Thundrax - A Day in the Life

Craig woke up in a cold sweat, his normal awakening ritual. Bad dreams were one of the prices that he paid for being Craig Carson, and this one had been a doozy. A month trapped in the bowels of Hell Itself did no favors for his disposition. Yet Craig Carson was still Craig Carson, too stubborn to allow anything as trivial as a nightmare to make a mockery of his life. The cold sweat in which he was bathed was but another war wound, to be ignored as he moved from battle to battle.

Outside his penthouse, Millennium City woke up with a scream, a child's cacophony of fury, business and frenzy, the start of another working day. Craig lazily rose out of his bed, stretching his obviously powerful muscles, and searching for is morning cup of coffee (Belize fair trade, purchased in bags at the Great Lakes coffee bar in Midtown, when Craig couldn't fly down to Central America and get some himself). The air bristled with late summer humidity, the dying season unwilling to rest without at least one more thunderstorm on the horizon. The weather energized Craig; the veteran hero loved the storms, the ebullient influx of ions coursing through his body had a restorative effect. With a thought, the Canadian unblocked the news feed from his HUD lens and began to sift through today's current events, mentally dividing them into four categories:

1. "This doesn't need a fricking superhero".

2. "This needs a fricking superhero, and it's already got one."

3. "Okay I need to look into this some time."

4. "This needs to be handled NOW."

There hadn't been a Category 5 event, the "Well Craig, it looks this is the day you finally bite the big one" event, since the last time Siris showed, The only Category 4 events were the invasion of Destroids that had hit the city in mid-September, accompanied by a looped video showing Zerstoiten at his melodramatic worst. Craig sighed and made a mental note to chide Destroyer about that, should they ever meet under civil circumstances again.

After finishing his cup, Craig hooked into the city traffic cams to more easily track down the Destroid wolfpacks, and then he proceeded to trounce them. Destreum steel was hard, harder than titanium, and their energy weapons packed a punch, but these assembly line jobs had numerous weakpoints, and it was not difficult for Thundrax to dismantle them. Destroyer's best work was always hand-crafted, like his suits. Unfortunately Craig (along with Defender, Drifter, and every major hero) knew that the worst was yet to come. Zerstoiten would step up his game soon enough, probably another attack on Champions' HQ.

After an hour of tracking down and punching destreum until his fingers were raw, Craig checked into a Royal Burger for a King's chicken salad and a Guru Wrap, then headed straight for Flux-Carson. He briefly tuned into the Serve and Protect channel, heard an anti-social teen super (who never seemed to do much in the way of actual heroing) picking a fight with everyone, an overwrought argument mixed with a lot of pop culture references that went over his head. He quickly changed the frequency. He didn't feel like getting into the channel's current social club: teen troll aside, most seemed nice enough, but it was catering more and more to the city's mystical community, which generally played by different rules and which was better off handling its own affairs.

Arriving at Flux-Carson, the mining and petroleum firm that he had bought from an old teammate, Craig talked with several project managers about delays on the mining satellite program; an expedition to the asteroid belt to test robotic protocols for the formidable challenge of finding the richest heavy metal lodes for space industry. Craig reminded them that their competition was years ahead of them, and only through innovation that they gained the advantage in this burgeoning field. It was the standard corporate speech, delivered with only a modicum of enthusiasm, but it seemed to be well received. Craig stayed for an hour afterward to answer questions about any lingering concerns, taking some time to look over records of his charitable foundation.

"Craig, may I have a word?"

It was his assistant, Mal. He was worried about his mental state after his latest ordeal. For a company like Flux-Carson, the boss's month long absence had not come as a welcome respite, but had been a source of company-wide anxiety. Craig sighed and apologized profusely. What was he to say? Hi folks, I just spent a month in unrelenting darkness and existential torment, suffering the worst punishment that the realm of the damned had to offer, an endless, unconsummated suicide, and if I acknowledge it, like every amateur psychiatrist around me wants me to do, then I will fall apart like the house of fricking cards. Of course, Craig did not say this. He did not need additional drama and hysterics in his life.

Sometimes you just have to let the healing process happen, without relying on an epiphany like you'd find on the last five minutes of a second rate TV drama, where opening up with one's "true feelings" was better than chicken soup and a bedside vigil from mommy combined.

Thundrax assured Mal that he was attending therapy and that it was going well, then made an excuse to leave, departing from Flux-Carson with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling churning in the pit of his stomach. He checked the comms again, pounded a few more of Destroyer's robots, ultimately disappointed that Albert had not fielded a more formidable force. Damned colleagues taking away my fun, Craig thought.

