Ultimate Sentinels #1: Human Age

Fawcett City, United States of America

The train was never supposed to be a part of cities. Their magic is too dependent on motion and on electricity. Their speed is almost a detriment to their abilities, passing through them before the proper grip can be applied, shaken free from their moorings by a fallen branch or an inch of snow.


Traci Thirteen was glad to be rid of that particular brand of magic, clinging to her clothes like soot, but never able to be separated from her with a brush or a gesture. Just a dark, thick, cling. As her train pulled into Fawcett City station, Traci was at the front of the carriage, hanging by the door, waiting to get off.


With only a small bag, despite travelling halfway across the country from Metropolis, she leapt straight off, and ran towards the city itself. No sooner than had she left the station, her shoes were off and her bare feet were in contact with the asphalt. Immediately, they took on the clean sheen and concrete features of the city.


“Nice shoes,” a passing business man said, “They those toed-runners?”

Traci smirked and nodded.


“Yeah, these ones though? They’re designed for city running.”


“Cool,” he said, tipping his fedora hat to her. Traci’s grin grew even larger. Fawcett City was beautiful. A piece of American Engineering at its finest, matching the art deco period with its thick, concrete, right angles and jutting shapes. Traci sped off along the side walk, the city underneath her feet filling her with its power.


Asphalt melted, for a moment, under her footfalls, solidifying shortly afterwards in plumes of fuming power. The city was the home of her abilities, her magic; she knew it better than anyone else on the planet. What’s more, she knew that Fawcett City was the home of city magic. Something about the Tower of Eternity Corp. absorbed and redistributed the city magic elsewhere. She came to a halt, just outside of the tower, looking up at it in awe, and opened her phone.


She let it dial, waiting for some response. She inhaled deeply; she knew the voice on the other end of the phone would immediately be combative about her choice. Traci stepped towards the Seven Steps of Man, at the front of the building. Slowly, she ascended, paying attention to the feeling, the impressions and the specific magic of the steps. Each step was richly decorated with different examples of human culture, the first being that of the indigenous people of Australia, bright coloured bands, boomerangs and animals bonded across its surface. It traced the nomadic life felt by the Australian Aboriginal Tribes, moving across Desert, through rain forest and mountains, feeling the first pangs of city magic by moving as a more than just a family unit, by moving as a roving city. Traci felt a surge of happiness, as her foot came into contact with it.


“Doctor Thirteen, Reporting,” she began, clutching the phone, and plugging in her hands free kit. She immediately winced as the voice behind it began yelling obscenities. She clipped the phone itself to her belt and continued to ascend the stairs.


“Godamnit, Lori, you’re ruining my bloody narrative here,” Traci said, adjusting the volume on her phone. “Yeah, I know I wasn’t supposed to, but it’s like asking you not to cake your face in lead blusher or whatever the hell you use to look like you’re made from Porcelin.”


Traci winced again and moved towards The Tower.


“Give it a break, Lori,” Traci said, “There’s just something about this City. I don’t feel this way anywhere else…”


She shook her head and turned away from the tower a moment, to look out across the small, but bright city of Fawcett.


“Lori, look, I don’t need a sanction to go where I please, OK? I’m a bloody sorcerer and this whole Coven thing…This whole…Lori.”

Traci paused, letting her shoulders drop.


“Yes, I am aware of that. Yes, I know. Lori. Lori! Yes, I am only sixteen and if my Father finds out I’ve skipped not only school but Hong Kong, I will be in serious trouble, but…Lori, BUT! Something is happening here. Something big.”


Traci turned back to the building and walked towards it.


