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DC Comics Presents
Nuclear Furnace Part 2by Dan Swanson
Continued from Nuclear Furnace Part 1
On August 5, 1945, the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, dropped the atomic bomb named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Japan didn't surrender. Three days later, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. This bomb was called "Fat Man", and this bomb convinced the Japanese to surrender. The surrender was announced on August 14.
Those people that knew Ted were really surprised at his reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima. They had expected that he would be very upset, feel very guilty for his part in creating the bomb, and condemn the President for using it.
Instead, whenever someone talked with him about it, Ted was one of Truman's most vocal supporters. "They had it coming, they started it" he would say if questioned about it. "We would have had to invade and it would have cost us over a million men. We would have devastated their country. We saved lives on both sides, and we saved time, too." All the arguments he had heard from Truman, although his friends didn't know it. What they didn't seem to notice was that Ted would never voluntarily talk about the bomb or the war. He only responded when others drew him into the conversation, and he would change the subject or leave the conversation as soon as he could.
In many other ways, Ted's behavior and attitude changed as well. As Starman, he had been on something of a rampage against crime and disaster over the last week or so. After the bomb, each night he spent a little less time as Starman, and became more passive in his heroic actions. He didn't avoid heroic situations when he encountered them, but he stopped actively seeking out situations where he could help, instead relying on his police/fire band radio receiver to alert him to trouble. When he responded, he acted with the same heroism and daring that he was famous for. By the end of August, instead of flying a regular patrol every night, he sat by radio, and only ventured out as Starman when someone called him.
His Ted Knight life changed too. He started spending more time in his lab, but his output dropped. He stopped talking about his projects to Doris and his friends, and even the cook. Doris walked into the lab once and found him staring at the wall. He didn't even know she was there! She watched him for about 10 minutes and he hardly moved. Finally, she slipped out, then came back in making a lot of noise. When she got back into the lab, Ted was still sitting, but he was paying attention to her, not the wall. She asked him to show her his work, but he claimed to be hungry and he hustled her off to a fancy restaurant.
By the end of August, he totally avoided any talk about science, technology or the war. He was never rude about it, but his friends eventually recognized that he just wouldn't talk about those things any longer. Ted seemed pretty normal in every other way, and nobody wanted to upset him by pressing him to talk about things he didn't want to talk about.
It bothered Doris to see Ted sitting idle. She co-opted him to work on the Baseball Fantasy Camp, which he did enthusiastically. She convinced him to join a handball league, and he did that as well. She suggested that the two of them join the Bridge club, and within a few weeks, they proved to be one of the top pairs in the club. And Ted got interested in playing chess via mail with Rex (Hourman) Tyler.
Ted had always been an interest in horses, and he started going to the racetrack. He would walk among the stables and admire the beautiful powerful animals, trying to see if he could figure out which horses would win their races. He eventually started to place some small bets - just to prove to himself that his judgement about horses was correct. He won much more often that he lost, and his bets gradually got bigger. As he became a more familiar figure around the track, some of the other horseplayers made it a point to hang around him, and they often bet on the same horses Ted did.
One day, one of these hangers-on asked Ted if he ever played poker. In fact, he hadn't played poker in a long while. Neither the risk of losing or the thrill of winning at poker had previously held any attraction for Ted. He would have to lose a lot of hands before he would lose enough to make him worry, and he would have to win a lot to win enough to be excited about. But since he had basically given up being Starman, he needed something interesting to fill his nights. So he got involved in a long-running poker game.
Twice a week, 5 or 6 of the guys from the racetrack would get together and play poker all night. After playing for awhile, Ted noticed that most of the players usually came out very close to even. There were a couple of guys who were consistent heavy losers, but they only played a few times a month.
Ted quickly became a regular. And he rarely went home a loser. For someone who had mastered the intricacies of nuclear theory, calculating the odds in poker was simple. Some of the other players clearly thought that poker was purely a game of luck, but Ted knew that by carefully playing by the odds, in the long run, poker rewarded thoughtful players who knew the odds.
Ted tabbed most of the players as gamblers, but one player, in particular, Miller Donovan, seemed to be associated with an organized crime organization. Or at least, that's what he boasted all the time. Ted noticed that Donovan won regularly at poker, and then every day he would lose everything he had won the night before, betting on horses. He and Ted would often talk between races, and Donovan often showed a detailed and accurate knowledge of what was going on in the Opal City underworld.
Between handball, bridge, the Foundation, chess, the poker game and the track, Ted was busier than he had ever been in his life. He didn't seem to miss his earlier lifestyle at all! He rarely if ever initiated anything, but he would cheerfully go along with whatever Doris or his friends wanted him to do. Whenever Doris asked him about his lab and his projects, or Starman, Ted told her that he had been 'burned out' and that he was just taking a 'vacation' of sorts. He said this so firmly that Doris had to believe him. In fact, she wasn't unhappy that Ted seemed to be giving up Starman, but she did worry about his loss of interest in his scientific pursuits and his new gambling habits.
The Baseball Fantasy Camp was a smashing success. Not only were the players from the Hawks and Skysox there as instructors, Starman, Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific showed up as well. Ted wasn't much of a baseball player, but Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific were exceptional athletes and could easily have been professional baseball players.
Neither the Hawks nor the Sox would make the playoffs this year. The Hawks had been hit hard by injuries in the middle of the season, losing 3 starters in a collision in short left field. As they adjusted to playing with these players, the lost 15 of their next 22 games and were never able to make up any ground in the standings.
Both teams were made better when some of their best players returned from the Armed Services, and there were baseball experts who thought they were actually the best teams in their respective leagues, right now. Of course, the teams in front of them in the standings would probably have argued about that!
Since there wouldn't be any official playoffs, both teams played the exhibition game as if it was a World Series game. The game was played in front of 40,000 fans, the largest crowd for either team since before the war. As a special treat, Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific each played an inning, and each had one at-bat.
Mr. Terrific led off for the Skysox with a hard ground ball to shortstop and reached first on a throwing error. Terry advanced to third on a single by the next hitter, and scored on a fielder's choice. The next batter drove in another run, and it was starting to look like a long night for the Hawks. The next batter grounded into a fielder's choice, leaving men on second and third with one out.
The next batter hit a shallow pop-up to right field that looked like an easy single and another RBI. The 3rd base coach sent the runners without even waiting to see if the ball would be caught. Although people knew Amazing Man as a mystery man, most people didn't know that he was one of the fastest men in the world (well, fastest men without super-speed powers, anyway). Will made a sliding catch, and easily threw the runner out at second to end the inning. 2-0 Skysox.
Amazing Man led off the bottom of the first with a single. He stole second on the first pitch to the second hitter. On the next pitch, the second batter hit a single and Will easily scored from second. The next batter walked, putting runners at first and second. The next batter hit a hard grounder to third base. The third baseman tagged the runner and threw to first for a double play. The next batter hit a high fly ball to left field. Mr. Terrific was in left, and he raced back to the warning track and made a leaping catch against the wall.
The first inning ended Sox 2, Hawks 1. Will and Terry were both pulled from the game and got a standing ovation.
The Hawks tied up the game in the bottom of the 8th inning, and won the game in the bottom of the ninth on what could have been a disputed play.
With 2 outs and a man on third, Hawks first baseman Mort Jackson hit a routine fly ball to center, and the game seemed destined for extra innings. However, an unfortunate seagull was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was hit by the ball. Ball and seagull dropped straight to the field, and the Sox center fielder was unable to recover and catch the ball. The winning run scored from third.
By rule, the Hawks won by a run. The Hawks players offered to replay the at-bat, or else count it as an out and go into extra innings, but the Sox knew the rules as well, and they insisted that the results stand. Both teams appreciated the sportsmanship displayed by the other side. They still didn't know which team was better, but that was OK. Both teams were good, and now everyone knew it!
