Joe Mikolay's Blog, page 7

A Cannibal’s Last Supper

To kick things off with a bit of a controversial thesis: I believe that NBC’s Hannibal is a show whose quality that I place on par with contemporaries Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

It’s a very different kind of show than those others, but I find it equally enjoyable. Its lush and sumptuous art design and direction make it stand out from anything else on television. As does its sometimes meditative pacing, which can be a bit of a double edged sword.

As Hannibal concluded its run this past Saturday (which was on NBC’s accord rather than showrunner Bryan Fuller’s)  I thought it was a good time to view its greatness and frustrations as a whole.

Major spoilers ahead, so consider yourself warned.

Season one revolved around Hannibal Lecter  and Will Graham (fantastically brought to life by & ) as the co-lead characters, despite only one of them having his name in the title. Graham had been portrayed without much fanfare in the 1986’s Manhunter and 2002’s Red Dragon, so Dancy had significantly less pressure on him. Lecter had been portrayed by , Gaspard Ulliel and (most famously by a wide margin) .

Hopkins won an academy award for playing the role in Silence of the Lambs before revisiting it to diminishing returns in Hannibal (the movie, not to be confused with this TV show) and Red Dragon. SotL made the character an icon, but I will fiercely defend my opinion that Mikkelson plays the character better than he has been in anything other than SotL. That includes Hopkins’ two subsequent portrayals.

But I don’t want to venture too far off course here, and so I’ll bring it back to the show itself. Jack Crawford (a convincingly authoritative ) and Alana Bloom (, given maybe the most active character arc through the series) become more important as the show moves through seasons one. Each episode had a killer of the week that Will is brought in to profile and help the FBI catch, which sounds fairly rote, until you consider exactly how it’s done.

Will steps into the mind of the the killer, which is illustrated in dream-like sequences where the crimes are recreated with Will as the killer. The actual killer is generally revealed halfway through the episodes, so that the show can deal with its true interest: what makes these people do the horrible things they do. It’s this difference that allows Hannibal to surpass anything like the Law & Order or CSI shows.

The real neat trick is how showrunner Bryan Fuller and his team make ghastly things appear beautifully gothic. Dead bodies are positioned like magnificent sculptures, blood flows in a manner that seems to give it a mind of its own.  It’s pretty similar to something you might see from a film, almost like the visions of a dark fairy tale.

Hannibal spends most of this first season assisting the FBI in the cases that they bring Will in on, primarily due to his fascination with the impossibly empathetic Graham. He also serves as Will’s psychiatrist, all the while continuing his killings and cooking as the Chesapeake Ripper. At this point it’s worth noting that they always make the meals prepared from human parts look so delicious that it has been widely considered Food Porn.

The developing bond between Hannibal and Will is really the driving force, as they are two sides of the same coin, and Hannibal believes he can flip Will.As things progress, Hannibal allows Will’s encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain do to infection) to go untreated, which takes a very heavy toll on Will’s mental and physical states.

Eventually, Will works through it enough to realize what Hannibal really is, and he tries to stop him once and for all. However, by that point, Hannibal has already framed Will for his own crimes as The Ripper and, in an ironic twist of fate, Jack Crawford stops Will from killing Hannibal. Season one ends with Will in a very familiar looking cell as Hannibal visits him. A full reversal of how most people were introduced to Lecter in the earlier films.

Season two is broken into two halves. The first half involves Will, fully recovered from his illness and sharp enough to take on Hannibal with equal footing. Unfortunately, he’s stuck in a mental hospital with all his allies thinking he’s a cannibalistic serial killer. This doesn’t stop Will from digging deep into his mental reserves and trying to figure out how best to bring Hannibal down.

Will manages to prove his innocence and, once freed, enlists Jack to help him finally get Hannibal. So the second half of season two has Will trying to beat Hannibal at his own game. He uses Hannibal’s curiosity and twisted affection for him to lure him into a trap. The whole game makes for fantastic television, but the finish is where the show makes its first fumble.

Season two ends with every major character, other than Hannibal, lying in a pool of their own blood from a trap set by Will and Jack gone awry as Lecter strolls out of his home. This was a mistake – not only because they didn’t have a season three renewal at the time, but because they missed out on a great opportunity to finally bring about some catharisis for the viewers after two years of Hannibal putting Will through the ringer.

It should have ended the exact same way, but with one major change. Will should have retrieved his gun, and emptied it into Hannibal as he tried to leave. The last shot of the season could have been Will and Hannibal lying across from each other with their blood mingling between them as they watch one another through dying eyes. It would have been a greatly poetic shot for a show that rarely passed on the chance to break out some gory poetry.

Which brings us to season three, the current and final season. Fuller had said that he wanted to do the Red Dragon story for season three, which was previously adapted to varying degrees of success the the 2002 movie of the same name and the 1986 movie Manhunter. For the second half of the season, which ran its series finale just last night, they did a fantastic job of running with that story. Since they kicked it off, the show has been every bit as good as it was prior to the season two finale gaffe.

The problem was with the first half of season three. The pacing of the first seven episodes were meditative, even by this show’s standards. In fact, the first four episodes were spent catching up with all the primary characters some months after the bloodbath at Hannibal’s home.

This would be perfectly fine for a show on Netflix or Amazon, where all episodes were released at once and you can blow through the first couple episodes to reach the point where things really ramp up. But asking your viewers to spend a full month getting back up to speed is asking a lot. Which is probably why they ended up hemorrhaging viewers, and got the cancellation notice passed down at this point.

The story they were telling was perfectly serviceable. It shows Will, Jack and Alana all tracking down Hannibal to Florence, a chance to roll out some gorgeous scenery, using their own methods. In episode five, they ramp up the momentum again by giving Jack his long awaited rematch with Hannibal, which is actually an joyously one sided beating laid down on Lecter. The next logical step was to have Will finally find what was left of Hannibal after the fight with Jack and lock him into that all-too-familiar cell.

But they didn’t give us that. After three years of build up, they didn’t give us the showdown between Will and Hannibal that many viewers were craving. The most frustrating thing about it was that there were two perfect setups in as many episodes for such a clash: one in Florence, and the other at the estate of Mason Verger (originally introduced in the SotL sequel Hannibal, but brought in earlier for the shows purposes).  Instead, Hannibal carries a wounded Will Graham home, and then turns himself in.

The next episode jumps three years ahead to kick off the Red Dragon story. Running it over the course of six episodes, rather than a two hour movie, gave the story more room to breath than it previously had been given. These episodes got the show back on track, and may have even been better than any previous story arcs. Going with one killer, Francis Dolarhyde A.K.A the Tooth Fairy A.K.A the Red Dragon (played with the conflicted ferocity by ), for the home stretch allowed the show to open up avenues of greater character depth than it had before.

