[The cover shows a beige office-style printer, sitting alone in a field, clearly having been smashed repeatedly with a baseball bat. A discarded ID badge is just visible in the lower right corner, the name obscured by blades of grass.] .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED presents ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #109 --X------------------------------------------------------------------------ '|` /|(`| | The Office Part 3 of 3 - TGIF /-|.)|-| copyright 2010 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS ASSIGNMENT -------- --------- ------ ---------- Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control AMERICA "JakZak" Taylor Meteor Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed AMERICA Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic CANADA Centurion Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration MEXICO Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts MEXICO Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body DIPLOMATIC Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis DIPLOMATIC Essay Sara Ana Henderson Gadgeteer VENUS Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage VENUS Beacon George Sylvester Living Light VENUS Geode Unknown Living Crystal VENUS Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control TRANSIT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [September 30, 2026 - The Multiversal Office, Chang'an Level] "GO!" Solar Max shouted, gesturing at the door. "Get Li Fan 8410 out," he ordered, and Lightfoot grabbed both the Chinese bureaucrat and his teammate Breaker and raced for the door that led from the Office to somewhere in the capital city of the People's Republic of China. Li Fan himself was probably authorized to open the door as well, but he was too deep in the metaphorical hunger of the Office to want to leave. Or, rather, like an addict he *wanted* to give up the endless filing of forms, but couldn't make himself. So far, that siren song had yet to become irresistably strong for the ASH team. They had their own problems, though. "Do we follow?" Scorch asked. "What if we wink out like ... did?" He paused for a moment, puzzled. The name he had meant to say had come out garbled, like several words all run together and trampling over each other. "Too much chance for a diplomatic incident," Breaker replied as Lightfoot returned her to the group after they'd shoved Li Fan 8410 out the door. Hopefully the man would recover his senses on the outside and not try to get back in. "..." the same garbled mess, "was a special case, I think," Solar Max frowned. "If we're lucky, though, he just got booted back to the Home Office. Let's backtrack as fast as we can, though. Breaker?" She nodded and pressed the elevator button. Of the remaining four people, she was the only one authorized to interact with the Chang'an office, thanks to a cover identity she had established some months ago. A bit of luck on their part had left that identity's credentials intact. A thought occurred to Breaker. "Actually, I might be vulnerable as well. The ID that I used to get my government job in China was a fake. Either it's a really good fake to be fooling the Office this long, or it was such a bad fake that they were on to me from the start and issued the authorizations in my real name so they could see how much rope I'd buy before hanging myself. Either way, I think I'm pressing my luck staying here," she finished, stepping into the elevator as it opened. "Why wasn't the elevator already here?" Lightfoot mused as they got in. "I mean, if there's really just this one bank of elevators to serve a theoretically infinite complex, the cars would almost have to be generated at need or they could take years to arrive." "Expectations game, probably," Scorch shrugged. "Or maybe there's a regulation somewhere about the maximum time someone's to be kept waiting for an elevator, and the Office just makes it take that much time, every time. We getting a signal from the breadcrumbs?" he asked Solar Max as the doors closed. The leader nodded, as telemetry from the microbots seeded throughout the various Combine-related levels they'd visited started coming in again. While they'd been in the Chang'an branch, they'd been cut off from the signals. "None of them report seeing ... though. I think. It's hard to even issue the query. But they didn't see anyone appear, nameable or not." The elevator opened to the Pentagon level. "Anyone home?" Breaker shouted, deciding to not bother trying to pronounce the name that the Office had decided was invalid. But there was only silence, the acoustic tiles and cubicle walls didn't even allow for an echo. "I'm making a command decision, guys. We're out of here," Solar Max declared. "If we go blindly searching for you-know-who, we could all end up vanishing. We need to regroup and do a better job sanitizing our paperwork so the Office doesn't decide, for instance, that Lightfoot needs to be artificially aged a few decades so that his physical age is more in line with his birth date." Lightfoot's eyes widened behind the goggles he habitually wore. "Crap. I didn't even think of that. I guess the Office does have protocols for time travel, though, or it would have happened already." "You hope," Scorch was out in the lead of the group as they exited the elevators, and within moments they were