//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS // || \\ || || --X--------------------------------------------- //======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #42 // || \\ || || Unfinished Business 1: The Legacy // || \\__// || || Copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ [cover shows JakZak in armor, with the helmet off, holding a palmtop computer in one gauntleted hand. The screen is partly covered by his hand, but part of a headline can be read. It says "...DEAD AT 61."] ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS STATUS -------- --------- ------ ------ Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control ACTIVE "JakZak" Taylor Comet Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed, Ice Body ACTIVE Green Knight Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration ACTIVE Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body ACTIVE Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic ACTIVE George Sylvester Living Light MEDICAL LEAVE Essay Sara Ana Rodriguez Gadgeteer ACTIVE Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage ACTIVE Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control ACTIVE Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis ACTIVE Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts ACTIVE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Para Magazine - June 2025 Issue - Obituaries] May 23: Academy Headmaster Dead At 61 The enigmatic Professor David Isaac Van Domelen, one of the founders of the North American Combine School for the Paranormal, also known as The Academy, passed away of reportedly natural causes today at the age of 61. He led a very private life, rarely appearing in public (PHOTO LINK: Academy graduation ceremony that launched both the Academy of Super-Heroes and STRAFE teams). Officially, he was never more than an educator and researcher in Violation Physics, but it was a poorly kept secret that he was actually the original Solar Max in the 1990s. While it was never revealed how he managed to survive the calamity of 1998, most suspect that this was related to his disappearance some time before on a deep space exploration mission. He may have simply been too far away to be affected. "The Professor", as many called him, spent his final years in a wheelchair, his health no doubt damaged by his long career as a superhero and explorer. Despite this, officials expressed surprise at his sudden death, although they assured the public that no foul play was suspected. The funeral services were officially closed to the press, although sometime _Para_ columnist Robert "Challenger" Coulter was invited for reasons he has not disclosed. Administrative duties at the Academy will be taken up by Sarah Cunningham, formerly Assistant Director. "He lived long enough to see his dreams for the new generation fulfilled, now it's up to us to live those dreams." - Acting Director Cunningham "He was a great man. We've lost too many like him lately." - Carlos Ruiz, former President of Mexico, outgoing NAC Chancellor "This marks the end of an era." - Charles Stockwell, President of Canada, incoming NAC Chancellor "One less man of conscience and courage to stand between the bureaucrats and our impressionable paranormal youth...a great tragedy." - Thom S. O'Ryan, freelance journalist "I only met him once, but it was like he knew what I was going through, how hard it was to be different. A lot of godtimers just wanna forget that sorta thing, but you could tell he wouldn't." - Carla "Speedy" O'Neal, Academy student (College Sophomore) "They say the true measure of a man is the quality of his enemies. In that regard, the Professor was probably better than anyone else now alive." - Derek Radner, Chancellor of Khadam * * * * [June 2, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector] The atmosphere in the conference room was sombre and strained, and not a little close. The entire ASH team was present, plus several of STRAFE's superhuman assets and a number of older men and women who all had some link to the departed man. Howard Henderson Sr. stood behind the podium that was normally Solar Max's. He cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "I would just like to remind you all that the Professor's last will and testament may contain classified information. Pursuant to his wishes, we have not pre-viewed the video portion of the will, so I will have to decide on the spot if any of its contents fall under National Security. Aspects of the written portion are considered Secret, however, and you will be signing the appropriate paperwork before leaving if necessary. ASH, STRAFE...your oaths already cover non-disclosure of this information." With that, he sat down and dimmed the lights. Not that it was necessary for the viewing of the tape...he just felt it was more respectful. The careworn face of the Professor filled the screen. While he had seen barely six decades of life, they had been very full decades, and it showed in his features. In fact, some people gasped at how much