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                                   CALFORCE
                                  Episode 115
                           (Brutal Light, part four)
                                "Harsh Shadows"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson

                                 |||---^---|||

     "We have no idea what you're talking about," Confusion told Ian, who
sneered, paternalistically, at him.
     "I think you do," Ian replied.  "I know Rad was on his way here, because
he saw a news report that CalForce was trying to capture Radian.  And now,
here you are, and neither Rad nor Radian in sight.  Now what does this tell
me?"
     "That you shouldn't believe everything you see on tv?" HotFlash asked.
     "That disco is making a comeback?" Criticalman asked.
     "Ooh, I know!" Mighty Guy exclaimed.  "Radioactivity!"
     Ian blinked at Mighty Guy.
     "What?" he asked.
     "Sorry," Mighty Guy said.  "Wrong question."
     "It tells me," Ian said, testily, "that Rad was here not very long ago,
and took Radian from the battlefield, correct?"
     "If you say so," Willwarp told him.
     "So where did they go?" Ian asked.  "Or should I skip directly ahead to
the brain probing?"
     "You aren't going to be probing anything," HotFlash growled, reaching
towards him with smouldering hands.  Ian's right hand lashed out and grabbed
her wrists, his long fingers holding them firm.  Her hands and arms erupted
into searing hot flame, but Ian didn't flinch.
     "Why do you want to know?" Confusion asked.  Ian looked at him and
released HotFlash's wrists.
     "I seek him because I am dying, and, in a sense, so is he," Ian said.
     "Yeah, you look real ill," Shadebeam told him.  MeltDown loosened her
grasp on Shadebeam's arms, though not entirely.
     "Despite my exterior appearance, I can assure you that I speak the
truth," Ian answered, curtly.  "While my physical shell appears to be in its
prime, my mind has aged...considerably.  About five millenia, give or take a
year."
     "Hoo," Microvax commented.  "Almost as old as Dick Clark."
     "Five milleniums prior, momentus events occured, on both Earth and
Planet California," Ian continued, grimly determined to exposit no matter what
comments were made.  "The Rad and The Dar battled each other, convinced that
by besting his opposite, he would successfully transcend to higher dimensions."
     Ian noted the look on Confusion's face.
     "Yes, it is the same Transcendence that Radian attempted, and failed to
complete," Ian said.  "But the magic of planet California was not as strong as
that of Earth, and the Magestrix did not perceive their threat to be quite as
urgent as the present-day Magestrix perceived in Radian.  Consequently, while
they did Intervene, it was to start a controlled magicalypse, which rendered
the surface uninhabitable for two or three thousand years, and killed The Rad
and The Dar, at their moment of Transcendence."
     "I was wondering how that was going to end," Shadebeam said, smirking.
     "As you know, The Rad was eventually reincarnated on this world, where
a fraction of his people had migrated.  He was born to a noble-born woman and
a meteorologist, and soon was known to his family and friends as Rad.  And he
grew as an ordinary human, with only his mind-bendingly superior tan as a
giveaway that he could be much, much more."
     "Um, if you don't mind my asking," Flores Lame said, butting into the
conversation.  "Just how do you know this?"
     "Ah, Ms. Lame," Ian said.  "I see your pet has been healed of the wound
it had when last we spoke."
     "Who's he talking about?" Timmy 'no clue' O'Larson asked, looking to his
left and right.
     "To answer your question," Ian went on, "I know...because I was there."
     "Huh?" Shadebeam asked.  "I was there, but I never saw you!"
     "But I saw you," Ian responded.  "And I must thank you -- without your
trip back in time, we would never have survived that horrific day.  The
Rad would have gone to one of the many pedestrian afterlifes that dot the
higher dimensions like flies on a cow's tail, and I would have dissipated,
possibly dissolving the planet altogether."
     "Wait," Confusion said.  "I think I'm starting to get this."
     "You mean you've been following this?" Glum asked.
     "He also followed the plot to 'Castle of Fu Manchu,'" Willwarp said.
"Give him some credit."
     "Both you and Rad were on Planet California at the time of this
catastrophe thingie," Confusion started.  "Rad got reincarnated here, and
you were born from him...or possibly you were reincarnated as well.  And
while The Rad was visible, you weren't.  Which can only mean..."
     "Yes?" Ian asked, raising an eyebrow.
     "You're Shirley MacLaine," Confusion concluded.
     "Bravo!" Mighty Guy exclaimed.
     "Author! Author!" Criticalman added.
     "No! No! No!" Ian exclaimed.  "It means that I am the incarnation of
divine power..."
     "...of Rad?" Glum asked.
     "...of Dar," Ian said.  "My sister, Chelsa, is the incarnation of
The Rad's Divine Power."
     "So, why isn't she here, instead of you?" HotFlash asked.
     "It is part of our agreement," Ian said.  "Either we both succeed, or
we both fail.  She has gone after Dar, and will bring him to me.  I am after
Rad, and will bring him to her.  And then...well, you'll see."
     "Hardly!" Mighty Guy exclaimed.  "Your quest will mean the death of a
great hero of this world, which I cannot allow!"
     "Then do your worst," Ian told him.
     Mighty Guy squared his shoulders, heaved his fist way back (unwittingly
knocking Flores through a plate glass window in the process), and slammed it
into Ian with full and excessive force.  The sound of the punch echoed through
the concrete and glass canyons of downtown Los Angeles and beyond, and the
Earth trembled a bit.
     Ian stood calmly, waiting for Mighty Guy to lower his hand.  Mighty
Guy tenderly removed his hand from Ian's jaw, and shook it to get rid of the
sting.
     "So much for that," Ian said.  "Now, as for where Rad is..."  With a few
quick gestures and some mumbled words, he scanned the area, seeking one who
had seen the abduction, but would offer little or no resistance to a quick
mind probe.  He found one.
     "Hey!" Timmy exclaimed.  "Get out of my mind, you pervert!"
     "Now, now," Ian said.  "I'm just looking for the image of Rad leaving
with Radian.  I have no interest in your private fantasies involving Flores
Lame and Marisa Tomei.  I...ah, here we are.  So he just sped in, abducted her,
and sped out, faster than you could see."  He released Timmy's mind, and
glared at Confusion.  "Why couldn't you have just *told* me this?"
     Before Confusion could answer, Ian gestured, and vanished in a flash of
teleportational light.