back into the relative comfort and absolute safety of the Pentagon.... * * * * [October 2, 2026 - Serengeti Plains, Africa] Vicente nodded to Cristovo. It was time for another lesson, the humans were once again spreading a little too close to the family's lands, as evidenced by the small party setting up camp. As long as they merely drove out in the day and went back to their towns at night, the human patrols were tolerated. After all, the family understood that they weren't the only ones who had the right to defend territory. But staying for the night implied that the humans were considering *adding* to that territory. Cristovo shrugged one shoulder, shifting his rifle slightly, and cocked his head questioningly. Vicente shook his head. No guns, not for this. Father had been very clear on that point: if the humans found gun-killed corpses, they'd assume it was an incursion from other humans on the far side of the plain, and come in force. If they thought it was just more of those "damned freakish lions," they were more likely to back off. Perhaps berate whoever had ordered the patrol to travel so deeply into the family's range, assuming this wasn't done on the orders of one of the men in the patrol. You couldn't berate a corpse, after all. The two watched the humans for a time, waiting for them to let their guard down. Cristovo explained the situation to the young male lions that had accompanied them, at least as well as the lions could understand it. These lions were not quite as smart as their forebears, the magic in their blood was thinner, but they still were useful in situations like this. And it made the females especially canny hunters, doing their best when coordinating with Vicente and Cristovo's birth-mate Maria. As the last children, the three of them got what father called the "scutwork" while their older siblings spent more time learning the human language and science, preparing to carry on once age or injury took father as it had taken mother. Finally, a change came over the camp, imperceptible to any but a trained hunter or assassin. While the guards set at the edges of camp still appeared alert, they had become satisfied that no threats were coming. Shadows lengthened, but sunset was not yet close enough to put them on edge. Now was the time to strike! Once it had begun, it was over very quickly. Only a few shots were fired, none finding a mark in flesh. They were careful to restrain the lions, gutting the humans but not eating. "Don't eat that, you don't know where it's been," was father's usual joke about eating humans. But his point was well-taken. Humans were simply not as safe to eat as four-legged prey. Especially the sort of humans who willingly entered the plains of the family. They tended to be tainted by poisons of one sort or another. Let the scavengers feast, they were better suited to dealing with the filth that might be found in a human's flesh. The scavengers worked quickly here, by the time the campsite was discovered by the next patrol, there would be nothing out of the ordinary, save perhaps for the lack of dead lions. And that only increased the "psychological warfare" impact that father advocated. "Their bullets are the right size, I think," Cristovo lifted an ammunition pouch. "We should be able to take a few without it being noticed." Elder by a few minutes, Vicente was the defacto leader of the group, and he nodded. "Father did say that this was a 'sorry ass excuse for an army' and didn't keep very good track of its supplies. I think if we take a few bullets from each of the pouches, no one will notice the loss. But leave the pouches themselves." Cristovo bent to the work of carefully looting the camp of ammunition and a few other small things they knew from experience would never be missed. Lions had no use for cigarette lighters, for instance, but most of the self- poisoning humans carried more than one, and could be expected to simply throw away the empties. And lighters were very useful for teenaged catmen who needed to travel light.... * * * * [October 2, 2026 - The Pentagon, Federal Sector] "Okay, even if we assume the Office pays attention to regular business hours, the local day started an hour ago," Solar Max told the small group assembled outside the unassuming door. "If cleaning up Sal's paperwork was all that was required to get him released, he should have walked out on his own by now." The past two days had been a grind of bureaucracy, nailing down all the nagging little loose ends that any real organization will let slide in the name of keeping things from stalling out entirely. Unfortunately, there were no established procedures for a lot of things when it came to the temporally displaced, owing to the relatively small number of them at any given time, so Lightfoot was being left behind. Sarah was replacing him for any speed needs, and they'd made sure to rectify all of her bureaucratic loose ends in the process. It turned out there was one system in which she was still labeled as deceased, which could have had...unfortunate...consequences. Breaker and Scorch would be coming along again, although each had gotten their records scrubbed as well as they could manage, and they'd try to avoid going into the Chang'an level just in case. Arin was there because, well, there was pretty much no way to say no to her. Not with Sal lost somewhere behind that