“So, should I call you, Mr. Iron Dork, or The Iron Dork…?”
A dimly lit room, then a carefully placed set of brilliantly bright umbrellas. The Iron Dork sits in a soft chair of deep green, adjacent to Miss Elizabeth Shou. The shadows of unidentifiable crew work the corners of his eyes.
“Just, uh, Iron Dork will be fine.”
“Okay then: Iron Dork. Assuming that you were once an everyday citizen, how does it now feel to be called a superhero, or in even more recent accounts, The City’s Savior?”
“Well, um… it took some real getting used to. Especially the hours… heh, makes me wonder why all crime couldn’t happen at mid-day!?”
Miss Shou smiles.
“Media still takes some getting used to. As you can plainly see, we’re not professionals.”
Her smile hasn’t adjusted in the least.
“But uh, it feels good to know that there are so many people with us on this.” He pauses. “Kind of makes them easier to save, ya know!” He shifts a little in his seat.
Miss Shou adjusts her notepad. “Forgive me, but I have to share with our audience how much shorter you are in person…”
A tight camera catches the slight curvature of his lips through the mask as he smiles. “I’ve gotten that before. One old lady began explaining to me that I needed to follow my own path and let the heroes be heroes. Really sweet.”
“So, why did you choose the name: Iron Dork? What about that particular name tells us who you are.”
“But I don’t want you to know who I am!” He laughs again for a while, then sighs. “Well, Iron for obvious reasons, but uh…” a brief pause, “I didn’t want to take myself too seriously. I mean, I take what I do very seriously, but didn’t want to imply… well, any real importance in myself.” He shrugs. “Plus all the other ‘Iron’ names were taken.”
Another polite smile from Miss Shou, who slightly tilts her head and looks just beside his eyes. “Tell us about the mask, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, It’s just sort of welded to my face, actually. I burn holes in it to see and breath through, and it can get ugly sometimes when I’m forced to improvise something.”
Her smile goes a little sideways. “What’s the reason behind it? For instance: according to Monthly Importance magazine, you’ve got a higher approval rating than any of the last five Presidents during any part of their term… Why not take that credit?”
He leans back in his chair.
“Well, I guess it’s kind of the same old story: I’d never have any peace if I were the Iron Dork 24/7… I don’t want bad guys coming after loved ones… you know. I have to say I found real sense in what was going on with Spider-Man at the time I started donning the Iron Dork thing.”
“But even Spider-Man recently revealed his identity, right?”
A short pause as he leans forward. “You read comics!?”
Miss Shou smiles pleasantly. “It was on the news.”
“Oh. Well, in the next few issues, we saw he regretted it almost immediately! MJ was confined to Stark Tower… he couldn’t keep his teaching job because the parents were afraid of villains attacking the school! They had to write another whole story arc to cover that up and make Peter Parker a secret again.”
“I see.”
She checks her notes.
“How did you join up with Titan?”
“A truck stop in Louisville.”
She pauses, pondering whether he’s joking or not.
“How easy was the decision for the two of you, having already been working together, to have Heatwave join?”
He takes a long, slow breath and straightens in his chair. “He, uh. He’s a neat guy. And extremely powerful. He knew he’d be a great benefit to our team.”
“It seems that was a smart move.” She pulls out a magazine. “This hasn’t been published yet, but will be at the time this interview is broadcast. It names our lovely city ‘The Most Secure City in the World’.”
We see Iron Dork’s chin lift slightly. “It really is a great city, and we’re very fortunate that things have gone this well for us so far…”
———————————————————————————————————————-
Six hours later… The downtown intersection of Pinebrook and Vista. A crumbled building surrounds a large, deep hole in the earth, around which our heroes are engaged in battle.
“Think you will get your chain back!?” Heatwave taunts twenty feet above Titan, who is only a few seconds from another flurry of vicious attacks from the impressive mythological chimera. Minutes ago, it had snapped Titan’s wrecking ball chain in a display of strength and now wore it like a souvenir around its two necks.
“I’d keep an eye on that thing if I were you.”
Heatwave still hovered in the same position, skeptically eying the odd turquoise bird gently wading in the air across from him. Its head tilted as Heatwave began to approach it, then with a bright green flash, it vanished, leaving Heatwave looking in all directions.
