[The cover shows a titanic lizard-man struggling in the grip of a bone dragon of some sort, on the shores of a burning lake.] ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT An ASHistory Series --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SUPER STORIES #29 - Leftovers Featuring Iguana Jack copyright 2012 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ The turn of the Century was a tumultous time around the Coherent Comics offices. The editors had made the bold decision (later imitated by another superhero universe beginning with the letter "W") to shake things up by, well, killing off all the superhumans and taking Earth to the brink of destruction. While most stories told around that time focused on bold normals trying to make the best of a world suddenly bereft of most high technology or magic...not everyone quite got the memo. A few stories sneaked through here and there that didn't really fit the tone Coherent editorial was trying to set, and for the most part they were later retconned as being alternate Earths or (in several cases) elaborate hoaxes perpetrated using Pranir tech. Eventually, it was decided that the market really couldn't support more than a couple of titles with that tone, and most of Coherent's output jumped ahead to tell stories about the next generation of superhumans in the 2020s, leaving only "From the ASHes" as an anthology series to continue telling "present day" stories, and it petered out a few years later. The story you are about to read, however, fell into a bizarre shadowland between those that fit the intended tone and those that were so bizarre they had to be explained away. It didn't quite break any of the rules, but it bent them so badly that no one would approve any further stories using the characters from it. And so it was swept under the rug and forgotten for over a decade. It is with no small trepidation we present the backup story from October 2000's From The ASHes #24, "Leftovers". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Oh, hell," Kate spat as she looked out the window of the worn-looking but otherwise clean lakefront diner. "I thought that kind of thing went away when the gods pulled up stakes." Scout Unit SU-88424, locally known as "Iguana Jack" because of his scaly hide and really faint resemblance to a humanoid version of a Terran reptile, followed his companion's gaze. "I presume you do not refer to the young men with their pants down nearly around their knees, although that fashion trend is indeed deplorable and is clearly impeding their ability to flee." "No, Sherlock, I mean the dragon-looking thing they're fleeing from!" Kate pointed. The other patrons of the diner had already started diving under tables or heading for the exits. Cleveland had never been a hotspot for superhuman activity except in the last weeks before everything went to hell, so people didn't have "superhero fight reflexes." Still, running was usually a good idea. They'd even done it in response to Jack himself the first few times, until the neighborhood had gotten used to having an alien refugee around. "Ah, that. Sorry, Kate, I'm still new to this planet, and I did arrive at an unsual point in your history...not always obvious what's normal around here and what's not," Jack deadpanned. The fact that his facial structure made it hard for mammals to pick up on his expressions in the first place made deadpan humor trivially easy for the gene-altered alien...well, once he'd gotten the hang of humor in general. "Funny man. Lizard. Whatever," Kate shook her head. "Best guess, this is something created by one of the flash in the pan mages a couple years ago, it got loose from the remains of his cliche'd secret base, and is running amok." "The last part seems a solid conclusion," Jack checked his pistols. Tsaran blasters of Santari make, they were the only part of his gear he'd kept after determining that his old masters were no longer among the living. And on the topic of not being alive, "That skeleton does not resemble any of those in the museum you took me to last month. For one thing, it has wings that, despite lack of any membranes, seem to be capable of keeping it aloft." "A dragon, they're not real...well, they're magic. Which means someone either found a dragon a few years ago and skinned it, or just made a dragon skeleton out of pure magic because he was a sicko with a thing for bad fantasy game art," Kate was clearing her own weapon, a decidedly mundane shotgun with underslung grenade launcher. The fact that the diner owner had no problems with her carrying that thing, much less with having Jack as a customer, went a long way towards explaining why the two frequented the place. It wasn't as if the food was particularly good...or so Kate said. Jack was engineered to eat whatever would keep him going, in whatever quantities were available. Part of being a Scout Unit. "I propose we return it to mythical status," Jack stood and shed his overcoat. It helped keep the humans from being too uneasy around him, but he lacked the semi-mystical talent that the now-vanished superheroes seemed to have that let one fight effectively in such a garment. "Or, failing that, at least occupy it long enough for the legitimate authorities to arrive and deal with it." Kate snorted, leaving on her own jacket. She lacked Jack's enhanced thermal regulation systems, and the late autumn chill would degrade her combat effectiveness more than the coat would. "Yeah, the authorities. So we'll only have to keep it occupied for what, a month?" The odd couple, a disgraced former FBI agent and an abandoned alien bioweapon, emerged from the diner and sprinted in the general direction of the rampaging bone dragon, then split and circled around to flank it. It was old habit and training, not something they consciously thought