door. "The more I think about it, the less confident I am that this is any sort of elemental plane," Netwalker peered suspiciously at the door, preparing to enter with the others. "I mean, given the briefing Peregryn gave on Tuesday, there's just too many elements that suggest a deliberately crafted dimension, rather than a naturally occurring platonic form." "Which is part of why I leaned on Director Farmer to lift your suspension long enough for you to come along," Solar Max nodded. "It might be more like your pocket realities, resonating with the concept of paperwork in the way yours resonate with the concept of the internet. In which case, you might be able to exert some control over it, or at least recognize telltales that we'd miss." "Plus, you might be able to remotely hack the workstations in there without falling into the pitcher plant," Scorch shuddered at memories of Li Fan's frantic insistence that he be allowed to fill out just one more form. "The breadcrumbs we left behind are still there, at least they were when the door was opened an hour ago to ping them," Solar Max noted. "They've spread out and finished mapping the levels we visited in the Combine section, although the amount of detail is better on the Pentagon level since we spent more time there and spread out more breadcrumbs." "Nothing particularly interesting or useful, though," Arin frowned at the screen of her handcomp. Netwalker shifted into IT Geek mode, "The breadcrumbs are pretty much just passive recorders in their current design. No AC...artificial consciousness...involved, just a fairly basic drone program. Assuming that the Office does grow new things when called upon to do so, it would still only have the things they saw when they were in it on Wednesday. The breadcrumbs are too dumb to ask for things like, oh, a directory sign or a direct phone to the boss." "On the other hand, they're probably also too limited to feel the hunger for paperwork, so the Office hopefully hasn't suborned them as it might have done to an AC," Breaker added. "The map they made is still useful, though. It provides a baseline, and we can program the breadcrumbs to alert us if anything changes. We might trigger something that's not visible from where we happen to be standing, after all." "Time to go punch the clock," Solar Max reached for the doorknob and opened the way into the Office. "And they'd better hope that's all I have to punch," Arin said, darkly. * * * * [October 2, 2026 - The Hague, Eurasian Union] People tended to assume Oni's sometimes distant and aloof appearance was simply a result of her powers. Maybe she seemed to be ignoring you because her mind was inhabiting a magnetic ghost miles away, her body running on autopilot. But Justice knew that Saori really was just that sort of person, even when her mind was in her body. She'd let people run off at the mouth, waiting for what she considered to be the right time to interject something important. If she didn't think you'd listen to what she had to say, she didn't bother saying it. As a result, Colin had a lot of one-sided "conversations" with his teammate. He didn't really mind, though. Sometimes he just needed to run through a rant until he ran out of steam, and if Oni did interject he could be pretty sure it wasn't just because she felt socially obligated to say something. It'd be something worth listening to. At the moment, though, he was starting to run out of that steam, repeating himself, and Oni hadn't made a peep. "...been here since breakfast, boring hallway in a boring building in a boring city," Colin groused. "I could be wasting my time chasing down shadow cultists, at least I'd be getting exercise. Okay, they've been mostly harmless since the parade, and I know this door," he pointed at the one that had appeared in the basement of an unremarkable part of the Union Court building a few days ago, "is important und so weider, but either send us in or let us go do something else! Assign some paper-pushers to guard duty, since about all that's likely to come outta that thing is paper." "Are all of *your* papers in order?" Oni asked, not turning to look Justice in the face. "You spent several years living at the edge of the law, if not completely outside it. What if the Office decided your paperwork was faulty and decided to do to you whatever it did to Centurion over in the Combine? I expect the paper-pushers are busily pushing those papers around with the expectation that whoever has the cleanest records will be going in soon. Do you really think we're just going to let the Combine do all of the exploring? And they want us available as soon as they're sure who can be sent in." That served to defuse what little righteous annoyance Colin still had left, and the hallway fell silent for a while. * * * * [October 2, 2026 - The Multiversal Office, Pentagon Level] "Nothing," Netwalker finally admitted, after about fifteen minutes of trying to exercise his powers. "They look like computers, and they're definitely hooked up to some kind of network, but it's nothing that my powers recognize as one. And given that I've gotten into a Babbage machine," he blushed slightly at this, his current suspension from active duty was a result of that particular adventure, "I'd have to say that these things are VERY unlike what we think of as computers." "Looks like the only way to interface