“I thought you could. Our powers line up a bit more than others, we’re sensitive to things. You’re a Mimemancer...yes, I know that isn’t the technical terminology…but you’re sensitive to cultural magic, or mimes, I can’t remember which. I’m sensitive to city magic. Something…some…Yeah, wave is a good term, I was going to use massive, foreboding cloud to give it some gravitas, but wave certain makes it feel kind of kitschy,"


“Because of that,” she paused, inhaling deeply, her breath catching, “Because of that, I know when something doesn’t feel right here, and it just doesn’t. Does it? I’ve never been to the Tower before. Shouldn’t be able to get anywhere near it. It’s always off limits. Last time we came here, we spent six hours trying to get up the steps. There’s always thick Red Paint from Stop Signs stopping me crossing the threshold, Subway Ticket Terms binding me outside of the building without an access card, but this time? The Shroud is down. The Sigils aren’t burning.”


She touches the front of the building, with a flat roof, the edges tipping slightly for rainwater run off. Not that it ever seemed to rain in Fawcett.


“Oh, Lori. I don’t think this is good,” Traci looked up, “I don’t think this is good at all.”


The side of the roof exploded, immediately sending a plume of dust into the sky. A strike of Lightning hit the building, shattering the windows on the top floor, rain glass and debris from the sky.


Traci, quickly whispering under her breath, drew the concrete up around her, forming a thick, grey skin over her body. With monochromatic lenses, her eyes deflected the glass. Thick cloud billowed from nowhere, sending the bright city of Fawcett into artificial darkness. Lightning sparked and struck several of the taller buildings. Traci narrowed her eyes, as the top section of the building exploded with power. An invisible wave of magic knocked her off her feet, as the tower in front of her shuddered.

“Oh, My Goddess,” Traci said. Lori burbled away in her ear-buds, but Traci could hear nothing. She pulled herself to her feet, her concrete shell broken and flaking off her arms.


A second, much louder, and brighter flash of lightning exploded into the top of the building. Dust began to billow out from underneath the building as the foundations gave way slightly under the magical onslaught.


“…Run,” Traci said to herself, “RUN RUN RUN!”


Turning on her heels, the building listing slightly, another explosion knocking Traci almost of her feet, she sprinted forwards. She stumbled from the aftershock, falling a few steps and onto the pavement. The section of the large plaza leading to the tower exploded, two figures rising from the indented concrete slowly, lightning exploding from their fingertips.


“Holy Shit-sticks, Lori,” Traci whispered, dust settling around her like grey rain, “I can see one of the Wizards of Shazam.”

The burbling down the phone line stopped.


“Damn You, Wizard…Fall. Fall for Gog!”


A younger man, bare chested save for his right pectoral, which was covered in strips of golden metal that spread down his arm, pressed down onto the ancient Aboriginal Australian man with all his might. What might have been a golden helmet was simply half a shell that covered the younger man’s head. Scratches and blood covered his face and chest. His eyes burnt with defiance, his teeth bared and sparks of purple energy exploding from his fingertips as he grappled with the much older wizard.

The Wizard stumbled under the power, his own energy and magic’s slowly leaving him.


“Fall,” Magog said, “Fall and let me have your magic. Let me in, little Wizard. Let us In.”


The Wizard looked across to Traci, and then back at Magog, pushing his remaining power into a final rush of energy and magic. Traffic stopped, street lights shed their colours, and the manholes from sewers dropped into the water-works below. Great streams of sewage and steam shot into the air.


“Shazam.” The Wizard whispered. Lightning struck the pair, exploding the remains of the plaza into a shower of burning tile fragments and metalwork.


Magog pulled himself to his feet, his body slightly ablaze, and covered in smaller scorch marks. The older Wizard was nowhere to be seen.


“OH GOD!” Traci yelled. She immediately clamped her hands over her face and took off into a run.


“Tell the others, Lori. If I don’t make it out of this, tell the others what I’ve seen. Someone killed a Wizard of Shazam…”


Traci pulled out a fistful of pens, dropping in the middle of the road. Magog in front of her, slowly stepped down to street level. His metal hand still contained hair from the older Wizard, and was coated in a thick layer of blood.


