"Memories"
“Trick or treat!”
The elder man smiled as he dropped a few wrapped parcels of candy into the awaiting bags the children held out. The each in turn looked down into their proffered bags to see what kind of goodies they had been granted, only to turn their previously sincere smiles into forced ones. The marshmallows shaped like peanuts were never a favorite for most modern kids, but their parents had told them to be polite to the older populace.
“Such nice costumes,” the elder man said as the kids disembarked. He nodded once sharply and closed the door of his private room at the retirement center.
The kids were part of a local program to mainly entertain the elderly that populated the facility. It was a win-win; the residents got to see some colorful runs running through the halls and the children got a few bags of candy.
The man set his candy bowl down on the folding TV dinner tray set up by the door and walked back to what he affectionately called the living room. It was more or less a big open space and his bed was in the corner, or what he called the bedroom. As he set down the bowl he glanced, mainly out of habit, at the pictures that decorated the wall beside the door.
Black and white glossy photos from generations prior, showing posed men and women from the past, most of whom were dead. The difference between his photos and those of the other tenants, however, was that his were depictions of other costumed individuals.
His gaze swept over a photo of a man on fire, who was soaring through the air alongside another individual that could have been a smaller carbon copy of himself.
Another photo showed a woman with a stylized shield on her impressive chest, smiling broadly as she posed with a few generals from the Allied forces.
One of the more impressive pictures was of a man lifting a submarine out of the water, his body gleaming with seawater as his hulking muscles shoved the vessel up and out of the ocean.
On nights like Halloween the old man allowed his mind to drift backward. It was one of the few that he could remember the Invaders, his friends, much more clearly. He was long past his prime, and his memory didn't serve him very well anymore, but on Halloween he almost felt like it was the old days once more.
A knock at the door broke his concentration. Smiling, he picked up the candy bowl again and reached for the doorknob. Just as he turned it, however, the door splintered and broke away from the frame, slamming into him.
He was tossed down to the thinly carpeted floor, the candy flinging out into his room. He heard heavy footsteps surround him and enter his space, towering over him. None of the three men that entered chose to help him out from beneath the door, allowing him to feebly slide the wood off of his frail body.
When he looked up at the men, he was stricken with old memories of horror, deceit, contempt, and fear.
“Doctor Faoul,” one of the men said. His voice was augmented and distorted through the helmet he wore. His body was hidden away by the metal suit he wore, an armor of awesome person that had kept him alive for much longer than a man should be allowed to live.
“How do we know this is him?” another man inquired of the other two. His face was also hidden away, but instead of a helmet, he wore a gas mask that was topped by a fedora. A short cloak hung from his shoulders. “Are we sure that your Doctor Schneider gave us accurate information?”
“He would not send us on a fool's errand,” the man in the helmet stated bluntly. His voice was thick with a German accent.
The third and final intruder was the most terrifying. His purple and black costume clung to his body tightly, with wire-frame webbing stylized as wings unfolding from beneath his armpits. His mask was garish, with overly large ears and a snout covering his nose. His mouth was open and his teeth glistening with saliva. Two of this teeth were elongated beyond the rest, coming to two sharp points.
“Oh, yes,” the third man said as he leaned down to place his face closer the elder. “This is him; I am certain. I smell his blood and it rekindles and old desire in me that I fondly recall. I have tasted this man before. Oh, yes, this is certainly the one we called Scarlet Scarab.”
Adbul Faoul tried to sit up and finish pushing the door off of his weakened body, but his strength betrayed him. There was a time when he would have quickly vanquished these foes, stopping them in their tracks with skill and practiced precision, but no more. Now he was decrepit, and barley able to keep his breathing steady.
“Baron Blood,” Faoul muttered. He glanced at the other two and said in turn, “Iron Cross...Agent Axis...”
The one in purple, Baron Blood, arose as his sneer grew wider. “I see his mind isn't completely lost,” he said. “Unlike you, Agent. Perhaps he'll be able to recall what we need to know.”