with them is to use the keyboards, then," Solar Max sighed. "I wish we had a telepath available with good enough clearance, someone with enough training to resist the mental effects of thost terminals. But Aaron's status is just too weird to risk bringing him in here, Director Clark's powers might make her *more* vulnerable not less, and no one else could be pushed through the process before next week without leaving possibly fatal gaps in the paperwork." Meteor shivered a little, and Solar Max recognized that look. The Office reminded her of her parents, emotionally distant "wage slaves" who had put in ten hour days at the office not because they had to, but because it was their way of hiding from the horror of 1998. A lot of people who survived had just buried themselves in work, using the excuse that the nation needed everyone to pitch in if things were going to avoid collapse, but really just trying to shut out the voices that told them that the world had already ended and they had been abandoned by God. Sarah had been getting better at dealing with reminders of that lately, using her super-speed to help pick up the slack on the virtual mountains of paperwork that ASH leadership seemed to generate, but it was still...uncomfortable for her. "I'll give it a shot," Meteor said, breaking Solar Max's reverie. "I might be able to get off a query before the pitcher plant effect kicks in." "Or maybe not," Netwalker countered. "It might be the amount of interaction that does it, rather than the time taken, in which case you could get trapped faster than any of us could react." "Ow, good point," Meteor winced. "And I certainly get bored with paperwork faster than anyone can react." She's once joked that filling out forms at ten times normal speed didn't make it take any less time from her point of view, it just meant she had more time to recover from the experience. "Arin, I want you doing this," Solar Max decided. "If it looks like you're starting to lose it, Meteor can get you out before you get too deep in. And you have a pretty strong motivation to avoid getting sidetracked." The slender young woman nodded, and stepped into the nearest cubicle, smirking at the motivational poster hung on one wall. "Don't just hang in there, kitty...climb up." She started typing, navigating various directories and help files. "This is surprisingly, well, *helpful* for a help system," she said after a few minutes. "I'd expect it to be," Netwalker smirked. "It's users and their conflicting and inane demands that screw up systems, and this place hasn't had any users in a long time." "Any system works fine so long as no one expects it to do anything," Scorch riposted. "Exactly," Netwalker nodded, not a trace of sarcasm to be found in his voice. "Well, this one seems to be doing something," Arin looked up. "Sal has been remanded to the Human Resource's Department. With an apostrophe in Resource's," she added. "All inquiries to be addressed in person." "Well, let's go see if the elevator has a button for that," Solar Max gestured for the group to head for the elevator banks. With a slight glance over her shoulder at the workstation, Arin came along with the others. * * * * [October 3, 2026 - United World Complex, Australia] Delta Rose stared balefully at the closet door in her office. It was after midnight, and while the complex never truly shut down for the night things had certainly settled down enough that there was no one around in that particular wing to wonder why she was contemplating a door. No one really wondered why she was in her office in the first place, of course. Her species didn't have the luxury of extended sleep cycles on its chaotic homeworld, and the synthetic frame that let her counterfeit the appearance of a Santari (or a human) was built to work for days on end without a significant break. So it was perfectly normal for the alien "ambassador" ("minder" might be a more accurate term) to be in her office at any and all hours when she wasn't needed elsewhere. Still, staring at a door like she wanted to drop it into the Sun wasn't normal, even for her. After all, it was just a storage closet, rarely even used in the past decade. It was there because the architect was of the "better to have it and not need it" school of design, and it was rarely opened except for the occasional cleaning. Now, though, it couldn't be opened by the cleaning staff. Or anyone, really. Because it led to the Office. Worse, it wasn't the "official" door for the United World complex. That had been discovered three days ago in one of the other buildings in the UW complex, and was currently under guard. Delta wasn't sure why she'd even looked into her closet, save for a sinking feeling that the human "Murphy's Law" was in operation. But it was definitely no longer a closet. It was an extension of the Office, and rather than looking like the cubicle farms seen through other doors, it was definitely the sort of administrative workspace Delta knew from back in the Planetary Confederation. Upon discovering it, and double-checking the preliminary exploratory reports from the Combine's team, she used her authority as a senior member of the Galactic Warrior Corps to expressly forbid anyone from accessing the Office from any Santari door. As far as she understood matters, she didn't have to actually transmit those orders anywhere, just put them