The World's Finest Team... JUST ANOTHER MUTHA-$%@&!-ING  TEAM-UP STORY
World's Finest #1 - July, Year Three	by Bertram Gibbs

BATMAN

SUPERMAN

APOLLO

MIDNIGHTER

    They saw satellite footage of the National Guard and Reserve units being struck down by laser and photon beams, still blindly moving forward, still blindly hoping they had the strength and the military might to win.  One camera focused on a small child; a six year old boy, his face covered in soot and dirt, tears making tracks down his cheeks holding the hand of his mother who lay dead-eyed on the ground, staring at the sky but not seeing.  The boy looked out at nothing, an odd smile on his face.  With the streams of tears washing away the grime, he looked like the negative of a mime.

    There were no situation comedies on.  No cop, crime, doctor, or coming of age dramas to watch.  No reality shows showing six men (one of whom secretly holds a position in a Fortune 500 company) vying for the attention of one woman on a desert island.  Nor were there commercials for products to make you thinner or your toilet cleaner, for to play them would not have only been in poor taste, it would have been surreal.  The war was televised and was Number One in the charts.

    Out of the entire country one state felt the tension more: New York.  The battle wasn’t taking place in the city, but across the harbor in New Jersey, which was too close for comfort.  Still, the one pervasive thought in the minds of New Yorkers was that if (and when) the war ended, what remained of New Jersey might be an improvement.

    The 13th Armored Division of Patterson New Jersey ran in a crouch towards the crumbling wall of what was once a Starbucks, their M-16s firing as they went.  Twelve men, all dressed in identical black padded battle suits, had taken position on the street, pinning the men of the 13th down from all directions.  They fired volley after volley of laser fire, one striking the captain in the face, and removing everything from the neck up.  Private 1st Class Harry Collins screamed partially out of shock of the suddenness of the shot, and mostly out of revulsion since he was standing directly behind the officer and became the most available canvas for a Pollack imitation.  Not a good combination.  Collins dropped to a fetal position on the ground before he could make it behind the wall.

    “Collins!” screamed Sgt. Halsey.  “Get your ass behind this wall!  Right now!”

    Collins began to babble as his dirty thumb moved closer to his mouth.

    “Collins!” screamed Halsey for a second time.  “SHIT!” He spun to the man behind him.  “Jeffreys!  Drag that asshole over here!”

    Tom Jeffreys, who had joined the National Guard to be trained in Broadcast Journalism (but was dropped unceremoniously into the supply sector due to his lousy grades), stared at Halsey like he had asked him to put on a chiffon muumuu and F-Me pumps. 

    “Didn’t you hear me, soldier?!?!” screamed Halsey over the sound of the laser blasts.

    “Uh, yeah, Sarge,” Jeffreys said, still staring.  “But why me?”

    Halsey felt his throbbing headache go into overdrive.  “Because I gave you an order, soldier!”

    “Uh, yeah, Sarge,” said Jeffreys.  “I got that. But why me?”

    Halsey growled in his chest.  This was a class-A cluster fuck!  He grabbed Jeffreys by the front of his BDU jersey and threw him forward towards the gibbering body of Collins.

    Jeffreys stood (still staring) at Halsey, then looked down at Collins whose thumb was firmly planted in his mouth.  He was humming ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’.  Jeffreys frowned.

    “Sarge,” he began.  “I joined the Guard to study broadcast journalism, and got stuck as a supply rat.  I did not join to play soldier.”

    “DRAG HIM OVER, YOU ASSHOLE!” screamed Halsey.

    “And that’s another thing,” continued Jeffreys, “You have no call to yell at me.  That’s being very disrespectful, and insulting to my intelligence.  Do you know I had a 3.89 score in my . . . “

    The sound of an explosion halted the rest of Jeffreys’ scholastic achievements.  All looked up (except for Collins, who had gone on to ‘Mary had A Little Lamb’) and saw a large chunk of masonry – about the size of an SUV – fall from the sky and land on Jeffreys with a huge thud.  Jeffeys’ black military issued boots stuck out from under the ragged concrete and Collins grinned and began to sing (around his thumb) ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead!’

    “SHIT!” screamed Halsey.  He turned to the five other soldiers behind him, only to find that they had moved several feet away and were looking in all directions except his.  “Rodriguez!  Go get Collins!”

    “Me, Sarge?” asked the small boned soldier, his deep olive complexion going a pasty gray.

    “There ain’t another Rodriguez here!” barked Halsey.  “Get him . . . “

    Something landed next to Halsey, who spun with his rifle and found the barrel was held in place by a large hand that seemed to have treads in its palm.

