understatement. I’d never been a big gambler, but sometimes fate conspires. My dad had died a few months back and the horse races were always a favorite of his. He was a regular, even had a lifetime box seat at his local derby. I guess the…

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Squire

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“Heaven forgive me my sins this day. Let the mother of all shine her light on this pennitent soul…” The squire listened to the soft pleas of the knight as he washed the gore from an axe. Only recently had the young squire been allowed to handle the knight’s weapon and he was amazed by…

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Mr. Unshakable vs. Nympho Noir

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The absolutely unsavory villain Nympho Noir has kidnapped the entire lacrosse team of Capital City! What kind of depraved experiments is he practicing on their innocent, unsuspecting bodies? Let’s find out! * Nympho Noir, a dashing dark-haired member of the Capital City rogue’s gallery, struts around the abandoned bathhouse where he is keeping the champion…

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Raphael’s Last Stand

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Angels don’t bleed. Not exactly. But something welled up out of Raphael as he hit the bottom. He staggered to his feet and conjured within his hand the idea of a weapon. He had only a moment before the dread thing was upon him. Asmodei, lord of lust, wore a leonine mane and in both…

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Mr. Unshakable Vs. Gearicho

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“It’s the end of the line for you, Gearicho!” said the elaborately coiffed Mr. Unshakable. His muscles gripped his cotton/spandex poly blend suit in a death-lock and the fabric against his groin bulged unseemly under the weight of his hastily tucked member. Unshakable’s prize winning smile radiated tangible warmth. “Fool! Do you think I would…

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