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                                   CALFORCE
                                  Episode 109
                          (On Being Amoral, part one)
                            "Amorality is Relative"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson


               "I don't think anyone is morally responsible for
                what he or she does at an English country house."
                                                    - Oscar Wilde


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

     The air was cold, up here.
     It had been rather chilly for the last few days in Los Angeles, though
the weather forecaster for the Cretin Broadcasting System had promised that
sunshine would be returning in the late afternoon, and would stay for a while.
     Better late than never, Manny mused.  He wouldn't be around to enjoy it.
     It had been a long year of rebuilding for California's mightiest heroes.
Now, after eight months, during the course of which they had only prevented
global domination twice, they were ready to re-emerge on the global scene
again.  And Manny was worried.
     Despite their successes against the Programmer, Dr. Sleaze, and Dr. Pop,
they had yet to face a world-class menace since their headquarters atop the
C Building had been repaired, following the battle to defeat Radian.  Faith,
their reality-warper, died in that battle, and three other founding members of
CalForce had left: Badass, their highly-armed assault specialist; Healer, one
of the more powerful psis on the planet; and Doubt, his brother.  Adding
Microvax to the team helped to shore up the power vacuum, but there were
areas in which they were wanting.
     The solution, of course, was to continue to practice the use of one's
powers, to hone them to a razor edge of perfection, in a relentless quest for
excellence.  CalForce, as did most heroing groups with high-tech digs, had its
own varient on the Danger Room, a place where each team member's individual
powers, ability to react to new situations, and so on could be tested with
computer precision.
     At least, Manny was fairly sure they had such a room.  He didn't recall
ever having actually used it, though he thought he remembered someone once
having told him they'd used the lasers in it to toast some bread when the
kitchen toaster broke down.
     He made a mental note to look into the question, and looked up at
Criticalman, who had signaled him that everything was in preparation.  He
looked out at the overcast sky, and gave the word.
     "Pull!" being the word in question.
     A twelve pack of Schlitz in cans was forcefully ejected from a machine not
three feet from where Manny sat.  Six feet to Manny's left, Key Li Pan tracked
it, her index finger outstretched and pointing towards it like a gun.  Two
seconds passed...three...
     The air ripped with thunderous noise as a nuclear force blast ripped from
her arm, blowing up the twelve-pack in midair.  Those on the roof of the C
Building, all five of them (the rest of CalForce either being asleep or in
the rec room watching WCW Wrestling), cheered.
     <<Dave,>> HAL's voice said, from an external speaker.  <<I am tracking the
descent of the Schlitz beer via satellite.  All indications are that it rained
upon Dave Saget, Dave Stamos, and the Olsen twins.>>
     "Not bad for random chance," Key said.  "Your turn, Yury."
     "Aim for the set of 'Family Matters,' HAL," Yury instructed.
     "Pull!" Manny exclaimed.
     A twelve-pack of Molson Ice shot out of the machine, arcing over
Hollywood, to the north.  Yury very deliberately did not watch its arc as
it spun end over end.  As it stopped going up and started going down, she
turned her head, raised her arm, and sent a blast of flame out that ripped
through the box and through the bottles, causing it all to disintegrate quite
nicely.
     <<I'm sorry, Yury,>> HAL said.  "It overshot the set of 'Family Matters'
and rained on Dave Stern, instead."
     "Close enough," Yury said.  "It's all yours, Tom."
     Tom McCavish-Laffalot nodded, not that that move was obvious inside the
VaxArmor.  Criticalman indicated to Manny that the next projectile had been
loaded; all he needed to do was say the word.
     "Pull!" Manny exclaimed.
     A six pack of Guinness was ejected forcefully from the building, in the
direction of downtown Los Angeles.
     Everyone, except for Microvax and Criticalman, gasped.  Microvax, in fact,
seemed a bit smug, as he raised his heavily armored right arm and unsheathed
the VaxAxe.  The blades of the double-edged battle axe gleamed a phosphorescent
green, and Microvax hurled the axe towards the tasty stout with great force.
     CalForce watched the scene, too stunned to even breathe.
     The axe hit.  Beer failed to rain down upon the startled residents of
Los Angeles.
     It wasn't until the axe had returned that the nature of the test had
become clear.  Microvax had hurled the axe, and had corrected its trajectory
in mid-flight so that its edges opened five of the six cans.  On its return
pass, the axe caught the six-pack by the plastic connecting rings, and
transported it back to Microvax's outstretched hand, all without spilling
more than a few droplets.  Criticalman got out the chilled mugs, and they
spent a few moments relaxing as they typically did after a training session.
     Power vacuum, schmower vacuum.