After the game, in front of the wildly cheering fans, the Mayor and the presidents of both teams presented Doris with a check for $250,000. The Sky's the Limit Foundation's first event was a smashing success.
Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific had been invited to spend the night at the Knight mansion, so once the three heroes were able to get away from the crowds, they headed to stately Knight manor. Doris had had a private talk with the two heroes earlier in the day, and expressed her concern about Ted's recent behavior. The two asked Ted if they could stop in his lab to see what he was up to these days. Ted didn't have anything really new in the works, but he figured he could show them some of the projects that he had been working on before, and they would never know the difference.
As Ted was explaining some of his uncompleted projects, a call for his services came over the police radio. Just a few miles from Opal City, there had apparently been an explosion on a train that was bound from New York to Washington, DC. The train had derailed, and there were a number of cars currently on fire, and for some reason they were evacuating everyone nearby.
The three quickly revealed their costumes, and Ted used the gravity rod to support Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific. They took to the air, and Ted flew at top speed towards the site of the train explosion.
************************************************************************************** Mr. Terrific noticed that Ted was carrying one gravity rod and there was another holstered at his belt. Ted had once told him that he did this when he was building new powers into the gravity rod, just in case the new powers failed. Terry smiled to himself - careful observation was kind of a hobby of his.
As they flew, Ted tuned in to the Highway Patrol radio frequency and listened to reports about the disaster. As he found out more details, he got more worried. He started telling Mr. Terrific and Amazing Man what he was hearing.
"A train, travelling from New York City to Washington, DC. Carrying German prisoners of war that were detained in the US, for shipment back to Germany... Explosion in a freight car caused the train to derail. Passenger cars in the rear of the train piled on top of one another. Local police and fire departments turned out to help. But somebody is reporting high levels or radiation, and the area within 5 miles of the wreck site is being evacuated of civilians..."
"It sounds bad, Ted! How are we going to help rescue people in a high radiation area?" asked Mr. Terrific.
"I'm pretty sure my powers make me more resistant to radiation" Amazing Man spoke up. "I can touch the tracks and change to iron or steel, so I should be OK."
"And I can use my gravity rod to shield against radiation, Terry, so I'll be OK. But what about you?"
"Can you use the gravity rod to enclose the radiation source?" Terry asked Ted.
"Sure, but then I won't be able to do anything else with it." Ted protested.
"Can you set up one gravity rod to enclose the radiation source, and then use the other one for everything else you need to do?"
Ted was startled. He had totally forgotten that he was carrying two gravity rods. "That's a great idea, Terry! Normally, the gravity rod only works when I'm carrying it. But I have been working on a way to set it on 'automatic'. I can use this one to set up a radiation shield and set it to automatic, and then use the other one for rescues and such. I guess great ideas are sort of a hobby of yours!" They grinned at each other.
Ted heard more news on the Highway Patrol radio. "Seems there were some Axis mystery men who died in Allied custody, and their bodies were being studied in the States. Several of these deceased mystery men were German, and this train was carrying those bodies as well as the German POWs. You know, I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this!" New York City, a dead super-powered German, explosions and radiation reminded Ted unpleasantly of the Aryan Flame, a super-powered German whom he had battled in New York City during 1944.
The memories were very uncomfortable - the Aryan Flame had used one of Ted's inventions to give himself super powers. Ted (with the help of Johnny Quick and Captain Triumph) had defeated him, and he had apparently died shortly afterwards, seemingly of a radiation overdose. Might the Aryan Flame still be alive, and involved in this accident? Ted had seen too many strange things in the past 5 years to discount that possibility. He gave Amazing Man and Mr. Terrific a quick rundown on the Aryan Flame.
The wreck scene was now in sight. It had been a very long train, mostly freight cars with about 10 passenger cars just in front of the caboose. Now it was a tangle of smashed cars, many overturned, others piled on top of each other. There were flames in many places, and near the front of the wreck, some of the cars were emitting an eerie blue glow. The Geiger counter in Ted's gravity rod started clicking. Ted set Terry and Will down behind a hill to protect them from radiation.
"I'll set up the radiation shield, and then we'll get to work!"
As good as his word, Ted flew to the glowing blue cars. Nothing seemed to be moving nearby or inside any of the cars. He quickly created a domed radiation shield around the damaged cars, and his Geiger counter reported an immediate lowering of radiation. The background level was still higher than normal due to secondary radiation, but it wasn't immediately dangerous. You wouldn't want to spend a week here until after it was cleaned up, but the 3 heroes didn't expect to be here that long.
Ted clicked the concealed controls on the gravity rod to set it to automatically maintain the radiation shield, then put it down in a safe place and got out the other gravity rod. He used the second rod to carefully place a heavy piece of wreckage over the first rod. This didn't affect its operation but Ted didn't want anyone else running off with it. A stranger probably couldn't get it to operate without extensive study, but he didn't want to take chances.
He flew back and got Terry and Will and they went back to the wreck. Mr. Terrific seemed to take charge.
"Ted, we have to find the train crew and find out if there are any dangerous materials in the freight cars, and how many people are on board!"
Ted noticed a group of men in uniforms - conductor, engineer, some policemen and some firemen, already trying to rescue people from the cars. He set the heroes down next to them. They quickly learned that the entire train crew was safe, and that as far as the train crew knew, there was nothing dangerous in the freight cars. But nobody could explain the blue glow. Those cars had been carrying coffins and some large boxes made out of a dull metal. Terry decided that they knew enough to get started with their own rescue efforts.
"Ted, you put out the fires! Will, why don't you see if you can get some of those passenger cars open?" and he pointed at some coach cars which were jumbled together in a pile. People were trying to get out the windows of those coaches because the doors were crushed shut. "I'll help the people in the cars over there," and he headed towards a couple of cars that had rolled over. The problem in those cars wouldn't be in making new exits, which would require super powers, but helping dazed and injured people climb out the existing exits. Ted and Will quickly realized that the jobs Terry had assigned were the ones each of them was best suited for. Tactical thinking seemed to be another of Terry's hobbies.
Ted had developed a neat technique for putting out fires. He shot high into the air and located the nearest body of water, which happened to be the Gunpowder River. He scooped up as much water as he could carry and headed back to the train wreck. He brought the ball of water in contact with a fire, and waved it back and forth like using the eraser on a pencil. As soon as one fire was 'erased' he flew on to the next one. In a few minutes he had erased all the fires. He dropped the rest of the water away from the train, and went to help Amazing Man.
Will had touched the mangled train tracks and transformed his body into organic iron. This increased his strength to the point where he could easily pick up one of the passenger coaches. But he quickly realized that more than brute strength was going to be required here. The cars were bent and twisted together in a pile and if he attempted to tear open one car, the whole pile shifted and threatened to collapse. There were screams of agony and fear coming from within all the cars, and Will wanted to work faster, but he couldn't risk it. He wanted to just tear into the pile and dig cars out as fast as he could, but he could end up killing many people that way. He had managed to safely tear a large hole in the side of one car, and the able passengers in that car were helping the injured get out, when Ted arrived to help.
"Starman! Can you keep this pile from collapsing while I tear holes in each of these cars?" he shouted.
Ted had a different idea. "Maybe. But let's try something else first. Can you grab this car" he pointed at the one nearest him "and keep it from moving while I cut a hole in it?"
Will grabbed the car in his iron hands. "Go to it!"
Ted had a new technique he had recently perfected. Well, not as recently as all that, considering how long it had been since he had gone out as Starman. He focused the beam of the gravity rod more intensely than he had ever done before and aimed it at the side of the car Will was holding. This produced a very small point on the metal side where the gravity was extremely intense. The metal nearby collapsed into the focal point of the beam and produced a small hole. Ted used the beam to trace a line up the side, and as he traced that line, the metal side was cut along that line. The effect was similar to a very hot cutting torch, but much faster, and without the intense heat. Ted cut out a large square, and then used the gravity rod to yank the cut section of the wall out of the way.
