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Part 8 – Nanowrimo Freedom Squad
Chapter 8
Two hours after the battle, Rigel stood in the mayor’s office, doing her best not to look angry or upset as the mayor berated her.
“So, you take the Freedom Flyer, and your most experienced team member to visit Psionicist on a hunch, the day after a massive super-villain escape. The group that you left behind decided that they should respond to an emergency by bringing an alien who is still under observation and call two heroes who haven’t even passed their tryouts to fight some of the most powerful villains to menace this country. Do you know how lucky you are that I don’t have a dead superhero or six on my hands? Have you seen the footage of Protector with the ripped costume and the blood all over his face? And Rockslide, a shattered mess? How long is it going to take him to get back together? Should I call all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men? And thankfully, Snowfall is alright, though the potential liability that your team risked could have cost the city millions if his family decided to sue. You also realize that it was the police who took care of the zombies.”
The mayor paused to clear his throat and picked up a bottle of water from his desk. He quietly unscrewed the cap and took a drink. He replaced the cap before putting the bottle down. He stared at Rigel.
“Sir,” said Rigel uncomfortably, “I’m sorry. I know you don’t approve, but Freedom Squad did drive off the villains. And…”
“Are you kidding me?” he said, waving his hands. “Those villains left. We don’t have a lead or any clues. Instead, I’ve got CNN flashing headlines like ‘Devastation in Megalopolis’ and showing images of a warzone that used to be a park. Meanwhile, I don’t know if you heard, but Defiance was looking for me.”
Rigel paused and looked down at her boots. Why couldn’t she be facing down a super-villain instead? She thought about being quiet, but a touch of annoyance won out. She folded her arms and asked in a slightly accusatory tone, “Why was he looking for you, sir?”
The mayor seemed to discount her tone, but she was sure he noticed it. “Probably because he knows that I assembled this team of ours. Maybe because he wants to hold me for ransom, I don’t know. Today was an unmitigated disaster. You need to get those tryouts done and recruit some more muscle for the team.”
“Yes, sir. But, we had a software test that turned off our communicators during the attack.”
“You should check your computer systems. After all, didn’t you hack the Freedom Squad servers and insert your own code? I’m assuming that you set up the software test and forgot to turn it off. I’d like some answers about that.”
Rigel fidgeted and nearly reached up and started twisting her hair. She forced her hand to remain at her side. The mayor was right. She had gone over all of the computer code. What if they had been hacked?
A strange feeling twisted inside her.
“What is it?” asked the mayor, “Something about the computers.”
“No, sir,” Rigel lied, “I was just wondering about Solaria. Does anyone know what happened to her? Ion called her and she said that she was on her way.”
“The police saw her blazing through the sky on the way to the park and told her to stop. They didn’t recognize her, and she didn’t have any Freedom Squad identification because…” he let his sentence hang and looked to her.
Rigel completed his statement, “… because she’s not a member of the team.”
“Very good,” said the mayor. “And with a massive super-villain breakout, they held her for questioning. Fortunately, she did everything that they asked. Maybe we should make her a member of the team. So, what did you accomplish with Psionicist? I’ve been told he woke from his coma.”
“Yes, sir, but…” Cori hesitated. Could she trust the mayor? What about the Ace of Spades? Was she being paranoid? If Defiance was looking for him, could the mayor secretly be the Ace? “Um… I’m not sure that Psionicist remembers anything. He seemed very lost. I had been hoping that he might be able to tell me something about Defiance.”
“Hmm…” said the mayor, “Walt Blythe, the last Protector, is dead. I’m assuming that Alex doesn’t know much about Defiance. What about Poltergeist? Have you tried to contact him?”
“Yes, I have, but I’m not sure how much he can help.”
The mayor paused and tapped his chin. “How about your telepathy? Didn’t you just scan the city for Nightstar’s mind and locate him before? Can’t you do the same thing with Defiance?”
Rigel sighed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I don’t know Defiance. I’m not even sure if he prefers to be called Bill or William or really anything about him. I need to have a strong mental impression to discern someone’s thoughts in a city of minds.”
He paused in his pacing. She didn’t need her telepathy to tell that he was considering the fact that Rigel hadn’t met Nightstar when she first scanned the city for him. She hoped he didn’t ask. She didn’t want to explain that she had temporarily imprinted herself with the memories of one of Nightstar’s close friends in order to find him.