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

     He had failed her.  It was obvious, wasn't it?
     Rad stared up at the mirrored ceiling, as he had on many nights since
the fateful one in which his sister had crossed the line from the light to
the dark, and had threatened to destroy the world that had been, for
twenty-four of his twenty-seven years, his home.
     No matter what the problem, they had always been able to talk before.
Their parents were always busy, going back and forth between their home in
Kyoto, Japan, and Marron, California, sometimes leaving Uncle Ho to watch
over them, but oftentimes leaving them in the care of their older brother,
Kaoru, who would take off as soon as his parents were gone.
     Even after Akane had started in the University of Tokyo, and Rad had
become a world-famous and very well-tanned superhero, they had managed to
stay in contact, though they saw each other less and less.  When Rad retired
from heroing and became Emperor of the Ottsamaddawidu Confederation (by
virtue of Glum having risen to become the Empress upon her father's untimely,
granola-induced death), they tried to keep in touch, but it became
progressively more difficult.  When one wasn't out, the other was.
     Then, the crisis on Planet Inhospitable happened, and Rad had called
CalForce out to help him recapture Dana Wader.  Akane looked troubled, then,
and Rad remembered thinking to ask her if anything was wrong.  Somehow, he
hadn't.  And by the time she returned to Earth, she no longer looked troubled.
     The murders started after that.  The madness, destruction, and darkness
followed.  She was running from that now, trying to escape what she had
created.  GLADYS had, by talking with HAL, kept him abreast of the news
developments on Earth, and he had been surprised to learn she had emerged
from hiding to fight in the Industrial Revolution, on the side of the
counter-revolutionaries.
     They had a lot to discuss, apparently.
     Rad looked at Glum, who was sleeping soundly, on her side, turned away
from him.  The last months had been hard on her as well, because she knew
what he was going through.  She had tried holding parties, vacations...anything
to break her husband from the ghosts that haunted his usually addled mind.
He did his best to go along with what she suggested, but they both knew it
wasn't working.
     Her side heaved slightly, as she breathed.
     He made a decision.
     "GLADYS," he said, softly.
     "Yes?" GLADYS voice replied, seemingly out of thin air.
     "I'm, like, going to, like, Earth for a bit, like, y'know?" Rad told her.
"Have the transmat coordinates, like, ready, like, okay?"
     Rad slipped out of bed, and walked to the closet.  He rummaged through
it for several minutes before pulling out a wadded up spandex bathing suit.
     "You're going to Earth...in that?" GLADYS asked, a note of concern in
her voice.
     "I'm, like, going to look for, like, Akane," Rad said.  "There's, like,
got to be, like, something I can, like, do, y'know?"
     "The transmat coordinates are in place in the Royal Transmat Station,"
GLADYS told him.  "Don't you think you should tell Glum?"
     Rad didn't answer.  Instead, he picked out a light tank top, and put it
and the suit on before regarding himself in the mirror.
     He looked grim.  His eyes had a tinge of red, and his face told of the
angst he had suffered for the better part of a year.
     Still, his tan was utterly stunning.  And that made up for a lot.
     The door hissed once, to open, and once, to shut again.
     From the bed came the sound of a small, almost whispered sob.