Once again, the passengers in the car flooded out, with the less injured helping those who were more injured. Ted used the gravity rod to gently lift out a few who couldn't move on their own.
He then used the gravity rod to support the rest of the pile of smashed cars, while Will tore the empty car out of the pile, so they could get at the next car. Before Ted released the pile again, Will used his vastly enhanced strength to fuse some of the wreckage into supports to take the place of the coach they had just removed. They then went on to the next car, and the next, working together smoothly.
Will had never retained a single changed form for such a long time, but every time he felt that he was about to change back to his normal body, he would touch another piece of the shattered train track, and will himself to remain as organic iron. He started to feel a kind of fatigue he had never experienced before, and each time he tried to extend his iron form he had to concentrate harder. He was pushing his power to the limit and beyond, and he had no idea what the side effects would be. And he didn't have time to worry about it.
Together Ted and Will slowly but steadily rescued people from the pile of tangled coaches. They worked from the top of the file down, and around the outsides towards the center. As they removed cars from the outside of the pile, the one aspect of the job got easier, because there was less chance of the pile collapsing. But, the cars from the interior cars were more badly damaged and mangled, and the people inside them were more badly hurt. Rather than just cutting holes in the sides of these cards, Ted and Will often had to go inside the cars and clear the wreckage away so that the passengers could reach the openings they had created.
Meanwhile, Terry had been opening doors, or going in through windows, on several passenger coaches which were much less damaged, having rolled over a few times but not having ended up in a pile. Inside each car, he organized the passengers so that they were able to help each other climb out. His language hobby helped him out here, as he was able to speak to the German passengers in their own language. He went from car to car, helping when help was needed, making sure that everyone was carried out of the wreckage. He often stopped to help bandage a wound, or splint a broken bone. He unfortunately couldn't help everyone, and sadly, a few times all he could do was gently reach out and close the eyes of some unfortunate.
Within a half-hour, the scene was swarming with rescue workers - firemen and policemen from local towns, ambulance crews, and several truckloads of GIs from the nearby Aberdeen military base. Additionally, many of the less injured passengers were helping out. In the face of this disaster, it wasn't important that six months before, most of the passengers on the train had been classified as captured enemy combatants. This was a human disaster and everyone human in range was doing his or her best to help overcome this disaster!
Several hours later, between the efforts of the three heroes, the local rescue workers and the passengers and crew of the train, they reached a point where everyone who had been in a passenger coach was either rescued or had died. The rescue workers began going through the rubble of the freight cars, because sometimes there were stowaways on freight trains. By now, some heavy machinery had arrived, and Ted and Will could take a break and let the machinery and the machine operators do some of the lifting and cutting. The three heroes gathered with some of the leaders of the rescue teams to decide what to do next.
Will was staying on his feet only through sheer will power. He had never used his power for such a long time. He finally relaxed. When he changed back into his normal form, the strain of the transformation overcame him, and he immediately fell into unconsciousness. Fortunately, Terry was quick enough to catch him before he fell to the ground.
A nearby doctor came over to examine him, but quickly realized that someone who specialized in super-hero physiology was needed. Ted placed a radio call to Dr. Mid-Nite. Mid-Nite contacted Dr. Fate, who magically zapped him from his New York apartment to the wreck site in the northern Maryland countryside. Ted explained the problem and Mid-Night quickly started work with the other doctor. Ted and Terry went back to the rescue operations.
Finally, the entire wreckage had been searched other than the glowing cars that were enclosed in Ted's radiation shield. It would take many days to remove the wreckage and repair the damaged tracks, and clean up the radiation, but the job that was left was in fact clean up and not rescue. Those that could be rescued had been rescued.
All that remained was to investigate the mangled radioactive freight cars. From beyond the radiation shield it was clear that there had been a massive explosion in one of the cars. This had destroyed the tracks underneath the car, which had caused the cars further back in the trail to derail as the passed over the wrecked track. The locomotives had managed to drag several of the cars nearest the explosion for almost a mile as the engineer had frantically braked to a halt.
Ted and Terry were still surveying the blue cars when Will and Dr. Mid-Nite walked up to them. Will looked very exhausted, but otherwise seemed to be OK. Ted was just about to speak to them when Terry tackled him to the ground. Mid-Nite dove into Will, knocking him aside, as a blue beam struck a wrecked train car just behind where they had been standing. There was an explosion, and Ted's Geiger counter clicked wildly for a few seconds, then died down again. The blue beam came from one of the cars inside the radiation shield and had passed through the shield without being affected. Ted's fears were confirmed!
Some how, some way, the Aryan Flame was alive!
**************************************************************************************
Ted's self confidence broke when he realized that the Aryan Flame had indeed caused this accident! While they had been totally engaged in the rescue effort, Ted and the other All-Stars had been able to concentrate on saving lives and the tasks that still needed to be done, rather than the horrible things they were looking at.
Probably 20 people had lost their lives because of this wreck. Some of these people could probably have been saved if the rescuers had got to them earlier. Over 100 people were sent to the hospital, and some of them would probably die as well. Many of the survivors would be coping with the wounds they received tonight for the rest of their lives. Although all of the All-Stars had witnessed death before, none had ever seen this many dead under such terrible conditions. This event would leave memories that would cause nightmares for years to come - if they lived through the upcoming battle...
Ted had been able to avoid thinking about the cause of the accident earlier, but when he was sure that the Aryan Flame had caused this accident, Ted couldn't hide from his self-guilt any longer. Ted's invention had been used to give the Aryan Flame his powers, and in Ted's mind, this made him responsible for all the horrors around him. One of the reasons Ted had avoided being Starman recently was guilt linked to the Aryan Flame. Ted felt that his actions as Starman had lead directly to the Flame's death. Now to realize that a villain he had created and had failed to neutralize had caused the deaths of so many, and agony for so many more, crashed in on him.
(It doesn't matter that no rational objective observer would blame Ted for any of this. The Aryan Flame had used Ted's invention without permission, and his death had not been caused by the method Ted used to capture him, but radiation exposure that he had inflicted on himself while using Ted's invention. He would have died anyway, and if Ted and friends hadn't stopped him, he probably would have killed a lot of people before he died. And Ted certainly wasn't responsible that the Aryan Flame had come back to life, as we shall see... But this was Ted's life and he was an 'emotional participant', not a `rational observer'!)
Most of the rescue workers had left. The military left a few MPs in anti-radiation suits to keep people away from the radioactivity. And the railroad had already started switching trains around the area. So even if the upcoming battle with the Aryan Flame got dangerous, the general public would be safe.
As they rolled behind some pieces of wreckage, the heroes noticed that the blue glow around the boxcars was fading. Quickly it was gone. Ted was surprised to realize that it was almost dawn. His gravity rod would run out of power soon! He had to get the other, prototype gravity rod back from under the pile of wreckage where he had hidden it!
Weeks before, Ted had been experimenting with increased power storage in the prototype testing gravity rod. Theoretically it had enough stored power for about 4 hours of steady use in full daylight. Ted headed towards the pile of rubble he had used to conceal the prototype. Getting the other gravity rod, and being able to assist in the upcoming battle, suddenly had become the most important thing in Ted's world. With his damaged self-confidence, he felt he needed to prove himself and right now!
Then one of the no-longer glowing boxcars exploded! When the smoke cleared and the debris finished falling, 4 blue-glowing human figures were revealed. As they watched, the blue glow around the figures faded, seemingly drawn inside them. It was as if they were absorbing all the radiation and radioactivity in the area!