                                 |||---^---|||

     Rad sat on the arm of the couch, watching Akane.  She sipped her coffee,
her eyes looking away from him.  Seated on the carpet in front of the tv
set, Tommy Anderson played a Nintendo football game.  Two urns rested atop the
tv set, containing the dust and bits that had been, up until that morning,
his parents.
     He waited for her to speak.  She'd have to, sooner or later.
     When she had awoken, she had looked at him with a mix of wariness and
resignation.  She had listened to Tommy's story about how Ian had visited and
killed his parents without any visible reaction.  She watched Tommy play
Nintendo.  She sipped coffee.
     "Like, sis..." Rad began, realizing she might very well stay quiet.
     "I have nothing to say," Akane answered.
     "But, like, if you talked about it, like, y'know..."
     "There's nothing to talk about."
     "Bogus."
     He decided to try a different tack, and moved off the couch arm, to sit
on an actual cushion.  Akane, who occupied the other end of the couch, nearly
jumped.
     "Stay...away from me," she warned.
     "Like, Akane," Rad said, slowly.  "What is, like, going on?"
     "What's going on..." Akane repeated.  "You really have no idea, do you?"
     "I, like, usually don't," Rad said.  "I'm, like, pretty sure I, like,
don't in this, like, case, y'know?"
     Akane took a deep breath, and set the coffee down.
     "I've been fearing this for a long time," she said, in a quiet, almost
ethereal voice.  "I've been going over it in my head, how I'd explain it all
to you, how my life got so fucked up..."
     "I, like, should have been there," Rad interrupted.  "I, like, could have
talked to you, and, like, maybe..."
     "Done what?" Akane asked.  "Stopped me from becoming the Dark Goddess?
Stopped me from running, after I lost my divinity?"
     "Um, yah," Rad answered.
     "Not a chance," she told him.
     Her eyes were cold, and Rad shivered, looking into them.  He had never
imagined that they could look that way.
     "There's more going on here than you know," Akane said.  "Or perhaps you
do know, but you just don't remember.  I...I want to tell you...I really do..."
     "You don't, like, trust me?"
     He looked at her eyes again, and thought he could see something else, a
pool of torment, drifting underneath the cold like a fish in an iced-over lake.
Her mask was starting to crack, to break apart.
     "No," she managed to say.  "Because I know the past, and I've seen the
future.  You will kill Glum...and you'll kill me.  And if I can't stop you,
that'll only be the beginning."
     Rad opened his mouth, but no sound issued forth.
     He tried again, with the same result.
     The mask was cracking, and she was reaching out to him.  Wordlessly,
they embraced, and Rad pulled her close to him.  He felt her tears on his
shoulder, and fought to still the pain that was gnawing at his brain stem.
Her body heaved, as she stopped trying to hold her sobbing at bay.
     Tommy, meanwhile, managed to win his game quite handily.