The mayor went over to his chair and sat down. He had apparently decided not to ask. His expression went from angry to relaxed and confident in a heartbeat. There was a reason that he was widely talked about for statewide and even national office. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine a time in the future where she might be having this conversation in the Oval Office.
“Rigel, find Defiance and get him back behind bars. Use whatever legal means you need to. He’s the highest profile of the villains and the most dangerous. Finish your tryouts and augment your team. If you can’t apprehend Defiance, get as many of the other escapees back behind bars as possible. Those are your marching orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Rigel, I’ve had offers from the Wardens, New Citadel and Vanguard to come in her e and clean up this mess. They aren’t here, because I still believe in you and that team. By the way, despite the poor timing, good job getting Psionicist revived,” he said, without looking up. “Also, don’t worry about the press, just focus on Defiance. See to your team, and I’ll look forward to your call about Defiance’s arrest. Unless you have anything else to discuss, we are done here. You should leave by the roof unless you want to face a horde of reporters who want to know why you weren’t with your team earlier.”
“G’day, Mr. Mayor,” said Rigel.
There were a number of questions that she wanted to ask, suspicions that she wanted to voice. She also felt angry and embarrassed, but she simply left, taking the stairs to the roof instead of the elevator. The exercise did her some good. Of course, she thought it would be easy to explain to reporters what had happened. She was trying to find information on Defiance and thought she might be able to save Psionicist.
Despite her frustration with the mayor, she felt a twinge of guilt. She had left him with the impression that Carlos was Psionicist, when she knew that he wasn’t and never had been. The world would figure it out soon enough. In the meantime, she didn’t want the Ace of Spades to know any more than he needed to.
She felt a chill, a sense of danger, but it faded almost immediately. “I’m getting paranoid,” she thought to herself. “Jumping at shadows and afraid of a criminal’s fairy tale.”
She responded to herself, “You aren’t paranoid. He’s real. He was in Carlos’ mind… and how do you know that he didn’t order the attack on your team?”
She pondered the Ace of Spades and mentally cross-referenced everything she knew about Psionicist and Defiance wondering if there was a connection. She needed to talk to Alex.
More importantly, she needed to check on Rockslide, Protector, Ion and Snowfall. She had seen them at the park, and while all of them claimed to be okay, even Snowfall who needed to be woken up, she needed to find out what the doctors had said.
“They are my team, my teammates, my responsibility,” she said to herself as she reached the roof.
She stood for a moment beside the mayor’s helipad and scanned the skyline of Megalopolis. This was her city. She was responsible for defending it, and it wasn’t just that it was her job. She had the power to fight against villains. It was what she was supposed to do, the right thing to do.
With a burst of telekinesis, she lifted herself into the air and flew toward Freedom Squad Headquarters.
“No one messes with Megalopolis without answering to me. Not even the Ace of Spades,” she said.
Day 4 Nanowrimo – Freedom Squad (a little late)
Chapter 4
Daniel Hunter was awake when Cori’s call reached him. “Hello, Cori,” he said.
“Are you on an encrypted line?” she asked.
“Do superheroes have any unencrypted lines?” he replied with a chuckle.
“True. Okay, what do you know about Defiance?” she asked. Cori felt a twisting worry in her stomach. She paced around her room, walking back and forth at the end of her bed. As much as she tried to reassure herself that Daniel was a technical genius and a former superhero, all she could think was that he was over forty and a normal human. “You should probably be wearing one of your Poltergeist suits.”
“I’m fine, Cori, and I’m not worried. You should do some of your yoga. It’ll help relax you.”
“I’m ignoring the yoga suggestion for now. Seriously, Homeland Security warned me that Defiance might go after you.”
“If he does, I’ll let you know. Listen, Cori, I knew Bill, I mean Defiance. He was a good hero, a little hot-headed, but he was a good hero.”
Cori paused. Her father had always said that Daniel Hunter was an excellent judge of character. There was also something strange in Daniel’s tone, almost melancholy.
“Daniel, what happened to Defiance?”
It was Daniel’s turn to pause. Cori wished that she had the video-conferencing feature activated. She wanted to see Daniel’s expression.