in her system. She might have limited legal rights as a person in the Confederation, due to her cyborg nature, but that didn't affect her authority over Dangerous Technologies. Still, it was only a temporary solution. She had to let her superiors know about the Office, so that they would know to countermand any attempts to access it by those who were higher in the hierarchy than Delta herself. And then they had to decide if it was time to take another shot at simply destroying Earth before it could further infect the galaxy.... * * * * [October 2, 2026 - The Multiversal Office, Human Resource] "Human Resource," Scorch read aloud the sign next to the door. "No 's' there. That's not ominous at ALL." Perhaps unsurprisingly, as soon as they had entered the elevator with the goal of going to the "Human Resource's Office," the control display had prominently featured the relevant stop. There was only one door out of the elevator bank at this floor, although everyone expected that had there been a need for more, more would have appeared. "Actually, I'm starting to get the feeling that this isn't something out of TwenCen dystopian literature," Breaker mused. "It's not ominous or malevolent, simply focused on following correct procedure and helping you do so as well. Even if, um, you don't appreciate its help." "Everyone be on guard," Solar Max warned. "A benevolent bureaucracy can still be hazardous, especially if you get lulled into a false sense of security." He opened the door, revealing an office that was exactly large enough to comfortably hold a single occupant and a half dozen visitors. It was neither antiseptically spartan nor intimidatingly opulent...it projected precisely the air of someone who not only had authority but was also answerable to at least one tier above him, who needed to look like he had the juice to get things done but also had to avoid looking too much like he was angling to take over his boss's job. The man behind the desk...well, about all any of them could say for certain was that it was a man. A human male. Everything else was... unclear. It's not that he was featureless or literally blurry, just that his features were so bland and forgettable that his appearance wouldn't even stick firmly in short term memory. A complete John Doe. "May I help you?" the man asked. "Are you the Human Resource?" Solar Max asked, somewhat hesitantly. "Yes. I perform the necessary human interactions for the Office, in such rare situations that proper procedure alone is insufficient." If he was irritated by what might be considered a stupid question, it didn't color his tone. And if his expression was irritated...who could tell? "And to anticipate your next two questions, I am authorized to say that I am not a god and that I am unaware of any career or existence I may have had prior to assuming this duty, or even if I had a prior life. I believe that exhausts the most common introductory small talk, since there is no weather here, and we may get down to business." "Where's Sal?" Fury blurted out. "Ah, Salvatore Napier," she amended. The Human Resource made a show of consulting the terminal at his desk. "Ah, yes, a curious case. Unauthorized assumption of a superhuman acting name, and one of only a very few cases not covered by existing North American Combine legislation or jurisprudence." Solar Max blinked. "Wait, I thought all the proper forms had been observed in assuming the Centurion name?" he looked to Arin, who nodded. The Human Resource let out a short, professionally polite laugh. "Ah, no, Mr. Taylor. That matter has been resolved more than sufficiently. It's the matter of his previous acting name, the Green Knight. Or, more specifically," he again peered ostentatiously at the screen, "El Caballero Verde. Perhaps I should bring Mr. Salvatore in at this juncture, his input may help clear things up." A door to one side of the office, which no one could remember having been there before, opened up. A somewhat befuddled-looking Sal Napier stepped out. He was wearing a paper jumpsuit rather than the green and brown dress uniform he'd had on two days ago. "Wha...where'd Li Fan 8410 go? Where'd my CLOTHES go?" Sal looked about in confusion. "Arin?" "I think you were held in stasis, Sal," Solar Max motioned for Sal to take a seat at the extra chair that had appeared while no one was looking. "Mr. Napier," the Human Resource asked once Sal had taken his seat, "the matter at hand involves your unauthorized assumption of the acting name 'El Caballero Verde' during the period from May First, 2024, through August Fifth, 2026." "Huh? How was it unauthorized? I checked with the DSHA, they had no records of anyone holding that name," Sal protested. "Yes, that's what makes this a thorny case," the Human Resource nodded. "It extends more into what might be considered common law, which is why it took so long for the Office to decide that it fell within our purview." He swiveled his screen so that everyone could see it, revealing the face of a hispanic man with wild eyes and a wreath of leaves mixed in with his hair. "This is the original Caballero Verde, active in Mexico City from June Twelfth, 1988 through April Sixteenth, 1991. He was strictly a local hero, fighting drug crime and performing search and rescue in the poorer parts of the city. His sole power was that he was unkillable. Unfortunately for him, the