“My mind has the sharpness of three intellects,” Agent Axis said from behind his gas mask. “I have forgotten more than you shall ever know about the glory of the Third Reich!”
“That much is obvious,” said the armored Iron Cross. “Otherwise we would not be forced to extract the information from our former antagonist.”
“Antagonist?” Agent Axis exclaimed. “I seem to remember it was him who lured the Invaders to Egypt, only to betray them alongside the Sons of the Scarab. Was it not so?”
“Dispute the facts at another time,” Baron Blood interjected. “Hero or villain; it does not matter any longer. Doctor Faoul, we have need of you. Tell us what we want to know and I promise you a swift death, which is undoubtedly more than you deserve.”
Faoul stuttered, unsure of how to respond. Surely at any moment one of his former friends would return to disrupt this nightmare. Perhaps even his son, the current Scarlet Scarab, would come to his rescue. His son knew where he was...didn't he?
Did the Invaders know he was still alive? Had he kept in touch with any of them? He couldn't recall. In truth, while he was sure that he had once been the Scarlet Scarab himself, he was confounded by much else from his past. It was one of the reasons he was in this facility in the first place.
He remembered bestowing the strongbox with his original costume and notes about the sacred Ruby Scarab to his son, Mehemet, but when had be passed that particular torch? A vision of the past resurfaced, recalling a flourish of magic from a being he knew as Garret, but beyond that his memory was lost to the folds of time.
Has he died? Had Garret saved his spirit somehow?
“Doctor Faoul,” Baron Blood said again, snapping Faoul out of his stupor. “I have read your files here at this curious facility, and I know that your mind is suffering. I can relieve that suffering for you. Call it a gift, a last offering to a once great adversary. But first I want to know one thing.”
“Wh-what do you want?” Faoul managed to say.
“I want the serum,” Baron Blood said coldly.
“I don't understand.”
“The serum!” Blood kicked Faoul in the face, just hard enough to slam the elder man back down to the floor. “The one developed by your Erksine was taken by our Axis scientists and formed into a new chemical agent. The traces of that serum were left in a lab that you helped destroy in Egypt. You no doubt confiscated the notes left in that laboratory, doctor, since we uncovered the site and found the files emptied.”
“I don't have anything--”
Another boot to his face pressed him down into the thin carpet, this time holding him there beneath the sole. “Doctor,” Blood said. “Do not toy with us. Our time to reclaim the future of the Third Reich is now at hand. We are reborn, doctor. You are not. You are weak. Old. Forgotten.”
His son. He had to warn his son, Mehemet. He must get away from this three Nazi champions. His son would know what they were talking about. He had connections in that world still, as part of some government joint effort with the Americans. He had the Ruby Scarab now. He had the power to stop these men.
...or was he confused about that as well? He had read about Mehemet, watched the news about the Scarlet Scarab's appearances, but he couldn't recall a single conversation with him. No images of a visit from his son surfaced, or past meals shared around the holidays, or even quick visits just to say hello. He didn't remember phone calls, letters, presents, greeting cards, or anything else that marked a direct interaction between him and the man he thought of as his son.
“Look here,” Agent Axis interjected. “Behind these photos.”
The man in the gas mask had removed the largest photo, a picture depicting the collected Invaders at a press conference with President Roosevelt. Behind it was a safe sunken into the wall.
...had he ever seen that safe before? He couldn't recall. He couldn't remember the combination to access it, at the very least.
“Move aside,” the Iron Cross' filtered voice said. He lumbering forward in his bulky armor, punched a metal gloved hand into the safe's door, and ripped the door off like it was made of paper.
The thee intruders looked into the safe eagerly, seeing piles of papers that had been stuffed into the metal box. There was no reason to how the papers were arranged; they were folded, torn, balled-up, and shoved into the crevices of the interior of the safe, as if put their hastily. Agent Axis began to extract the papers, mulling over their contents.
“What are they?” Baron Blood inquired, his boot now removed from Faoul's head.