Flying over Westside, Craig encountered – you guessed it! – a little girl with a cat stuck in a tree. He was sorely tempted to just teach her how to contact animal control and leave, but he did his superheroic duty and pried the little claw monster out of its tanglework of branches. He was certain that at least a dozen of his fellow superheroes would laugh at the stereotype, but to hell with them. No, not literally, of course not literally. There were not many supervillains that he would consign to that place, let alone colleagues.

"Thundrax," the little girl asked. "Who would win in a fight between you and Ironclad?"

"The bad guys, sweetie," Craig answered as gently as he could muster. "That's why we don't fight."

Leaving a somewhat disappointed little girl behind, Craig decided to go to the club for a pint of Guinness and a chat with friends. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of old drinking buddies at Caprice in the late afternoon; instead the dark and gritty supernatural brigade were flying their black and red colors in force, holding grim conversations about about "challenges" (Memo #1: Dueling has been illegal in the United States since the 19th century) and "final consequences" (Memo #2: Murder has been illegal since at least the time when that old guy came down from Mount Sinai lugging a pair of heavy stone tablets). They also talked about "masters" and "thralls" (Memo #3: The Emancipation Proclamation did happen, and maybe acting like a post-Enlightenment member of civilized society might help your chances of getting some of the more ridiculous anti-supernatural laws thrown off the books). He did have a chat with some kind of "witch hunter" in a Puritan outfit with arms at least an inch thicker than Craig's already impressive biceps: Solomon Kane Schwartzennegger. A short man came up to Craig and asked: "How much can you lift?"

"Around 400 tons, give or take ten tons or so," Craig answered.

"I'm a god," the man replied. "I have no limits!"

Craig paused for a moment and held his initial response in check. "That must make lifting really boring," he finally said.

Meanwhile, across the room, one of the club's larger regular muscleheads, the leader of the "survival of the fittest" faction of the dark and gritty brigade, looking like a Sons of Anarchy reject in his shirtless vest and jeans, was loudly proclaiming that he was unmatched in might and physical prowess, probably in response to the conversation.

"Gosh, I'd really like to pit my strength against yours!" the beefcake puritan told Craig.

"Uh, why?" Craig asked, looking over at the "god" and the master of the "Conan the Biker meets Ayn Rand" tribe. "I'm not even the second strongest guy in the room."

The puritan continued to needle him. Craig really didn't feel like a trip to Carl's to get in the ring and wrestle the guy, so he directed him to a table, peeled off his shirt (a force of habit) and put up his arm for an arm wrestling contest. The opponent was strong, but not in Craig's league, and Thundrax easily put down his arm, even when the man was chanting Latin catechisms to augment his strength.

"Children," sneered the leader of the Randroid barbarians as he walked by.

"Yeah," Craig muttered under his breath. "We should be ripping each other's throats out like mature adults – when they get overly wrapped up in some third-rate Klingon cosplay like you."

"Mortals," sneered another passerbyer as he contemptuously observed the contest.

"I know. Gods would never do anything macho and stupid," Craig muttered, suppressing an urge to punch him to Valhalla.

Craig finished putting the opponent's arm down. The man was not the brightest tool in the shed; he couldn't think of his name, even though Craig was in uniform (and at least one person had interrupted the conversation to say: "hello, Thundrax") and while he was well-meaning, he was too busy obsessing over his work hunting rogue supernaturals to offer a really good conversation, or maybe Craig was just being too much of an ass to really engage with people. After a few minutes, Craig finally got bored again and excused himself.

Getting easily bored easily was one of his curses. It was a miracle that he had as many friends as he did.

This was one of those nights when Craig was happier to leave Caprice than he had been entering it. He had no clearance for law enforcement duty in Millennium, nor was he assigned to any task forces that would justify his intervention. He had heard about a new mob enforcer who was spreading fear in the underworld, a criminal mutant named Protohammer who'd threatened a friend of his -- with free time on his hands, he decided to casually roust some gang members and see who decided to spill their guts. Unfortunately, the first three criminal bars he visited had already welcomed several of his colleagues, and the gang members were not in any shape to talk.

