The Origin of MASK
Chapter 26: Not a Game Any More, Part 2
By Qweb and/or Jelsemium
Matt and Brad's attempt to keep Switchblade from reaching Rhino had left the other Venom agents free to reach their vehicles, which left Firecracker in a jam. Hondo had charged the line of Venom vehicles as if he was intent on sacking a quarterback. It only belatedly occurred to him that there weren't 10 other guys backing his play. A fine way for a so-called strategist to act, he thought.
Thunderhawk and Condor were still trying to handle Switchblade, with unnoticeable success. Bruce and Alex were still trying to disentangle Rhino from its three parachutes. Dusty and Gloria had gone to cut Vanessa off from Manta.
Hondo and Julio found themselves all alone facing Stinger, Jackhammer, Piranha and Vampire.
And the other team was playing for keeps.
"Oh, oh," Julio said mildly.
Hondo gritted his teeth and bulled his way through the line, sending the two motorcycles spinning, a tactic he wouldn't have dared try on the heavier vehicles. As he spun in a 180, Hondo saw the slick red GTO called Stinger, convert into a ground hugging, treaded tank. The tough black Bronco known as Jackhammer seemed to sprout cannons from every seam. Both started after the smaller pickup truck. Firecracker dodged away.
Rax and Malloy picked up themselves and their bikes.
"I'm gonna make those turkeys pay for that," Malloy snarled.
He revved Vampire, then noticed Rax wasn't following.
"Whatsa matter? Scared?" he challenged.
"Nah," Rax said. "I'm just going after bigger game."
He pivoted Piranha around and headed toward the bogged down Rhino.
The parachute shrouds had wound around Rhino's tires. It took Alex and Bruce only a moment to untangle them, but it was a costly moment.
As they climbed back in the cab, they heard the roar of an engine topped by a shout through their headsets.
"Alex, look out!" cried a Texas voice.
Rax sat tall in the saddle of his deadly bike, racing toward the passenger side of Rhino. Alex knew his posture didn't come from pride, but from lifting the breast-high firing mechanism of his Stiletto mask above the level of the bike's windshield. Two machine guns emerged from the base of the sidecar, just for insurance.
In the remote corner of the computer expert's mind — which was something of a computer itself — Alex calculated that the combined firepower of Piranha and Stiletto would pierce the armor of Rhino's door, as well as the flesh of any human creature so unfortunate to be sitting there. He did not believe, however, that the missiles would have sufficient power to pass through him and reach Bruce who was trying to start the big rig's cold engine.
Alex stiffened his upper lip and did what Britons have always done so well. He held the breech.
Rax roared close for a sure kill, then Rhino seemed to disappear, dropping as if into a hole. But it was Piranha that was rising, racing full speed up a ramp of ice that ended level with Rhino's roof. The superpowered cycle made Evel Knievel look like a piker, as it flew off the end of the ramp, hurtled over Rhino, over Jackhammer, past Switchblade's nose, to finally crash into the swampy ground at the edge of the lake.
Rax and his bike parted company.
The venom agent skimmed across the lake like a well-tossed stone, rolling to a halt on the grassy bank at the edge of the woods. He landed at the feet of a deer, which had frozen there when the action started, hoping desperately the crazy humans wouldn't see him. But this crazy human had gotten too close.
The animal darted for the safety of the deep woods, thudding across Rax's back as it went. Cursing the heavy-hoofed animal, Rax rolled over and met another denizen of the woods, one that wasn't afraid of humans in the least.
The skunk proved it, too.
On the far distant side of the lake, Alex breathed an incredulous sigh of relief at finding himself unpunctured.
Dusty gave him a thumbs up sign as he passed at high speed in his ungainly looking vehicle, then Gator's gaping mouth closed over the hydroplane and its ramp-building freeze cannon, leaving a relatively innocent looking jeep again.
Bruce and Alex gaped as the innocent looking jeep fled the scene at high speed, taking to the woods in the opposite direction of the fight.
"Now where the blazes is he going?" Alex asked, never once considering that Dusty might be running away.
While Rax made his abortive charge at Rhino, Malloy launched his one-man cycle-jet into the air and caught up to the fleet-wheeled Firecracker before Stinger or Jackhammer could. He buzzed the pickup repeatedly, forcing Hondo to swerve to avoid the ball bearings fired from Malloy's Buckshot mask. Firecracker slithered across the bearing covered ground, but the teacher kept it under control, giving thanks under his breath for the lessons Gloria and Dusty had given him.
The pursuing Stinger's massive treads crunched the treacherous balls into the ground, but Jackhammer didn't have as good luck. It spun out and jolted to a halt while Dagger cursed his Venom cohort.
"Turn off your mask, Malloy," Bruno ordered from inside Stinger. "You're no help."
Malloy stopped firing Buckshot reluctantly, but he didn't argue with Bruno, a former circus strong man. Instead, he began firing Vampire's lasers, trying to herd Firecracker back toward the other Venom vehicles.
Dagger restarted his stalled engine. As he threw Jackhammer into gear, Gorey opened the passenger door and looked in timidly.
"May I ride with you?" he asked.
"What happened? Lose your truck?"
"No, I know right where it is," the mousy man replied. As he climbed in the Bronco he slapped his hip pocket in a gesture Dagger didn't try to understand.
"Let's catch these guys," Gorey continued, his teeth clenched behind his mask. "I want to make them all pay for what they did to Outlaw."
Lasers blazing, Vampire buzzed Firecracker again.
"Someday I've got to give this guy a flying lesson," Julio muttered.