A light static in his ear, and he instinctively listened closely to decipher it. Then a deafening, body-vibrating BOOM! clapped just beside him as the thunderbird almost seemed to laugh, then with another flash it re-appeared ten feet in front of him. After clasping his ear, Heatwave immediately unfurled with a retaliation of short, powerful blast of flames, diving directly towards the bird who easily danced aside both Heatwave and his attacks. On the second pass, it ascended as a green streak into the sky, leading a cursing Heatwave to give chase.
The Iron Dork stood amongst the building wreckage near the edge of the massive hole, muttering to himself under the long, cold shadow of another giant worm. Not unlike the kind that took all three of them to defeat weeks earlier, but somehow more tolerant of heat.
He watched its giant head gently sway, the hanging tendrils under its mouth dancing in unison as a crisp voice sounded in his ear.
“Dork…”
“Yeah, Roach?”
SLAM! The massive head plunged unafraid into the sharp stone shrapnel with a sickening crunch.
Iron Dork rolled over with a cough, melting his way through bent and broken steel as the worm began to lift itself beside him. “Didn’t copy that Roach…”
“….trade ze…..csrrrkk…..Titan….”
He felt the cold shade on his face once more as the sun was eclipsed behind the frayed and deranged silhouette of the worm that immediately came again, wildly down at him. Its whisker-like prongs flailed behind its open mouth.
Another last second dive as he seared a path through earth-shaken debris with the impact he felt the ground behind him. He felt the ground below him give way as the edges of the large sink hole widened, crumbling into the darkness below. He grasped for a hold, but only took debris down with him into the pit.
The sky above flickered and glowed orange from Heatwave’s concentrated barrage of flames as he came booming down after the thunderbird at a speed that kicked up loose debris. He chased the green static streak blindly, leaving careless patches of fire behind him, always feeling he was inches away from landing a blow. The lightning playfully circled Titan and the chimera, engulfing them in a loud vortex of heat and wind.
Titan gasped for breath as the pair ascended once again into the sky, breaking the vortex. Titan glanced around at the sporadic fires around them, then at Heatwave sending maniacal flare after flare.
“Heatwave!” He tried shouting over the crackling rumbling of the thunderbird’s wings, but the chimera had taken his distraction as advantage to pounce on Titan to the ground.
The giant worm paced the edge of the even more giant hole, leering over the side for a minute before lowering its head to feel in the darkness.
The massive head slowly broke the plane of the ground, but immediately snapped its head back with a searing roar, the Iron Dork holding fast and singeing a sensitive tendril over a fleshy black eye socket. The flesh melted in his grip as the worm thrashed in agony, until he had nothing to hold onto and was thrown down, crashing into the scattered debris below.
Slowly, he stood. Disoriented. He looked up to the tilting world with hardly enough time to react as the worm’s giant tail came swinging his way in full momentum. He managed to grab hold of the worm’s soft under-flesh of tendrils, entangling his arms in them to hang on again as the worm jolted its body violently in all directions. Ping after ping rang against his steel body from the onslaught of tiny teeth nipping from the hundreds of tendrils, until the worm SLAMMED itself to the ground then raised itself a full twenty feet in the air to throw its upper half into a wide whirlwind swing that broke the Iron Dork loose and launched him with such momentum that he came to a stop only after passing through the fourth concrete wall of the catty-corner parking garage.
“Damn!” From underneath the drooling snarling head of a lion, and the groping, butting head of a goat, Titan followed the path of Iron Dork’s flailing body.
THLLLCK!
“ARGH!” With a frantic kick, Titan lands a much heavier than normal boot against the chimera’s ribs, forcing the beast to retreat, as Titan picks himself up. He looks into his hand as it pulls away from his side smeared with blood, then small drops of blood dripping from the end of one of the goat’s horns. The serpent-headed tail seemed to smile as it wavered in mockery behind the creature.
A flash mixture of green and orange, then a brilliant flash of white, as Heatwave’s battle and a looming thunderstorm compete to illuminate the darkening sky.
“Titan, swap creatures with ze Iron Dork.”
“Dork is down, Roach.”