So, the driving narrative of season three was essentially a three way courtship of sorts between Graham, Lecter and Dolarhyde. The season, and series, wrapped up with another of planned trap going sideways, as Dolarhyde helped Hannibal escape during what was meant to be a fake escape that would lure Dolarhyde in with Hannibal as bait. Hannibal and Will ended up at the former’s secret cliffside home as they awaited Dolarhyde’s arrival.

In the end, Will and Hannibal had to team up to kill Dolarhyde – even though they were both motivated to slay the Dragon for different reasons. Hannibal always wanted to share a kill with Will, while Will wanted to stop Dolarhyde before he massacred another family. The two shared a blood soaked embrace – the blood being their own, as well as Dolarhyde’s – on the edge of the cliff before Will tightened his grip on Hannibal and pushed them both off the into the abyss below.

Graham’s reasons for taking this course of action are complex enough to deserve their own post, but part of the motivation was that he knew this might be the best chance he’d have to finally stop Hannibal. He’d unsuccessfully used himself to bait Lecter in season two, but this time Hannibal steps right into the trap. The trap, unfortunately, was Will himself. This is not exactly the direction that I would have gone in but, after painting themselves into the corner with the season two finale and the season three mid-season finale, it was about as fitting an ended as possible.

The biggest overall misstep that I feel they made was making the subtext of the twisted bond between Will and Hannibal into actual text. That ended up driving the show into a place far less accessible for most viewers. It’s  always admirable when creative people do something different, but they still need to leave enough common ground to fit more than a handful of Fannibals.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a great show and I’d highly recommend watching the entire run to anyone and everyone. But the rough patch that ran from the end of season two through the first half of season three has dampened my affection a little bit.

I will no doubt remember the show very fondly, and revisit it again in the future. Mostly, though, I hope to find something to fill this vacancy in my complex, prestigious television viewing slot. Much like Hannibal himself, I’ve developed an appetite for something a bit hard to come by through traditional means. Although, since I’ve never seen anything quite like it on TV before, I’m not sure I’ll see something like it again.

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Superheroes Now Super Available

Hey All,

Figured I ought to let anyone who drops by know that DarkLight Redemption is now available to purchase in paperback & on Kindle.

You can also borrow it from you local cyber library if you have a Kindle Unlimited Membership, or take a moment to enter the Goodreads Giveaway contest!

The post Superheroes Now Super Available appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Post-Human Universe: Origins

I posted a blog on the inspirations for the titular character of DarkLight Redemption a few days ago, so today I’ll be discussing a bit about the origins of the Post-Human Universe as a whole.

I love comics and have for most of my life, which is why I-  like many geeks – often daydreamed about writing the adventures of Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Captain America, X-Men, Justice League and all the usual suspects. Also, like most people, I didn’t exactly have the DC or Marvel people knocking down my front door asking me to write for them. So I ultimately had to create my own sandbox to play in.

The Post-Human Universe is called so because, while the Post-Humans are at the center of it,  the story expands beyond just the Earth. Post-Humans are, simply put, people who have gained extraordinary powers. However, in DarkLight Redemption, I reference aliens from other worlds and even other dimensions. The Universe title is also a tip of the cap to the similarly named Marvel Universe and DC Universe.

As far as the story mechanisms goes, most comic stories are told from the first person perspectives of the title characters. Which is why I wrote DarkLight Redemption from that perspective, and intend to write my future Post-Human novels from it as well. They may not always be narrated by DarkLight himself, but they will all be told in the same manner. Another advantage of the first person narrative is that it plunges you directly into the world around that character with an immediacy that pulls the reader right in.

Tying the reader to a single character is also a good way to avoid several dozen, or hundred, pages of exposition. That’s especially useful here, since this story kicks in twenty years or so after the universe has already been changed in the Post-Human era.  DarkLight himself is also a character who has spent years in a world that may otherwise seem strange to the reader, and so he’s a good guide for the journey.

I pulled some general story and tonal pointers from sources ranging all the way from Watchmen to The Venture Bros. Both of the aforementioned stories, wildly different as they may be, take place in extraordinary worlds made more relatable by the narrators who have lived in them for a while. Watchmen references a history of its world in smaller chunks, which works for the sort of story I was telling as well. And Venture Bros has fun with a world of super people and, while I didn’t quite go as far into the realm of parody, I wanted to keep things light for the most part.

You may notice that this novel is referred to as Book One in the Post-Human Universe. Don’t be scared off by that. I have plans to write several more novels in this series, but each one will stand primarily on its own merits – much like my Venator Series. Believe me, you won’t be waiting years for a conclusion to any of these stories.

If you’ve read this, and you’re interested in checking out DarkLight Redemption, then you should visit Goodreads and enter for a chance to win a copy of the novel. Of course, you always have the option to just buy the novel and leave nothing to chance. Either way, I do hope you decide to give it a shot.

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DarkLight: Origins

Since I’ve just published my fourth novel, DarkLight Redemption, I feel like it’s a good time to discuss a bit about the origins and influences of DarkLight  the character.

I’m a big comic book geek, and have been for a very long time. I love the larger than life action, the colorful costumes, the different spins they put on archetypal characters, really the whole shebang. Perhaps my favorite story trope is the loyal sidekick learning alongside the great hero and being groomed to one day replace him. Something about the idea of such a legacy always appealed to me.

The most famous example of this is Batman & Robin…well, Robins. Dick Grayson was the first Robin, and generally came across as a lot less intense and more personable that Bruce Wayne’s Batman. And while the idea of following around a superhero and learning from him is cool, my greater interest was in the idea that one day Dick Grayson would need to replace Bruce Wayne under the cowl. The idea of such a responsibility is very daunting to Grayson, but he also understands that Bruce will die someday, and he will be the only one who is truly able to step up.

Of course, DC Comics was in no rush to make drastic changes to their most popular character, but they also felt it was a bit odd that Grayson never got any older. So the idea was cooked up to re-brand an older, more mature Dick Grayson as Nightwing. I was fascinated with the notion of allowing a major recurring character to evolve, which is probably why Nightwing became my favorite superhero. He was a guy in his late teens-early twenties who was trying to carve out his own place in the world, while still understanding his place in the line of succession of Batman.

Other former sidekicks got “called up” before Nightwing, most notably his best friend Wally West/Kid Flash who became The Flash once Barry Allen was killed off in Crisis On Infinite Earths. But, eventually, Grayson got his chance to assume the role of Batman in the Batman Reborn storyline after the death of Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis.

A few years before that, however, the character who replaced Grayson as Robin- only to be killed off by The Joker– returned. Jason Todd came back from the dead (the how and why is better left untouched in this limited space) and took up the name Red Hood. He was more of an anti-hero than straight up villain who used the type of lethal force more akin to Marvel’s Punisher than Batman.