Quickly biting the caps off the pens, she drew with both hands. Her left hand scratched a circle around her, a circle which was covered in Mandarin symbols, the names of streets near her house. The second pen, which was red, traced out the routes of roads in her native city of Hong Kong. She continued to attribute as much detail as she could underneath her feet, knowing the road layout of her home city almost like the back of her hand.


She closed her eyes and finished the end of her spell, whispering under her breath in Mandarin.


“Destination Entered. Calculating Route. Recalculating…”


A concrete shell closed over her, the last thing her eyes focused on was Magog, staff in hand aiming it towards her sinking womb.


“Lori…I love you.”


New York City, United States of America



“Good Evening. We’re joined in the studio today by two of America, and possibly the worlds, favourite magicians. Mr. Miracle, and Big Barda.”


The Interviewer pauses for a moment for the canned applause to play out. Barda leans forwards, putting her huge hands on the tiny, faux birch desk.


“It’s just Barda,” she said. The Six foot eight inches Amazonian warrior sat back in her chair, and rest a huge hand on the shoulder of her husband. He shifted to accommodate her weight and templed his fingers.


“So, Shilo…can I call you Mr.Miracle?”


“Only if I can call you Newsreader,” he replied with a childlike grin.
“

"Well, then, Shilo, I believe you’re about to step away from stage magic to do…what exactly? How exactly are you any different, in your abilities and your reach, than say…John Zatara?”


“Well, you are aware that magic, in and of itself, does not exist,” Shilo said.


“Yes, I am aware of that,” the broadcaster smiled. “Of course, everyone is aware of that.”


“But you make reference to the abilities of myself, or Zatara. We don’t have abilities. We’re not magicians.”


“OK. But, you know what happens now, this isn’t your first rodeo…you’re here to promote your tour. So I am supposed to ask you serious questions…”


“Which I will parry,” Shilo said.


“So, you’re a fairly unique presence in the entertainment industry,”


“I’m not in the entertainment industry. I’m not entertaining and I certainly don’t feel an industry can be built around me and my tricks.”


The broadcaster paused, adjusting her shirt slightly, and looking at the camera.


“You’re young, black, and American, without the usual trappings. Do you feel as though you’re a representative of your race?”


“Yes, it’s a hell of a medical form. Do you? Where do you…where do you stand on it?”


The presenter paused again.


“Well, I do, I suppose…”


“Excellent, and what exactly do you feel you bring to your…race?” Shilo asked. He leant forwards, his short dreads covering his eyes for a moment.


“I…Well, now you’re interviewing me…so, let’s get back to what we’re here for. You’re touring now and…”


“Well, that’s the inherent problem isn’t it? I’m touring and we’re forced into this promotional tumble to get the message out that I’m touring, but doing something that isn’t magic, but people only want the magic.” Shilo shrugged and sat back in his seat, “My wife doesn’t think it’s worth doing this, do you darling?”


Barda grunted.


“Shilo, you’re notoriously private, and almost a little shy, but people watching this today may be hard pressed to imagine you as that, as you’re being almost overly irritable. Can you answer why?”


“Not especially, I find these things…interviews…a little on the frustrating side. I have to do this, I have to promote what I am, who I am, and what I’m doing, but I can’t directly say…come to my show…because that’s perceived to be arrogant. Don’t come to my show…but now people are going to say I am passive aggressive. Still others will dissect my body language and that of my wife…considering we’re in an unnatural setting and we’re sat, talking unnaturally about something that say, 25? No…50 percent of your viewers won’t care about…it’s all a very odd, surreal and incredibly frustrating experience.”


Barda ran a finger through her shoulder length black hair, eyeing the broadcaster, and camera intermitantly.


“I…” the Broadcaster held her hand up a moment…”We have some breaking news…there appears to have been a Terrorist attack on…”


“GRUH!” Shil grunted, slamming his fist into the desk. He doubled forwards, his forehead hitting the faux wood, his black shirt rumpling and shifting as it began to slick itself with his blood.