older he looked than he had even a few months before, his decline had become quite rapid in his last weeks. The camera pulled back to reveal an upper torso shot, the Professor sitting calmly in his wheelchair, tweed jacket slightly rumpled and his tie almost imperceptibly askew. "Welcome, everyone," he started. "I apologize for the drama of a video will, they were hackneyed when I was a young man. But some of you may have been caught by surprise by my death...not that I will be, I can see it coming down 52nd Street at this point," he smirked. "Anyway, one last message from me may help you with closure. Funny...I saw so many that I knew die, came back to Earth to find out that almost everyone else I knew and loved had died, but I never needed 'closure'. They told me I was just bottling it up, but that's not true. I missed every one of them, but...well, it was just another goodbye, I'd had enough of those that didn't involve death yet never led to a reunion. But enough about me, this is all about and for you, the survivors. At least, I presume everyone in my will has survived me...some of you might not have. It's a violent world for young heroes, and it's entirely possible one or more of you has fallen in the past week or so. I do hope not, however. "Howie Senior...my first bequest, request really, is for you. Not everyone I cared for died in 1998, but I let most of them think I had died. Most of them probably figured out the truth by now, but it'd be cruel to leave them guessing now. Since you've been getting hip-deep in secrets in the past few decades, I suppose you'll be able to tell them what they need to know without violating any confidences. I could have just arranged for them to be sent emails with the information, but I'd rather they have a human face to help them navigate the maze of grief," he paused to cough, a violent spasm that forced him to pause for several seconds before continuing. "Peregryn, among my effects is a medallion, a souvenir from an old case that I'd hidden away before my long journey. I've been in correspondence with a linguist in California, and he's expressed an interest in translating the ancient Minoan script on it. I'm pretty sure it's magical, so I don't want to just courier it to him, and I've been meaning to ask you to do this anyway...if I neglect to do so before you view this tape, please take care of it. You may keep the medallion after Professor Pi is done with it, add it to your little collection." Director Henderson slid a small lockbox across the table to Peregryn. "Tom Dodson," the Professor continued, "I've given you what I could already. I know money isn't as much of an issue with you, what with the support ASH gets, but I'm leaving you some of the small fortune I accumulated during my life. I also want you to go home. I know you've been avoiding going back to the town where you grew up, avoiding the remaining family you have, but you need to talk to them, at least make sure everyone's able to deal with your separation from them. And while you're there, you can present whatever they're calling that university now with an endowment for a Professor of Violation Physics, and another one for more student parking. Always wanted to do that last one." Tom looked uncertainly around the room, then sighed. "I guess I'll go," he muttered. "Jonathan Zachary Taylor...you have already inherited my name and my legacy, so I guess I'll leave you some of my responsibilities as well. Director Henderson will give you a map detailing the locations of some of my fiercer battles in the 1990s, and my best guesses at the locations of various free-standing warp oubliettes I left behind because of teleportation, defensive warps and so forth. Some may have faded, others might be growing unstable. Please visit the locations in the order indicated and 'clean up' the warps for me. Why didn't I take care of this myself? Well, somehow these spacetime loops got bound into the Barrier, and I couldn't budge them while the Barrier was still whole. Now that the Barrier has been pierced, you may be able to do something about them. I certainly was no longer in any condition to try by that time." There was a quiet murmur through the room. By the time the Barrier had been breached, the Professor was wheelchair-bound due to the strain of helping defeat the Burnout Assassin. "Sarah Grant-Taylor, Sal Napier, George Sylvester...each of you has recently become something other than human, discovered that flesh isn't a requirement for life. While I grant that you have struggled with the results, you do give an old man hope that death won't be the end yet for me either. Perhaps I will see you all again, eh? In the meantime, however, I have assembled the diaries of various post-humans I knew in the 90s, plus recorded my reminscences about others for you. Matrix, Haze, Bubba da Gargoyle, Spyder 9000 and others, they've gone through similar situations, you three are not alone...." * * * * By the time the video ended half an hour later, the bequests and requests handed out and final goodbyes