“Dork… is. NOT down…” came a third defiant voice through the in-ear communication system, dramatically a second before the low rumbling of thunder introduces the first light drizzle.
Titan chanced a glance away from the chimera to see a soft orange glow emitting from the dark catacombs of the parking garage, intensifying slowly until a bright center emerged as a battle ravaged Iron Dork. The light splashes of water hiss on his exposed skin, raising a thin cloud of steam around him.
“Damn…” Titan turns back towards the beast, slightly favoring his right side.
“Dork, change targets with Titan.“
“Roach, I don’t…”
“You are too evenzy matched. Change targets.“
Titan hesitantly shifts towards the giant worm. “You got this little man?”
“All over it.” said Iron Dork as he began running with the accompaniment of colliding trains as he ripped a jagged molten path through fallen debris.
Titan slowly bent down to pick up a large flat disc of steel, eying both monsters carefully. As the giant worm’s mouth began to salivate and open slightly, he hurled it with amazing speed at the cracked mouth, but with seemingly no effort at all, the worm snapped its jaws shut over the plate, the two pieces falling harmlessly twenty feet to the ground.
“Here we go…” exhales Titan, as the gaping mouth and waves of tendrils loom high above him.
A thunderous roar as the Iron Dork collides between front paws of the chimera, who falls awkwardly over itself but is amazingly, not burned. But a split second later the beast was up again, rapidly exchanging blows with Iron Dork as next to the both of them the giant worm slams down again but is knocked off target by the right fist of Titan.
The lioness face contorts in fury and pain as it tried to tear through the skin of the Iron Dork’s forearm then catches a scorching palm slammed against its ear. The chimera leaps away as beside it, the giant worm hesitates and distances itself from Titan.
A booming thunderclap, and the sky erupts in heavy downpour.
The worm’s body rises and falls as it sizes up the Titan. Then the Titan’s hairs stand on end from the booming roar of the worm. Its tendrils flaring, the debris rattling as it suddenly strikes faster than seemingly possible, the Titan caught in its massive body which begins constricting as dozens of tendrils latch painfully onto his skin.
A less threatening thunderclap as the small thunderbird evades Heatwave inches from the ground. A continual stream of wild flames lash in all directions, illuminating the ground against the darkening sky as he screams wildly after the barely visible bird.
Roaring back in retaliation, the Titan twists his body against the squeezing worm, thrusting his hands in the air holding a few pairs of bleeding tendrils as the worm screams and quickly uncoils.
The Iron Dork spins to avoid the goat’s lunging horns and lands between the two heads and catching them in a double headlock as his exposed arms begin to glow a bright red. Behind him, the serpent tail strikes repeatedly, but ineffectively against the back of his head and neck.
The thunderbird comes to a rest behind the unaware Titan. Heatwave accumulates an intense flame and jettisons it from his palms into a tight beam that catches Titan in the shoulder as the thunderbird vanishes once more.
ARGH!! Titan hunches over, patting the flames away from his blackened shoulder.
“Heatwave, STOP!” shouts Iron Dork as he’s inched slightly forward from the chimera, then rammed squarely in the back.
“Heatwave, stop attacking of ze zhunderbird.”
But ignoring any interruptions, he hovers motionless, glaring through his wet hair at the small bird only ten feet opposite him.
“Heatwave…”
His palms form centimeters apart, a brilliant light of concentrated of fire swirling betweenthem. Instantly, it expands into a small wild storm of fire, lashing out between his fingers and wrists until he tightens his containment.
“Heatwave!” Roars Titan from below.
His hands shake in effort, but he only continues to feed the growing fire. Still staring at the bobbing thunderbird, he feels all his anger, all his power, rise from the depths of his gut, flow through his arms as boiling blood and pouring itself the hungry flame as it grows and streaks blinding rays of white light. His long hair begins to pull away from his face, and his cape blowing behind him as the accumulated energy radiates. But clinching his teeth, he holds his hands inches apart as they quiver, compressing and intensifying the flame.
“Titan!” shielding his eyes, the Iron Dork runs at his partner. “Throw me up there!”
The debris cleared below Heatwave as whirlwind wisps of flame lashed and licked out of Heatwave’s hands in a wild shower of escaping energy. A distant scream of concentration as his hand slips, the most minuscule amount, and his world fades to white.