One of the figures was the Aryan Flame. Nobody recognized the other three. They all seemed to be dressed in cheap clothes and lab coats, which were well tattered by now. The figures started moving towards them. They moved almost as if they were wooden puppets on strings - awkwardly and in jerks and stops. What was perhaps more eerie was that none of the four made any noise whatsoever! Except for shuffling their feet, they moved in total silence. Will noticed that there were no expressions on their faces, Throughout the entire battle that followed, not one of them ever uttered a word or even made a grunt of pain! And their expressions never changed...
As they got closer, two of them raised their arms and pointed at the heroes. A blue beam came from the Aryan Flame's hand, and lightning flashed from the hand of the other villain. Fortunately Ted had thrown up a shield between them just before they started blasting, and both beams splashed harmlessly against that shield. The heroes quickly scattered. Each of the enemy figures moved towards one of the heroes. Just before being engaged by the Aryan Flame, Terry noticed that the enemy figures were now moving with less awkwardness, almost as if they were coming back to life.
The War Department had code names for all of these 'deceased' German mystery men, and those code names will be used throughout the rest of this story. It's easier on the author than saying 'Ted thrashed his foe" or "The zombie with the electrical powers attacked Will!" even though the surviving heroes didn't learn their names until a few days later. The heroes did figure out the powers of each of their foes, and so will you!
Starman and Electraking
Seeing Ted moving (towards his other gravity rod), Electraking shot a lightning blast at him. Ted still had a shield up, and the blast was deflected away. Ted responded with a force blast at Electraking. Somehow, the King was able to cause debris to rise off the ground and intercept Ted's force blasts. So exchanging energy blasts wasn't accomplishing anything.
Suddenly Electraking changed tactics. He pointed both of his arms at the locomotive, which had somehow not been damaged in the wreck. He then raised his arms, and the locomotive rose majestically into the air! Ted was almost awestruck - Superman might have lifted the engine more easily but very few other beings in the world could have! He used the gravity rod to determine that Electraking was using magnetism! This made sense - electricity and magnetism are just two manifestations of the same force.
Suddenly Ted realized that the locomotive was accelerating towards him! He couldn't afford to be distracted trying to analyze his opponent's powers! He was pretty sure his gravity rod wouldn't be able to stop something with the mass and power of a locomotive moving faster than a speeding bullet! So, he flew out of the way, fast!
As Ted flew to the side, Electraking tried to change the path of the engine, but it had too much inertia, so he just let it go. The engine fell to the ground with a tremendous noise, and rolled over half a dozen times. The water tank burst and hot water sprayed all over. The wreckage already in its way was further demolished. Fortunately, none of the other heroes, villains, or the MPs had been anywhere near the flight path of that engine!
Electraking turned his attention back to Ted. He used his ability to control electricity to shut down the gravity rod!
Ted was flying low and fast. He hit the ground hard and rolled, smashing into piles of rubble. His costume protected him from somewhat, but he rolled over a lot of sharp fragment of wreckage, and he began bleeding from numerous cuts all over his body. He smashed into the broken piece go boxcar he had placed overtop of his second gravity rod. He heard and felt bones cracking in his rib cage. He was in agony, but he was able to use his momentum to roll behind this piece of wreckage. Fortunate for him that he did!
Electraking blasted that rubble with a lightning bolt! Ted felt the current, but the metal in the wreckage saved him by grounding the lightning bolt. Electraking couldn't see Ted behind the wreckage, so he used his magnetic powers to life it out of the way, no doubt planning to drop it on Ted as soon as he saw him.
Ted knew he had only one chance, and if he didn't move fast enough, he might die. His terror overcame his self-doubt, and he snatched up the second rod and blasted Electraking in one smooth motion! Not knowing the second gravity rod existed, the King had not turned it off. He was unprepared for Ted's sudden blast, which knocked him tumbling backwards. Ted took the opportunity to pick up several tons of debris, doing his best to avoid iron or steel, and throw it Electraking.
King's instant reaction of using magnetism stopped a lot of the mass, but the aluminum, wood and rock in the mass slipped through. King was forced to blast the incoming mess away with lightning. He wasn't totally successful, and got battered a little bit, but he was almost immediately ready to continue the fight.
Ted realized that he was getting his butt handed to him. He figured it was time to retreat and come up with a new plan. At that moment, Ted saw Amazing Man knocked to the ground by a man swinging a section of train track. Then the man raised the track section over his head and plunged it at Will's heart, exactly as a man would plunge a wooden stake into the heart of a vampire! Ted tried desperately to use the gravity rod to snatch Will out from under the deadly steel stake. Nobody else was going to die today if he could prevent it! But he wasn't sure if he could move Will away in time!
Dr. Mid-Nite and the Iron Fury
Dr. Min-Nite thought he might be in trouble. For some reason, he was having difficulty seeing the opponent whom he knew was stalking him. Doc's goggles enabled him to see infrared light. Objects at different temperatures radiate different 'colors' (wavelength, frequency) of infrared, and human bodies are usually warmer than the things around them, making the infrared color of a human body easily distinguishable from cooler objects behind it. Easily, that is, for those who can perceive infrared!
For some reason, this villain's body heat seemed to be about the same as the background temperature, and so all Doc could see was a blob of color moving against a background of the same color. Kind of like watching a black cat walk in front of a black curtain in shadowy light - he could tell something was coming towards him, fast, but he couldn't make out any details. Occasionally the figure would cross between Doc and a hot spot in the wreckage, and the different colored light from the hot spot would outline the figure, much as that same black cat standing in front of a white curtain would be outlined. So Doc knew he was being stalked by a human-like figure, and he also knew that it was moving a little bit faster than the fastest 'normal' human Doc had ever encountered.
With so much wreckage around, it was impossible for his foe to quietly sneak up on him. Doc heard a sound to his left, and turned, throwing his best roundhouse right at the blur he saw. He missed, and the Iron Fury stepped around the outside of the punch and slammed a punch to the side of Doc's head that made his head ring. Doc jumped backwards quickly, but the Iron Fury spun around and launched a kick at Doc's head. Doc barely got a hand up to block the kick. He ducked under the kick and got his hand under the Iron Fury's outstretched leg and lifted, toppling the Iron Fury onto his back. But he was up again almost instantly. He swept a kick towards Doc's ankles, and Doc jumped to avoid this kick. The Iron Fury continued his spin, and he caught Doc off-guard by sweeping directly into another kick, which caught Doc in the temple! Doc staggered backwards.
The Iron Fury was on him in a flash. He rained blows on Doc, using his hands and feet equally. It was all Doc could do to minimize the damage he was taking - He was blocking or evading less than half of the Fury's kicks and punches. From the impacts he felt when he was hit, he estimated that the Iron Fury was much stronger and faster than any 'normal' human. Mid-Night continued to retreat, blocking punches and kicks when he could. Doc hesitated just a little when his foot slipped on some smaller pieces of debris, and the Iron Fury pounced!
He dropped his head and rammed it into Doc's stomach, and as Doc bent over, the Iron Fury straightened up and caught Doc underneath the chin with another head butt!
Doc had been right! He WAS in trouble!
Doc fell to the ground, unable to move. He was surprised when the Iron Fury didn't finish him off right away. Instead, Fury kicked him, hard, in the rib cage! And then kicked him again. Doc used the momentum of the second kick to the chest to roll away from his foe. He swept up a handful of dirt and as his opponent approached him again, Doc threw the dirt in his face. This slowed him down momentarily, which allowed Doc to get back to his feet. He started circling his foe, until he was able to see him clearly against a hot spot in the wreckage - a couple of boxcars that had been on fire earlier and still were hotter than the environment around them. He still couldn't see his foe as clearly as he would have liked, but it was an improvement!