                                 |||---^---|||

     "Okay, we'll try this again," Chalandra said, patiently.  "Where are
they?"
     "How should I know?" Shadebeam asked.  "I ain't a psychic friend."
     "I understand you share a connection with Akane," Chalandra persisted.
"You must know where she is."
     "She did?" Glum asked.  "I never knew that."
     "When she left the Realm Nocturnae and returned to CalForce Headquarters,"
Shadebeam said, "yeah, I noticed that happened.  She did too, and she
abducted me.  Then Ramrod, Wonder Grunion and Kid whatshisface barged in,
and Ramrod shot her in the head.  She came back, but the connection didn't."
     "I...see," Chalandra said, as though she had been about to say
something else.  She looked at Manny, instead.  "So when do we turn her in?"
     "I'm not sure that we should," Manny said.
     "Do we have a choice?" Key asked.  "I mean, she did violate a number of
laws in helping Akane escape..."
     "I agree!" Kent weighed in.  "No matter our personal views on the morality
of her choice, we must uphold the law!"
     "Well, so far, she's our only source as to what happened on Planet
California five millenia ago," Templar pointed out.  "And if we keep her with
us, Akane's bound to come back for her sooner or later, and she's the big
fish we want to fry."
     "I'm more concerned about Rad at this point," Manny told them.  "And
Dar, if he faces the same threat that Rad does.  It's clear that Ian is
formidably powerful, and Chelsa is probably equally powerful."
     "I could have hit him harder," Kent said.  "I was still weak from what
Akane did to me."
     "My poor, brave dear," Key said, as she rubbed his shoulders, using tiny,
localized nuclear force blasts so he could feel it.
     "So what's the next move?" Eivandt asked.
     "Half of us should go after Dar, to try to get to him before Chelsa does,"
Chalandra suggested.  "The other half can try to reach Rad, before Ian reaches
him."
     "What about him?" Tom asked, hooking a thumb in the general direction of
Kaoru Moroboshi, who was sleeping soundly in a corner of the building.  Yury
strode over and shook his shoulders.
     "Hnrrrr," Kaoru groaned.  "I don't want to be funny any more..."
     Yury slapped him vigorously, and he woke up.
     "Ow," he commented.  "Hey, what gives?"  He looked at the members of
CalForce, and at Shadebeam, whose wrists were held securely.  "Where's my
sister?"
     "Gone," Chalandra told him.  "She and Rad disappeared.  Will you help
us find them?"
     "Of course!" Kaoru exclaimed.
     "Are you sure this is such a good idea?" Yury asked.  "I mean, he tried
to kill me, last time I saw him."
     "I've turned over a new leaf!" Kaoru told her, proudly.  "I intend to
dedicate myself to the noblest of causes, to make up for my past evil actions.
All I ask is that I be given this one chance."
     "Is he like this a lot?" Templar asked Shadebeam.
     "Usually," Shadebeam responded, without enthusiasm.
     "What about you?" Chalandra asked.  "I understand you won't help us find
Radian or Rad, but will you help us find Dar?"
     "Um...sure, I guess," Shadebeam said.  "But I don't know where he is,
either."
     <<Dave,>> HAL interrupted.
     "Yes, HAL?" Manny asked, automatically.
     <<I have received a call from a Dave Petron, in Ahongadonga, Indiana,>>
HAL revealed.  "He claims that two people, Dave and Chelsa, visited him last
night, looking for Dave and Dave.  He saw the battle on television this
morning, and thought he should call you.>>
     "Very well," Manny said.  "Put him through."

