Thunderclaps: Chapter 6 - Deal of Judgment

“Justice means the same in the east as it does in the west.”

(1966, Minutes of a Los Angeles City Council Meeting)

Statement by Rocket Lady of the Soviet Offbeat Team October Warriors made to TV Station President Herman Edge during a friendly visit. President Edge was later revealed to be the leader of a sex trafficking ring by a team-up between Rocket Lady and the LA Defender Crescent.

Kirara could easily do what had been beyond her for the past two days. She shattered the steel chains binding her arms and legs.

In that moment, she became Flare once more.

She used her arms to protect Shizuko’s head and back as she flew sideways from the bed, easily broke through the alloy wall with a headbutt, and escaped that rape room.

“Eclipse! Capture Kirara!”

When the Doctor noticed, he shouted at Eclipse, but Flare had already landed above the underground computer room on Shizuko’s instructions.

The computer room was installed behind a special alloy barrier to avoid external interference, but that was meaningless against Flare.

She kicked a hole in the ceiling and descended in front of the computer while Shizuko attempted to contact the complex program from within Flare’s arms. Shizuko could manage it from that distance even with the interference device in her brain. She did not need a keyboard, mouse, or voice input. Her nanomodules converted her thoughts into EM waves that allowed her to directly enter the electronic world.

She announced her success in less than a second.

“Found it!”

She sent two instructions to the computer.

“Bgrbggwgyaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!”

An inhuman scream escaped Waxwork’s half-melted wax throat and mouth.

The wax man had been blown away by a high-voltage attack emitted from within Rei’s…no, from within Star Thunder’s ass and from the exterior of the rest of her.

“Agwaaaaahhhh!!!!”

Wormhole writhed in agony.

Something like a black carpet emerged from the leopard print covering Ocelot’s body and it attacked those extraterrestrial worms.

“Meowww! Time to fight worms with bugs, you son of a bitch!”

The black carpet was a swarm of carnivorous marabunta army ants, the strongest creature in the Amazon jungle, that Ocelot had summoned. Those ants did not create a colony. They would surround their queen as they moved around the jungle and devour every animal that got in their way, no matter how large.

The pale young man must have shared the otherworldly worms’ pain as they were attacked by the carnivorous ants’ sharp mandibles because he writhed on the floor like he really was dying.

The worms thrashed at the ants while vanishing into the many dark holes opened in Wormhole’s naked body.

“Ahhhh, wait, no, please don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me all alone!”

No one on earth could say for sure what happened next. While Wormhole begged the worms, his body turned inside out. His brain, organs, and bones emerged to the surface. And while inside out, he bent and twisted around before vanishing without a trace. All that remained was a pile of metal tape on the floor.

No one has ever seen Wormhole since.

Waxwork stepped on the vanished young man’s abandoned belongings while he created blades of hardened wax from all over his body.

“You…you piece of shit! I’ll show you the true horrors I can- erk.”

After transforming his full body into weapons, the wax man lost consciousness and fell over.

Meanwhile, Joy Division held her head and writhed in pain.

“N-nooooooooooo!”

The djinn vanished in a poof of smoke.

At the same time, Brain Dead, Animalism, Gravity King, and the many other Ogasawara escapees hanging out at the Doctor’s secret base all lost consciousness.

Flare reemerged from the hole in the floor. She was now accompanied by Rose Device who was all armored up.

“How about that, Disorder? I knew someone as distrusting as you would have installed the same devices in the other Offbeats’ brains so they couldn’t rebel against you. We just instructed those devices to knock them all out.” Flare smiled. “Well, Rose Device did, not me.”

The Doctor’s mechanical face twitched.

“Kill them, Eclipse! Slaughter the Thunderclaps!” wailed the mad scientist just before he vanished from the room.

A moment later, Rose Device’s mechanical voice spoke up.

“Pattern B teleportation detected. He used a personal teleportation device.”

After confirming her father had escaped, Eclipse put on a gruesome smile and kicked off the floor to take flight.

“I have father’s permission now. I wanted to tear you limb from limb from the very beginning!”

Flare took flight as well.