    “Get your men back, sergeant,” said the dark haired man.  He was dressed in black slacks, a white tee shirt and was standing on the jagged edges of broken concrete barefoot.  And he wasn’t armed.

    Halsey’s eyes widened and he pulled the weapon from the man’s hand.  “Look, mister,” growled the sergeant, “I don’t want to bring you up on current events, but there’s a war going on!”

    The man smiled darkly and turned to the black suited soldiers across the street who turned and fired laser blasts at the ground and walls where they stood.  Well, where Jack Hawksmoor stood; Halsey had dove behind what was once Starbucks’ front counter for cover.

    As soon as he turned from the sergeant, Hawksmoor’s face grew hard and tight.  He could hear the cries of the city as section after section was being demolished.  Around him massive chunks of buildings littered the street, fires burned, glass and displays broken beyond recognition.  The cries of pain.  The cries of injustice.  The cries for revenge.  There were also a small handful of people scattered about the streets, their clothes and their skins torn and charred, but Hawksmoor couldn’t hear their cries.  The city was much too loud.  His hand touched his ear.  “Angie?” he said.  “Back ‘em in.”

    Coming out of the sky in a power dive was the Engineer, her silver body pointed in a perfect dive.  She flexed her hands and smiled.  Both her hands began to melt and reform into round openings with a target sight and shots of plasma fired striking the street, sending concrete (and a mailbox) flying in all directions.

    Four black suited soldiers on the right side of the street turned and ran up the street, firing over their shoulders, trying to hit the swooping and firing Angie.  The lead man pointed to the pair of broken yellow arches and the open window to the remains of the restaurant.  The men behind him followed at double-time.  The lead ran around a fallen Ace Hardware sign and disappeared.  The remaining three comically collided with each other as the second soldier came to an immediate halt.  They looked around and only saw their comrades firing at a man dressed in slacks and tee shirt dodge every shot by impossibly leaping around and bouncing from the top of a damaged car to a telephone kiosk, off the side of a wall, only to land before them with a look of anger stretched across his face.

    Then the ground erupted and raised water pipes that flipped the men off their feet.

    The second man, now in charge, took a step and stopped as their original leader came crashing to the ground directly in front of him.  The man stared at the blood and the brains spotting his black uniform and felt his gorge rise.  As he leaned forward to release the cream chip beef on toast he had for lunch, he felt himself jerk back suddenly.  When he opened his eyes, he found the ground was now far below his feet.  He looked up at the face of a beautiful woman who was grinning down at him.  He looked down and mentally noted that they did look like ants.  Feeling an attack of vertigo coming on, he quickly looked up and spotted the pair of large wings coming from the woman’s back.  His eyes snapped back to the woman, who was still smiling at him.

    “Are you an angel?” he asked in a whisper.

    Shen’s smiled widened.  “Sure, sweetheart,” she said.  “I’ll be your angel.”  Her shoulders flexed and they rose rapidly in the air.

    The soldier’s mind finally questioned why they were flying, since only one of they had wings.  He looked around and realized the woman was holding him by the straps of his shoulder belt.  He failed to notice the grenades that were dangling in the wind by their silver rings.  Suddenly he saw nothing but white as they passed through a cloud.  He felt a cold mist coating him, seeping deeply into his bones, and he shivered slightly under his uniform.  Suddenly his eyes were filled with a flash of light.  He squinted his eyes shut and gradually opened them, allowing his eyes to adjust.  What he saw stopped his breathing.  There was the brightest bluest sky above him, a floor of snowy clouds below him, and a huge ball of warming yellow in front of him.  It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and tears formed in his eyes.  He looked up at Swift.

    “Am I going to Heaven?” he asked.

    Shen’s eyes lit up, sun reflecting in little pinpricks of light.  “I really can’t tell you, sport,” she said.  “You may.  You may not.  But I do know one thing.”

    “What’s that?”

    “You’ve got to make a small detour first,” she said and bent her body down sharply and went into a power dive, straight back from where she came.  The soldier’s mouth opened in a silent scream as he saw the Earth coming in for an extreme close-up.  Shen increased the speed of her dive and let her arm; the one that was holding the soldier by his harness, drag out behind her.  Then with a small jerk of her body, she increased the speed of the soldier’s fall by using every muscle in her body (and wings) and threw the soldier forward.  She took a second to watch the man’s fall and slowed her descent.   The man’s body became a small dot, then disappeared, only to be replaced by a large ball of flame.  Shen was a firm believer in the concept that it isn’t the fall that gets you; it’s the sudden stop.