“Several documents listing wartime secret plans and locations,” Agent Axis replied. “There is a wealth of information here, my friends. Yes, I'm sure this will lead us to our goal.”
With a burst of energy that he had not known for decades, Faoul stumbled across the room to his bed, collapsing on the worn mattress. The three intruders paid him no attention, which gave him the opportunity to slip the Luger he hid behind the bedpost out from its hiding spot and into his mangled hands.
“Trick or treat!” a group of kids shouted from down the hall, their request issued to another resident out of sight.
He squeezed off a shot at Baron Blood, partially amazed that the weapon had still fired. He fired again, but his aim went wide, possibly from the recoil of the first shot, and the bullet buried itself in wall next to the safe.
Blood fell against the wall, but recovered quickly, his vampiric powers of endurance more than enough to push the bullet back out of his shoulder. He whirled on Faoul, his teeth ready to slice into the old man's flesh.
Agent Axis extracted his own weapon and aimed it at Faoul, and the Iron Cross raised one of his gauntlets that was charged with a taser blast. Neither returned the volley. A few children ran by the room, frightened by the gunfire.
“The authorities will be called here soon enough,” Baron Blood said. “We have to take what we came for and leave. Our presence cannot be revealed to our enemies just yet.”
“We thank you, doctor,” Agent Axis said as he stuffed the majority of the safe's contents into his pockets. “And the new age of the Third Reich thanks you as well!”
Agent Axis squeezed the trigger, the gun fired, and the man who thought himself Abdul Faoul doubled over. Blood seeped out of his gut, splashing over the bedspread. The Baron was atop him instantly, his hunger seething. The Iron Cross, however, quickly pulled him back. If it were not for the enhanced strength of his armor, there was little chance that he would have been able to pull Baron Blood back from such a meal.
“There is no time,” the Iron Cross said. “We have what we came for.”
Baron Blood regrettably allowed himself to be guided back toward the shredded door frame, saying beneath his breath, “Fool.”
As the three intruders left his small one-bedroom apartment, they failed to notice a few breathes of life still held within Faoul's lungs. The shock of the bullet puncturing his abdomen had triggered his programming, and he began to remember why he was there, and what the intent of his placement had been.
He reached back where his weapon had been hidden and tapped a secret button depressed in the wall stud. It silently sent out an alert to a watchful government agent, a man who would able to do something about what had just transpired.
“Faoul” looked down at what most would assume was his lifeblood, gashing forth onto the bed. To the paramedics and then the medical examiner that would claim his body later, it would appear that Abdul Faoul had been killed. When SHIELD recovered their Life Model Decoy some time after that they would download the recording his retinal camera had made of the event that led to his deactivation.
He had sent the alarm. SHIELD would come. The heroes would be made aware of what was going on, and the return of some of the most heinous creatures to ever threaten freedom would be brought to light.
The only thing he didn't know as his body began to shut down would be what their intentions truly were. He would leave that for someone else to determine. Even though he was just an LMD, he still smirked at the thought that his own mask would be removed on this night, a night reserved for hidden identities.
# # #
TO BE CONTINUED
# # #
From the Author:
Confused? Okay, let's backtrack a little bit. The year was 2007 and I was determined to make M2K a place where villains could be revitalized. I also wanted to promote our various anthology titles to get more writers interested in writing for the site. I chose Agent Axis, an old Invaders villain, and remade him for the modern day. That story can be read here.
Then skip ahead to the 2009 Halloween Special. As my contribution to that collection of awesome stories, I chose another Invaders villain, the original Baron Blood. I brought him back to life in this story.
Then in November of 2009, I released another one-shot that once more brought an Invaders villain out of the graveyard and into the modern day. The character was Iron Cross and the story can be found here.
Seeing a pattern here? This is a plan now seven years in the making. The old villains are coming back, and they have a specific goal in mind. What is that goal? Well, you'll just have to see, but it obviously involves using the German engineered version of the Super Soldier Serum. One day, maybe in the near future, I'll release the mini I've had in mind for years that will reveal all.
Only time will tell! Thanks for reading!