last person he ever saved was a child in a burning building, and that child turned out to be an Anchor. El Caballero Verde died of smoke inhalation and burns while making sure the child lived." "So THAT'S why people called me that," Sal gasped. "I just figured someone was making a joke on my old Gawain codename." "Presumably. Not my department," the Human Resource shrugged. "The fact remains, though, no one authorized the reuse of the name. And I can't close your file and release you until this matter is dealt with." "But he no longer uses the name," Fury protested. "And we just spent the last two days making sure there's no official reference to him as the Green Knight in current paperwork." "I've noticed the Office isn't making us refer to him as the Green Knight anymore either, or garbling it together with Centurion" Scorch observed. "So clearly it has decided that at least that much is settled." The Human Resource shook his head. "This is part of why this is a thorny case, Ms. Kelsey, Mr. Handleman. People were calling him El Caballero Verde for a year before he officially adopted the name, and will likely continue to refer to him by the name, at least in Mexico City, for some time to come, will-he or nill-he. It is necessary to clear this matter up before I can allow Mr. Salvatore to leave." "How?" Netwalker spoke up. "If there's no formal procedure, and he's already renounced the name, what's left do to?" "Fortunately, prior to the regularization of such matters in 2011, there were common law solutions for cases where local jurisdictions conflicted in matters of superheroic acting names," the Human Resource stood and walked to the side door. "If you'll follow me, Mr. Napier, we can get started." "Started? With what?" Sal asked. "Why, the Name Fight, of course," the Human Resource grinned ferally, suddenly wearing the form of the original Cabellero. "I hereby formally challenge you to the right to the name of El Cabellero Verde!" * * * * [April 16, 1991 - Mexico City] The heat washed over Sal, immediately burning away his flimsy paper clothing. He hadn't been sure what to expect when he stepped through the door leading out of the office, but being dropped in the middle of a burning building hadn't been it. "Socorro!" came a weak voice over the crackle of the flames. Without hesitating, Sal headed for it. He wasn't fireproof, so it hurt like hell, but he was healing as quickly as he was burning, so he'd survive. It was just really unpleasant. If he'd still been normal flesh and blood, it might even have been agonizing. Whatever the Name Fight involved, it would have to wait. Sal could just make out two forms amid the flames. A child tugging at an adult, who was pinned by a fallen beam. Were the flames getting more intense? "Ayudame!" the child choked through the smoke and superheated air. "El Caballero est..." and then he (she?) dissolved into coughing. Sal forced his way through a half-burnt wall and grunted at the intense pain that shot through his shoulder as he did so. Underneath the pain was a vaguely familiar feeling...Anchor! His powers were being Anchored! Wait, was the Human Resource making him re-enact the death of the original Caballero? If so, it might come out differently this time...the original probably had never heard of Anchors, and didn't know why his powers had faded. Sal had trained against Anchors, since he couldn't really cut loose in sparring sessions against non-Anchors. And he'd regularly checked to make sure that none of the changes his body was undergoing would render him fatally vulnerable to Anchoring. So all he had to worry about was the fatal vulnerability he now had to the burning building! He dropped as low as he could manage so that he could breathe without searing his lungs, and checked the figure trapped by the beam. He was badly burned, but still had a pulse. Grabbing what looked like a table leg that wasn't yet on fire, Sal pried up the beam holding the fallen man, and the child put on a surprising burst of strength to pull the man free. Once that had been accomplished, Sal took as deep a breath as he felt he could, then grabbed both child and man and threw them over his shoulders. Anchored or not, he was still a towering mass of muscle, and within seconds they were all out into the cool spring night, bursting out amid the crowd that had formed and was trying to assemble a bucket brigade of some sort. Sal wasn't sure this neighborhood was even on the list of places the fire department would visit, it looked pretty poor. A tearfully-grateful woman gathered the Anchor child up in her arms. Sal didn't have time to explain Anchors, so he simply looked at the mother and asked her, through coughs, "Please, fetch a doctor for this man." Fortunately, the woman didn't hand the job off to someone else, and hurried off with her child. Sal immediately started to feel better. "Thank...you," the burned man gasped, in heavily accented English. "I think...God is calling me." The pieces fell into place. "No, Cabellero Verde. You should live now, your powers will heal you," Sal assured him. The original Caballero coughed bloodily. "I am afraid my gift is not that strong. Perhaps you...can carry on...for me...." And with that, he died. * * * * [October 2, 2026 - The Pentagon, Federal Sector] "It certainly makes sense when you think about it," Peregryn's mystic portrait