might actually help in this particular case. Without exchanging further words, they both opened fire on the monster. Jack set his Tsaran pistols on the wide beam aperture, and Kate was using buckshot. Their shots tore away pieces of the creature in showers of bone fragments, and it reeled back for a moment. "The bones seem...less than solid!" Jack shouted across the street. Most of what he had destroyed as simply vaporized, but fragments of bone from Kate's shot had landed nearby. He picked one up. "This is...a chicken bone?" he quirked an eyebrow in an expression he had practiced extensively. Then the bone was jerked from his hand by an unseen force and flew back into place on the monster. "Okay, that's twisted!" Kate sprinted over by his side. "Someone made an undead dragon skeleton out of chicken bones? REALLY?!" To emphasize the point, she pumped the action on her shotgun and blew another section of the beast into fragments, but the fragments didn't even hit the ground this time before they flew back into place. "I don't suppose you have a large bomb on your person?" Jack asked. "No, I left the pocket nuke at home today," she snarled. Jack fired repeatedly, aiming for joints in the hope that he could disperse the creature by destroying important locations, but it soon became obvious that whatever vanished mage created this, it was a holistic spell. As long as most of it remained intact, it would hold together no matter what minor damage the two could inflict. "Gah," Kate spat. "It's like reviewing a really bad but really popular show...no matter how many holes I put in it, it keeps going!" The bone dragon had decided it could ignore them, and had moved on to destroying the waterfront buildings. Either its creator had been intent on demolition, or his instructions had gotten muddled over time and neglect. If all of the buildings had been empty, Jack would have been inclined to let it go and see if it wandered off on its own. But Cleveland still had over half of its pre-crash population, and this was one of the more heavily-populated parts of the city core. Too many would die if he did nothing. "Kate, I think I can stop this creature, but it will require saying goodbye to you. Perhaps forever," Jack held his pistols out to her, butt first. "I will not need these to do what I am planning." "Wait...what? Did those sicko snake-owls engineer a bomb into you or something?" "In a manner of speaking, yes. All Scout Units need a way to wreak havoc if our reconnaissance determines that a target must be destroyed immediately. The specific means depends on the nature of the engineered entity, and the cybernetic varieties DO have bombs. But my breed is different." Just then, the dragon collapsed the front of the diner, and flames erupted from the back as the fryers were tipped over onto something flammable. Jack hoped everyone had fled from under the tables by that point. "Ah, good. They will not miss the contents of the larder, then," he nodded. "Once the dragon moves on, I will engage my Omega Mode." "What...does Omega Mode involve?" Kate looked far more concerned than Jack could remember seeing her. Could it be she saw him as more than a fellow warrior? Odd. Intellectually, he could grasp concepts like love, but he had no context for knowing if he even could experience it, let alone when he did. But it didn't really matter, did it? He had decided his duty was to protect this part of Cleveland, and he was quite literally a creature of duty. "Eating, at first. Quite a lot. The base modifications of Omega Mode won't be enough, I need to add mass at a reckless rate, which will allow me to grow into a beast that can match the dragon blow for blow. But it is not magic, and even if I survive the transformation, I do not know if I can ever return to my current form...or my current mind. The Omega Mode is meant to die in the process of doing as much damage as possible, none has used it and lived long enough to see if it can be reversed. Kate," he held her shoulders and stared unblinkingly into her eyes. "I will not be the same person once I have completed the transformation. I will try very hard to limit my rampage to just the dragon, but I may become as mindless as it seems to be. If that happens, I want you to be the one to kill me." "Jack...." "Right here," he pointed to a spot behind his ear hole, "on either side. A deliberate weak spot, in case one of us enters the Omega Mode accidentally. A tight beam shot should stun me, and then a more careful shot at the same spot will likely be enough to kill me. You're the only one I trust to know this." "I...understand," Kate nodded, clearly reluctant. Two years ago, Jack would have assumed she was simply unwilling to throw away a powerful ally like him. Very few remained on the planet who exceeded natural human potential, and while Jack wasn't the most potent of them, he was certainly the toughest customer in Cleveland. But now he knew it was more than pragmatism that caused that catch in her voice. And he felt something akin to it himself, fear and regret for what must happen. "Watch the beast, if it looks to be moving too far away, lure it back. Omega Mode will leave very little of my higher thinking intact," Jack warned. "I will attack the most dangerous thing in the vicinity, but I will not look too far afield." With no further conversation, Iguana Jack dashed towards the wreckage of the diner, triggering the hormonal changes within himself that would lead to Omega Mode. On their own, these changes would merely rearrange his existing form within limits imposed by natural law, perhaps tripling his strength and making him recklessly savage. But any organic matter he could consume in the next few minutes would be quickly converted, adding to his mass and power. With a restaurant's entire larder to work with? It would