“Shilo?” Barda asked. She touched his shoulder, feeling the dark liquid underneath the clothing.


“Is he?” the Presenter asked. Barda said nothing, hoisting him out of the chair and laying him on the desk. She tore his shirt off with a single arm and threw it across the room. His chest was covered in runes of blood, symbols she recognised from elsewhere, and elsewhen.


“Is this some kind of stunt?” the Presented yelled. She pushed herself closer to Barda, touching the giant womans shoulder.


“Does it look like it?” Barda responded, pushing the woman in the chest. She was sent sprawling backwards.


“Shilo? Can you hear me?” she pressed her ear against his lips, “Shilo?”


She swallowed loudly, and looked back at the cameras.


“Turn them off!”


The technical crew struggled, as Barda produced a small glowing cube from her handbag, and placed it down on the front of Shilo’s forehead.


“OFF!”


London, England



Beryl Hutchinson pulled her jacket close over her chest, tucking some of her auburn hair behind her ears, and adjusting her headphones. It blared out her custom combination of streaming news vlogs, and the latest Chvrches Single. The mixture of fact and “fiction” of the music always helped her, especially when she had to cut through some of the more shady areas of Greater London. Hearing and enjoying the constant flow of data was always a bit difficult around the thick 1970’s concrete buildings, WiFi was an elusive animal. The Metropolitan Line was down this evening, her headset telling her that there were signalling issues at Finchley Road. She had to cut through some of the side streets by Wembley, sticking as close to Neasdon as she could, skirting the very edge of the football borough. The stink of the recycling plant nearby made her pull the neck of her hoodie over her mouth. Almost immediately, the live-streaming RSS feed in her ears started bleating at her. She pulled her left bud out and held it up to examination, pulling out her phone.


A Tower in Fawcett City, USA, had exploded, raining debris all over the city. Looked like it was some kind of terrorist activity, but the “specialist” feeds that Beryl had hooked herself into were firing up, pouring information into her ears and into her smart phone. Information calling that statement into question, using words like “Magic”, “Deities” and “Elemental Power”. Debris was beginning to settle. A stage magician had gone into a coma in New York, his wife screaming something about a Third World, and that wasn’t something that Beryl considered to be related to Africa. Immediately, her phone was out, tongue clicking against her teeth in that familiar British tut.


She stopped in an alleyway, her phone illuminating her face as she intuitively scoured the internet and Dark ‘Net for more information. The illumination grew brighter, almost too bright, before she realised it wasn’t coming from her phone.


A man, bare chested, head covered in a Golden Helmet, with curling, twisted horns, hurtled down the alleyway. Beryl leapt out of the way, just in time, as the man shattered the far wall of the building opposite the alleyway. Stumbling down the alley, the sodium stained light flickering like a broken street lamp, was a man. He was tall, and lithe, limbs almost impossibly thin. He was dressed in a smart pinstripe suit, and fedora, with no skin or features; a man who was a human shaped light-bulb.


He looked at her, or at least she thought he looked at her, before falling back against one of the walls of the alleyway. His feet slid against the floor.


“Tell him,” he said, his voice the buzz of a light-bulb before the filament pinged loose, “Tell him that it’s his turn. His time to be the Re…”


He fell on his knees, his right leg shattering completely in his suit. He listed violently to one side, his whole body falling. He landed heavily on his palms, which both cracked, snapping at the wrist. His descent into the ground shattered his head completely, and once that had spread apart in a sea of transparent fragments, the rest of him simply shattered.


“Shit!” Beryl yelled.


Magog pulled himself free of the building, eyeing Beryl suspiciously.


“You can see me.”


Beryl swallowed and took a step backwards, her heels crunching in the remains of the fallen glass man.


“Cloudling,” he said, taking a few tentative steps towards her. He paused, almost sensing something in the distance.


“A lucky escape,” he said quietly, pointing his long, golden staff at her. “You are marked, Cloudling. Your days are numbering, this new revolution of elements? It ends.”