“He made a terrible mistake. He attacked a group of cosplayers, and he couldn’t accept what had happened. I suspect Psionicist tried to use some type of mind control on him, and Bill didn’t take it well. In the end, he surrendered. He just knelt over Psionicist’s body mumbling the same thing over and over.”
“What was he saying?”
Daniel sighed. “He kept saying, ‘He was the Ace of Spades,” like it was a mantra. I think he was trying to convince himself. I had to do it.”
“Daniel, who is the Ace of Spades?”
Daniel cleared his throat and forced a sad chuckle. “Cori, there is no Ace of Spades. There’s no such thing. He’s a myth, a fairy tale, a story that criminals tell to scare each other. When things go wrong, crime lords blame the Ace of Spades. He’s solo operatives, like the hero Argent, or other criminal organizations who disrupt plans and cause issues that criminal organizations don’t anticipate. He’s a bogeyman that master criminals blame for their own failings.”
“Wait,” said Cori, “I thought he was a criminal, not a hero. Why would he be something that criminals would be concerned with? And what is the myth that criminals like to tell each other? Who do they believe he is?”
Cori kept thinking about Agent King. Stacy believed in the Ace of Spades. She had wanted Rigel to know that she believed in the Ace of Spades.
Cori reminded herself that she needed to get used to thinking of herself as Rigel and not mentally refer to herself in the third person.
“Slow down, Cori. First, if he existed, which he doesn’t, he is definitely supposed to be a criminal. Criminals fear competition more than they fear heroes. Most of us obey laws – villains don’t. As far as the myth, it can be convoluted, but generally, he’s supposed to be a genius, usually a hacker and/or engineer who either was arrested as a youth or forcibly recruited by a major criminal organization, something like Dr. Inferno’s cults. As the story goes, he learned everything he could from the criminals he associated with until he was ready to break out on his own. He then used his abilities to steal, scavenge, salvage and take over operations built by other criminals. He’s reputedly untraceable, a phantom, a nearly virtual entity with resources now on the scale of a major corporation or small country. Think of him as a ‘shadow government’ or other conspiracy theory organization in the form of a single individual.”
“Someone like that would be incredibly dangerous,” she said.
“That’s true, except for one thing,” said Daniel.
“What?” asked Cori.
“He doesn’t exist,” stated Daniel.
“Right. I know. I’m just trying to understand what Defiance might be thinking and what he might do,” she said. She didn’t like lying to Daniel, but if the Ace of Spades did exist, he might be able to monitor her communicator or Daniel’s line, even if it had been encrypted by Poltergeist.
She glanced around her room, noting the various security cameras and thinking about the number of security scanners that ran throughout Freedom Squad Headquarters. What if someone could use them to watch her?
“Daniel, could we get together for lunch sometime? I miss you. We could even meet somewhere as Poltergeist and Rigel.”
“Sure,” he said, “but no costumes. I’m retired. Send something to my scheduler.”
“Will do. Thanks, Daniel.”
“Cori, one last thing,” he said, “be careful.”
“No worries,” she said with a smile that she didn’t feel. “Bye, Daniel.’
“Bye, Cori.”
She sat down on her bed, debating about whether to mentally command her costume to shift into something more relaxing. Her head still hurt.
“Off,” she said aloud, letting the costume flow off of her. She needed to sleep.
She climbed into bed, lay down on her pillow and closed her eyes. As she drifted off, she imagined that somewhere the Ace of Spades might be real and be watching. As she cautioned herself not to be paranoid, she slipped into a restless sleep.
HeroNet Files Story Excerpt
Hi everyone,
Here’s a draft of the first section of my story in HeroNet Files. Enjoy!
Ten Years Ago
Trapped in an underground cavern, the hero Orion struggled to free himself from the arcane bonds pinning him against an obsidian monolith. He strained both his muscles and his mind, as his psychic powers tried to unravel the evil magic that held him captive. He didn’t have much time. His archenemy, Doctor Inferno, had already completed the first part of his unholy ritual.
The super-villain paused from his castings and floated over to regard his black-clad caped nemesis. When they had first met, Orion’s hair had been as dark as his uniform, but now, it was as white as the starry constellation pattern on his chest. Of course, Inferno had not changed, at least in appearance. He still wore his tattered purple robes and his skeletal features remained wreathed in hellfire. So many years they had fought, but now, it would come to an end. Despite himself, Doctor Inferno was determined to explain to Orion how he had finally won. He wanted to savor this victory.