be GLORIOUS. Kate was starting to get worried. Once she'd figured out the controls on Jack's alien blasters, she'd started to do enough damage to get the chicken-bone dragon's attention, but she had to stop and run every so often lest she get too MUCH of that attention. Hit and run, shoot and scoot. But she was only human, and eventually she'd screw up and end up ripped apart by the thing's claws. Would it try to eat her? Merge her bones with its own? So far it hadn't been eating any civilians, merely concentrating on doing property damage. On the other hand, she was pretty sure it was a little smaller than when it had first appeared, and if it lost enough mass would it start trying to replentish what had been shot away? And meanwhile, where...was.... "Oh." The remains of the diner's side wall had sloughed away a moment ago. What emerged could match the dragon in size, and easily outmassed it. It looked like Jack only to the extent it was vaguely reptilian...and had those spots behind the ear holes. "SMASH YOU!" a deep and distorted parody of Jack's voice boomed as the Omega Mode lumbered towards the bone dragon. It was the awkward gait of an elephant or a dinosaur out of the prehistoric past, the cruel realities of biology and gravity robbing him of the inhuman speed and agility that had been his hallmark. The bone dragon took notice of Jack. Whatever its magical "programming" was, two story tall lizardmen definitely triggered something in it. Mystic and low-mass to begin with, the bone dragon was far quicker, but it was also rather stupid, and simply crashed into the Omega Mode and started clawing at his flesh. And while Jack seemed to have exhausted his vocabulary already, his designers and obviously put a premium on retention of combat- related smarts. Blood oozed from several wounds, but the Omega Mode was obviously meant to be hard to kill quickly. Bone fragments flew in all directions as Jack tore into his foe. Within seconds, the dragon was more cloud than beast, as bones flew back into position almost as quickly as they were ripped away. "Let's see if I can't speed this up," Kate snarled, setting both pistols on their widest setting. Aiming carefully away from Jack, more for her own safety than his, she vaporized bits of bone and rotten meat with the cyan flares of the alien weapons. On their own, the guns hadn't been able to exceed the construct's self-repair abilities, but it was clearly tipping the balance now. The wings and tail vanished, the spell giving up on cosmetics in a desperate attempt to retain the core form. Then the Omega Mode bit down hard on the head of the necromantic menace, swallowing shattered bones and throwing them into the horrific biofurnace churning away in his belly. The spell shattered in a burst of nauseating anti-life energy. Whoever had cast it, for whatever reason, it no longer mattered. Just one more leftover from an age of wonders destroyed. It had been a monster rather than a thing of beauty, but its loss still diminished the world a tiny bit. "KAAAAATE...." She blinked, shaking off the mystical miasma. "Jack? Are you still in there?" "HARD. SO HARD NOT TO...KILL YOU." "Do you need me to...?" she started to lift the guns. Jack shook his massive head slowly. "PUSHED. TOO FAR. TOO BIG. TOO TOUGH. NOT WORK. I GO." With that, the lumbering beast walked into the lake, bits of the surface still on fire from debris and spilled fuel. There was no dramatic orchestral soundtrack to accompany his slow descent into the water, just the distant sirens of emergency vehicles responding too late to save her friend from his own biology. Kate kept watching the lake until long after the last ripples had vanished into the normal wind-driven waves. "See you later," she said, then vanished into the gathering crowd. ============================================================================== Author's Notes: Written for High Concept Challenge #31, "Big Monster Battle." This is actually very loosely inspired by an adventure I ran in my Modern Knights RPG back when I was at Michigan State, playtesting some updated rules prior to its ebook release. In one of the early sessions, they faced Bob the Necromancer, who (lacking the resources to raid a museum for dinosaur bones) had constructed a skeleton dragon out of chicken bones. One of the heroes, Jhet Komodo, was the inspiration for Iguana Jack, although Jhet never grew to several stories tall, and he had no ties to Khadam or the Pranir. The campaign was set in Detroit, using the Modern Knights setting, so it had a lot of elements in common with ASH (like Doc Droid, Khadam, and the like), but it had significant differences as a result of letting the players help define the setting. And, of course, since it took place in 2001 it lacked the 1998 cataclysm. I had thought of adapting the chickenbone dragon pretty soon after the announcement of the challenge, but it took me a while to decide how I wanted to run the actual story. 1998 wild weirdness? 2026 Lady Sable leftovers? Work it into the LNH somehow? Eventually I settled on making it part of the Coherent Super Stories conceit of being comics from the world in which ASH properties had been part of the media landscape for generations. Previously, I'd mostly worked from the premise that the fictional Coherent Comics just jumped ahead to 2022 stories after blowing things up in 1998, but who's to say they didn't try something like the Wildstorm Universe first, a few years of post-apocalyptic stories with few or no superheroes? Okay, it's possible I established otherwise at some point, but I'm not going to worry too much about that. ============================================================================ 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). ============================================================================