Magog pointed his staff into the sky, and with the splitting of ions and the scent of Ozone, he was gone.


Beryl slid down onto the floor, her cheeks wet with tears, and her lungs cramping with uncontrollable sobs. She had faced down a God and survived, only to find herself a marked woman.


San Francisco, United States of America


“I just don’t understand why you won’t talk to me?”


Elisa Stone turned the wheel deftly in the heavy rain. The water spattered the windshield, as the robotics expert glanced across at his Son.


“What is there to discuss, Dad?” Victor replied. His huge arms were crossed over his Football jacket, eyes locked on the road ahead. “You wanna slow down as well?”


“Damnit, Vic, how are you supposed to make something of yourself when…”


“When what? I don’t follow in your footsteps, Dad? I’m not a scientist.”

“You are…your grades…your knowledge…it’s a waste of a good mind.”


Victor Stone looked at his aging father, grey playing out in his hair, wrinkles cutting into the skin under his eyes. He looked tired. He looked warn down.


“Dad,” Victor said carefully, “Look, it isn’t a waste of a good mind. When you were studying, people told you to know your place. That a man like you couldn’t be a scientist, and you should do something you didn’t want to do. Now look at you? Expert in robotics, well paid, highly regarded. Well, now you’re telling me that my place in this world is to do science instead of Football.”


Elisa sighed, and took his eyes off the road for a moment.


“Vic, Football wrecks lives.”


“No, Dad, people wreck lives. Football is a game. I want to play it, not live it.”


Elisa shook his head slowly.


“You’re making a mistake, Vic,” he said, “I don’t want to argue about this but, you can’t play football forever, and you can’t bet your future on it.”


“You can’t bet your future on anything, Dad,” Vic said, “DAD!”


Ahead of them, a figure stood in the middle of the road. Rain lashed down on him, and even within the headlights, his body was dark colours and a fluttering, high collared cape. Elisa threw the wheel as best he could, the car skidding and listing on its right wheels. The man stepped in front of the car, which had narrowly avoided him, and hurled a small cube through the windscreen.

Glass shattered and rained over the pair.


The car exploded.


Hong Kong, China


The concrete womb opened up with the fracturing of Asphalt. The runes on the underneath, road names in Mandarin and a rough A-Z scratched into the hard surface flaked away, leaving only small fragments of pavement. Traci pulled herself up, dripping in sweat, motor oil and sewage. Her breathing was heavy, and she held herself at the thighs for a few moments to catch her breath.

“Ohgod.Ohgod.Ohgod.I’mgoingtodie.”


She stood up fully, leaning back awkwardly to crack her back and get more air into her lungs. She was home. The familiar, casual semi-colonial magic of Hong Kong gave her the same easy half-way house feeling as her own family, with her British Father and Chinese Mother.


“Not quite,” came a voice, “Goddess.”


The woman stood behind her carried a small, compact staff. The huge woman took a step forwards, easily towering over the shorter Traci by two feet. A grin broke over her features, hair falling down over her shoulders in Raven waves.


“The Third World orders your Death, little Magician. What do you have to say for yourself?”


Traci closed her eyes and reached out with all of her senses, gripping onto the nearest source of magical power.


“I say that you can only cross if the Green Man is showing.”


“What?” The huge woman tried to take another step forward, but found herself bound. Glowing, Crimson hands held her around the shoulders, pinning her in place.


“Rules of the Road, Bitch,” Traci said, flipping the Amazonian woman the bird.


“Now, stick it up your arse!” Traci yelled, kicking the woman in the shins and breaking into a sprint. The energy of her home city seeped into her, propelling her forwards. She didn’t break a sweat. She didn’t even lose her breath, lost in the speed of the Chinese City. It was ten miles before Traci even considered slowing down.


She skidded to a halt and opened her phone.


“Girls…we’ve got serious, serious problems.”


Next Issue: More Coven!  More Third World!