Speaking of Marvel, they had a similar story arc at around the same time where former Captain America sidekick Bucky Barnes came back as The Winter Soldier. Both of these characters became major parts of the ongoing adventures of Batman and Captain America. In fact, much like Dick Grayson becoming Batman, Barnes ended up carrying the shield as Captain America after Steve Rogers was killed off.

This is where I’m going to begin to tie everything to DarkLight Redemption. Character-wise, DarkLight is most similar to Dick Grayson. I even pay homage to the period in his run as Robin/Nightwing, when he led the Teen Titan (later known just as Team Titans and then just Titans) which was the inspiration for Varsity Squad in my book. But DarkLight’s character arc resides somewhere between Grayson and Jason Todd/Bucky Barnes, in that he does reluctantly become a supervillain. I’ll leave the specifics of that to be discovered by those who read the book.

There are also, of course, real world inspirations for DarkLight. I believe anyone who had been through – or is currently in – their twenties can relate to the idea of feeling as though they are at a crossroads in their lives. There are many paths that can be followed, and every decision you make leads you farther down one or another.

The sense of trying to make one’s parents, or parental figures, proud while still trying to blaze your own trail is one that I’m sure also strikes a chord in many of us. The legacy they are faced with living up to is far more dramatic that the one that most of us in the real world face, but the idea is the same. Maybe that, more than anything else, is why drew me to the Nightwings, Red Hoods and Winter Soldiers of the comic book universe.

Speaking of universes, I’ll probably be writing something up regarding the influences for the Post-Human Universe at large soon as well. Until I do, feel free to get started on DarkLight Redemption today! You can purchase the book in paperback, or follow me on Wattpad where I’ll be posting chapters weekly.

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TeeVee Morghulis Or Why Game Of Thrones Must End

Valar Morghulis – All Men Must Die – and the same can be said about every show on TV. Moreover, for a TV show to be considered truly great, I believe that it needs to have a strong beginning, middle and (perhaps most importantly) end.

HBO more or less just announced that Game of Thrones will run at least eight seasons. It had previously been suggested that they would wrap after seven seasons while, at the same time, HBO execs have said they’d like to see the show run ten seasons. I was personally very happy with the idea of seven seasons, that way they could ride out the momentum they’ve built without losing steam in the same manner that George R.R. Martin has several times in his Song of Ice and Fire novels.

A last season needs to be settled on sooner rather than later, so that the showrunners can set the home stretch in motion and deliver a conclusion on the highest level possible. Seven made sense to me, as that would give them twenty more hours after this past season to get to where everyone already knows the story is going. That being an army of nightmare creatures breaking down The Wall and laying siege to Westeros.

Already in this past season’s episode “Hardhome” we got a good look at the terror waiting to be unleashed once winter eventually arrives. After seeing that episode, I know I’m not the only one who cared considerably less about all the other storylines that were still dealing with political positioning, and smaller personal skirmishes. Assuming there were only two seasons left, I was ready for season six to be the last time winter was coming, and season seven being the madness that ensues when winter finally arrives. All-in-all, I’m just not sure how you can wedge another ten episodes in between there.

Game of Thrones shares DNA with something like Breaking Bad in that it is all clearly leading somewhere. There were events set in motion early on that would lead to a inescapable reckoning. In Breaking Bad, Walter White was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then rose to power as Heisenberg . It was therefore inevitable that either the cancer, or the sins he committed as Heisenberg, would kill him. Everyone knew this was coming, which is why everyone was excited when an end game was promised for season five. If they had tried to milk two or three more seasons out of the story, it would have diminished the legacy of the show.

I can also reference Starz’ Spartacus. They did a great job of going full speed ahead through the entire run of the series. That run lasting only three chronological seasons and one prequel season. Spartacus is a well known legend, and you’d have a hard time finding someone who didn’t know how it ends. With that in mind, it was important to make the journey to that ending as effective as possible, without any sort of lag time. Spartacus is one of the very few TV series that I own on blu ray, so you can draw your own conclusion about how I feel they did.

Lost is a cautionary tale on the flip side of this. I loved that show, even though I remember a couple of the middle seasons being a mess. The problem was that they had promised answers, and waited too long to lock down a time of resolution. The same could be said for another show I loved that suffered from stretching itself too thin over too many episodes – Battlestar Galactica. This show was also had what was, essentially, a single large story arc that required an ending. Part of the reason why both of these shows have sat in my Netflix queue for years with the unfulfilled intention of rewatching them is because they are both at least twenty episodes longer than they should have been.

Episodic shows like Mad Men, or The Walking Dead, or The Flash can run as long as they please. This is because they don’t need to worry about momentum building up over multiple seasons. When done well, an episodic series will build up momentum and deliver a measure of resolution at the end of each individual season. Game of Thrones does not have that luxury. Any time spent not leading towards the finale feels extraneous. In fact, you can feel this sort of stalling in many episodes of Game of Thrones that fall in the middle of each season.

Maybe eight seasons of Game of Thrones will be fine. I certainly hope they manage to pull it off, as it’s probably my favorite continuing series on TV (fare thee well to the already canceled Hannibal). That being said, I know that my attention will still waiver during scenes that don’t push the story towards its inevitable climax. I’d like to revisit Game of Thrones again once it ends but, if they keep driving it until it’s running on fumes like Lost or BSG, then it will likely end up sitting on my HBOGO watchlist as unwatched as those other shows in my Netflix queu.

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DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Eight

So this will be the final chapter of DarkLight Redemption that I’ll be posting here on my blog. The full novel will be available very soon, and you can count on me posting here when that happens.

I will continue to post chapter on my Wattpad page until the novel is complete.

EIGHT

 

 

As much as it pains me to admit it, Elizabeth Stokes was right: The Elemental Executioners had done a job for Weston, and when they came to collect their fees and found out that he was gone, they turned on each other quicker than starving hyenas.

The way I see it, if a tight unit like that can turn on each other so quickly without Weston holding their leashes, then this is a much bigger problem than I’d anticipated.

Which means that I find myself reluctantly flying back to Weston Tower to admit that Elizabeth was right. I’m looking forward to that about as much as getting teeth pulled. As an added concern, I seem to have picked up a stalker.

I thanked Dominatrix, as is proper etiquette when one saves your life, and then took off on my way. I’d expected her to take that as a signal to be on her way, but once again, I was wrong.

I’ve flown around the city twice already, hoping to politely shake her, but she’s kept pace. She keeps asking questions, which I naturally ignore. But not getting a response to one question doesn’t seem to deter her from asking another. And another.

“So where does your power come from? Inner willpower? Radiation from the yellow sun?” She runs down a number of other possible origins before moving on. “I was born with mine. Which was pretty weird. But also pretty cool,” she continues, making me wonder why she didn’t name herself Chatterbox instead of Dominatrix.