said. "From what you've since discovered about the original Cabellero Verde, an actual fight would have been rather one-sided. So the Human Resource misdirected you and set a task where you would fulfill the requirements of another 'common law' tradition in the heroic community, the deathbed legacy." "Was it all a simulation, though?" Sal asked. "It certainly felt real enough, more real than it had to be." "Hard to say," Solar Max shrugged. "We've seen that the Office can create within itself whatever is necessary to do the job, a perfectly realistic simulation strikes me as possible. Or it could have actually placed you in 1991, it's not like there's sufficiently detailed records of that fire to tell if you were actually there. Short of stumbling across an old community newspaper story about a mysterious stranger, I doubt we can know." "What about the child that was saved?" Arin asked. Sal shook his head. "Dead end. We found records of someone who *might* have been the girl saved in the fire, but it was a story about a young Anchor policewoman killed by a gang of godpowered drug runners who didn't like the idea of a cop who could turn off their abilities. But for all we know, it was a different person. I mean, I never got a clear enough look at the kid to even be sure it was a girl." "On to bigger issues," Solar Max gestured at his console screen, "the immediate security matter does seem to be resolved to the satisfaction of our relevant government agencies. They've got their people triple-checking things to make sure no one can gain access to any of our levels of the Office without our knowing about it, and diplomats are already wrangling over the matter with China and the EU. Given what happened to Li Fan, no one's too eager to turn this into a transit hub in any case, but I'm sure we won't just wall off the doors and forget about 'em." "If nothing else, the matter of what sort of dimension it is needs to be resolved," Peregryn's portrait said. "And if the Human Resource isn't a god, what is he? Merely an extension of the Office, or perhaps the result of a human being trapped inside for too long?" "But none of this is a matter for us, at least not at the moment," Solar Max told the various people, teleconference screens and mystically animated portraits in the room. "And I'm perfectly happy to let someone else take care of the paperwork this time." ============================================================================= Next Issue: Okay, I don't have any solid plans for the next arc. I don't feel ready yet for the next Big Thing that I've been building towards, though, so I may take a break and see if anything else suggests itself as an intermediate storyline (and yes, others have suggested some things, but so far none of the ideas have grabbed me). I might participate in RACCWriMo, though, with a story idea I've been kicking around as a possible ASHistorical. ============================================================================= Author's Notes: The briefing from Peregryn that Netwalker mentions is available at http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH/Elemental (I decided trying to cram it into an issue would be a case of explosition). I really wanted to make some sort of LOLcat reference in the scene with the motivational poster, but those are post-1998 and if something like them exists in the ASH 21st Century, it would probably be rather different. While outlining this issue, I tried to find a God of Bureaucracy in order to have a possible suspect in case the Office wasn't an elemental plane after all, but I wanted a single-portfolio god. Most of the gods who can be thought of as being patrons of bureaucracy are also the head of their hierarchy (the Jade Emperor, Mulungu), or they're more general gods of writing and recordkeeping (Thoth). Even the Romans, with their host of minor gods and goddesses for everything from the sewers of Rome (Cloacina) to harrowing the fields (Imporcitor) didn't seem to have a dedicated god of bureaucracy. Obscure pre-Rome Etruscan god Quirinus sometimes gets tagged with that duty, having lost his position as a wargod and existing only as a faded echo of the original ruling triumvirate of Sabine gods, but that seems to be more of a modern construction. My fictional Roman god, Santarus, was a god of politics, not bureaucracy per se. I looked to Catholic saints, but while there's plenty of patrons of bookkeepers and librarians, there's no specific patron saint of bureaucrats (maybe they figure that's a job for the other team). The Discordians have Zarathud as the Patron Saint of Bureaucracy, but I decided that if I couldn't have a god or saint with a real historical pedigree, I'd just leave it vague. I originally planned to have Meteor face off against the Human Resource in a battle of forms, but had a late-in-the-game inspiration and changed it to the Name Fight...and then while writing the last scene changed the Name Fight to what you just saw. Just one of those cases of a story writing itself, yes? ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ ! There's also a LiveJournal interest group for ASH, check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=academy+of+super-heroes (if you're on Facebook instead, there's an Academy of Super-Heroes group there too). ============================================================================