“So, Orion,” Inferno rasped, “you can keep trying to find a way to use your mutant mental abilities to defeat my sorceries, but you will fail. Your old team is gone. They were smarter than you. They retired. There is no Citadel of Justice to stop me. No, my old enemy, there is only you, and you are trapped and bound.”
He paused to savor Orion’s glare. Rubbing his skeletal hands together, Inferno continued. “I’ve summoned the Eternal Darkness, a mystical energy source capable of unraveling your world. Think of it with your scientific mind as a black hole unleashed upon this precious planet – a black hole that I will command. It’s coming, and nothing you can do will stop it.”
Orion forced confidence into his voice. There was hope, but he needed time. Perhaps if he spoke long enough, the bonds would break. Maybe help would come. “We’ve done this before, Inferno. You’ve always failed, and I’ll find a way to beat you again.”
Doctor Inferno made a harsh sound that could have been a cough. “Don’t delude yourself. You know that even your science dictates that I should triumph. You call it the law of averages. You defeated me what, six times?”
“Fifteen.”
Doctor Inferno clenched his fists. “Fifteen?” He hissed and coughed again. “Truly? Fifteen! Fine! So, you’ve defeated me fifteen times. Fine. But this time, we are buried in a lair underground, shielded by so many mystic protections that no one can find us.”
Orion smiled. “I found it.”
Inferno’s skull flames flared with his anger. “Yes, you did. You always find people. That’s why you call yourself Orion, because you hunt down injustice. I’m used to it. I knew you would be here, but I have trapped and defeated you. And when the Eternal Darkness comes to me, I shall make you its first victim.”
“You’ve lost, Inferno.”
“How can you say that? I could kill you now. I could win anytime I want. You are helpless. I’ve won.”
“Watch,” said Orion.
At that moment, a twisting tunnel of light formed in the center of the ritual circle. Four figures in costume landed on the stone, ready for action.
“Who dares?” shouted Doctor Inferno. “What madness is this, Orion?”
“New Citadel, attack!” shouted one of the figures. He wore a black costume with yellow flame designs on his gloves and boots and a yellow exploding star symbol on his chest. He threw his cape back behind him with a flourish and ignited a brilliant golden energy blade which reflected off the mirror shades that he wore even in the darkened cavern.
“I was planning on it, Nightstar. Let’s see how Doctor Inferno handles his balance being disrupted,” said a young woman with a domino mask wearing a unitard covered in kaleidoscope of colors.
Nightstar didn’t pause to reply. “Clone, find a way to free Orion. Blazar, help Spira with the evil doctor. Let me know if nuclear energy can overwhelm hellfire.”
Without waiting for Blazar, Spira soared toward the roof of the cave and pointed her hands at Doctor Inferno. The air rippled around the super-villain.
“Foolish child, do you think that you can disturb the sense of balance of one who has traveled realms beyond your ability to comprehend?” said Doctor Inferno. He responded to her attack with a bolt of flame. A crackling field of electricity formed around her, diverting the fire.
Spira looked first at Orion, then around the cavern. She was as surprised as Doctor Inferno. “Where did that come from?” she whispered, even as she used her flight to dodge another flame blast.
While Dr. Inferno focused on Spira, the living nuclear android, Blazar, unleashed his fusion bolts with a roar. However, as they reached their target, a glowing mystical shield deflected them. Realizing the potential danger to his teammates, he activated his control rods to absorb the radioactive blasts into himself. He would be able to fire again in 52.17 seconds, but he calculated a 70% chance that he would be too late to determine the outcome of the battle.
Clone, the man able to be in two places at once, divided and sent his second self, Clone 2, over to Orion, using his genetically enhanced reflexes to leap across the pools of magma, while his first self, Clone 1, moved underneath Spira in hopes of catching her if she fell out of the air. Before Clone 2 could reach Orion, a rocky humanoid erupted out of the ground between him and the world’s most powerful psionic hero.
“My rock elementals should easily thwart any chance you have of saving Orion,” laughed Doctor Inferno.
With a deep rumble, two more rock elementals rose from the ground to join the first.