“Look, Dominatrix,” I turn toward her, and float backwards for a bit, “I really do appreciate your help, but…”

“Olive!” she calls back excitedly.

“What?”

“My name is Olive,” she replies with a polite smile that looks wholly out of place when surrounded by black leather.

“Okay, Olive, first: You shouldn’t go around telling people your real name,” I say matter-of-factly, “Defeats the purpose of the mask. Secondly: I’m on my way to handle some important business. So I have to say goodbye,” I finish.

“What important business?” she asks, her excitement ramping up again.

“It doesn’t concern you.” I’m irritated, but her vibe is somewhat endearing.

“But I can help!” she offers. “Like I helped back there with the Element Guys!”

“Elemental Executioners,” I correct her. “How long have you been doing this again?”

“I’m still learning the business, and I know you’ve been in it for a while,” she states. “So I was hoping to…y’know…hang with you for a bit.”

I’m getting the sense that shaking her is a lost cause. So I try a different route.

“Okay, Dominatrix….”

“Olive!”

“Trust me, when you’re wearing the mask, you’ll want to stick with codenames,” I explain. “I’m going to see Elizabeth Stokes. She’s got a job that I need to handle.”

“That’s funny. When I asked her about you yesterday, she told me your contract expired.”

“This is a different kind of job,” I clarify. “So if you want to tag along, be my guest.”

She zooms closer to me and stops right at my side. I can make out her emerald green eyes through the mask now. I search the rest of her rounded, pale-ish face, and long straight black hair, but I’m still unable to put my finger on where I know her from.

We coast the rest of the way side by side and land a block away from Weston Tower. The heat’s on after the mess the Elemental Executioners made, so we use one of the secret underground entrances. It’s a converted length of sewer that leads directly to the  basement of Weston Tower.

As the elevator arrives at Weston’s office, the doors open to reveal a smug Elizabeth with an I-told- you-so look on her face.

I’d love nothing better than to flip her off and step right back into the elevator, but there’s too much at stake. So I lead Dominatrix to Elizabeth in a whipped-dog posture.

“Ah, dear Thomas, how lovely to see you again so soon,” Elizabeth purrs.

“Thomas?” Dominatrix jumps in. “Your name’s Thomas?”

“Do you mind?” I ask Elizabeth, ignoring Dominatrix. “I’m trying to maintain a secret identity here.”

“Or do you prefer to go by Tommy?” Dominatrix asks from behind me.

“Apologies,” Elizabeth says without the least bit of an apologetic tone. “After seeing you two on the news, I assumed that you were partnering up now.”

“We’re not,” I correct her and look at Dominatrix over my shoulder.

“Tom-Tom!” she exclaims with a smile.

“Just Tom. Aw hell,” I say, finally turning to face her while I pull off my mask. “Not like this is doing any good here.”

“Thank God!” Dominatrix gasps. “This thing gets soooo uncomfortable sometimes.”

She slides off her mask and pulls off what turns out to be a black wig. She shakes out her short, red hair, and I finally realize who she is.

“Hey, you’re the cute girl from yesterday!” I blurt out.

“You think I’m cute?” she smiles and bats her eyelashes at me.

“No!” I say with a little too much emphasis. “Well, yes, but that’s not…” I take a breath and turn back to Elizabeth. “You were right,” I tell her. The words leave a bad taste in my mouth. “We need to find Weston.”

“Of course I was right,” Elizabeth replies without missing a beat. “But you may have had a point as well. Perhaps it would be best if I do not send you out there. At least not alone.”

“Who’d you have in mind?” I ask. “And don’t say Blynk or Mimic because even I don’t trust them, so there’s no way my old buddies on the right side of the law are going to.”

She doesn’t say a word; she just looks past my shoulder at Dominatrix.

“Who? Me?” she asks, just before a tomboyish chuckle escapes from her. “Niiice!”

“No way,” I immediately argue. “She doesn’t have the experience.”

“She saved your life not fifteen minutes ago,” Elizabeth reminds me.

“The hero types aren’t gonna want to have anything to do with her,” I continue to argue my case.

“As you said, she is new,” Elizabeth reminds me. “It should be quite easy for you to convince them that she’s unsure of her place in the world. You know how those do-gooders adore having the chance to redeem one of us.”

“Oh, I could totally play that up!” Dominatrix interjects, furrowing her eyebrows, “Yeah, I’ve done some bad stuff, but sometimes I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror,” she says with an overdone frown.

Elizabeth and I look at her with a shared curiosity for a few seconds before she breaks into a smile.

“Pretty good, right?”

I tilt my head at her, and then turn back at Elizabeth.

“You will be doing most of the talking anyway,” Elizabeth tells me.

“Fine,” I surrender. “I just need to change first.”

“I get it,” Dominatrix says with a wink. “You’ve gotta stop by your secret lair, right?”

“Yeah,” I answer as the image of my unmade bed and stack of dirty dishes in the sink flash into my mind. “I suppose you could call it that. Meet me at the top of the Empire State Building in twenty minutes.”

“I like it,” Dominatrix nods and puts her wig and mask back on. “Dramatic! Sexy!”

“Convenient,” I add. “It’s the most recognizable building in the city, and I figure you’re new in town.”

“How’d you guess that?” Dominatrix asks as she straightens her wig.

“I know that you have no wish to team up with Blynk and Mimic,” Elizabeth says, before I can brag about my above-average powers of deduction. “But they would be a good place to start. They handled a few other recent jobs for Mr. Weston, so they may have a greater understanding of what he was working on.”

“You mean you don’t?” I ask with genuine surprise.

“Mr. Weston, like all powerful men, does keep his share of secrets,” she says with a bit of hurt in her voice. “Even from his most trusted confidants.”

“Sure,” I say as I pull my own mask back on, “We’ll let you know when we find something.”

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DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Seven

SEVEN

 

 

Okay, so I may have been exaggerating when I told Elizabeth Stokes that the world was better off without Weston. I’m no fool — I know he plays a big part in every aspect of human/Post-Human relations.

That being said, he’s still a really bad guy, and he’d have to be removed from the outside world sooner or later. Weston is a criminal, and he belongs in prison — and yes, I understand how hypocritical that may sound coming from the guy who hijacked a military convoy yesterday.

Truth is, my bigger concern is not him being gone — it’s that someone made him gone. Weston’s got contingency plans for his contingency plans, and he’s got an army of Post-Humans at his beck and call. So anyone who got to him is someone who needs to be feared.

However, that doesn’t change my position that I’m not the right person to go snooping around for him. Yes, it would be different if it were Charles or one of my old teammates with Varsity Squad who’d gone missing. Those are people that I’d be willing to put my life on the line for, even if they hate me these days.

But I’m sure as hell not strolling into every lion’s den I can find to figure out where the world’s most nefarious string-puller has vanished to.