The sharp sound of nothing. Peace. No rain, no more restraint. Only a genle breeze encouraging him back, which he welcomed as he closed his eyes.
Their eyes were sealed, but their bodies were thrown to the ground from the back draft of the incredible wave of elongated fire. From the wreckage of the ground, Iron Dork saw Heatwave’s ravaged body momentarily suspended in air before slowly falling backwards to the street.
The sky glowed red. The ground, and the windows from surrounding buildings all glowed red following the massive arched flame as it passed through the vanishing thunderbird and between rows of buildings before resting on and searing through the center of a six-story factory several blocks away.
The two remaining heroes picked themselves up and stood in petrifyied horror as the two halves of the factory held for just a moment before the low moan of bending steel.
The halves began to sway, and faint sounds of screams pierced the heroes.
“GO! I’ve got these two!” The Iron Dork shouts a second before Titan bounded in ascension toward the factory. Titan knew better, but also knew the people in that factory were going to need a lot of help.
The worm and the chimera looked briefly unsettled as the entire ground began to shake. The Iron Dork watched his brother’s shape disappear into the growing dust cloud from the falling building.
“Roach! We need you!!”
The Iron Dork was reminded how quickly the massive worm was capable of moving as the giant head slammed violently down on top of him, burying him a foot deep into the debris laden ground.
He saw the chimera amongst the falling rain as it descended over him. Quickly grabbing a piece of rebar, he lifted it just in time for it to catch the vicious swipe of a sharp claw and break in two.
“ROACH!”
He no more sounded the scream before he saw a screeching yellow pulse in the sky, and from the corner of his eye, saw the thunderbird fall in a spiral dive from the sky.
The Iron Dork turned his head slightly to see Roach descending from somewhere above and pull her legs up to kick off of what seemed an invisible wall only she knew was there! Another kick and a turn and she had changed direction, sky walking his way.
Dripping saliva returned his attention to the lioness’s mouth, as he heard what could only be Roach landing next to him. In the space between the two heads of the chimera, he saw the powerful worm gathering itself at full height for the new challenger.
The familiar sound of affirmating beeps and whistles and a shower of blue sparks flew from the palms from her black fingerless gloves.
The giant worm wasted no time testing its new adversary, and it happened, literally, in the blink of an eye.
In the area of ground where Roach had just stood, was the enormous, and closed mouth and head of the giant worm, its teeth had buried into two foot of concrete.
“NOOOOOOOO!” screamed Iron Dork in painful disbelief, and a reaction more of instinct than of any pre-thought, and he thrust a vibrant red hand smoothly into the side of the great beast’s ribs. The chimera cried back in pain from over his body.
He worked to his feet as the chimera struggled to walk slowly backwards, before falling into the large opening in the ground from which they had emerged.
Rounding back towards the worm, he was surprised it was still in the same exact position… eyes open, teeth clinched.
He watched closely… as the top half of the worm’s head slowly began separating from the bottom. Clear saliva mixed with a thick brown blood as the roof slid slowly away from the neck, and finally, to the ground, revealing an undamaged Roach knelt to the ground with both glowing palms up.
The rest of the worm’s giant body followed to the ground with a thunderous crash, fallen and resting in the rain.
“What was that!?” said the Iron Dork in a shaky voice.
She worked a set of controls on a band over her bicep and the gloves silenced.
“Come, let us help ze Titan.” said Roach, as she activated another series of switches.
“Yeah, but you’re… okay?.”
She gave him a look that could have been skepticism. “Let me get you zere more quickly.” and kicked him square in the rear end with the same gravity defying boots she bounced in the sky with moments ago, sending him flailing about in a low arch towards the dense cloud over the wrecked factory.
He landed on his stomach in a large cleared circle, coughing from the inhilation of wreckage. He saw he was not alone in the large crater, but with a handful of broken and wounded bodies.
Some of the workers held hands as they lay next to each other trying to make sense. Some were sobbing, crying for wives or children, while some others, were very still.