“Everyone, leave Flare to me. I will defeat her!”

“You wish!”

The two of them clashed in the center of the room. The steel room shook from a roar that seemed far too loud to have come from two human bodies colliding. Rose Device quickly created a spatial statis field around herself, Star Thunder, and Ocelot to protect them. The bed Flare had been bound to crashed into the wall and shattered.

“Die!”

Eclipse’s fist crashed into Flare’s solar plexus. The white-costumed figure was slammed into the metal floor, broke through, and vanished to the floor below. Eclipse dove into the hole after her. The sisters were out of sight, but powerful sounds of destruction and an earthquake-like shaking still reached the other three.

“I’ve never seen Flare look so impressive in the 2 years since I met her,” said Star Thunder.

Doctor Disorder’s teleportation took him deep into the mountains, far from any humanmade objects. A clear blue sky sat above the dense forest around him. The only building around was a Japanese-style house that had fallen from the sky and crashed into the ground. That was Rei’s house and the Thunderclaps’ base.

No one knew that the mad scientist’s secret lab had been constructed underground here a few years back. He had disguised it to the point that it could not be detected even by military satellites and the people who had worked on constructing it had since died in ways that looked like natural causes. Eclipse had been created by the computer here while the Doctor was imprisoned in Ogasawara.

“Damn, now I’ll have to leave Japan. Maybe I should head to Europe for a while and work with the Secret Cabal. The Magistrate owes me one after that power up I gave to the Dark Champions of their French HQ.”

He extended a manipulator from his right shoulder and inserted it into a tree trunk. The optical camouflage vanished and a small stealth jet appeared.

The onboard AI rejoiced at finally being used after so many long years of waiting, so it opened the cockpit and lowered the boarding ladder.

The Doctor started to climb aboard until he heard thunder rumbling in the blue sky. There was truly not a cloud in the sky, but lightning crashed down directly into the cockpit. The Doctor was knocked away from the jet which burst into flames before his eyes.

His hip slammed into the ground and his mechanical eye widened as he heard a mechanical voice from behind him.

“Teleporting away does not guarantee an escape. My brain can track teleportation at this range.”

He looked back to see Rose Device, Star Thunder, and Ocelot standing there.

“I-impossible. Where is Eclipse? Killing all of you should have been like taking candy from a baby for her.”

Star Thunder gave him a pitying look.

“Eclipse is otherwise occupied. With fighting Flare.”

The ground shook, several large trees fell over, and the bedrock exploded upwards.

Dirt and stone erupted into the air while white and a black shooting stars flew out.

“Flarrrrrrrre!”

“Ecliiiiiiipse!”

The white costume and the black bondage suit flew in constantly-intersecting arcs at supersonic speeds. With each intersection, a shockwave reached the ground. Eclipse was punched away so hard her back tore through a mountain peak and Flare was punched down so hard her head tore a crater in the ground.

The younger sister spoke down toward the older sister as she tried to stand back up.

“You are no more than my prototype, so you can never defeat me. You lack this power father gave only me: Omega Vision!”

Beams launched from Eclipse’s eyes. The explosive current of deep crimson energy ionized the air as it raced toward the ground.

Flare’s costume instantly vaporized and the rock around her grew red before melting in the excess energy.

“She’s burning!” screamed Rose Device whose mechanical vision could look straight at those blindingly bright beams. “Kirara-san’s body is burning. I can’t believe it!”

But Flare remained standing. The scorching energy washed over her and her skin carbonized, but she still stood tall.

“That’s not going to worrrrrk!!”

She took flight. She flew straight into the Omega Vision to climb toward Eclipse.

The Doctor shook his head in annoyance at the sight.

“Truly unbelievable. I did not design Kirara to endure the Omega Vision. My calculations say Eclipse should be superior to her in every way.”

Star Thunder’s hand held the Doctor’s head and turned him toward his two fighting daughters.

“While you were in Ogasawara and the machines were creating Eclipse, Flare was protecting people and fighting evil as a superhero. She might be an artificial superhuman, but she has still found her life at risk on a few occasions. She grew stronger by overcoming those things.”