spoken, the mood of the room was lighter, if apprehensive. "Did the Prof strike you as being...needlessly cryptic at times?" Scott asked George as the two left the room. George shrugged and hummed in a way that Scott had come to interpret as tentative agreement. That George could use his new photonic form to make sound at all was a significant accomplishment, but he was still a long way from understandable speech. His features blurred for a moment, the effort required to keep them fixed in the form of his old face while also "speaking" being a little too much. Not that he really complained about these problems...it was better than being dead, after all. "I mean, it's not like I had a lot of long chats with him, but it didn't sound like the way he normally talked," Scott continued, still uncomfortable with carrying the entire conversation himself. One of the things that had helped the two become friends was that each could hold up his end of a conversation with the other...and both tended to bulldoze just about anyone else if they weren't careful. "He sure had a lot of oddly unfinished business as well, things he should have been able to take care of a long time ago. The medallion, the endowment, that whole Manhattan deal...strange. And then there's asking *me* to approach Coulter and see if he wants to teach Applied Ethics at the Academy! I'd rather just reduce that collaborator to a pile of ash and molten metal...I would have at the funeral, if it hadn't been, um, a funeral," he finished somewhat lamely. George just nodded companionably. * * * * [June 8, 2025 - Kirksville, Missouri Sector] For once, Tom had taken his time, driving down from Chicago in a quietly purring electric car. He'd used his powers a little, mostly to get more speed out of less charge, so he wouldn't have to stop as often for a recharge, a trick he'd picked up when his powers were first manifesting back in the early 90s. Although he'd used it then to save on gas, not electricity. There was a steady, if light, stream of traffic down U.S. 63. It had been renamed at some point as Highway G-210, but you could still see the occasional old road sign here and there that no one had bothered to take down. Kirksville...was Kirksville, pretty much. Like most smaller towns in the Bible Belt, it hadn't been hit all that hard by the Godmarket and its aftermath, and people fleeing from the cities in 1998 had mostly countered the loss in population due to general economic decline in the years after the disaster. Truman State University and the College of Osteopathy were still there, and still the only real reason the town had for existing anymore. He had mixed feelings at the sight that greeted him as he came across the city border. The housing development he grew up in had been knocked down and replaced with a new one. Not that the old boxes were likely to have survived thirty years of normal use, much less rough use. The storms that had followed the nuclear destruction of Wichita had nearly blown over one of the blocks, in fact. It was home...but it wasn't home. Even when it had still been there, it had stopped really being home once he'd redubbed himself Lightfoot and joined ASH. He hadn't wanted to be a damn townie anymore, he wanted to follow his older, college-age friends into the rest of the world, make a difference out there. Not sit and rot in a little college town that refused to admit it was a college town, like so many of his peers were content to do. He'd taken his GED's at sixteen, passed, and gone on to being a superhero with his mother's permission, if not her blessing. Tom turned right on Normal and slowly drove towards the university. She'd wanted him to come home for college. Truman State was a good school, he'd had to admit. It'd even been Solar...the Professor's undergraduate school, which was a stronger recommendation than anything U.S. News and World Report could offer. With his powers, it didn't matter so much where he chose to go to school, he could always zoom back to Milwaukee in an hour or so at need from anywhere in the country. But he'd be a townie again. Didn't matter that he was a superhero, that he'd lived in Milwaukee for the past couple of years, or that he'd be living in campus housing like every other frosh. You could always tell the kids who grew up in Kirksville, it was like a stink that wouldn't wash off. Anywhere else, ANYWHERE, he'd be just another out-of-towner come to college, it wouldn't matter where out of town he was from. But here in K-ville, he'd be a townie. He pulled into the visitor lot and killed the ignition. It was fairly empty, classes weren't in session and the summer programs weren't taking up space at this end of campus at the moment. His meeting with the university president wasn't for another half hour, but he didn't feel like checking into the hotel yet. If he'd had his way, he wouldn't be staying in a hotel here, he'd just present the endowment and then leave. But he and the Professor counted as major celebrities for this little town, and a big day was ahead