-D. Golightly
The elder man smiled as he dropped a few wrapped parcels of candy into the awaiting bags the children held out. The each in turn looked down into their proffered bags to see what kind of goodies they had been granted, only to turn their previously sincere smiles into forced ones. The marshmallows shaped like peanuts were never a favorite for most modern kids, but their parents had told them to be polite to the older populace.
“Such nice costumes,” the elder man said as the kids disembarked. He nodded once sharply and closed the door of his private room at the retirement center.
The kids were part of a local program to mainly entertain the elderly that populated the facility. It was a win-win; the residents got to see some colorful runs running through the halls and the children got a few bags of candy.
The man set his candy bowl down on the folding TV dinner tray set up by the door and walked back to what he affectionately called the living room. It was more or less a big open space and his bed was in the corner, or what he called the bedroom. As he set down the bowl he glanced, mainly out of habit, at the pictures that decorated the wall beside the door.
Black and white glossy photos from generations prior, showing posed men and women from the past, most of whom were dead. The difference between his photos and those of the other tenants, however, was that his were depictions of other costumed individuals.
His gaze swept over a photo of a man on fire, who was soaring through the air alongside another individual that could have been a smaller carbon copy of himself.
Another photo showed a woman with a stylized shield on her impressive chest, smiling broadly as she posed with a few generals from the Allied forces.
One of the more impressive pictures was of a man lifting a submarine out of the water, his body gleaming with seawater as his hulking muscles shoved the vessel up and out of the ocean.
On nights like Halloween the old man allowed his mind to drift backward. It was one of the few that he could remember the Invaders, his friends, much more clearly. He was long past his prime, and his memory didn't serve him very well anymore, but on Halloween he almost felt like it was the old days once more.
A knock at the door broke his concentration. Smiling, he picked up the candy bowl again and reached for the doorknob. Just as he turned it, however, the door splintered and broke away from the frame, slamming into him.
He was tossed down to the thinly carpeted floor, the candy flinging out into his room. He heard heavy footsteps surround him and enter his space, towering over him. None of the three men that entered chose to help him out from beneath the door, allowing him to feebly slide the wood off of his frail body.
When he looked up at the men, he was stricken with old memories of horror, deceit, contempt, and fear.
“Doctor Faoul,” one of the men said. His voice was augmented and distorted through the helmet he wore. His body was hidden away by the metal suit he wore, an armor of awesome person that had kept him alive for much longer than a man should be allowed to live.
“How do we know this is him?” another man inquired of the other two. His face was also hidden away, but instead of a helmet, he wore a gas mask that was topped by a fedora. A short cloak hung from his shoulders. “Are we sure that your Doctor Schneider gave us accurate information?”
“He would not send us on a fool's errand,” the man in the helmet stated bluntly. His voice was thick with a German accent.
The third and final intruder was the most terrifying. His purple and black costume clung to his body tightly, with wire-frame webbing stylized as wings unfolding from beneath his armpits. His mask was garish, with overly large ears and a snout covering his nose. His mouth was open and his teeth glistening with saliva. Two of this teeth were elongated beyond the rest, coming to two sharp points.
“Oh, yes,” the third man said as he leaned down to place his face closer the elder. “This is him; I am certain. I smell his blood and it rekindles and old desire in me that I fondly recall. I have tasted this man before. Oh, yes, this is certainly the one we called Scarlet Scarab.”
Adbul Faoul tried to sit up and finish pushing the door off of his weakened body, but his strength betrayed him. There was a time when he would have quickly vanquished these foes, stopping them in their tracks with skill and practiced precision, but no more. Now he was decrepit, and barley able to keep his breathing steady.
“Baron Blood,” Faoul muttered. He glanced at the other two and said in turn, “Iron Cross...Agent Axis...”
The one in purple, Baron Blood, arose as his sneer grew wider. “I see his mind isn't completely lost,” he said. “Unlike you, Agent. Perhaps he'll be able to recall what we need to know.”