Doc realized that his foe was a trained martial artist. He wasn't quite sure what tao the man followed, but he really didn't have time to waste figuring it out! He finally realized that the opponent's skin wasn't normal, either - it seemed to be almost like some kind of very flexible light armor. Doc was having very little success in this fight.
Doc realized that he wasn't going to be able to keep up this fight for much longer. Sooner or later, he would miss a block, and the force of that blow would leave him open to the next blow, and it would be all over after that. Or, even if he managed to keep blocking everything, within a few minutes he was going to be so worn out and banged up that he wouldn't be able to resist any longer. And his opponent showed no signs of slowing down.
Doc needed a weapon of some type. He only had one kind of weapon with him, the weapon he was so familiar with - his Blackout Bombs! As soon as the impulse came to him, his trained reactions took over and he quickly pulled a Blackout Bomb from under his cape and threw it.
Doc never threw his Bombs directly at people. A Blackout Bomb exploded with considerable force, and could probably hurt a normal human badly if the Bomb struck him. In addition, the chemicals in the Bomb that combined to produce the thick dark smoke were caustic and could cause irritation and pain. In particular, if the unmixed chancels got in someone's eye, they could cause blindness. But this wasn't a normal situation! Doc threw the Bomb directly at his foe's chest!
Even the Iron Fury's superior speed was not enough to protect him. The Bomb hit him squarely on the chest and burst. The concussion was enough to drive the man backwards, snapping his head forward and down, which brought his face into contact with the reacting chemicals. The man staggered backwards, pawing at his eyes, but made no sounds. Doc had planned to finish the fight as soon as the Bomb went off, but he found that he still couldn't see his foe clearly. He needed a better plan! So Doc decided on a tactical withdrawal.
Will and Phantasm
Will started running towards the figures revealed when the boxcar exploded. Along the way, he touched a steel train wheel and converted his body into organic steel. The change slowed him down significantly, but he was very strong and almost invulnerable in this form. Suddenly there was a silent explosion about 10 feet in front of him that left a very deep crater. Will tried to stop before he fell in, but couldn't! He stumbled and rolled, right over the edge of the crater - but didn't fall in! As he finally stopped rolling, the hole beneath him vanished.
Will looked around for an enemy. He saw Starman engaged with Electraking, and Dr. Mid-Nite fighting the Iron Fury. Terry was trying to avoid the explosive blasts of the Aryan Flame, but the 4th figure seemed to have vanished! Suddenly, Will was struck from the side by something very heavy and quite invisible. It sounded like steel striking steel, and the invisible club struck Will repeatedly. He wasn't really being hurt, but it sure was annoying! He flailed wildly around himself, hoping to strike his opponent by accident, but none of his punches struck anything. What a totally frustrating fight!
Will's invisible opponent, the Phantasm, must have been growing tired. His strikes slowed and then stopped. Will saw a four-foot section of demolished train track, with a ragged point on one end, appear out of nowhere a few feet in front of him! Will still couldn't see the Phantasm, but now that he had a general idea of where to look, he noticed that several of the piles of rubble wavered, as if there were hot air rising from the ground between Will and the piles. He couldn't be sure it was his foe, but he was willing to take a chance! If the Phantasm was causing this wavering effect, he was retreating.
Will noticed that in the wreckage nearby was the door from the end of one of the passenger coaches including the rubber weatherproofing seal. Will immediately touched this seal and turned his body into rubber.
Then he grabbed two really heavy pieces of wreckage, one with each arm, and backed away from the area where he thought his foe might be lurking, invisibly. He stretched his arms as far as he could, and then jumped into the air. His stretched arms snapped back to their normal length like two rubber bands, and he was shot into the air like a slingshot. While he was still in the air, he expanded his body until it was very thin and covered a lot of area, and when he fell to the ground, he trapped the Phantasm under the elastic tarp his body had become!
"Just like Plastic Man!" Will smirked to himself in satisfaction. He quickly found out that it was harder being Plastic Man than it appeared to be!
Not only were his muscles now made of rubber, but they were almost paper-thin rubber. Will didn't have the experience using this form to know how to apply leverage with his muscles in that condition. The Phantasm stood up, stretched out his arms and started crumpling Will between them like a big sheet of newsprint paper. He wasn't doing any permanent harm to Will, but it was causing Will incredible agony! He nearly passed out.
The Phantasm threw him aside, then again picked up the 4-foot piece of railroad track. He must have had superior strength to pick it up so easily! He swung it at Will like a baseball bat. Will quickly touched a piece of metal wreckage and willed himself to change. Unfortunately he was touching a piece of aluminum, and when the steel rail smashed into him he was knocked down, and knocked out. As Will hit the ground, the Phantasm changed his grip on the track section. He raised it in both hands over his head, and plunged the pointed end at Will's chest like a spear.
Just before the point pierced Will's chest, Ted deflected the downward plunge of the pointed steel stake to the side. He had realized he wasn't going to be able to move Will in time and changed his tactics. Even so, he was almost too late! While the pointed end didn't skewer Will through the center of his chest, it didn't miss entirely. The jagged point scraped down the side of Will's aluminum rib cage, leaving a jagged 6 inch long tear in his side.
Ted quickly pulled Will away. He also swept up Mid-Nite and flew towards the largest pile of wreckage. He figured they could hide behind the wreckage and get a short breather. And maybe Mid-Nite could do something about his ribs and the big gash in Will's side! At least Will wasn't bleeding, but Ted was scared what might happen if Will turned back to his normal self with a hole like that in him.
Terry and the Aryan Flame
Terry was fighting the Aryan Flame. He was vastly outmatched in power, and the Flame had a weapon that could strike at a distance and Terry didn't - all he had was his hands. "Actually" he quickly amended his first thought "I do have another weapon, that can strike at any distance - my brain!"
The Aryan Flame opened the combat by aiming a two-handed blast at Terry, who ducked, but was rocked by the large explosion when the blast beams hit a damaged boxcar behind him. He dropped flat to escape the shrapnel from the explosion and scurried quickly to his left and out of sight behind another boxcar. Almost instantly, he appeared around the far end of the car.
Terry started throwing debris at the Flame, testing his powers. Everything he threw vanished in a bright flash of heat, about 12 feet from his foe. The bigger the object, or the harder Terry threw it, the more intense the flash. But the largest stuff he could throw was incinerated and the Flame hardly slowed down.
The Flame turned and blasted the boxcar as soon as the rocks hit his heat shield, and Terry was on the run again!
He zigzagged as he ran to avoid more blast beams. The Flame apparently got frustrated consistently missing his moving target, so he began chasing Terry, trying to get close enough so that Terry wouldn't be able to dodge in time. Terry turned his head to watch as the Flame run after him, and he calmly deduced the rest of the shield's properties! The shield didn't affect things that were stationary - these things passed through it without being affected. Maybe Terry could use that to his advantage!
The two foes were at an impasse, as Terry had proved that he was able to effectively dodge any blasts that they Flame threw his way. But Terry was sure that he would tire before the Aryan Flame. He had had time to formulate a plan, and it was time to put that plan into action.
The locomotive, which Electraking had so casually thrown at Starman, had been a coal burning steam engine. Terry climbed up on top of the coal tender and started throwing lumps of coal at the Aryan Flame. Of course, this didn't hurt him, but it seemed to anger him. He threw another two-handed blast in Terry's direction, and the coal car was shattered. This was the most dangerous part of his plan, as this could have easily caused a much bigger explosion. Terry was counting on the metal body of the car to channel the explosion so it would smash the coal inside but not ignite it. Luckily, it came off without a hitch. The coal tender exploded, vaporizing the coal inside, leaving a huge cloud of coal dust hanging in the air.
Terry had leapt off the tender an instant before it exploded, and now he made sure that the Aryan Flame saw him dodge into the thick black cloud, as if to hide. He wasn't moving as fast now as he had been before, and he was clearly limping!