Elizabeth’s worried about everything falling apart, but Rome didn’t collapse in a day. I’d say it’s a safe bet that things will get sorted out before panic engulfs the streets.

I’m about to hop on the subway and head home to make up for last night’s lost sleep when I hear it: crunching metal and shattering glass from about a block away.

I’m figuring that it may just be a car accident when I see a giant ogre made of water towering over the top of the café on the corner. There are a few people who can control water like that, and none of them are on the side of the angels.

I remind myself that I’m retired just before I hear the screams. This isn’t just a heist — people are getting hurt, and I know I can’t just walk away.

My full costume would be extremely cumbersome to wear under my civvies, but I do always keep my mask with me. It’s tucked into one pocket or another; today I pull it out of my inside jacket pocket.

Back when I was LightBlast, I’d do this in case I need to spring into action at a moment’s notice. As DarkLight, I did it in case I needed to make a quick escape. Now as neither, I guess I’m regressing a bit to the former. I pull the mask on, light up and fly up over the café to get a better look.

It’s worse than I thought. The hydromancer is one of the Elemental Executioners. They’re a foursome, each one with control over a different element: water, wind, fire and earth. They can always be found working together, usually under Weston’s orders, but that’s not what I find.

Water Executioner is using his ogre construct to attack Earth Executioner, who uses his power to catapult a car at Wind Executioner, which was the crash I heard. Fire Executioner seems to be trying to play peacekeeper, but to little avail.

“Stop this!” Fire-Ex calls out to all of them. “You’re acting like maniacs!”

“What’d you call me?” Wind-Ex (not to be confused with the cleaning product) growls back.

“Since when did either of you become the boss?” Earth-Ex jumps in. “Neither of you are the boss! The boss is gone.”

“And you’re next!” Water-Ex yells as his ogre drives its fist down onto Earth-Ex.

There are two big problems I see here. The first is that these four guys are generally thick as thieves. Actually being thieves, this makes them very good at their jobs. The other, bigger problem is that this street is teeming with people who are now screaming and trying to escape with their lives.

I’m planning my first move, and it needs to be a good one since I’ve only ever taken on these guys when I’ve had back-up of my own. But, like I’m sure someone has said before, planning is what you do while innocent people suffer. And that’s what I’m faced with here.

In a matter of moments, Fire-Ex sends a flame tornado at Water-Ex, only to have it intercepted by Wind-Ex redirecting the fire at Earth-Ex. Earth-Ex uses his power to pull up an eight-foot length of sidewalk, which deflects the flame tornado. But as the cyclone disperses, the redirected flames set the nearest building on fire.

I can see the whites of the eyes of the people in the building, and I know that my first priority is their safety. I form an energy sphere around the flaming wall and squeeze it down until the oxygen is gone and the fire is extinguished.

By the time I try to make my move on the Executioners, the length of sidewalk that Earth-Ex pulled up has been thrown at Wind-Ex. Wind-Ex managed to slow the launched cement at him enough to get out of the way… only to be clobbered from behind by Water-Ex’s ogre.

I’ve now completely lost track of who’s fighting whom, and it just looks like it’s become a four-way death match. The length of sidewalk is about to crush a pair of young girls before I use extensions of my energy field as arms and pull them to safety.

I can’t just sit here trying to do damage control because I know that sooner or later, it won’t be enough. I need to draw the fight to me and try to get it away from the people on the street.

With two open palms, I fire four energy blasts, one for each Executioner. It’s a cheap shot, albeit a satisfying one, that knocks them all on their asses. Water-Ex’s ogre collapses, drenching them all. They look up at me with fury in their eyes.

“Alright, boys,” I say, pumping up my force field. “That’s enough rough-housing. Time to go sit in the corner for a few.”

“Son of a bitch!” Earth-Ex snarls at me. “You did it, didn’t you?”

“I don’t see any other energy-slingin’ superguy here, do you?” I retort.

“You took him!” Water-Ex follows, ignoring my jab. “I knew we couldn’t trust you!”

“Took who?” I ask just as the ledge of the roof behind me slams into my back.

The force field took most of it, but I still find myself landing face-down on the street. Stupid. I didn’t mind my surroundings, and now this fight’s gonna go down right here. I look up long enough to notice most of the people have fled the scene, so at least I bought them some time.

The water spraying from the nearest fire hydrant now looms over me in the shape of a giant snake. I send an energy blast through its face and manage to hit Wind-Ex, who was hovering in the air behind it. He couldn’t see me through the water construct, and I’m glad I haven’t forgotten all the training Charles gave me.

It’s a pyric victory, though, as a giant fireball hits me. Again, my shields keep me from becoming a charcoaled steak, but I still feel much of the heat on my face.

I launch myself into the air again, just in time to avoid being crushed by a truck that Earth-Ex and Water-Ex send at me. As soon as the truck hits the ground, I send crisscrossing energy balls at the Executioners.

Water-Ex takes it on the chest, and he’s thrown through a nearby store window. But Earth-Ex pulls up another chunk of sidewalk to block the one coming at him. I put enough oomph into the balls to break through the sidewalk, but it only puts down Earth-Ex for a few seconds.

I need to wrap this up before the numbers catch up to me. I fly fast and low and drive my right fist into Fire-Ex’s face, unleashing a low-powered energy blast at the moment of contact. My blast-punch puts his lights out, as it usually does against anyone without super-strength.

Next, I turn around and lift the still-dazed Earth-Ex about twenty feet into the air with a column of energy. I then make the column vanish, and Earth-Ex hits the ground with a thud, putting him out of commission as well.

I try to make my move on the others, but they beat me to the punch.

Before I know it, I’m spinning around in the middle of a water tornado. As I try to get my bearings, it begins spinning even faster. Water-Ex and Wind-Ex are combining their powers, and the gravity of the construct is limiting my movements.

I know there’s a way out of this, but I’m spinning too fast to even get my thoughts straight. I can feel my force field begin to fade, due to my lack of concentration.

Just as the first sprays of water break through my shields, I feel myself plummeting. I hit the ground, and a few hundred gallons of water drop on top of me. I get my head on straight just in time to see Dominatrix dropping the unconscious Water-Ex and Wind-Ex onto the street.

I hear the sirens coming as Dominatrix walks toward me. Before she gets too close, I roll over and vomit. Finally, the world stops spinning a thousand miles per hour, and she leans over me.

“Y’know, if you can’t hold your liquid, maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” she sasses me in a strangely familiar voice. “Wait,” she says with a finger pointed up. “I can do better than that.”

The post DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Seven appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Six

SIX

 

 

According to police standards, a typical person is not considered missing until at least forty-eight hours have passed. Drake Weston, however, is not a typical person.

Oh sure, he’s invisible when he wants to be, but he’s always reachable to his closest associates. And no one is closer to him than Elizabeth Stokes.