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

     "Okay," Manny said into the transciever.  "We have activated our
transponder, and locked the computer to air traffic control.  Confusion out."
He set down the transciever, and turned to look at his teammates.  "We've
entered Belgian airspace, and we'll be landing in Brussels in about ten
minutes.  Everyone ready?"
     "Looks that way," Templar Maccabee (Criticalman) commented.  "Chal's
sorting out the passports and other papers."
     Manny blinked.  "Again?" he asked.
     "Again," Templar responded.
     Manny stood up from the pilot's chair and started towards the back of
the Star Yacht.  He passed Tom (Microvax) and Yury Mitsuke (HotFlash), who
were involved in a complicated game that seemed to combine three-dimensional
chess, water polo, and pong, which Yury seemed to be winning.  On his left,
Kent Clark (Mighty Guy) and Key Li Pan (MeltDown) looked out one of the
Star Yacht windows at Belgium.
     "Hey!" Kent exclaimed.  "I see a Brussels sprout!"
     "We're too high up to see..." Key started.  "Oh, wait, I forgot about
your Mighty Vision."
     "I'm not using my Mighty Vision!" Kent declared.  "Isn't that a
sprout, down there, next to that English-style country house?"
     "Hmmmm," Key said, "no, that's a windmill."
     "Oh," Kent answered.  "Can we tilt at it?"
     "Only in Holland, sorry."
     "Drat."
     Chalandra was seated in back, sorting through a small sheaf of papers.
Her fingers weren't moving very quickly, and Manny got the feeling that they
were already in order.
     "Hey," he said, as he sat down next to her.  "Relax.  We're almost there."
     "I can't relax," Chalandra told him, putting down the papers so she could
take out a cigar and light it.  "I know that, technically, we're all coming
over here to visit Eivandt, but I can't help thinking you might have another
motive."
     "Like what?" Manny asked, looking at her innocently.
     "Like introducing me to your parents, maybe?" she asked, between long
puffs on her cigar.
     "I'm wounded," Manny told her.  "I'm hurt.  I'm..."
     "Transparant," Chalandra interjected."
     "Um, yeah," Manny said, grinning a bit.  "Guess I'm not as unfathomable
as I used to be."
     "Not to me, you aren't.  They know I'm a vampire, right?"
     "Sure!" Manny said.  "They watch the news."
     "You haven't *told* them?" Chalandra asked, nearly dropping her cigar.
     "Well, I've told them about you," Manny said.  "But not *about* you,
you see..."  He paused, seeing Chalandra's exasperated look.  "Don't worry!
They're very broadminded.  You'll love them."
     "We're landing!" Templar called, from the front of the ship.  A slight
shudder ran through it as it touched down.  The gangway lowered, and
CalForce disembarked from the Star Yacht onto the tarmac of Brussels
International.  It was nearly night, and the few fading rays of the sun
were not enough to affect Chalandra as she shouldered her luggage.
     But the presence of hundreds...no, thousands of people around the
Star Yacht did affect her, in that it caused her to pause and remark as
to how unusual the sight was.
     "This sight is unusual," she said.  She looked at the crowd again,
a great deal of which appeared to be female, all of whom were screaming
something.  Chalandra looked at the banners they were hoisting, which bore
distinctive slogans, such as: 'Confusion, we love you!'  'Confusion, we
love you more!' 'Confusion, we want to have your baby!' 'Confusion, we want
to rip your clothes off and immerse you in Brussels sprouts!' and other,
even more graphic slogans.
     "Not just unusual," Yury commented.  "But downright unfathomable."
     "I take it that Manny is something of a celebrity in Belgium," Templar
ever the master of understatement, commented.
     "Perhaps they can help us find Brussels sprouts!" Kent, ever the master
of irrelevant statements, commented.
     Two figures moved past the police barricade that had been hastily
erected, and the law enforcement officials made no effort to stop them.  They
rushed towards Manny, and hugged him fiercely.  One was male, in his mid-
fifties, with a salt-and-pepperish mustache and a hairline that was receding
at a visible rate of speed.  The other was female, also in her mid-fifties,
somewhat overweight now, though Chalandra guessed that that hadn't been the
case thirty years ago.
     "Son!" they exclaimed, in unison.  CalForce cleverly deduced that these
must be Manny's parents.
     "Mom!  Dad!" Manny exclaimed back, making it final.  "Where's Eivandt?"
     Manny's mother looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears.
     "He's been kidnapped, son," his father told him.
     "Kidnapped...?" Manny asked.  "But...why?"
     "We don't know," his mother said.  "We haven't received a ransom note."