"Maybe there are just too many vigilantes in this town," Craig sighed. Between the Owl, the Reckoning, Mr. Blank (II), Spectre, and others, the town was nearing Hudson City levels of grey clad crimefighter overload. He knew of course that a good vigilante, one who targeted weak points in the criminal infrastructure, didn't leave a body count, and made sure that the police could actually get a conviction, was worth his weight in questionite.

He joined the Protectors channel for a bit. This was a little less trollish than Serve and Protect, but no less light-hearted, as members were giving Riptide and Dobergirl a hard time for past incidents. Craig didn't need light-hearted at the moment: he was in "Captain Serious" mode, and this was one of those days when all jokes sounded more cutesie than funny. He gradually drifted off as the course of his non-patrol took him over the Detroit River and into Canada, the Memorial City section of Windsor.

Clear as a gunshot, the night sounds were punctured by a woman's scream. Not quite as shrill as a movie sound effect, it repeated thrice, like hiccups. Then Craig's eyes narrowed and he felt his body tighten like a coiled fist and without a lick of cornball dialogue or a moment's hesitation he soared in the direction of the scream. He quickly arrived to stumble upon a shadowplay of silhouettes as the woman (early 20s, Caucasian, wearing faded jeans and a red blouse -- always come up with the police description first) was flailing against a phantasmal figure. Craig moved to grab him and throw him off, hovering about a meter above the ground. However his hand went right through the assailant, a hand placed through smoke.

The attacker was an intangible. Which meant...

Craig was good at situational mathematics, penetrating the surface layer of a situation to figure out what was really going on. This time, he was too slow. A glowing object on the woman's forehead flared to argent life, the inhaled breath of a sudden something. whose touch brought Thundrax to his knees in a Coriolis of song and pain. Then the phantom materialized, the shady folds of his form manifesting themselves as armor, a glowing knife of purple energy striking into the back of his upper spine, paralyzing him from the neck down. A second touch from the woman was sufficient to put him down.

And that's how Craig Carson died. Not at the hands of Destroyer, or Firewing, or Black Paladin or even old enemies like Master-Mind, Zorasto, or Borealis. And certainly not saving the world. No, the mighty Thundrax succumbed in a darkly-lit park in Windsor Ontario at the hands of two previously unknown telepaths.

"Except," the man in glowing force field armor sneered. "You're more useful to me alive than dead, naked, and in a dumpster."

"My dignity thanks you." Craig replied, quickly assessing the situation. He was still paralyzed from the neck down, and in some sort of lab. There was a lot of glowing fields and objects that clearly possessed psionic properties.

"Don't thank me yet," the man said with a twisted smile. "As soon as I'm done with you, I've got a nice dumpster in the worst part of town with your name on it."

"Hopefully, it's where they dumped all of the prints of that movie they made about me." Craig quipped in response. "If you're doing this because Thundrax: the Movie sucked and you wasted ten bucks plus concessions, I deeply apologize and totally sympathize. Because when I saw it, I certainly wanted to kill myself in a painful and irrevocable way too."

"Ah, the unflappable hero, facing death with a defiant stare and a cheap stand-up routine." the villain said. "But this time, you're dying Mr. Carson, and you're going to betray all of your friends before you die."

"This sounds kinda personal," Craig noted.

"It's a statement," the man replied. "Nothing more."

"What statement? I Don't Like Mullets?" Craig replied, briefly singing a parody of the Boomtown Rats. "And does Mr. Statement have a name?"

"You may call me Psikhan."

"Khan? Khan? That's kinda 19th Century you know. Kids today won't know what you're talking about. Public education doesn't even mention the Mongols anymore. They'll think you're a telepath who hates Star Trek." Thundrax said.

"Make your jokes while you can," Psikhan snorted, beginning to be irritated by the banter.

"Hey, if you think my critique's bad, be thankful you went after me and not All-Star," Craig replied. "But tell me, now that I'm facing certain demise, how'd you knock me out so quickly? I'm telepath trained. Even Menton and Superior couldn't one shot me.

"Those were the telepaths of the past," Psikhan boasted. "My lovely Psisong and I are the future."

With that, the woman stepped into view, a gem set on an elaborate high-tech coronet on her forehead. To Craig's horror, he had seen such a lattice once before.

"That's Warmonger tech," Craig stated, all trace of frivolity vanishing from his voice. Now he knew how they were able to knock him out so easily – Warmonger was a Galaxar, a ten billion year old entity that was as evolved over a human being as a human was above an ant. He had seen the psionic slave brace on the forehead of one he'd primed to detonate bombs across the planet, a living deadman's switch. Psisong elegantly slid to the villain's side, like a dancer.