Just yesterday, I would have sworn to you that I’d never set foot in this building again. And yet here I stand, less than twenty-four hours later, in Weston Tower. Once again, I’m greeted by Elizabeth, but this time, there’s no Drake Weston sitting at his desk behind her.

I’m about two seconds away from turning around and walking right back out when I see a very unnatural look on Elizabeth’s face. It’s a look of genuine concern, and it takes a lot to make this woman concerned. Which is why I decide to hear her out.

“And that is the problem,” she says after an abbreviated salutation. “It has been nearly a full day, and I have been unable to reach Mr. Weston.”

“Maybe he slept in?” I propose. “Maybe he decided to take a day off from masterminding insidious schemes and just chill? Even the notorious Drake Weston must take a day off every once in a while.”

“I have at least a dozen different ways to contact him when it is urgent,” she deflects. “He never takes longer than three minutes to contact me back when I utilize any of them. Since you and I last spoke, I have used all of them…twice…and received no response.”

The tone of her voice becomes graver.

“A man like Drake Weston does not simply vanish,” she continues. “That means he has come up against something that even he cannot overcome. And that would be something that I have never seen. Nor would ever wish to.”

“Look, I get it: You care about your boss,” I say in a manner that defies my own fears about someone (or something) that could make Weston disappear. “And I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but honestly, I kinda think the world might be better off if the great and powerful Drake Weston is gone.”

“Mr. Weston always said he thought you were a smart young man,” Elizabeth says with daggers in her eyes and bullets in her voice. “Clearly he misjudged you. Have you learned nothing about how important he is to the world in the past five years?”

“What I learned is that he’s responsible for very bad things happening,” I counter. “In fact, he had me help him do some of them.”

“You know nothing,” she snarls.

“He’s the hand that steers the supervillain community,” I growl back. “I fail to see how the bad guys having less guidance is a negative.”

“You have worked with a number of Post-Humans on the wrong side of the law, yes?” she asks, getting frustrated with me. I nod.

“Have you developed many friendships during those jobs?” she asks.

“Of course not,” I reply.

“There are not many who have,” she says. “Do you know why?”

“I’ve got some ideas.”

“It is because they hate everyone. The so-called good guys, the government, the other so-called bad guys,” she explains with some condescension. “That is why they are criminals,” she continues. “What do you think happens when there is no one keeping them occupied and employed?”

“They’ll keep committing crimes,” I reply with no surprise, “and nothing will change.”

“It is not just the villains,” Elizabeth states. “Mr. Weston was the liaison between more Human/Post-Human affairs than anyone else on the planet. Heroes, villains, the government –”

“I get it. He had his fingers in a lot of pies,” I cut her off.

“I am talking about the man who is the single most significant part of the entire Post-Human infrastructure of society, and you are throwing pastry-based clichés at me?” she says coldly.

“Listen, even if you’re right and it’s a problem that Weston is missing, what makes you think I’m even the right guy to look for him?” I ask. “I’m no gumshoe.”

“But you are the one person who still has strong connections to both sides of the Post-Human community,” replies Elizabeth.

“You’re joking, right?” I scoff. “I’m Judas to the superhero community, and the supervillains never really trusted me; they just worked with me because Weston told them to.

“Trust me, if I’m anything, then I’m the guy most likely to get my ass kicked or killed anywhere I go!” I exclaim. “You need to find someone else. I know I’m not the only one to flip sides at one point or another.”

“Mr. Weston’s other allies will give you the information you request because I will tell them to. When he is not present, I am his voice and his hand,” she says in a way that’s, admittedly, a little intimidating.

“And you had a close bond with a number of the others from your days as LightBlast — the sort of bond that does not just disappear after a little time has passed,” she argues. “These people you cared about will not be immune to the fallout.”

I don’t like what she’s insinuating, especially since I know exactly who she’s talking about. I clench my fists and almost subconsciously try to power up. But Weston’s power-dampening fields keep me from doing anything more than getting red in the face.

“Even when you’re asking for help, you can’t stop pushing it, can you?” I say in a threatening tone of my own.

“You know that I am right,” she says, intentionally softening her approach.

“What I know is that I’m done here.”

I turn and head back to the elevator, stopping at the closed doors. A few long moments pass, but the elevator doesn’t appear.

“I may not have my powers up here, but neither do you,” I turns to face her again. “And I may not be the type of guy who hits women, but you and I are gonna have a big problem if you don’t let me out of this office right now.”

She pushes a button on Weston’s desktop, and I hear the elevator moving into position.

“You will be back once you see what happens out there without Drake Weston,” she warns as the light above the elevator dings and the doors slide open. “Believe me, Thomas, it will not take long.”

“Yeah, well, good luck getting someone to find your boyfriend,” I retort as I step inside and the elevator doors close.

The post DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Six appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

The Risky Risk Aversion Of Vince McMahon

There was a WWE special event this past Sunday – they still refer to them as Pay Per Views even though people who have the WWE Network are not actually paying per viewing any longer – called Battleground. It was fine for a non-major event, with some good matches.

The big twist that WWE would like people to be talking about is the return of The Undertaker seeking revenge on Brock Lesnar for ending his WrestleMania win streak. But what the “smarks” and the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC) are really talking about is John Cena winning yet another match that does nothing for him and hurts his opponent.

The opponent in this case was Kevin Owen, who earned a reputation as a big time performer in the indies. He burst onto the NXT scene earlier this year, and possibly made an even bigger debut in a WWE ring a few months ago. Cena won the United States Championship at WrestleMania, presumably with the intention of restoring the credibility of that title by putting it on Vince McMahon’s hand-picked face of the company. The end game was seemingly to bring up a new star who would take the title off Cena and instantly become a main event level player. Owens had, in a very short amount of time, proven that he was the perfect guy to step into that spot.

Naturally, he lost clean to Cena by tapping out in the middle of the ring. This was just the latest in a long line of instances where Vince McMahon – at least over the past few years – shucked away from creating a new main event star in order to retreat to the comfort of a guy who was made ten years ago. It doesn’t always go the same way, sometimes Vince just kills a guy’s push with no real Plan B. I’m sure it’s not all Vince’s doing (you can get a better idea of the sort of “yes men” he surrounds himself with by googling the name Kevin Dunn). The bottom line is that Vince McMahon is, for some mysterious reason, terrified of taking chances on creating new main event stars.

I’m not going to go into how creating new stars back in the Attitude Era led to the most successful period in WWE history – that’s a whole other article. The fact was that Vince was forced to make new main eventers because WCW had signed away all of his current main eventers. The sad truth is that there’s no outside parties pushing Vince any longer, and so he doesn’t feel he needs to create new superstars. Even though, by that same token, there’s no real risk in pushing new guys to the top because WWE is really the only show in town. Thriving profressional wrestling organizations in Japan and Mexico are  fine, but they’re not really competition. The same could be said for TNA and ROH who, even after recently pairing up, are still not a genuine threat.