    Back on the ground, a group of men ran for the opening of an abandoned Dairy Queen and felt the ground beneath them turn to strawberry yogurt.  They struggled to stay upright and reached out for solid ground, finding none.  When they were about waist deep in the thick pink goo they suddenly stopped.  They looked around and took a step forward, but found their legs inoperative.  One man began to hyperventilate when he realized that the sweet smelling desert had solidified around them.  The men began to beat at its pink rock hard surface, with its frozen sculptured waves.

    “It needs something,” said the Doctor floating down from the sky into view. He looked from face to screaming terrified face, then at the pink frothy and rock hard pool they were trapped in.  “Sprinkles?” he asked himself softly, ignoring cries from below him.  “Nuts?  Hot caramel?  Fudge?”  He looked down through his red-lensed optical enhancers and grinned.  “No,” he grinned.  “A cherry.”

    The soldier’s screams slowly faded when they realized the largest Maraschino cherry in the world had materialized over their heads.  The same Maraschino cherry that suddenly dropped like a lead dirigible on same.

    Five soldiers ducked down an alley to find a man wearing a black leather trench coat and S&M mask leaning against a wall.  His eyes were facing downward and appeared to be in mid-contemplation when his head tilted slightly in their direction.

    “So?” he asked.  “What kept you?”

    The first soldier whipped out his sidearm like a gunslinger.  The Midnighter, who had rushed forward and grabbed the man’s hand in the upward swing, turned the weapon to face him and squeezed his finger to depress the trigger, sending a laser blast directly in his face.  Because the weapon was on its highest setting, the beam, after vaporizing the soldier’s head in a wet red mist, struck the lower extremities of the one behind him.  The man stupidly looked down and stared at the smoking hole between his legs before going into shock, followed by a welcome cardiac arrest.

    The third soldier leaped over the bodies of his unit and struck Midnighter in the chest with a flying kick.  Midnighter absorbed the shock of the blow by rolling with it, and as he moved back, caught the soldier’s leg under one arm and brought a very hard elbow on the man’s stretched out knee.  The leg made a very quick V and an even louder snap.  The soldier began to scream and the Midnighter dropped his leg and chopped him in the throat, breaking his neck and ending his worries.

    The fourth and fifth soldier dove at the Midnighter, who sidestepped them and chopped and kicked as they went by, catching one in the back of the neck, and the other behind the knee.  Both men turned as Midnighter shot them both a vicious chest punch.  The blows stunned them long enough to reach out his left hand and sink two fingers in one soldier’s eye sockets, twist and pull out, and grab the other soldier’s neck with his right hand and rip the man’s throat out.  The suddenly blind soldier screamed a high-pitched shriek and raised both hands to his face.  The Midnighter’s hands shot forward and grabbed the man by the sides of his head, twisted it sharply and snapped his neck.  As more firing rang out from the mouth of the alley, he raised his bloody, gloved hand and stared at his gore-covered fingers.

    “Fuck,” he muttered.  “This may stain.”

    The remaining soldiers were surrounded by the Authority and did not know which way to turn.  They glanced at each other and moved, weapons raised, in a tight circle.  Shen and Angie landed, staring at them.  Jack Hawksmoor bounded to a crouch on their opposite side.  Jeroen floated down and hovered above the street, while the Midnighter stood, arms folded across his chest, glaring at them.  For the next several seconds, there was silence, only broken by the electric humming of the laser weapons, their power coils on their highest setting.

    “Hey, guys!” called a voice from above.

    The soldier’s heads snapped upward.  What they saw was a God.  Apollo hovered over their heads, a beatific smile on his face.  With the sun behind him, the earthbound soldiers saw a tall muscular black silhouette below a tanned angelic face with the flowing white hair.  His face was visible because it was encased in a golden halo of energy.  He grinned.

    “Thanks for making it easy!” he said and incinerated them with a solar blast from his eyes.

    The Authority moved together.  The Doctor made a stick and was roasting a sausage over a burning corpse.  Angie stared slightly aghast at Jeroen.  The Doctor looked up with a slightly dazed and guilty look on his face.  “Sorry, Ang,” he said.  “Got the munchies.”

    Apollo flew into a walk next to the Midnighter, who gave him a glance and kept his eyes on Jack Hawksmoor who landed on what was someone’s balcony.

    “Well?” asked Apollo.

    “Well what?” asked the Midnighter.

    Apollo stared at him.  “You were quiet this morning,” he said.

    “I’m quiet every morning before my coffee,” Midnighter replied.

    “I mean,” said Apollo, “I figured you would have said something.”

    “Like what?”