“Nightstar, we have a problem,” said Clone 2 as he prepared to dodge giant stone fists.
“Is this your plan, Orion? These young heroes? Are they the replacement for your Citadel of Justice? Perhaps one of them will survive to tell the story of your defeat… that is, if I leave anyone in the world for them to tell.” Doctor Inferno laughed maniacally. “What do you think? Should I leave someone to record my triumph?”
There was no answer. Orion was gone. Only the mystical bindings remained.
“No!” screamed Doctor Inferno. “That’s impossible! He can’t have escaped.”
Nightstar spun his sword and seemed to cut a hole in reality which he stepped through, only to step out where Orion had been a mere moment before. He stood defensively in front of the obsidian monolith.
Doctor Inferno now knew what was happening. Orion was invisible.
“You didn’t put this team together, did you, Orion? It was your old teammate, that gadgeteer lad, Poltergeist. I should have known from the girl’s electrical force field. Have you grown up now, kid hero? Gathered your own team of youths? Well, you think of me as a master of fire, but the flames of hell burn cold as well as hot. Ice of Nevermelt, freeze my enemies and bring an end to this.”
1.03 seconds to power, thought Blazar as his systems shut down. Frost covered his body. Ice encased Spira, and she fell toward Clone 1. Perhaps by reflex, Clone 2 summoned his other self, before Spira’s ice block smashed him. Nightstar became a frosted statue and the outlines of another figure in gray and black armor appeared beside him, with one hand touching Orion’s chest in an attempt to share an invisibility field.
Only Orion remained untouched, just as Inferno had wanted.
“Very clever. It was Poltergeist. He’s old enough now to mentor these young heroes. Trying to pass on a legacy, Orion? How did they find me?”
“I’m sure if you try to think about it, you can figure it out. I’ll let you try twenty questions if you’d like.” Orion furrowed his forehead, trying to find some last reserve of psychic power. He was still trying to stall. He looked at the frozen body of Poltergeist, and thought to himself, “Good try, Daniel. I knew that you might one day be the best of us.”
“It is over,” pronounced Doctor Inferno. “The Eternal Darkness is here. I can sense it. I now call it to me!” He raised his hands and more flames erupted from his skeletal fingertips.
Orion focused on the evil mastermind. He had to make mental contact with Doctor Inferno. Despite the bonds, maybe he could fire a single psychic blast and still disrupt this terrible ritual…
Suddenly, Nightstar appeared in the air beside Doctor Inferno, no longer frozen. Before he fell, the young hero struck the super-villain with his blade.
The sword was psychic energy and though it did no physical damage, the thrust disrupted all of Doctor Inferno’s spells, including the one that sustained his physical form. Orion’s greatest enemy screamed, a terrible agonizing psychic scream that Orion felt in the deepest sections of his mind, echoing over and over. The mental feedback made him scream louder than his nemesis before falling to the floor, no longer held by his mystical bonds, unconscious.
Nightstar twisted in the air and landed in a crouch on his feet.
Doctor Inferno’s empty tattered robe landed beside him.
“Orion! Sir, are you okay?”
There was no response. Nightstar was beside him in an instant and put a hand over the man’s heart. He felt a beat. Orion was breathing, and his heart was beating. Nightstar ran a gloved hand through his hair.
“Nightstar, step back. I’ll check him,” said Poltergeist. Nightstar’s mentor, the former kid sidekick of the original Citadel was moving again. Poltergeist carefully checked Orion.
The freezing spell had broken.
“My uniform feels terrible,” shouted Spira.
“What happened?” said Clone.
Orion opened his eyes. He looked from Poltergeist to Nightstar. “Nightstar. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s me. Doctor Inferno is gone.”
Orion laughed softly. “Nightstar, you just saved the world. I’m not sure what went wrong with Inferno’s spell, but I won’t argue. Good teleporting too,” said Orion with a smile.
Behind that smile, the older hero had come to a realization.
Poltergeist spoke. “Nightstar’s the team leader. He’s the one that located you and his teleportation to bring us here, though I wish the young man had given me more warning.”
Nightstar adjusted his shades. “There was no time,” he said flatly.
“He’s right,” said Orion. “There was no time. He did well.”
Poltergeist nodded. “He’ll need more training. They all will. Just like you trained me, but I agree, old friend, they did well.”