Titan landed with a light THUD near the others, lowering a man in his arms. Iron Dork rose quickly and saw the man wailing in pain, but unable to move as glistening pieces of glass bulged from his arms, and probably, Iron Dork thought, under the spreading blood forming on the man’s chest.
“Here!” yelled Roach from above to seemingly no one in particular as she came hovering down to the clearing. A second later and a dark mass began thinning as it spread over the area. A few screams of panic rang before the bodies were quickly sedated by the swarm of mechanical spiders who then began attending to their wounds.
The Iron Dork watched in amazement at how they gently tore clothes away from bleeding areas, then began inspecting…removing…stitching…cleaning. Rows of sharp teeth worked under their eyes as they sewed quickly and mechanically perfect. Spiders not attending to the wounded searched the rest of the area, picking through rocks or working in unison with others to magnetically charged themselves and haul away pieces of iron and steel with magnificent strength.
Distant sirens foretold the arrival of several EMS vehicles.
“Clear ze path!” shouted Roach, pointing through the dark cloud surrounding them to where the street would be. A congregation of spiders moved sharply to work a cleared path towards the ambulances.
“Doooorkk” came a weak voice behind him.
It was a very heavyset man with a series of rebar rods protruding from his left leg and side. He groaned in agony, squeezing his side to try and relieve the pain. The Iron Dork met a look of absolute plea as he walked slowly towards the man.
“Lay still.” he said, ran a red-hot finger quickly through each of the pieces of rebar, cutting each piece fast enough to avoid warming the rebar still inside the man. The man was free to roll onto his back, but Iron Dork knew it was of little comfort.
“Pull it out…” He man gasped between clinched teeth and heaving breaths.
“The paramedics will be here soon! They can…”
The man clinched the Iron Dork’s tattered slacks.
“I could kill you!”
Tears streamed down the sides of the man’s face as his dark brown eyes continued to plea, until the very last second before their lids fell closed over them.
“Hang on!”
The saw the spiders still working to clear a path, then cringing his face, gently pulled a warm piece of rebar from the man’s side as blood began to pour.
“Somebody help me!” and he turned back to the body to see one of the small spiders, working with mechanical precision to hold and close the wound.
The sirens howled more closely.
Another piece of rebar, another spider. The man’s body lay still while small amounts of blood seeped from each puncture to the wet ground before attended to.
Red lights flashed barely visible through the dust cloud as paramedics began surrounding them. He felt his body being pulled away as white uniforms began kneeling over the man.
The Iron Dork turned slowly around to see the familiar face of his older brother.
“Jim…”
Titan quickly turned Iron Dork around and pulled him in line with of the three of them as they watched the paramedics work.
“Take it easy, little man.” he said with a gentle squeeze of Iron Dork’s shoulder. “That’s all of them.”
A small group of spiders were bringing the last pair of bodies from a large pit of debris, pulling them up between several weaves of shining cable and guided them smoothly and perfectly to open gourneys.
The quick thumps of a helicopter sounded somewhere above the dust cloud, shining a bright beam down which only made it even more difficult to see.
A strange hum filled the air: a low vibrato sounding from all around. He saw somewhere in the distance beside him, Roach nod in confirmation.
“Zey will follow ze worm hole.” she said to the two of them.
The helicopter’s search light disappeared, and the remaining convoy of ambulances poured into the clearing.
The heroes stood together, looking over the chaotic wreckage of the former factory, and the assembly of workers being carried away. Some of them still agonized and lamenting in their pain. Others, they knew, had only left to be identified. But they stood, silently hopeful for each one of them.
“…Heatwave…” said the Iron Dork.
“Where is he now?” asked Titan in a gravel voice without turning his head.
“He fell unconscious, back where the griffon…”
Cutting him off, Titan disappeared through the thick clouds, leaving a gap between himself and Roach.
He saw the large man now being carried off by a team of four medics. He looked away and ran a hand through his hair as he breathed much more heavily.
Roach watched him from the corner of her eye before a sudden crash, and Titan had returned.
“He wasn’t there…”
The Iron Dork turned to his brother’s ashy black face.
“Saw the griffon, shreds of clothes and cape, but no Heatwave.”
The somber sound of cries and medical communication dulled into silence as the events of today resonated in his mind, ever-present with the now striking question of where was Heatwave now.