    Apollo’s eyes turned inward for a second.  When he refocused, he glared at the man in black.

    “What?” asked the Midnighter.

    “I don’t want to talk about it,” Apollo said as he forced a smile to Shen.

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he whispered harshly.

    “You forgot!” snapped Apollo.  His voice carried to distract the Doctor from his sausage.

    The Midnighter was a man of few expressions.  Psychopathically sadistic.  Massively pissed off.  Irritated scowl.

    Uncomfortable.  The few who turned at Apollo’s retort were blessed with the sight of the their dark comrade, the Midnighter’s face showing that universal expression found in the typical male of the species.  The man could be from Borneo, he could come from the Bronx, New York, he could even come from an alien planet or civilization, or a different dimension.  You have that extra chromosome, and the look comes free.  It is that look that falls over every man’s face when those four words echo in his head:

    OH, SHIT! IT’S TODAY!

    The ones that did catch Midnighter’s fallen expression quickly looked everywhere but where the two men were standing.

    “Okay,” said Hawksmoor, drawing everyone’s eyes to him.  “We’ve tracked him down to a warehouse in Hoboken, and it’s like a small fortress.  We know he is working on some sort of dimensional transportation device.”

    “Something to send him into alternate realities,” added the Engineer.

    “Shit,” muttered the Doctor.  “Multiverse crap.”

    Jack glared at the Doctor.  Jeroen eyes dropped to the small chunk of sausage on his stick.

    “So here’s the deal,” continued Hawksmoor.  “We take out his military; Apollo and Midnighter, you get him.  Let’s do it!  There’s no telling if he’s perfected the device.  If he has, he could be anywhere in the multiverse.”

    The Doctor and Shen took to the air, as Angie swooped down and lifted Hawksmoor from the ground and followed them.  Midnighter and Apollo stared at each other.  “You’re giving me a lift, right?” Midnighter asked.

    “Yes,” replied Apollo.

    “You’re not going to drop me, are you?” he asked.

    Apollo smiled.  “Would I do that?” he asked innocently.  “To you?”

    Midnighter frowned.  “Okay,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

    Apollo lifted off the ground grabbing Midnighter by the armpits and flew in the direction of Hoboken.  He looked down at the top of the Midnighter’s head.  The masked man looked up.

    Apollo’s dark smile returned.

    “You’ve gained weight,” he said.

    “Not now, please,” Midnighter muttered.

    Apollo’s face hardened.  Then the muscles unclenched.  “You’re right,” he said in an amiable voice.  “Let’s not do this now.  Let’s do this later.”

    The too-agreeable voice chilled Midnighter.  He sighed.  Maybe he’d die in this mission.  He should be so lucky.

    A warehouse in the city of Hoboken overlooked the New York harbor and its incredible array of architecture.  As the evening dusk settled over the city, the Empire State Building had altered the lighting on the upper floors to show red, white and blue-lit sections.  It looked like the colors of our land were rising proudly from the center of a sea of yellow and white lights.  The New York skyline proved to be an interesting counterpoint to the fireball explosions, the zipping red lights of tracer bullets, and the sudden burst from a laser-firing device coming from across the city across the sea.

    In front of the warehouse, hundreds of men in black battle garb ran from one end of the perimeter to the other, firing at the incoming Authority.  Shen was on the ground fighting half a dozen soldiers.  She kicked, punched and gouged her way through the crowd, leaving profusely bleeding bodies in her wake.  Angie had morphed her left hand into a plasma cannon and was blowing away small pockets of soldiers that tried to surround her.  The right hand had changed into a razor sharp sword, and was slicing, cutting and stabbing the soldiers who got close enough.  Jack Hawksmoor was making the buildings fall on units of soldiers, while the Doctor was calmly walking through the running soldiers and stopping them in their tracks by making them see themselves doing the most horrifically heinous act their individual minds could conjure to someone.  He felt that making the victims someone they loved was a nice touch.  Meanwhile, Apollo and Midnighter flew in complete silence as they hovered over the installation, heading for the section that housed their target.

    “Apollo . . . ?“ said the Midnighter.

    “Yes?” he answered.  There was the Ice Age in that one word.

    “I know you think . . . “

    “I think?” snapped Apollo.  “You.  Forgot.”

    “I did not!” said Midnighter, sounding wounded.

    Apollo glared at him.  “I’m not talking about this,” he said firmly.

    “I think we . . .

    “We said we’d table this topic for later,” said Apollo.  “It’s tabled.”

    The Midnighter’s scowl deepened.  He wanted to hit something.  Very hard.  Yeah.  That would make him feel better.

    To Be Continued…