Orion closed his eyes. He didn’t want to say anything. He worried that if Nightstar knew what had truly happened, the young hero might not forgive himself. Orion had made contact with Inferno at the moment of Nightstar’s psychic sword strike. The psychic backlash had quieted Orion’s mind. The thoughts of everyone around him were silent for the first time since his childhood. He wondered if his mind would stay this way. If so, his days as a hero were over. To his surprise, Orion felt a great sense of relief.
He sat up with Poltergeist’s help and regarded the young team staring at him in awe. They would protect the innocent from threats like Inferno.
It was time to hang up the cape.
“As for me,” said Orion, “get me back to your base, let me heal, and then, I have a special lady waiting for me.”
Three days later, Corey Dandridge parked his car in the driveway of his townhome in Sydney, Australia. He had wanted to live his normal life as far away from the United States as he could, where few super-villains bothered attacking. He had chosen Australia.
The media was abuzz with word of Orion’s retirement announcement two days ago in San Francisico at the headquarters of the Citadel of… well, actually, New Citadel, he reminded himself. It would subside soon enough. Maybe he would write a memoir one day.
As for now, there was someone he hadn’t seen in far too long. He unlocked the door and went inside.
“Li? You’re free! I’m home,” he shouted to his housekeeper.
“Dad!” came an excited yell. A blonde-haired twelve-year old girl raced into the room and threw her arms around him. She started crying.
“Corinne, are you okay?”
“I just missed you, so badly. I was worried, really worried, and I needed you. I needed you a lot.”
Li slipped through the room, taking her pocketbook and the roll of bills that Corey handed her.
“Goodbye, Cori, and Mr. Dandridge,” she said. She gave a smile and then left the father and daughter to their reunion.
After the door closed, Corinne released her father. She wiped her eyes.
“What is the matter with you, young lady?” he said softly. “You haven’t cried like this when I’ve been away on business since you were six.”
“That’s because I thought you were away on business, Dad, not fighting for your life against Doctor Inferno.”
Corey froze. “What?”
“Don’t try, Dad. If you are wondering how I know, well, something’s happened.”
With that, she raised her hands in the air. All of the furniture in the room lifted a foot off the floor. In his mind, Corey Dandridge heard his daughter’s voice.
“I need you to teach me how to control this.”
The Black Widow Strikes (or thankfully doesn’t…)
My apologies to all my blog followers for not writing and my thanks to my friend who e-mailed me yesterday and noted, “You didn’t make a post for the entire month of April.” Oops!
I’ve had lots of ideas about posts, but it’s the usual story of life and projects getting in the way. So, I was going to post about my upcoming work on Mummy: the Curse and a superhero anthology and all sorts of statuses, but an interesting topic presented itself this morning.
So, I woke up this morning to a soft tickling feeling on my back. I thought that it was probably one of those imaginary feelings that you can have or else just a blanket or sheet rubbing me strangely. I reached my arm back to move whatever it was or just convince myself that I was imaging things.
Well, the tickling feeling moved as I reached for it, and I spun and somehow, with a dexterity that I didn’t know that I had got out of the bed. (Fortunately for her, my wife was already up and out of the room.) And there was a spider, and it was a BIG spider. And well, it was a shiny black spider that looked basically like this:
Except it was on my blanket, and I’m completely positive that it was 10 times bigger than that picture. (Yes, I know that there is no scale there, but this was one of the largest black widows that I’ve seen.) I didn’t get much of a look at the underside, only to see a hint of red.
Fortunately, there was a marvel of German engineering available in my bedroom, the Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner. I grabbed it, plugged it in, pulled out the wand and found that the spider was gone. At this point, my wife came into the room (something about my yelling). She carefully pulled back the blanket and exposed the target.
I try to be merciful to spiders, but one that can make me seriously ill or worse from its venom isn’t one of them. For the record, in the conflict between spider and cyclonic vacuuming power, the Dyson won easily. I spent the rest of the morning moving roleplaying games, pillows, curtains, miniature boxes, dressers and the like and cleaning like crazy.
The moral of the story is that crazy things can happen to you at any moment, so I really need to get my novels done. I hope everyone woke up in a better situation that I did.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!
For the record, I still think highly of this Black Widow:
Harry Heckel 