"You've encountered others of this kind?" Psikhan asked with a leer whose expression of naked greed could almost be described as a perversion. "Excellent! We'll pry the location of each and every one of them out of your mind."

"I don't know where they are, you idiot." Craig muttered. " if I knew where that maniac left any of his toys, I'd have gathered them up and hurled them into the fricking sun."

"A pity. Fortunately, Mr. Carson, you have other secrets in your mind. Thirty years of secrets, as a superhero, an UNTIL captain, an RCMP officer, a politician, a businessman, a confidante of heroes. The contents of your mind may be one of the most valuable in the entire superhuman world."

"Don't tell that to some of the supergeniuses and sorcerers I know. They'll get brain envy," Thundrax replied. "And do you honestly believe you'll get all that before Starforce or the Protectors track you down and rescue me?"

"I was hoping for Eternity Inc. myself," Psisong said. "That Colosso is such a dreamboat."

"Oh sure," Craig sighed. "You telepathic women are all the same. Ignore the mullet, go for the bald guy. I'm afraid you're in for a disappointment. I have no affiliation with that team."

Psisong displayed a glowing red crystal, around which a tiny lightning field danced. "You're hardly a disappointment, Mr. Carson. Your memories have already been extracted."

"They're now ready to go on sale to the highest bidder," Psikhan said. "So..." and he flipped a switch to bring a dozen computer monitors to life. "Live from Xanadu, my telepathic fortress, it's the death and dismemberment of Thundrax!"

The screens showed a number of figures: a VIPER commander in full dress, a figure with a shadowed face in a three piece suit (definitely not representing ARGENT, who were completely not a criminal organization), a man wearing a gold mask like a Mayan sun god, hiding his voice behind a distorter (Craig suspected it was Invictus, but could prove nothing, the supervillain Binder, leader of the Ultimates, a face like an energy storm framing a burning pair of eyes, dressed in a Nazi uniform (Baron Nihil), the musclebound form of the Indescribable Hunk (the latest in a long string of third rate villains who believed they were fit to challenge Craig), and of course, Connie, his former teammate Augury, representing the suervillain Borealis. She had a container of popcorn in her lap and a gleeful expression on her face.

"Orville Reddenbacker, Connie?" Thundrax moaned. "Reddenbacker? After all we've been through, you were too cheap to spring for gourmet popcorn to witness my death? I'm hurt!"

"I know, Craig," Augury smiled, playing with a few kernels before swallowing them.

"Is she your ex-?" Psisong wondered.

"GOD, NO!" Thundrax and Augury declared at the same time.

"I believe introductions are in order," Psikhan began.

"Let us skip the formalities," the VIPER Commander stated. "The Venomous Imperial Party of the Eternal Reptile wishes to start the bidding for Mr. Carson's memories at five hundred million dollars in American currency." the commander stated.

This was probably more than anyone expected, especially at the start. The faces on the monitor -- and the room -- did a collective blink.

"My company," the ARGENT commander piped up, "only wishes Mr. Carson's memories as they pertain to business and financial regulations. Surely they can be divided and sold into lots."

"I'm afraid this is a package deal," Psikhan replied. "We have five hundred million..."

"Excuse me.." Augury chimed.

"Be silent, witch!" Nihil snorted. "Do not trust her, Psikhan! Canadian women are the most treacherous creatures on Earth!"

"Oh bite me, you pathetic relic," Augury sneered. "Misogynistic idiot." she added with a mutter, almost beneath her breath, and she turned to Psikhan. "I know you've demonstrated the technology on our agents to show it's genuine, but they weren't trained to resist telepathic intrusion. "How do we know Craig was fully affected by the process? There could be gaps in the memory record."

Psikhan smiled, the boastful smile that comes when a man thinks he has every answer. "I am able to telepathically go through the mental records and display them. Request any memory you wish, and I will show it to all on this viewscreen," he boasted.

"His last high level meeting with UNTIL Command!" VIPER said.

"His last review of his R&D projects!" ARGENT countered.

"His most humiliating defeat!" Binder shouted.

"Show him naked, so he may look upon me and know that he is the inferior specimen!" the Hunk said.

Even Nihil did a double take at that statement. "Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of creepy, Hunk?" Craig noted.

"For a change, Craig is right," Augury interjected. "Does he even have a million dollars? Unless you want to be paid in "Muscle Bucks", is there any point to him being there?"