of him tomorrow. Tom sighed. At least he could probably use all the official fooforaw as an excuse to avoid spending too much time with his mother or cousins, who were now too old to feel like relations. Not that he'd ever really felt like one of them. * * * * [June 8, 2025 - Stanford University, California Sector] "Thank you for making the time to see me before heading off to the Moslem Confederation," Peregryn said, bowing slightly to the slender old linguist. "I know how difficult it can be to get permission to enter those nations for research purposes, and how tight your schedule must be right now." Professor Pi waved a hand dismissively and grinned. "Ur will still be there tomorrow, assuming your friends have no plans to invade the Confederation," he chuckled. "And it seems a simple enough task you ask of me. May I see the medallion?" Peregryn nodded and extracted a smooth steel safe-deposit box from the large satchel he had slung over his shoulder. Placing his thumb on the ident square, he opened it to reveal a necklace with broken chain. "This looks brand new," the archaeolinguist frowned. "It has a glamour upon it that resists the effects of time," Peregryn explained. "Although, for all I know, it *is* relatively new. Many ancient artifacts of new vintage appeared in the late 90s, after all." "Of course," Pi nodded. "It's part of why I switched from living languages to dead...a number of tongues were coming back to life during the first half of my interrupted graduate studies. Oho, it's in Linear A!" he reached for the medallion, then paused. "Is it safe to touch?" Peregryn nodded. "It doesn't seem to be very powerfully magical, and lacks any sort of obvious defensive charms. I...got the impression that the Professor knew enough about it to be certain it wasn't too harmful." There was a short pause. "Linear A? Wasn't that the Minoan script that was never translated?" Professor Pi chuckled as he turned to his computer and started rummaging through files. "Officially, it wasn't. In 1975, a powerful postcognitive named Robert Mayor managed to view enough of ancient Crete to create a rough translation key. However, 'serious' linguistics journals wouldn't touch any work done using postcognition thanks to some notable hoaxes in the 1960s, so he ended up publishing it in Physical Review M as a Violation Physics paper. Not many physicists are interested in dead languages, and not many linguists even know Physical Review exists, so it languished for decades. A few years ago, though, your Professor stumbled across the article while doing some 'light reading' of Physical Review M, and emailed a few linguists who had done work on revived languages in the 1990s. I was the first to reply, and he sent me a scan of...yes, definitely a scan of part of this medallion. Just a fragment with no real meaning on its own, but enough that I could confirm for him that it was Linear A, and that I could probably translate it if I spent enough time with Mayor's key." "How long will it take you to translate, then?" Peregryn frowned. "Not long," Pi assured him. "This was a few years ago, and I found myself tinkering with Mayor's paper on and off since then. I can't translate it by sight, of course, but...ah, here. I have a reasonably good translation key and dictionary here," he turned the screen so Peregryn could see it. For a few minutes, he silently compared the medallion's inscription to his notes, jotting down words and phrases occasionally. "Done," he sat back in the swivel chair. "The printer's spitting out a literal translation," he gestured at the device, "but here's the general idea. It's a prayer to the bull god...Minoans worshipped bulls, you know. It's where the legend of the Minotaur comes from. And...take this with a grain of salt, mind you...the phrasing of this particular prayer suggests to me that the medallion was meant to be given directly to the bull god as an offering." Peregryn nodded, then scrutinized the literal translation. "Thank you very much, Professor. This should help me understand the artifact, and maybe divine the reason it was given to me." * * * * [June 8, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector] "I just dunno, George," Scott slumped, his face going into his hands as he leaned forward onto the table separating the two. "I've been chewing on this for days now, and I can't figure out what I'm going to do about Coulter." "aaaa iiiimmmm oooo oii?" George replied. Now that he knew how to make sound in the first place, he was making rapid progress. But he still sounded like a really bad speech synth from the 1970s, more like a guitar "talking" than a person. Still, Scott was able to make out the words enough to level a baleful glare at his photonic friend. "Right. Ask him to join the Academy. I just arrange a meet and tell him, 'Hi, Challenger. There's an opening at the Academy for a CSV member, would you be interested in applying?' I doubt that'd go over too well. And how am I supposed to convince him it's a good idea when I'm convinced it's a *bad* idea? I'm