Even with some bright spots popping up here and there, WWE has a very stale product. A big part of the problem is Vince McMahon & Co keeping fresh faces away from the top of their cards, and regularly digging up stars from past eras to take those spots. In this blog, I’m going to explain several instances where they could have gone in exciting new directions before copping out and returning things to the status quo.

I’m only going to go back to 2011, since four years really is a large enough sample size to make my case. Throughout the summer, CM Punk was cutting blistering promos and having exceptional matches. He impressed so much that Vince decided to put the WWE Championship on him at the Money on the Bank PPV that July. After getting one of the loudest pops in recent history for beating John Cena, Punk was written off TV to build up anticipation for the rematch at SummerSlam.

The crowd is hot for Punk all the way up to SummerSlam, and he won that match as well. Of course the end of the match was a bit overbooked, which took some of the wind from it. Not nearly as much, though, as having a has-been who played a very large part in the death of WCW – Kevin Nash – come to the ring, drop Punk and allow lukewarm heel Alberto Del Rio to cash in a Money in the Bank contract to take the title off Punk. Punk then proceeded to have a pointless, several month long feud with Triple H before the powers that be finally realized that Del Rio wasn’t doing anything for the fans and put the title back on Punk at Survivor Series in November 2011.

CM Punk went on to have the longest WWE reign as WWE champion in 25 years and had a series of great matches. He may not have main evented as much as he should have during that reign, but things worked out at least. Dolph Ziggler was not as lucky.

Ziggler is a great worked who, at the time, was a heel who got more cheers than most of the babyfaces that WWE wanted the people to actually cheer for. He won the Money in the Bank contract in 2012, but still was booked to lose a lot more matches than he won – which is really how his career has gone for the most part. On the night after WrestleMania in 2013, Ziggler finally cashed in his contract and won the World Heavyweight Championship from Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio was a lukewarm babyface at the time, and the pop Ziggler got when he won rivaled the massive one that Punk got the year before.

Unfortunately, Ziggler got a concussion off a blown spot and ended up having to sit out for a few weeks. This did nothing to dim his popularity and, when he came back to finally defend his title, WWE decided to make him a full-on babyface. He then proceeded to lose the title back to Del Rio, much to the dismay of everyone other than Vince McMahon. Championships are won and lost all the time, and so the fan naturally figured they would put the title back on Ziggler in short time. But it was not to be. Del Rio held onto the title until October 2013, where he dropped it at Hell In The Cell to Vince’s safety blanket John Cena.

Ziggler continues to be a great worker, in fact he had an awesome moment at Survivor Series 2014 where he was the sole survivor in a match that ousted mega heel group The Authority from power. In an act of atrocious and lazy booking, The Authority was back in power less than a month later. Ziggler, meanwhile, was finally booked so badly for so long that the fans seems to have finally accepted that he’ll never be the main eventer that he should have been.

The arc of Daniel Bryan’s odyssey started in summer of 2013, when he split from a wildly popular tag team with Kane to become the single most over performer in WWE. His unmatched work rate, easy charisma and everyman sensibilities made him the most universally cheered WWE superstar since Stone Cold Steve Austin’s heyday. Bryan was essentially the only guy who every demographic in the crowd were rooting for. Vince and his henchmen are known for going all starry-eyed a very specific type of musclebound human action figure, and so he was not apt to move the undersized Bryan to the top of the card.

But every crowd in every city WWE went to had a different idea, and so Bryan finally got a main event WWE Championship match against (you guessed it ) John Cena. Bryan won the match, and the title, clean in the middle of the ring. This is all the more astounding since Cena only does one or two clean jobs every calendar year. After a few minutes of celebration, Triple H, the special guest referee in the match, dropped Bryan and allowed Randy Orton to cash in a contract to take the title off Bryan.

The next few months went much the same as they had for Ziggler earlier in the year. Bryan never won the title back, and was phased out of the title scene by the end of the year. Randy Orton squared off with John Cena to unify the titles- which was another terrible idea that I’ll have to address in another blog – and the world yawned. The fans, however, would not let Bryan suffer the same fate as Ziggler, and they simply cheered louder and louder for him no matter who he was in the ring with or if he was even in the ring at all.

It took all of Vince’s WrestleMania plans to fall apart – formerly popular superstar Batista came back and got booed out of the building, followed by CM Punk getting sick of the sort of things listed above and simply quitting the company – in order for Vince’s hand to be forced and allow Daniel Bryan to be the star of 2014’s WrestleMania. Bryan became the undisputed champion after a pair of great matches on the same night, and everything seemed right in the world of wrestling.

Sadly, a serious neck injury forced Bryan to vacate the championship, and the fans never truly got to see him have the title reign they were dying for. Of course, had they put the title back on Bryan back in September or October of 2013 like they should have, then we would have had a very satisfactory seven month title reign filled with a number of guaranteed great matches.

After Bryan vacated, Vince could have put the title on another up and coming superstar in an eight man ladder match held in June 2014, but boringly and lazily plopped it back on Cena. It’s worth noting that two guys who I’ll get to in a moment – Bray Wyatt and Cesaro – were also in this ladder match. Cena was then used to put the WWE Championship on part-time bad ass Brock Lesnar.

It may sound like I’m piling on John Cena here, but I’m really not. He’s a fine worker and, after all, he’s not the one booking his programs. That being said, he’s been used over the past year to bury a trio of heels who could have been used to freshen up the man event picture – Bray Wyatt, Rusev and Kevin Owens.

To summarize, a win for Wyatt over Cena at WrestleMania 2014 would have established him as a made man. Naturally he lost in the center of the ring. Wyatt hasn’t even sniffed the main event scene since then. At WrestleMania 2015, Rusev was the undefeated United States Champion who would have gotten a similarly massive boost by beating Cena. So, he also lost in the middle of the ring, and has become a bit of a comedic act since then.

Cena has since brought a lot of credibility and excitement to the US Title picture with his weekly US Title Open Challenges on Raw. But the truth was that he should have just been holding the title until the right time and right guy came along to take it from him. Kevin Owens was that right guy, and this past Sunday at the Battleground PPV was the right time. So, of course, John Cena was booked to beat him in the middle of the ring. Now, this just happened, so it’s not too late for things to work out. But it seems pretty unlikely, and the optimal moment for Owens to win the title has passed.

As I type this, Cesaro is on a run of fantastic matches that rivals Daniel Bryan’s leading up to SummerSlam. His popularity is blowing up, and the fans are ready to see him take the leap into the main event scene. Years of sour experiences have given me very little faith in ever seeing him reach the top of the card, though I’d love to be proven wrong. That being said, there’s no legitimate reason for him not to. Then again, Vince McMahon & Co have never seemed to need legitimate reasons to do any of the stupid things they do.

CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, Kevin Owens and Cesaro are all guy who could have – or still can – make the WWE main event scene a lot more entertaining. Yet Vince McMahon prefers to dwell in his John Cena-shaped cave. When he does venture out, he brings along part timers like The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar or The Rock, and sticks them at the top of the card until they go away again a month later.

It’s a bummer, but it’s not too late. Punk is gone, Bryan may be finished and Ziggler’s cred may be damaged to the point where he’ll never get his WWE Championship reign. But Wyatt, Owens and Cesaro are still in spots where they can succeed if they’re given the opportunities that Vince gave to John Cena a decade ago.

But Vince is scared of the future, and he’s scared of taking risks even though there’s no genuine risk involved. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no real competition for WWE’s market share. The best hope we, as fans, have is for Vince to finally step down and let Triple H and Stephanie McMahon take over, as they have shown a very promising vision of the future with NXT. Barring that, maybe John Cena will decide that making his living in Hollywood is a better deal than getting bounced off a ring apron every night. I’ve heard only good things about his roles in Trainwreck and Sisters.

Anyway, that’s my diatribe. I’ve been a fan of WWF/WWE for way too long to pull myself away – even though I do fast forward through about 65% of Monday Night Raw on a given week. Still, I’d like to see new stars being made, and new match-ups at the top of the PPV cards.

The most exciting part of pro wrestling, after all, is the fact that it’s a “sport” where the fans actually have an influence on how things play out. Or at least they should. We can’t hit three pointers for our favorite NBA teams, and we won’t catch touchdown passes from the QB of our favorite NFL teams. No matter how loudly you cheer for your team, it’s not really going to affect the outcome of the game. But with pro wrestling, you buy a ticket and you cheer as loud as you can for your favorite performers. The powers that be hear those cheers and sometimes, though less soften than they should, they will give those stars a well-deserved push.

TV shows have production schedules that stop them from changing course on a dime if something is not working. On the other hand, if something is not working on WWE TV, they can flip that story around the very next night. But too frequently they do not. I’ll keep watching, regardless, and I’m sure I’ll keep complaining. Hopefully, though, there are enough of those CM Punk/Dolph Ziggler/Daniel Bryan pops to keep me from becoming disenchanted enough to finally cancel that WWE Network subscription.

Ah, who am I kidding. There’s always that back catalog to keep me on-board. Ironically enough, that might be the exact same stance that Vince McMahon has been taking.

The post The Risky Risk Aversion Of Vince McMahon appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Five

It’s hot as hell out there today, so turn up your A/C, lay out on your couch and enjoy chapter five!

FIVE

 

 

After the conversation with my parents went about as well — and as poorly — as it could have, I walked just down the street from their house and took flight. It takes less than five minutes in the air to get to my usual landing spot in the city.

It’s still pretty early, so I decide to swing by the bar and see how everything stands there. I named my pub Dive. It’s an ironic name — or at least I like to think so. It’s small, seats maybe fifty at capacity, and we don’t serve any food other than your typical bagged bar snacks.

I live in Manhattan, but Dive is in Astoria because it’s way cheaper to lease a joint out there. We’ve got satellite set up, so we can put on any and all the games that we want to. Twelve TVs hanging from the walls, so we get plenty of local sports fans. I pride myself on keeping the good stuff on the taps and on the shelves. The patrons seem to appreciate it.

We’re still in September, so Sunday Night Football is airing on all the TVs. Bar’s about half full, which is typical for this time. I only keep one bartender and two waitresses on nights like this. I chat up the staff while seating myself at the bar and knock back a few while I watch the game.

When it’s time to leave, I duck into a narrow alley a few blocks down, make sure there’s no one watching from the windows and launch myself into the sky. I drop down on a rooftop down the street from my apartment building and float down slowly, again making sure no one is watching me.

My apartment is nothing to scream about, just a third-floor walk-up near Gramercy. Truth is, since I’m no longer collecting those loaded briefcases from Weston, I may end up moving closer to my bar in Astoria. Dive does well enough, but I’m not exactly a billionaire playboy.

But that’s a problem for later; right now, I just want to plop down on my sofa and enjoy my freedom. Of course, I have to feed Neena and Veena first. My lifestyle made it difficult to have high-maintenance pets, so I got myself a couple of dwarf hamsters and named them after a pair of bellydancing twins that I saw on an infomercial late one night.

They’ve got a lot of personality for such little critters, but at least I don’t have to take them out for walks a couple times a day. That being said, I do give them plenty of time in their plastic balls to go for a run around the apartment. Since my schedule is about to become a lot more manageable, I might think about adopting a dog or cat.

I thought I’d sleep better after simplifying my life, but that’s not the case. In fact, I barely sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. My mind keeps racing to the beat of all the remarkable and terrible things I’ve seen.

Aliens, monsters, doomsday devices, displays of power that would make a normal person lose control of their bowels. And I’ve seen too many of those normal people suffer at the hands of beings that are almost impossible to believe exist.

As LightBlast, I fought the battles that most people couldn’t. I mean, I personally blasted spaceships out of the sky, for cryin’ out loud!

Then, as DarkLight, I used those same abilities to assist Drake Weston in accomplishing whatever heinous ends he sought. But who am I now? Am I just Tom Reynolds: an aimless, self-employed twenty-something?

I still have my powers, and as far as I know, they’re not going anywhere. Do I just waste them and prove, once and for all, that I was never really worthy of having them?

I’m done with Weston; that’s not even a debate. But I can’t very well go back to fighting against him and his kind, either.

Drake Weston knows everything about me now. Which means that, if I piss him off, then everyone I care about could end up getting hurt. They might just vanish to some dark fate notated by a single shorthand line in one of Weston’s ledgers.

I’ve never once cursed my powers. In fact, I oftentimes defined myself by them. But to have them now, and not be able to use them?

I have to remind myself that I should be relieved. After all, there will be no more flying into fights where my opponent could make me explode with a wink of his eye. And yet relief never comes.

My personal identity crisis lasts until the sun forces its way in through my bedroom window. A bowl of cereal and a glass of juice later, I find myself finally passing out on my sofa.

Just as I’m settling into a mildly inappropriate dream about the redhead I spotted leaving Weston’s office yesterday, my phone rings me back awake. The number is blocked, so I’m about to let it go to voicemail when curiosity gets the better of me.

“Hello,” I yawn into the phone.

“Thomas.” Hearing Elizabeth Stokes’s voice on the other end of the line clears up my head in a hurry. “We need your help.”

“I’m done helping you and your boss,” I say with anger in my voice. “A deal is a deal. You might remind him about that.”

“I can’t remind him of anything,” Elizabeth says with some concern registering in her normally unshakeable voice. “Because he’s gone missing.”

The post DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Five appeared first on Joe Mikolay.