As soon as he could no longer see the Aryan Flame through the coal dust cloud, Terry's limp vanished, and he ran directly away from his foe, as fast as he had ever run before! If the Flame fired a blast beam while Terry was still in the dust cloud, it would be just too bad for Terry! But Terry had been sure that the Flame would want to see his blast strike Terry, and his gamble paid off. The Aryan Flame strode arrogantly through the dust cloud!
When Terry judged that the Flame was about in the middle of the cloud, he turned and hurled the heaviest rock he could throw into the cloud. The rock struck the shield and was incinerated. The Flame's movement had allowed coal dust inside the shield, and the whole cloud ignited instantly into a brilliant fireball. The dust wasn't confined, so it didn't (quite) explode, but the sudden fireball produced a loud "whoomph" and the concussion was enough to knock Ted off his feet, about 20 yards away!
But, that fireball and concussion were not enough to harm the Aryan Flame. He was knocked off his feet as well, but he was back on his feet almost as quickly as Terry was. Apparently he was invulnerable to flame. Ted, who had witnessed the Aryan Flame's first incarnation, when his body had seemed to emit blue flames, wasn't surprised.
Doctor Mid-Nite was tending to Will when Ted picked Terry up with the gravity rod, and flew him to their temporary hiding place. There were 4 super-powered foes advancing on them, and they all knew that they wouldn't be able to rest for very long!
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Ted carried the other 3 All-Stars away from the crash site at top speed. The railroad tracks ran through some woods here, but the destruction caused by the wreck had created a large clearing full of debris from the wreck. Ted landed them on top of a hill about a half-mile away, from where they could look down into the clearing. The villains were regrouping, and heading towards them on foot. None of them seemed to be able to fly.
Ted was frantic! "Guys, we just got clobbered! We can't fight these guys again! We have to call in reinforcements to help us, or these guys may end up killing us all!"
Terry responded calmly "Take it easy, Ted. We can't call anybody - ever since that boxcar exploded, none of our radios are working. There's too much static, probably coming from that lightning guy."
Ted tried his radio and found that Terry was right. Meanwhile, Mid-Night was examining Will's injury.
"Well, I'll fly us all and we'll find a phone!" Ted was ready to use the gravity rod to pick up his teammates and fly away.
"Hold it, Ted! We can't just run off and leave these guys alone! Somebody could get hurt or killed if we don't stop them!"
"Then I'll go by myself!"
Terry and Will had been hanging out with Ted for the past 2 days, first at the baseball camp, then at the exhibition game, and finally in this battle. They had both noticed that Ted didn't seem to be his normal self, and Doris had got them and privately discussed his issues with them. Terry understood that his friend had recently undergone some rough times, and he had tried his best to be understanding, but now he was getting mad.
"YOU WILL NOT!" he said, in a tone of command none of his teammates had ever heard before. "Listen to yourself, Ted! You just told us that these guys are so dangerous that the 4 of us can't fight them alone, and now you are proposing to run off and leave only 3 of us to stop them? And Will is unconscious. That doesn't sound like a hero to me! It sounds like a coward." Terry paused, as if in thought, and then continued.
"Actually, if you really feel that way, we're better off without you. Get going!"
He turned away to help Doc with Will. Terry didn't really think Ted was a coward, but they didn't have time to coddle him. Terry was counting on his accusation of cowardice shocking Ted back into some semblance of normality, at least as long as it took to win this fight. Without Ted, Terry saw no way to win. With Ted, he figured it would be easy.
Ted stood absolutely still about a minute. Then he started to tremble, and the trembling got worse, until he fell to the ground as if he were having a fit. He was twisting and turning, his arms were flailing wildly, and he was drumming his heels into the ground! Doc jumped on Ted's legs and Terry sat on his chest, and frantically pulled his mouth open and stuffed a folded bandage into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue.
Ted had never developed the mental and emotional tools he needed to deal with his current situation. It's not that he had never failed before - he had. He knew how to battle back from failure and win through to a greater victory. And it wasn't the fact that his teammates were depending on him in a life and death situation - he had been in those situations before and always succeeded admirably.
The difference was that never before in Ted's life had his failures seriously affected anyone other than himself. Well, maybe he had disappointed his parents or Doris, but that was the worst that had ever happened, before. Ted could handle failing himself, but he didn't know how to deal with failing others!
He couldn't operate effectively with the fear, doubt and guilt in his mind. He didn't know how, and he didn't have time to learn! The anger and contempt he heard in Terry's voice drove him. He would do whatever he had to in order to restore Terry's faith in him! He had to save his friends, regardless of the cost to himself! So he did what he always did in a tough spot - he fought, and kept fighting until he won!
His attention turned totally inward, into his mind, Ted saw Starman flying over a vast landscape. Spread across the landscape were hideous monsters, evil super villains, flittering ghosts and many nightmarish things Ted couldn't even name. One by one he fought each of these evil things in his mind, and forced them into a magic bottle he had created with his gravity rod. The magic bottle got heavier and heavier, and Ted had to struggle harder and harder to push each successive monster, villain, ghost and nightmare inside.
Finally, though, it was done! Throughout the vast expanse of his mental landscape, Ted searched. He looked in every mental crevice, under every virtual rock, behind every imagined tree. He found no monsters, no ghosts, no super-villains, and no nightmares. He sealed the bottle and hid it in the furthest corner of his mind he could imagine. Finally his mind was back under his own control and he could return to the real world.
What had seemed like many long weeks of exhausting battle to Ted had only been a few minutes to his friends. They fought against his uncontrolled spasms, doing their best to keep him from hurting himself. Then, as suddenly as the fit had started, it stopped.
Ted opened his eyes. He was absolutely exhausted. He had reopened some of the gashes on his body while he flailed around, and had pulled some muscles in his arms and legs. But his mind was clear! In fact, more clear than he could ever remember!
"Sorry, guys! I was a little high strung there for a while, but I'm ready to go now! Let's go stop those guys!" Ted used the gravity rod to create a platform Terry and Mid-Nite could stand on. "Let's go!" he urged.
"What about Will?" Mid-Nite was alarmed at the change in Ted. From fear to recklessness in only a few seconds - what was going on?
"This won't take long! We'll be right back and you can help him then!"
"Sorry, Ted - tending to Will won't wait. We don't know when he might...."
Ted was impatient and interrupted "OK, Doc, you take care of Will and I'll take care of the bad guys. Be right back!" He dissolved the platform and started to fly away.
"STOP RIGHT THERE, TED!" Terry commanded. Once again, his teammates were astounded at the power of his voice. Ted stopped. "Ted. Will needs help NOW and you are the only one who can help him. You WILL help him, and then the four of us will take down those super-zombies together." Terry was a little bit surprised when Ted did what he was told to do.
Ted and Mid-Nite knelt down next to Will and examined the gash again. Doc said, "I think if we could somehow fuse the edges together, that would be good enough. When he changed back, he would be fine."
"Easy as pie, Doc!" Ted actually started singing to himself! " And whistle while you work, whistle while you work! Come on get smart, tune up and start to whistle while you work!"
As Doc watched, Ted carefully used the gravity rod to smooth the torn jagged edges of the tear. He then pulled the edges together until the tear was reduced to a scratch on Will's side.
"This is the best I can do, Doc! I hope it's good enough!" It looked good enough - just a shallow scratch. Will certainly looked almost as good as new!
"Good work, Ted! Now, how do we get him to wake up?"
Will's body seemed to have some kind of unconscious safety protection mechanism that had kept it from changing back while he was so badly injured. Shortly after Ted was finished, Will, still unconscious, suddenly changed back to his normal form. Mid-Nite examined him and could find no trace of the wound! He broke an ammonia capsule under Will's nose, and Will work up, shaking his head and retching!