not that kind of salesman, George." George hummed some more, but it was atonal. His features blurred, and he gave up on the effort. Instead, he held up a hand and increased the albedo of his solid-light body until the fingers shone like polished green metal. "What?" Scott quirked an eyebrow. "Mirror? Oh...you mean that mirror thing Radner was going on about when he recruited Coulter?" George nodded. "How does that apply? Sure, villain groups with an ethical member tend to be more stable, but hero groups get along fine without unethical members. Usually better, I'd say. For instance, Barnstormer only made trouble for the original ASH back in the early 90s when she joined as a mole for that gang of goofball baddies. Although her light control powers were helpful when Doublecross surfaced, I suppose...but that had nothing to do with her criminal origins. Do we really want someone at the Academy providing them with a bad example?" George reached over and turned on a computer screen embedded in the tabletop. He did that a lot, he could type more quickly than he could make himself understood speaking. "The Academy kids already have plenty of bad examples," he typed. "Khadam in the news, some of them come from paragangs, that sort of thing. Coulter is a...mixed example. :) He's played both sides of the fence. He was a paraganger, then a reporter, then a supervillain, he's seen a lot and been forced to make a lot of choices. Ethical choices. He's stood by his friends through it all, tried to find solutions that would keep things from spiraling out of control. Even if some of those choices were on the darker side of gray." "I guess. You're saying that Coulter could help the kids figure out that it's not all shiny four-color stuff out there, without having to feed 'em into the sort of meat grinder we got put through as Grads. Maybe. I'm not sure that sort of lesson can be learned in a lecture hall, or if it's worth the risk of letting him inside the Academy's walls. I'll have to think about it some more." George nodded, then typed, "So, as long as you're uncomfortable and uncertain already, how're things between you and Julie?" He grinned lopsidedly at Scott, his face almost managing something like its original color, but with a vaguely disturbing green tint to it. Scott sighed, feeling a disturbing green tint come over his own face. "Could be worse. Now that we've had a few months to get over the shock, we're pretty sure that while you may have sparked things by being inside my head, what came after was just the two of us. Although I'm still creeped out when I think about you along as a passenger when I was in bed with your sister." "YOU'RE creeped out? XP" George typed an archaic "emoticon" signifying eyes squeezed shut and tongue stuck out. "I'm glad I only have a few vague memories of that time, to be honest. My awareness seems to have been tied into how hard you were pushing your powers, and you mostly restrained them around Julie, thankfully. I do have some memories of horrible humming, which was probably when Mr. Strings tried to take you over in Montreal. Not enough room for three in that tiny skull of yours. ;)" "Do you remember anything about how you got into my head, yet?" George shook his head ruefully. "Still just a few bits and pieces, like a dream that seemed so clear right after I woke up, but faded almost immediately. Maybe I lost some stuff in the move from Doublecross to this Squad-Bod. But I think somebody out there has his eye on me...I didn't just happen to wind up stuck in your body, I was *put* there. :/ And I don't think it's entirely luck that the boost to your powers has stuck around, either. Someone has plans for both of us." "Well, I need to go think about the plans the Professor has for me some more. You can go back to your speaky-practice now and give your hands a rest." The one sound George had managed to reproduce faithfully by this point was the "raspberry", and he favored Scott's departing back with one. * * * * [June 8, 2025 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin Sector] Solar Max felt around the edges of the warp, formed several dozen meters above the oddly-named Kinnickinnic Avenue. It was the third warp on the list, and the Professor's notes indicated it had been used to snare a spread of minimissiles aimed at a nearby school building as part of a diversion. Time folded back on itself inside the warp, so the missiles would still be there, ready to explode as soon as they hit something. Or they might have exploded on hitting each other...then unexploded, re-exploded and so forth to infinity. It was a little piece of 1992 all tied up with a bow. But the odds were too good that they'd come out of the warp "live" to be sloppy about this. And it had to be done, there was always the chance that an Anchor would wander too close to the bubble and it would come undone spontaneously. Less chance than there used to be, but...he decided not to keep thinking along that path. Breaker and Agent Teller of STRAFE waited below to help clean up the