                                 |||---^---|||

     The plane lifted off from the hidden M.I.B. runway, located deep in the
woods behind the This-Is-Not-An-M.I.B.-Front Elementary School, just south
of Richmond.  Aside from the pilot, it had but three occupants.
     "We're off, sir," Atkinson said, unnecessarily.  "We should be in Los
Angeles by early evening."
     "How do you think they'll react?" Sutherland asked.  "According to the
news coverage, Rad snatched Radian away, though they captured Shadebeam.  And
what we have isn't good enough to be called proof..."
     "No, it isn't," Karina replied.  "But they will have to think it is,
won't they?  That's the only way we'll be able to ferret out Radian's ally
within CalForce."
     "Sir..." Atkinson started.
     "Not now, Atkinson," Karina growled.
     "But I forgot to set my VCR to tape MST3K," Atkinson complained.
     "You should have thought of that earlier," Karina told him.  "Now sit
down."
     Atkinson sat.  The plane flew onward.

                                 |||---^---|||

     Dar opened his eyes, and noticed that it was evening.  He felt exhausted,
and wondered why.
     That question was quickly answered when he noticed Marian nestled snugly
against his body, warm under the multiple bedcovers that were a requirement
in New England at this time of year.  They had spent most of the night, and
most of the following day in bed, and Dar wondered why he had ever left in
the first place.
     She opened her eyes, and smiled sleepily at him.
     "You still haven't lost it," Marian said.
     "I haven't?" Dar asked.  "Oh, of course, I haven't."
     "I'm glad I waited," Marian told him.  "I knew you'd come back, someday."
     "How?" Dar asked, as she kissed his chin.  "Why did you believe I
would return after so long?  Howmmmphhhhh--"  He eventually stopped trying
to talk, and instead accepted and deepened the kiss.  After a while, he
forgot exactly what he was asking, and decided it didn't matter much, anyway.
     Then, a voice spoke, from somewhere beyond their bed, and caused them
both to jump, from considerable surprise.
     "So," the dark, female voice spoke.  "This is the important reason you
had to leave me for?"
     "H-Hecate," Dar stuttered, his eyes widening.  "H-how...?"
     "Um, you didn't tell me you were already involved," Marian said.
     "I'm not...I mean..."
     "No, he's not," Hecate said.  "Because very soon, he will be dead."
     "Yeah," a male voice added.
     "Shut up, Katsu," Hecate told the voice.
     "Aw, but gee," Katsu said.  "Don't I get a line?"
     "No!" Hecate, Dar, and Marian exclaimed.
     "Poo," Katsu commented.
     "Hecate, I don't think this is a good time..." Dar started.
     "I think it's an excellent time," Marian said.  "I figured there had to
be another woman, you know.  You were never this good under the sheets before."
     "He's a slow learner, but persistant," Hecate said.
     "I think I'll just be teleporting away now..." Dar started.
     "You'll be going nowhere," another female voice, this one almost musical
in tone, told them.  Seconds later, its owner materialized in the bedroom,
colors radiating from her dazzlingly beautiful frame.
     "Hello, Uncle," the woman said.  "My name is Chelsa.  I'm here to kill
you."
     "Take a number," Dar suggested.

WILL CHELSA HAVE TO WAIT IN LINE TO KILL DAR?
OR WILL SHE SETTLE FOR JUST CAPTURING DAR?
WILL RADIAN BE ABLE TO TRUST RAD AGAIN?
WHAT ABOUT VICE VERSA?

Join us next time, when Tommy Anderson asks the musical question, "What do
you mean, they willed all their money to Al Sharpton?"...only on...SUPERGUY!
--
Gary W. Olson         swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu         swede@drycas.bitnet

       "Mine brain has meditated on the spinning of The Chao
        It is hovering o'er the table where the Chiefs of Staff are now
        Gathered in discussion of the dropping of The Bomb
        Her Apple Corps is strong!"
                     - The Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy (first verse)