Dr. Mid-Nite checked out Ted and Will as thoroughly as he could given the circumstances. Both men insisted they were fine. Doc reflected that it didn't really matter if they were or not - the bad guys would be here in only a few more minutes, and they were going to have to fight no matter what their conditions!
Terry had a plan. "While we were fighting these guys before, I observed enough about their powers to make me think that we can beat them one-on-one if we each select the proper opponent. Doc, you take the illusionist (Phantasm). I think his illusions are strictly visible light, so they shouldn't affect you.
"Will, you get the human dynamo (Electraking). Remember that copper conducts electricity and is non-magnetic! I'll take care of the martial artist (Iron Fury). Ted, you've beaten the Aryan Flame before, so he's yours! Remember, you control gravity, the most powerful force in the universe!"
Ted knew this wasn't strictly true. Magnetic attraction is many times stronger than gravity. But in a larger sense, gravity is the dominant force in the universe because _everything_ is affected by gravity. Terry was hoping that if he got Ted thinking again, he might get over his suddenly manic state. Manic self-confidence in battle could be as bad as no self-confidence!
Ted once again scooped up his teammates and they returned to the battlefield. The villains had made it about halfway to the hilltop where the heroes had been resting. Ted made sure the bad guys saw him fly overhead, and they turned to follow the All-Stars back towards the train wreck.
The 4 still hadn't said anything, they didn't seem to be displaying any emotion, and they didn't seem to have a plan, outside of fighting. They seemed determined to fight the All-Stars but why? At the moment, it didn't really matter.
They seemed to be carrying out some kind of relentless mission, and right now their goal seemed to be the destruction of these 4 All-Stars.
Ted set Will, Doc and Terry down in the wreckage field, and then hovered over the villains as they ran back through the woods. Ted used prearranged signals so that each All-Star would be nearby when the foe Terry had chosen for him emerged into the clearing.
Ted felt great! In fact, he felt better than he had for years! Yes, he had some nagging little injuries, but they were really trivial. Time to zap the bad guys!
He couldn't understand why it had taken him so long to realize just how powerful Starman really was. It seemed to him that the Ted of the past had been really stupid, or scared of his real power. Well, he was past that now! It was hard to believe that only a few minutes ago, he had been terrified of a bunch of, frankly, second rate villains. But it really didn't matter. He was straightened out now!
He didn't agree with Terry's plan to take on the villains in separate, one-on-one battles. Ted knew he could take them all by himself, with the other All-Stars for backup and support. But the others had accepted Terry's plan, so Ted had gone along. He was flying above the woods, informing his teammates of the bad guys' locations.
This job was boring. Ted was trying to figure out the most spectacular way of beating the Aryan Flame, when suddenly he was smashed by energy bolts and sent pinwheeling through the sky! Phantasm had used his illusion powers to hide blast beams and lightning bolts until they actually blasted Ted's energy shield. Ted was spinning end over end and he became so dizzy he lost control of the gravity rod! He fell into the clearing and would have been seriously hurt if Will hadn't been doing his Plastic Man imitation again and managed to catch him.
Ted was annoyed, with Will! He hadn't asked for help! He could take care of himself, and certainly didn't need any assistance from an India rubber man! At that moment, the four villains burst out of the woods at the opposite end of the clearing, and started rushing to the attack!
Ted, Will and Terry raced towards their foes. Dr. Mid-Night remained motionless. As far as he could see, there was nothing in front of the other All-Stars except an empty clearing! He remembered Terry's warning, and quickly scanned the entire clearing, and was chagrined to see the 4 villains only yards from him, clearly about to launch a sneak attack!
Doc did what he always did so well in a fight. He whipped out a Blackout Bomb, and hurled it at his foes. Suddenly the bad guys were enveloped in a thick black smoke cloud. The cloud momentarily blocked the Phantasm's vision, and his illusion vanished. The moderate breeze quickly blew the smoke away, leaving the villains facing the heroes for the final battle.
The explosion of the Blackout Bomb, and the disappearance of their foes, took Ted, Will and Terry by surprise. Will turned around, and lunged towards a broken electrical cable. The insulation had peeled back and copper wire was exposed. Will was following Terry's hastily stated battle plan. But his foes were faster!
Phantasm threw a dazzling beam of light at him, trying to disorient him. The Aryan Flame shot two blast beams, and Electraking blasted him with lightning while using his magnetic powers to try to smash Will from behind with debris! One of the Aryan Flame's beams struck the ground just in front of Will and caused an explosion, releasing a burst of radiation.
Ted tried to protect Will from these several energy blasts with an energy shield. In a one-in-a-zillion coincidence that could only happen on Earth-2, Will was struck by 6 kinds of energy (light, blast beam, radiation, lightning, magnetism, gravity-rod energy) at exactly the same nanosecond as he willed his body to absorb the properties of the copper wire!
There was a soundless explosion of brilliant white light, so bright that it temporarily blinded everyone, even Mid-Nite. When the heroes could see again, Will was gone without a trace! All-Stars 0, Zombies 1!
The villains didn't give the All-Stars any time to wonder about Will's fate, however - they attacked in force, trying to take advantage of their enemies' confusion.
Electraking and the Aryan Flame both blasted at Ted. The Iron Fury attacked Terry, and the Phantasm directed an illusion at Dr. Mid-Night.
Mid-Nite and the Phantasm
Unfortunately for the Phantasm, his illusions involved visible light, and Doc's goggles allowed him to see using infrared light. So the Phantasm's powers were totally ineffective against Dr. Mid-Nite - as Terry had suggested. The Phantasm did have enhanced strength as a result of the process that had given him his illusion powers, but he wasn't a trained fighter. He was used to striking disoriented, defenseless opponents. Well, he was attacking the wrong All-Star this time!
Mid-Nite didn't even need to waste another Blackout Bomb - he just ignored the illusions that Phantasm was desperately creating around him. Then he simply walked up to the Phantasm and decked him with a swift one-two! Score: All-Stars 1, Zombies 1!
Terry and the Iron Fury
Terry knew that the Iron Fury was stronger and faster then he was, and also seemed to be partially invulnerable. He knew that one way to fight a foe who had these advantages was to strike him from outside the opponent's own striking range, and block or avoid any attacks that opponent might make. One weapon that might allow Terry to do these things was the quarterstaff. Terry was a little rusty, as he didn't have a lot of time to practice - his 999 other hobbies took a lot of his time. And he was worried that the Iron Fury might have experience fighting against a man armed with a quarterstaff. Far Eastern martial artists often fought unarmed against armed opponents in practice.
Terry had found a perfect quarterstaff in the wreckage - a wooden rod about 8 feet long and perhaps 2 inches in diameter, made of a very hard wood, and polished smooth. It must have been a handrail on the wall of one of the Pullman coaches. He quickly moved to the attack against the Iron Fury, trying to regain his touch. The Fury was able to block all of Terry's attacks, but Terry saw, to his relief, that the Fury was using blocks that had been developed for use by unarmed fighters against men with swords, not quarterstaffs! And he noticed that the Fury's fighting style was very sloppy - he depended on his superior strength and speed rather than skill and training, and often let an attack land, rather than avoiding it or blocking it, counting on his armored skin to protect him.
Suddenly the Iron Fury launched an attack of his own! He leapt towards Terry, swinging a right, then a left, and followed up with a sweep of his right foot towards Terry's head! Terry blocked the punches by cracking the staff down on the Fury's wrists, whack! whack!, with force that would have shattered bone on a normal man! And then he swung the staff up under the kick, lifting the Fury's leg even higher, and the Fury tumbled backwards. Terry charged, but the Fury recovered in time, and Terry was barely able to evade another kick to the head!