mess if the swarm of missiles came screaming out the moment Solar Max opened up the warp bubble. Breaker could simply catch them by main force, while Teller could guide them into each other or at least nudge them out over the lake. It had taken a little wrangling to get Teller along on this, but given the nature of the threat, he'd felt it was a good idea to go to the extra effort. And, as an extra safety measure, there was a police cordon out to half a kilometer to keep everyone away. "Ready?" Solar Max asked over the comlink. "Yes," Breaker replied. "Born that way," Teller added. Solar Max reached into the warp and *pulled*. Suddenly, space everted and vomited up its deadly cargo. As he'd hoped, the way he'd turned spacetime inside out left most of the missiles crashing into each other immediately. He was buffeted by the blasts, but the armor he wore was more than up to the task. A few strays got loose, but were quickly grabbed in golden auras or tweaked into each other. A quick wave of gravitic tides and the remaining missiles shuddered and then detonated, away from anything that could be hurt. Police manning the cordon visibly relaxed, and the small crowd that had gathered around cheered at the impromptu fireworks display. "Three down, five more to go," Solar Max told his onboard computer. Then he reviewed the rest of the list. Each of the first seven were progressively more hazardous, but there were no notes about the last one's contents. Maybe it was harmless, and therefore a low priority once JakZak had gotten the hang of popping these bubbles? Something nagged at JakZak, though. It couldn't be that simple. If had really been an easy one, it should have been at the top of the list along with the other "practice" bubble he'd popped a few days ago. And while it was the most recent of the warps, created shortly before the original Solar Max left on his trip across the galaxy, all the warps were created within a span of five years. If that sort of difference was important, the Professor would have made sure to clean up his mess before this time. Not to mention, the bubbles JakZak had popped felt pretty sturdy, time didn't seem to weaken them on its own. No, there was something special about that last one. Something important enough to make sure JakZak didn't try to open it without as much practice as was possible. So...why not say what it was? The list itself had been generated weeks before the Professor's death, and he wasn't sloppy enough to leave something like that unfinished, for the last minute. Unless he *couldn't* put words to screen about it? The sound of the cheering crowd grew distant as JakZak realized that, no matter the details, this simple cleanup job was definitely not simple. Time to have a little chat with Papa Henderson.... ============================================================================= Next Issue: "Unfinished Business 2: Bull Market" reveals some of the secrets of the Professor's Last Will And Testament, with a look at those bygone days of the mid-90s! ============================================================================= Author's Notes: Yes, I killed myself off. Sorta. The original Solar Max character was conceived as a version of myself 7 years older, so he could have finished a PhD by 1989 (the time the original ASH campaign got off the ground). My middle name is John, but back when I was taking Confirmation Class I picked a "Confirmation Name" of Isaac, so I decided to give this older self that as a regular middle name. Over the years, I became increasingly uncomfortable with having a self-insertion character, even one in a supporting role, so when I was looking for something that could follow #41's theme of growing into the role of command, it struck me that eliminating the Professor would stone two birds with one kill. (Mind you, Tony then asked for a self- insertion in the form of Professor Pi, but that's *his* problem now.) In the standard Hero Story, the mentor usually dies at some point. Sometimes too early, forcing the young hero to fend for himself in a cruel world. Sometimes rather late, as a sort of capstone to the hero's ascension to adulthood. But the mentor rarely sticks around, and now Solar Max II is on his own. But, as Shakespeare once said through Marc Antony (IIRC), the evil men do lives on after them, while the good is oft interred with their bones. JakZak now gets to deal with his mentor's...Unfinished Business. Finally, a disclaimer. I haven't talked to the real Tom Dodson since 1992. Lightfoot is only loosely based on him, however...not only would Lightfoot's life diverged pretty strongly after getting powers, I also don't know much about Tom's life before age 12 or so, and will be making it up like I would for any other character. If I happen to get the details right, it's purely coincidence. ============================================================================ 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/?yguid=8894028 ! ============================================================================