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

     Miles away, darkness was also falling upon an English country house,
which, curiously enough, was not located in England, but, in fact, was in
Belgium.
     No, there was no windmill next to it.  That was a different English
country house.
     Inside *this* country house, a number of villains were in a state of
repose.  A small television in the corner was replaying some soccer matches,
and was being uniformly ignored by everyone present.  One of them, dressed
in black, was reading _the Brothers Kamazarov_ while perched upon the arm
of a wooden chair, standing on his toes, his long blond hair hanging down
his front.  Another, a massive, exquisitely chiseled man in a black
bodysuit, was drinking one can of beer after another, and crushing them
against his forehead with his pinky after emptying them.  A third, wearing
reddish clothes that came within a few shades of matching his skin tone, and
did not match his white hair and white beard at all, was playing the
trombone badly.
     One got the sense that the first two were vaguely bored.  One also got
the sense that the third was vaguely boring.  One would be quite correct.
     "Aren't they back yet?" the one on the floor asked.
     "By their lack of presence," the one on the arm of the chair said,
without looking up from his book, "I would say not, Nimbus."
     "I know that, Ted," Nimbus said.  "I was being rhetorical."
     Ted, otherwise known as Egoiste, the Fencer, shrugged and closed his
book.  "So when are they going to get here, CC?"
     The trombone playing stopped (in and of itself a cause for rejoicing)
and the white-haired, red-skinned man replied.
     "Soon," Johnathan Frakes (coincidence), also known to international
law authorities as the Crimson Crowbar, intoned, woodenly.  He was
angry, and that anger was reflected in his voice, but it was completely
inapparent to his listeners.  "You've asked that question three times so far
this evening."
     "Shouldn't we finish unpacking the Ubermachine, already?" the Egoiste
asked.
     "Let the eyelids guy do it," Nimbus said.  "He's going through it,
after all."
     "You call me?" No-Eyelids Man asked, leaning through a doorway that
led deeper into the country house.
     "No, he didn't," Frakes intoned, woodenly.  "Have you finished?"
     "Well," No-Eyelids Man said, "I disassembled the box, but there's
all these little styrofoam things, and they're stuck in everything..."
     "You're not done," Frakes intoned, woodenly.
     "No," No-Eyelids Man replied.
     "Then get back to work!" Frakes yelled, though, like everything else
he uttered, it came out as a wooden intonation with the same decibel level
as always.  No-Eyelids Man shrugged and left.
     No sooner had he gone than three more people entered.  One was in
silver and blue armor and moved with the grace and implicit danger of the
Terminator.  Accompanying her was a woman, french, one would guess, with
blonde hair and unwavering eyes.
     In front of them, a short, vaguely Belgian man with longish, curly black
hair and a glazed look in his greenish eyes.  There was a bruise on his
right cheek, and his k.d. lang shirt was ripped and bloodied.  (It is
important to note, at this point, that, despite his condition, he was still
more impressive than No-Eyelids Man.)
     "I told you to bring him in unharmed," Frakes intoned woodenly.
     "Sorry, boss," the armored woman, Arsenal, said as she removed her helmet.
"When Geneva took him over, he fell on his face."
     "He had a psi-implant," Geneva, whom some of you smug people with long
memories might remember as Psybernet, said.  "Looked like it was based on
M.I.B. technology, but a lot more efficient.  Took about a minute for me
to burn it out."
     "And the man underneath?" Egoiste asked.
     "He put up a struggle," Psybernet answered.  "But not much of one."
     "In other words, he isn't Trashman, right?" Nimbus asked.  Psybernet
scowled at Nimbus, who grinned.
     "You," Frakes intoned, woodenly, indicating the vaguely Belgian man.
"Your name?"
     "Eivandt Seconds," the man said, almost as woodenly as Frakes.
     "Your occupation?"
     "None, at present."
     "Former occupation?"
     "I was a superguy, Doubt, a member of CalForce."
     "Your goals for the future?"
     Eivandt Seconds blinked before responding.
     "I will become a villain, and join the Unimaginable League Amoral."
     "An admirable goal," Frakes intoned, woodenly.  "Once the Ubermachine's
buyer arrives, we'll see about helping you achieve it."

THE UBERMACHINE HAS A BUYER?
EIVANDT HAS A K.D. LANG T-SHIRT?
MANNY HAS GROUPIES?
BRUSSELS HAS SPROUTS?
THE ENGLISH HAVE COUNTRY HOUSES?
FAMOUS HOLLYWOOD STARS HAVE CLOTHING DRENCHED IN BAD BEER?
MICHAEL JACKSON HAS LISA MARIE?
DAN QUAYLE HAS COOTIES?

If you have Superguy, you will have the answers.  If not, you will not have
the answers, your soul will become impoverished, and you'll spend the rest
of your days watching the MTV video awards.  Don't let this happen to you or
someone you love.