“My mind has the sharpness of three intellects,” Agent Axis said from behind his gas mask. “I have forgotten more than you shall ever know about the glory of the Third Reich!”
“That much is obvious,” said the armored Iron Cross. “Otherwise we would not be forced to extract the information from our former antagonist.”
“Antagonist?” Agent Axis exclaimed. “I seem to remember it was him who lured the Invaders to Egypt, only to betray them alongside the Sons of the Scarab. Was it not so?”
“Dispute the facts at another time,” Baron Blood interjected. “Hero or villain; it does not matter any longer. Doctor Faoul, we have need of you. Tell us what we want to know and I promise you a swift death, which is undoubtedly more than you deserve.”
Faoul stuttered, unsure of how to respond. Surely at any moment one of his former friends would return to disrupt this nightmare. Perhaps even his son, the current Scarlet Scarab, would come to his rescue. His son knew where he was...didn't he?
Did the Invaders know he was still alive? Had he kept in touch with any of them? He couldn't recall. In truth, while he was sure that he had once been the Scarlet Scarab himself, he was confounded by much else from his past. It was one of the reasons he was in this facility in the first place.
He remembered bestowing the strongbox with his original costume and notes about the sacred Ruby Scarab to his son, Mehemet, but when had be passed that particular torch? A vision of the past resurfaced, recalling a flourish of magic from a being he knew as Garret, but beyond that his memory was lost to the folds of time.
Has he died? Had Garret saved his spirit somehow?
“Doctor Faoul,” Baron Blood said again, snapping Faoul out of his stupor. “I have read your files here at this curious facility, and I know that your mind is suffering. I can relieve that suffering for you. Call it a gift, a last offering to a once great adversary. But first I want to know one thing.”
“Wh-what do you want?” Faoul managed to say.
“I want the serum,” Baron Blood said coldly.
“I don't understand.”
“The serum!” Blood kicked Faoul in the face, just hard enough to slam the elder man back down to the floor. “The one developed by your Erksine was taken by our Axis scientists and formed into a new chemical agent. The traces of that serum were left in a lab that you helped destroy in Egypt. You no doubt confiscated the notes left in that laboratory, doctor, since we uncovered the site and found the files emptied.”
“I don't have anything--”
Another boot to his face pressed him down into the thin carpet, this time holding him there beneath the sole. “Doctor,” Blood said. “Do not toy with us. Our time to reclaim the future of the Third Reich is now at hand. We are reborn, doctor. You are not. You are weak. Old. Forgotten.”
His son. He had to warn his son, Mehemet. He must get away from this three Nazi champions. His son would know what they were talking about. He had connections in that world still, as part of some government joint effort with the Americans. He had the Ruby Scarab now. He had the power to stop these men.
...or was he confused about that as well? He had read about Mehemet, watched the news about the Scarlet Scarab's appearances, but he couldn't recall a single conversation with him. No images of a visit from his son surfaced, or past meals shared around the holidays, or even quick visits just to say hello. He didn't remember phone calls, letters, presents, greeting cards, or anything else that marked a direct interaction between him and the man he thought of as his son.
“Look here,” Agent Axis interjected. “Behind these photos.”
The man in the gas mask had removed the largest photo, a picture depicting the collected Invaders at a press conference with President Roosevelt. Behind it was a safe sunken into the wall.
...had he ever seen that safe before? He couldn't recall. He couldn't remember the combination to access it, at the very least.
“Move aside,” the Iron Cross' filtered voice said. He lumbering forward in his bulky armor, punched a metal gloved hand into the safe's door, and ripped the door off like it was made of paper.
The thee intruders looked into the safe eagerly, seeing piles of papers that had been stuffed into the metal box. There was no reason to how the papers were arranged; they were folded, torn, balled-up, and shoved into the crevices of the interior of the safe, as if put their hastily. Agent Axis began to extract the papers, mulling over their contents.
“What are they?” Baron Blood inquired, his boot now removed from Faoul's head.
“Several documents listing wartime secret plans and locations,” Agent Axis replied. “There is a wealth of information here, my friends. Yes, I'm sure this will lead us to our goal.”