The Fury may have been a sloppy fighter, but Terry quickly realized why he could get away with it. Terry's hands were almost numb from blocking the earlier blows, and the Fury hadn't seemed to notice Terry's hardest blows! If Terry couldn't end this soon, even if the Fury never hit him, he would soon be too battered and worn out to keep blocking and dodging. And he knew that after that first missed block, it would be over!
Terry tried a desperate move. He dropped under a left-footed kick to his head and shifted his grip on the staff. While the Fury was recovering his balance from the kick, Terry swung the staff like a baseball bat at the Fury's right knee. Even though he was standing on only one leg, the Fury was strong and fast enough to jump backwards beyond the range of Terry's strike. Terry missed!
Terry's momentum carried him around in a complete circle before he was able to regain his balance and get his guard back up. Luckily, the Fury had landed on some unstable rubble and had almost fallen, preventing him from attacking Terry when his back was turned.
Seeing that Terry was a little slow in recovering, the Fury immediately launched a new attack, throwing a series of punches that Terry had trouble blocking, each punch getting closer to him before he could deflect it out of line with the staff! Suddenly, the Fury swept another left-foot kick towards Terry's head!
Terry ducked, and once again swung at the Fury's exposed knee. He had held back a little last time, but this time he used his full speed, hoping to catch the Iron Fury off-guard. But the Fury had deliberately repeated this attack, anticipated Terry's response, and set a trap for him. This time, instead of jumping backwards and clear, the Fury leapt straight up! Terry's momentum would once again force him to turn his back on the Iron Fury, and the Fury would come down close enough to launch an instant attack. A hard kick to Terry's spine would end this fight for sure!
Except, Terry had set a counter trap! Instead of completing his swing at the Fury's knee, which was no longer there anyway, Terry strained with every erg of his own strength and speed to change the arc of the swinging staff! He yanked it into an uppercut, and stood up as he did so, adding even more power to the swing. The staff struck the Iron Fury on the left side of the head, across the ear, and the force of the blow actually shattered the end of the staff! The Fury went limp in the air, and fell hard to the ground. He was no longer moving!
Terry hammered the remaining length of staff into the back of the Iron Fury's head, smashing it into the ground so hard that it bounced! After that, he lay motionless. Terry had never before hit an opponent with such vicious blows, either of which could easily have killed a normal man. But the Iron Fury was far from normal!
All-Stars 2, Zombies 1! For the first time in this fight, the All-Stars were ahead!
The Fury wasn't breathing, but Terry wasn't worried. He had noticed that none of these 4 breathed. He had a theory that they were somehow animated by radiation, but he needed to discuss that theory with Dr. Mid-Nite and Ted before he came to any conclusions.
Starman vs. the Aryan Flame and Electraking
Ted was facing two powerful foes. Months ago, he had required the assistance of Johnny Quick and Captain Triumph to best the Aryan Flame, and Electraking had beaten him severely only minutes ago! He should have been worried about the villains but he wasn't. What did worry him was the beating his reputation would take if anyone else ever found out how badly a second-rate villain like Electraking had trounced him. He needed to take both villains out in spectacular fashion or nobody would respect him.
Well, Ted was sure he would have no problems with either of them now that his head was clear!
Ted was much smarter than either villain. He had created a barrier around his gravity rod that would prevent Electraking from shutting it down as he had done with the other gravity rod earlier in this fight. Ted knew his energy shields could protect him from whatever energy blasts his enemies aimed at him.
He thought back on the tactic that he had used so successfully against the two kid gangs last month. A little improvisation here, but the same general plan... Ted used the gravity rod to increase the weight of the Flame's palms so much that they pulled him down and pinned him flat to the ground! The Flame's blast bolts produced violent explosions whenever they hit something solid. If he tried a blast now, the explosion would blast his own hands!
Setting his gravity rod to automatically maintain the gravity field he had placed on the Aryan Flame's palms, Ted turned his attention to Electraking. King blasted lightning at Ted, who laughed as it bounced harmlessly off his force shield. This guy couldn't possibly be as easy as the Aryan Flame, could he? Ted repeated his tactics, increasing the weight of Electraking's hands until he was pulled to the ground, and his hands also were pinned, palms down. Well, that ended that fight! Maybe he ought to think about helping Terry and Dr. Mid-Nite?
But before he did that, he landed, then walked up to Electraking and kicked him viciously in the ribs! "That's for the cracked ribs you gave me earlier!" Ted grunted, in satisfaction. He started to turn towards Doc and Terry, and was struck behind by a tremendous blow! Ted had forgotten that Electraking didn't need to use his hands to use his magnetic powers. Ted's inattention allowed the King to smash him with several tons of junk!
Ted almost never totally let his force shield down, which was all that saved his life! He was knocked flat and then buried under the tons of broken train wreckage Electraking threw at him. He lay there stunned, as Electraking piled more and more wreckage on top of him!
The good news was that the gravity rod still held the Aryan Flame and Electraking pinned to the ground, and Ted's force shield was still protecting him. The bad news was, most of Ted's power was currently co-opted, holding the villains and protecting him from the rubble. There wasn't any power left to escape.
Ted decided to trick his enemies into helping him out of this trap. So he released the Aryan Flame, who responded just as Ted had hoped, quickly double blasting Ted! This blast cleared some of the debris, and Ted's power was enough to throw off the rest.
Ted was very angered by this experience! It wasn't fair that a 'helpless' opponent had attacked him! It never occurred to Ted that he had never before expected a super-villain to play fair....
Ted needed a quick way to neutralize Electraking's magnetism. He used the King's own trick against him, and buried him under a pile of wreckage. The King was barely able to use his magnetic powers to keep from being squashed. As long as Electraking's hands remained pinned to the ground, and he was forced to use his magnetic powers to protect himself, he was temporarily neutralized.
The Aryan Flame, on the other hand, had risen to his knees and was again firing blasts at Ted! Ted didn't see any reason to change successful tactics, so he blocked the Flame's blast beams and again pinned his palms to the ground. This fight was really starting to get boring!
Suddenly, the gravity rod failed! Ted checked it frantically, and realized that it had just run out of power! He had installed improved power storage in this gravity rod, but he had never anticipated this level of power expenditure! He should have known better, but he hadn't even considered this possibility!
With their hands free, the Aryan Flame and Electraking quickly blasted away the pile of rubble that was burying Electraking. Once again, they both aimed blasts at Ted, and there was nothing he could do to escape! He managed to duck behind the remains of a car that had been carrying some automobiles, and avoid the first round of blasts, but without his gravity rod, Ted knew he was a sitting duck! The blasts flipped the train car, and Ted had to move fast to keep out from under it. A car wheel and tire, blasted free from one of the cars on the carrier, struck Ted in the back of the head. As he fell to the ground, unconscious, Ted's last thought was about how bad his reputation would suffer when people found out he had been killed by these 2 losers!
The Aryan Flame and Electraking raised their arms like a firing squad raising their rifles and blasted Ted. Neither Mid-Nite nor Mr. Terrific was close enough to help him! It looked like the Zombies were about to tie it up at All-Stars 2, Zombies 2!
Down from the sky flashed a brightly glowing white figure, directly into the path of the bolts fired by the Flame and Electraking! This figure seemed to simply absorb the bolts. It then flashed towards the Aryan Flame, and from the Flame to Electraking. Both villains fell to the ground, apparently unconscious. . The flashing figure stopped, and quickly changed from glowing white into the powerful form of Amazing Man! Final score, All-Stars 4, Zombies 0!
With all 4 villains defeated, Doc turned his attention to the unconscious Ted, while Terry and Will used wires pulled from the wreckage to bind the villains. It turned out that they didn't need to bother - as they were tying up Electraking, all 4 bodies disintegrated into dust!
Continued in Nuclear Furnace Part 3
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