Apollo and the Midnighter? Yeah, I know those two. Yeah, there's not
much I don't know, you know? Heh heh...
Anyway, they were superheroes like me, even back then. Younger than
me, though. Not as much experience. You see, my costume is camouflaged to
look like a janitor's uniform, but Apollo's is more like a dance outfit,
y'know, like from 'Cats' only without the tail? As for the Midnighter, he's
just gotta let the S&M thing go. It mighta worked in Dallas, but fuck, man,
this is New York!!!
Still, they had some neato powers. I said 'give 'em time,
and they'll make it big somewhere', and hey, I was right, wasn't I?
Hey?
When?
Jesus, let me think... It was three- -no- -two years ago. I think.
-One of my enemies got me with a mind-sccrambler ray last Tuesday, and I
haven't quite recovered yet. Occupational hazard, you know?
Anyhoo, I was on patrol, and I see these two guys. I can tell right
away they've got superpowers, 'cause that's one of MY powers, and so I sit
back and watch what they do. They coulda been super villans, for all I
knew. I must have trailed them the whole night.
Apollo kept looking back, but he
couldn't have seen me, because I had my invisibility coat on. Maybe he
sensed my body heat or something, I never got around to asking him. I
really liked that coat, you know? Full invisibility when you turned
the
collar up, and so clear you could see right through it. Even had a
force-field to keep the rain off too. If the clerks at thrift stores
weren't too so stupid to recognize this stuff, they'd make a lot more
money.
So I followed them around for a while, and then we see some guys
gearing up for a hit. The gun kind. So the Midnighter flattens himself against
the wall, damn near disappears himself. Apollo flew up to the roof, and
waited up there. The guys we're keeping an eye on get back in their car, and
wait.
About a streetlight (that's about a minute and a half, if you don't
know pigeon time) later, their friends show up, and I suddenly realize that
this is a lot bigger than I thought, because one of the hoods who shows up
is Fast Eddie Canton, A.K.A. 'The Bottleman' one of my arch-enemies. I
grab a trash can lid just in case he has any toxic glass-bombs with him, and
look for an angle to begin the rain on his parade.
No need, as it turned out. Apollo hit 'em high, the Midnighter hit 'em
low, and I caught The Bottleman with a lid-in-the-face as he was trying to
escape. Most satisfying night, that was.
I got to talking with them afterwards, you know, comparing techniques,
and Apollo lets it slip that they don't have a secret base set up yet. I'm
thinkin' 'amateurs', and the Midnighter's wishin' Apollo had kept his
mouth shut. So I invite 'em back to my place, giving 'em a line about
'professional courtesy', and 'the enemy of my enemy' and all that.
That
wasn't why I knew they were okay, but I don't tell the answer to that
question to just anybody, new friends or not.
Anyway.
The location of my secret base is secret of course, but I can tell you
that
it's underground, and it's got banks of fluorescent lights that double
as
the communication center. I've never successfully taught anybody else
how
to read light-code, not even my sidekick Sweeps, and he's pretty sharp.
Sweeps? He's in jail right now. He was in jail while Apollo and the
Midnighter were there too, come to think of it. Fucking cops, I swear
the
Bottleman's bought them off somehow.
When we got to the base I checked the code banks, but nothing new was
in the
database for that night so I showed my guests around. The Midnighter
took
some notes about the layout of the place, but I doubt he's ever had
much
chance to use 'em, since they moved to that giant space-Carrier.
Anyway,
Apollo looked like he was getting tired, so I showed them where the
spare
bed was.
"You don't mind sharing, right?" I asked. "The other bed is usually
mine."
The Midnighter said that no, they didn't mind sharing. -Duos never do,
I've
noticed. Just then something came in over the light banks, and I had
to go
out on patrol again. Rat-wench had sent out one of her robotic
spy-drones,
as it turned out. Took me an hour to smash the damn thing.
When I got
back, Apollo was asleep, and the Midnighter was sitting beside to the
bed,
on guard, but mostly just watching his partner. Looked like he was
thinkin'
too much, so I put a hand on his shoulder, and said,
"It's a tough life, isn't it, kid."
The Midnighter just looked up at me with an expression a three-legged
cat
would wear, and then nodded like he'd been thinkin' the exact same
thing.
They stayed for about a week, those two. When I went out on patrol,
usually
one or both of them would come with me, and I'd give them pointers.
The
Midnighter fixed my radio-receiver, and Apollo was handy to have around
whenever rat-drones stole the matches, so I didn't mind at all.
Fixed my radio... well, he fixed it so it'd play music, but it never
did get
all the secret frequencies the way it used to. I didn't tell the
Midnighter
that, because he seemed so pleased with himself for what he had been
able to
get it to do, I didn't want to cut him down. Apollo just liked the
music.
He knows a lot of eighties songs, and he was always tryin' to get the
Midnighter to sing him country-western stuff. The one time the
Midnighter
cracked, he sounded okay.
One night at the end of our patrol, Apollo said they had to be moving
on,
they'd put me in enough danger as it was. I told him he was talkin'
out of
his ass, and that I knew the score already, but he didn't buy it. Not
many
people do.
Having powers like mine is great, except that I can never prove I have
'em.
Damn Harry Bendix anyway.
I never saw Apollo or the Midnighter again, but when I heard that
they'd joined up with the Authority, I wrote Sweeps a letter and told him all
about
it.
~Fin~
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