With a burst of energy that he had not known for decades, Faoul stumbled across the room to his bed, collapsing on the worn mattress. The three intruders paid him no attention, which gave him the opportunity to slip the Luger he hid behind the bedpost out from its hiding spot and into his mangled hands.
“Trick or treat!” a group of kids shouted from down the hall, their request issued to another resident out of sight.
He squeezed off a shot at Baron Blood, partially amazed that the weapon had still fired. He fired again, but his aim went wide, possibly from the recoil of the first shot, and the bullet buried itself in wall next to the safe.
Blood fell against the wall, but recovered quickly, his vampiric powers of endurance more than enough to push the bullet back out of his shoulder. He whirled on Faoul, his teeth ready to slice into the old man's flesh.
Agent Axis extracted his own weapon and aimed it at Faoul, and the Iron Cross raised one of his gauntlets that was charged with a taser blast. Neither returned the volley. A few children ran by the room, frightened by the gunfire.
“The authorities will be called here soon enough,” Baron Blood said. “We have to take what we came for and leave. Our presence cannot be revealed to our enemies just yet.”
“We thank you, doctor,” Agent Axis said as he stuffed the majority of the safe's contents into his pockets. “And the new age of the Third Reich thanks you as well!”
Agent Axis squeezed the trigger, the gun fired, and the man who thought himself Abdul Faoul doubled over. Blood seeped out of his gut, splashing over the bedspread. The Baron was atop him instantly, his hunger seething. The Iron Cross, however, quickly pulled him back. If it were not for the enhanced strength of his armor, there was little chance that he would have been able to pull Baron Blood back from such a meal.
“There is no time,” the Iron Cross said. “We have what we came for.”
Baron Blood regrettably allowed himself to be guided back toward the shredded door frame, saying beneath his breath, “Fool.”
As the three intruders left his small one-bedroom apartment, they failed to notice a few breathes of life still held within Faoul's lungs. The shock of the bullet puncturing his abdomen had triggered his programming, and he began to remember why he was there, and what the intent of his placement had been.
He reached back where his weapon had been hidden and tapped a secret button depressed in the wall stud. It silently sent out an alert to a watchful government agent, a man who would able to do something about what had just transpired.
“Faoul” looked down at what most would assume was his lifeblood, gashing forth onto the bed. To the paramedics and then the medical examiner that would claim his body later, it would appear that Abdul Faoul had been killed. When SHIELD recovered their Life Model Decoy some time after that they would download the recording his retinal camera had made of the event that led to his deactivation.
He had sent the alarm. SHIELD would come. The heroes would be made aware of what was going on, and the return of some of the most heinous creatures to ever threaten freedom would be brought to light.
The only thing he didn't know as his body began to shut down would be what their intentions truly were. He would leave that for someone else to determine. Even though he was just an LMD, he still smirked at the thought that his own mask would be removed on this night, a night reserved for hidden identities.
# # #
TO BE CONTINUED
# # #
From the Author:
Confused? Okay, let's backtrack a little bit. The year was 2007 and I was determined to make M2K a place where villains could be revitalized. I also wanted to promote our various anthology titles to get more writers interested in writing for the site. I chose Agent Axis, an old Invaders villain, and remade him for the modern day. That story can be read here.
Then skip ahead to the 2009 Halloween Special. As my contribution to that collection of awesome stories, I chose another Invaders villain, the original Baron Blood. I brought him back to life in this story.
Then in November of 2009, I released another one-shot that once more brought an Invaders villain out of the graveyard and into the modern day. The character was Iron Cross and the story can be found here.
Seeing a pattern here? This is a plan now seven years in the making. The old villains are coming back, and they have a specific goal in mind. What is that goal? Well, you'll just have to see, but it obviously involves using the German engineered version of the Super Soldier Serum. One day, maybe in the near future, I'll release the mini I've had in mind for years that will reveal all.
Only time will tell! Thanks for reading!
-D. Golightly