"Enough of this, kill the Canadian dog now!" Nihil demanded.

"Gentlemen, ladies, and... specimens," the man in the sun mask put up his hands. "We are all civilized people, are we not? Let us confine our disagreements to... the hero of the day. As for a test of your technology, I believe multiple memories will be required,"

Augury laughed. "You all think so small. Let a telepath tell you what to do. Find the memory he's most strongly repressing. Let's see that."

"That is... more than acceptable as a trial," the VIPER commander noted.

"Agreed," said Binder.

"I do not trust this woman, or her master," the man in a sun mask stated.

"Colleague," Augury corrected. "Borealis is my colleague."

"Canada must burn!" Nihil ranted.

"I don't give a rat's ass about his memories," the Hunk said. "I just want the last thing he looks at when he dies to be my body! Let him die knowing he couldn't hold a candle to me!"

"Oh for pity's sake," Craig moaned. "Did you have to turn my death into this farce? Just take me to the dumpster now. Get it over with, please!"

"See?" Connie smiled. "He'd rather die a humiliating death than have everyone see what he's trying hardest to repress."

"I am not!" Thundrax said. "It's just that there are things I've seen that no one should witness, not even my enemies. You don't want to go into my mind, trust me."

"You always were patently obvious, Craig." Augury stated.

"Agreed." Psikhan stated. "Give me Carson's mind probe, now!" he ordered Psisong.

"Don't do this..." Craig warned, but the telepath greedily took the gem, stared into its depths, twitched and promptly began to scream. He was seeing Hell, the unfathomable Hell, crushing down on his psyche with the weight of five simultaneous nervous breakdowns, an abusive cadre of teachers, a lonely loveless childhood, waking up in pitch darkness for the first time, all wrapped up into one soul-crushing experience. And then it gets worse. And it never stops getting worse. For that is Hell, not fire and brimstone and jabbing pitchforks, nor the immutable ice of a Norse winter, nor even the stench of death. Hell is that state where one's natural revelry in life is reversed, and one learns a new reason every second to hate one's self. And that is what Psikhan experienced at that moment.

Without Psikhan maintaining his paralysis field, Craig immediately regained the use of his limbs and sprang on Psisong, delivering a mild shock to render her unconscious. He quickly overrode the block on his internal comm, instructing UNTIL to trace the signals of the auction bidders to their sources. Invictus had already logged off, and the VIPER Commander was giving a signal to cut the channel. The Hunk seemed deeply confused, while Nihil went on another rant.

"Witch!" Nihil shrieked at Augury. "You're a precognitive! You knew what would happen!"

"Of course I did!" Augury said with a deeply self-satisfied smile. "Great job, Craig! He's catatonic, probably for the rest of his life. And you'll be wondering if your objections only just egged him on. Perhaps even subconsciously, you even wanted that to happen."

"Enjoy your popcorn, Connie," Craig replied, swallowing his fury. That bitch always knew the worst ways to get at him. He removed the coronet from Psisong, twisted some metal into a body wrap, blindfolding her to make it more difficult to use any non-amplified psionics.

Binder sighed. "Such lack of professionalism," the villain leader said. "I can ensure you that the Ultimates will not squander such opportunities next time we meet."

"Really? I guess there's a first time for everything, Binder." Thundrax replied, with a satisfied snark. "Try not to sniff your glue-gun too often, and give Blackstar my best."

The impact of the insult was hidden beneath Binder's mask. "Adieu, Mr. Carson," he said with the slightest hint of a growl before switching off his signal.

"What happened?" the Hunk said, turning around to find an UNTIL assault squad invading the abandoned gymnasium that was his sanctum.

After ensuring that UNTIL would safely enter "Xanadu" -- a simple log cabin near the shores of Lake Ontario with a bunker dug as a basement, Craig took the coronet into space and threw it into the sun. Craig was no cosmic hero; it took twenty hours flying at Mach 2 to reach the point in high orbit where he could hurl it at escape velocity, and it would take months for the object to reach the sun at the rate Craig was best capable of throwing it, if it even hit the mark at all. He would still have considered it as a satisfying experience, except that he hated flying in space: it was cold and dark, and reminded him of the recent unpleasantness he had suffered. God, he hated the dark. When his arguably dubious mission was finished, he just aimed himself for the planet, kept it in his view like a great blue lighthouse, and allowed himself the luxury of a freefall, tumbling to earth like the mortal he was at heart, for that was the part of him that really counted.