He leaned out of the window as the jet roared past again. "Hey, Venom!" he shouted. "This is a stick up!"
Malloy wondered whether the old line was supposed to scare him. It didn't.
It should have.
The Streamer mask fired, gluing Malloy and his flying bike together in an embarrassingly intimate relationship. The Venom agent hugged the jet, unable to so much as twitch a finger to steer Vampire. All he could do was fly straight ahead, until the stickem gummed up his engine as well.
The inseparable pair landed with a slurp in the marshy ground at the near end of the lake and skidded to a messy, muddy halt.
Rax chugged around the lake on a battered but still functional Piranha. The animal-hating Venom agent was dripping wet from a desperate but futile dip in the lake.
He studied his hog-tied, hog-dirty cohort and decided to help him, not out of any brotherly love but because Rax had no desire to go back into battle with his damaged cycle. Any excuse to avoid tangling with those masked maniacs was a good one.
So, of course, there was no need to hurry.
Malloy was speechless with fury when Rax took his time dismounting and hunting for a tool to cut the Streamer strands. Rax admired his beet red face.
"What'sa matter, Floyd?" Too stuck up to talk to your old friends?"
Malloy's vituperative response proved he wasn't. He cursed so violently and creatively that Rax could only nod in appreciation. Then a wind shift brought Malloy a realization of why Rax had taken a bath when it wasn't even Saturday.
"And, furthermore, you stink!" Malloy finished without missing a beat. "Now get me outta here!"
At first, Mayhem didn't even bother to fire his many weapons. He wanted to see what these interlopers were made of. He whipped his big but agile chopper through a series of wild gyrations to assess his opponents' talents.
What he found out impressed and infuriated him.
The guy on the small, green helicopter obviously had professional combat experience. Though his aircraft was small and lacked speed, it was even more maneuverable than Switchblade, and its lasers were nothing to sneeze at.
But worst of all, to Mayhem's point of view, the pilot was enjoying himself!
In odd moments of silence, in between explosions and when the wind was right, Switchblade's external monitors picked up the sound of Condor's pilot — singing.
"Masked cru-sa-ders working overtime … fighting crime … fighting crime. Se-cret rai-ders who will neutralize … soon as they arrive … at the site." Brad skipped his second verse. Even though he didn't think anyone but his allies could hear him, he wouldn't mention Trakker's name out loud around Venom. He went straight to the refrain. "MASK! is the mighty power that will save the day-ay-ay. Ba duh duh. MASK! No one knows what lies behind their masquerades. MASK! Always riding hard on Venom's trail! Come see the laser ray-ay-ays. Fire away!"
And then he'd suit action to words and fire.
"MASK," Mayhem mused. "So that's what they call themselves."
It was lucky for Brad that Hocus-Pocus disguised the sound of his famous voice or he would have blown his cover right then.
The pilot of the gaudy flying car was equally annoying to Mayhem. Matt was the unpredictable entity professionals dread, the talented amateur. Professionals learn from the same book. They understand each other. But when you run up against an amateur, all the rules go out the window. While Mayhem fumed, Matt was displaying all his talent, flying Thunderhawk and firing its weapons at the same time, since his copilot was incapacitated.
Calhoun was a pilot himself, but he'd never put a plane through anything like this. The twists and turns were twisting and turning his stomach and he was making a valiant effort to not be sick.
"You all right?" Matt asked during a lull.
"I've never been carsick and airsick at the same time before," Calhoun groaned.
"If you're going to be sick, your mask's a bad place to do it," Matt advised as he sent Thunderhawk into a screaming dive on Switchblade's tail. Calhoun swallowed hard.
Switchblade swung out of the way, but, while concentrating on Thunderhawk, Mayhem had forgotten Condor.
The small chopper popped up in front of the larger one, spitting anti-matter from its headlight, firing lasers from its skids. Switchblade's armored hide hissed and bubbled under the double assault. Mayhem realized the trail of destruction was heading for his rotors.
The chopper stopped chopping and dropped like a rock, falling below Brad's rising line of fire. Switchblade's rotors folded together then were pulled down into a slot along the back of the helicopter. Airfoils that held the flightless chopper in a shallow dive extended into full-fledged, swept-back wings. Jets burst into life at the tail of the reborn aircraft.
The jet roared past Condor sending the helicopter tumbling in its slipstream.
"This is going to be tougher than I thought," the musician broke off his song to tell Matt.
His only answer was a low moan from Calhoun.
Manta soared high above Gloria, then plummeted like a falcon. Lasers tore gaping wounds in the lawn. Scorching the thick green grass, the spear points of deadly light arrowed toward Gloria who stood in the center of the clearing, hands on her hips, totally disgusted by Vanessa's retreat into the air.
"Aura, ON!" Gloria said.
Lambent golden light formed a dome around her. The laser fire only made it glow more brightly.
Teeth gritted in fury, Vanessa fired and fired until her lasers overheated and cut out. With a cry of fury, she extended buzzsaws from either side of the flying car.
Gloria didn't even flinch as the blade ground itself to powder against the glowing force field.
Vanessa fought down her rage.
"Then let's see how you like this!" she growled in her deep voice.
She attacked the house instead of the girl. She crossed in front of the three-story structure, her remaining blade gouging the brick wall from side to side. The front of the house seemed to sway on its foundation.
Manta swept away from the building, moving back for a clear missile shot that would drop the house on Gloria's head.
"It might not kill you," the Venom agent gloated. "But it'll keep you out of my hair for awhile."
Next episode:
The battle heats up
And a car flies without wings.