The streets of New York were as noisy as ever. Cars crammed together as they attempted to make progress toward a destination. People lined the streets, heading one direction or another.
A panel truck stopped and tossed a bundle of papers near a stand. The owner thanked the men, and they proceeded to their next destination. After all these years, and with everything available online, people still stopped and picked up a paper to read the thoughts and opinions of news reporters. Stack by stack, the newsstand owner filled his bays, setting the Big Apple Daily News right next to sports magazines and Stock Trading Insider.
“Hey, Bob, papers in yet?” A man in a business suit stopped and tossed some money on the little stand.
Bob held out a thick edition of the paper. “Just arrived. Ain’t nothing but more about that attack in Japan.”
The businessman looked at the colorful cover of Lord Dragon flying over Okinawa. “They’re still cleaning up after the whole Paris thing, and I don’t even know what the hell happened in Ireland. This world has gone nuts.”
“Tell me about it.” Bob hefted the rest of the bundle behind his stand. “Oh, well. Exciting news sells, and that makes me a buck. Oh, I have the new edition of Natural Geographic. You still collect those?”
The businessman laughed and tucked the paper under his arm. “Since I was five.”
Bob looked around behind him for a moment and then came up with a thick magazine. “Look at this. They’re doing an entire issue on Dragons. Suppose they knew about that crap in Japan?”
The businessman laughed. “That’s just a dinosaur with wings. This thing in Okinawa looks just like something off a Chinese takeout box. Look.” He flipped out the paper and gave off a yell and threw it down. “WHAT THE HELL!”
Bob leaned over, looking at the sprawled paper on the ground. The front page was nothing but a picture of a demon, staring at them with black, soulless eyes. “What the…? That wasn’t on there.”
“LOOK!” The businessman stepped back and pointed at the stand.
Bob ran around the stand and found all the papers had that same face. No title, no words, nothing left on the front page but that horrible face. “This...I...what is that!”
“I don’t know. It looks like it’s staring right at me.”
Just then cars screeched and stopped, horns blared, and people were yelling. A girl ran by, pointing upward, and screaming, “LOOK AT THAT!”
The gigantic screen attached to the side of a building, which normally ran the news all day, had a demonic face glowering over the city. Unlike the picture on the paper, this one moved as evidenced by the way it smiled and licked its lips with a forked tongue. All at once, the screen returned to the news.
“What…what was that?” Bob asked.
The businessman shook his head. “I don’t know, but look at your papers now!”
All the papers were back to normal, as though nothing had changed on them. With trembling hands, Bob pulled one up and spent a moment looking at it. His friend beat a hasty retreat, heading for the sanity of his cubicle.
***
The sun blazed over Puebla Mexico. In the distance, a volcano belched out a steady stream of white clouds. The city below was a mixture of modern life and ancient history. Tourists stopped long enough to snap pictures of the two strangers coming in for a landing.
“You look absolutely green,” Fiero stated as she flew next to her companion.
Crimson Guardian, flying by use of rocket boots, let out a low burp, and then said, “I sorta ate too much chocolate.”
“How much did you eat?”
He counted on his fingers a few times, then said, “seven pounds.”
“SEVEN POUNDS!”
“Yesterday.”
Fiero frowned. “No wonder.”
Crimson let out a satisfied smile on his otherwise nauseated face. “It’s fantastic chocolate.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Get ready to land.” She dove toward a golden building resting at the top of a strange-looking hill.
Fiero smiled at a girl who snapped a bunch of shots. “So, do you have any...Crimson?” She turned around to find herself alone.
Crimson had walked into the church, gawking at it like all the rest of the tourists.
“Crimson, what are you doing?”
He looked up at the art around the room. “My sensors said this place had gold all over it. And, look, it’s amazing.”
“Sure, it’s great. We have a job to do.”
He looked at an ornately decorated woman in the back. “Our Lady of Remedies...interesting.”
“Whatever. Come on...wait, you look better.”
He smiled. “I feel better.”
“How?”
He shrugged in his techno suit. “What goes in the mouth eventually comes out the other end.”
“You mean...you...no, you didn’t...in that suit.” She walked away, not wanting to discuss this.
He protested as he followed. “This is a highly advanced suit with alien tech in it. I haven’t had to use a normal bathroom in months. It doesn’t smell and...”
“I don’t even want to talk about this. We are here to find this mythic and see if he’ll help us.”
Crimson followed her back outside, and they looked down over the ancient ruins of the Cholula Pyramid. “I already came here once, looking for him. No luck then.”
“Why are we doing this again?” Fiero asked.
Crimson said, “From what Lord Dragon and the other mythics told us, we need all the help we can get.”
Fiero let out a hard sigh. “There are heroes all over this planet now. I think we can handle this Jinn character...whenever he shows his face.”
“You and I were both there when Jinn used Cupid’s bow...you know, back in Oklahoma.”
“Yeah, and?”
Crimson said, “We also fought Cupid himself in Paris.”
“What’s the point?”
Crimson looked back out across the city. “We barely defeated him in Oklahoma, and he escaped right in front of us. Cupid almost took us all out, and he was without his bow.”
“The point?”
“The point is, Fiero, we weren’t strong enough then. Only by a thin shred of luck did we get out of that with our butts. This Jinn now has three times the power of any one of them, plus he has used some kind of technique...spell...whatever, to give himself power that scares even their leader. We need all the help we can get.”
Fiero gave a quick nod of agreement. “True. I guess I’ve done so much in my time, by myself, I feel strong enough to defeat anything. But even I must admit that I fell to Cupid. That was a battle that...well, I just don’t want to think about how close we all came to defeat.”
Crimson said, “Lord Dragon also said that this mythic was one that knew Jinn better than the others. He fought with him and then against him back on their world a long time ago. If any of them know how Jinn thinks, it’ll be him.”
“Where do we start?”
Crimson pulled out a scroll of paper. “Down there, in the pyramid. Let’s go find Quetzalcoatl and get him to help us.”
She scoffed. “You just like saying that name.”
“It’s a cool name. Quetzalcoatl, Quetzalcoatl...” He kept saying it in various tones as he led the way down into the ruins.
Inside the church on the top of the hill, tourists gathered to look around and see if any other superheroes had shown up. A priest and several parishioners came in to answer questions about the church.
“She is glowing!” a man cried out as he pointed at the highly decorated statue of The Lady of Remedies.
Everyone turned and took pictures of the statue as the surrounding light grew brighter. The priest and other followers came closer, some praying aloud.
“It is a sign!” A woman fell to her knees and recited her prayers to Mary.
The glow grew brighter as the heat in the room also increased. Suddenly, the head of the statue burst into flames. The golden decorations around the statue melted away. The people, once in worshipful adoration, now screamed and backed up. Finally, the statue tore in half and fell to the ground, burning. In its place was a horrible image of a demon, pagan markings covering its body.
“RUN, GET OUT OF HERE!” The priest cried, shoving people toward the door.
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