“You claim Flare grew beyond my calculations? Preposterous.”

A black-scorched hand finally struck Eclipse’s cheek. The blow cut off the Omega Vision and a pair of fists continued raining blows down on her.

Pushed on by the sounds of impact, the Doctor’s mechanically amplified voice rang angrily through the sky.

“Preposterous I say! Eclipse, final phase!”

“Huh!?”

Eclipse’s chest burst from within. The ribs connected down the center of her chest separated to the left and right, grabbed at Flare’s torso, and fused back together behind her sister’s back.

Eclipse turned to her creator for help concerning this transformation to her body.

“Father, what is this!? Did you build this function into me?”

“In 10 seconds, the Omega Vision emitter in your body will go haywire. Heat rivaling the center of the sun will fill the area within a few meters of you. Rejoice, my daughter. You will be offering up your body to vaporize Flare.”

“Father!”

Star Thunder and Ocelot failed to accurately perceive what happened over the next 10 seconds. Rose Device only figured it out by replaying the footage in her brain after the fact.

During the 1st second, Eclipse broke her own ribs with her arms and kicked Flare away.

During the 2nd second, Eclipse turned her back on her sister and rocketed down toward the surface. She grabbed Doctor Disorder like a hawk snatching up its prey and she ascended into the azure sky once more.

During the 3rd second, the sight of the younger sister’s ascent brought a past memory back to Flare.

“Stop! Don’t shoot my daughter!”

My mom’s scream was drowned out by the gunshot echoing through the cave.

She took the bullet for me. Even though she knew a mere handgun couldn’t hurt me.

“That is my daughter, your rotten thief,” arrogantly declared Doctor Disorder.

Then the explosive inside my mom’s hip activated. Her lower body was blown to pieces before my eyes.

“I’ll kill you!”

It was I who screamed that.

“I’ll kill you!”

I couldn’t stop the torrent of rage within me. Just as I ran forward to tear my own creator to pieces with my bare hands, my mom’s remaining upper body grabbed at my leg from the ground.

“No. You can’t do that.”

“Mom. But.”

“Charles said…Super Offbeat said he was not given his great power to take lives. He said it was to protect lives…no matter whose. So please, protect his life.”

I screamed.

I screamed as I picked up my dying mother in my arms and flew deeper into the cave. Because I was not at all confident I could keep myself from killing Doctor Disorder if I stayed there.

“Wait!” roared my creator, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of my fist shattering the bedrock.

I broke through the mountain and flew toward a human city for the first time. I met Rei a few days after burying my mom.

“Mom.”

During the 4th second, Flare took flight. During the 5th and 6th seconds, she forced her burned body to give her even more speed than her sister as she flew, flew, and flew some more.

“Faster. Faster! Faster for mom!!”

During the 7th second, Flare arrived behind Eclipse and matched her ascent speed. The sisters were motionless relative to each other.

(If my sister can do it, then so can I.)

During the 8th second, her blackened right hand touched Eclipse’s back. The sisters’ bodies fused together. Flare’s fingers contacted the tingling energy within.

“Ohhhhhh!”

Hearing Eclipse’s groan, Flare pulled her hand back out. She now held a strange, crimson-glowing organ in her hand.

During the 9th second, Flare kicked Eclipse down toward the ground. At the same time, she threw the melting Omega Vision emitter upwards. Her arm could throw a JSDF tank with ease, so the artificial organ flew well above the clouds.

During the 10th second, the white clouds were dyed red and annihilated. The heat instantly vaporized the water droplets forming them. The explosive expansion of the air whipped up a powerful wind and the forest on the surface creaked as it blew through.

Flare rode that wind down to the surface. The burns covering her body were already falling away with new skin appeared below. Her healing power was incredible.

On the ground, Eclipse was waiting for her sister while restraining her father with her great strength. The wound on her chest was already healing too.

The naked and half-naked sisters stood on either side of their father. Two looks containing complicated feelings crashed together, producing sparks. The Doctor stared blankly, feeling left behind by the superhuman speed at which things had played out.

“Wh-what? But how did…and why did…? Eclipse, what are you doing?”

Eclipse responded coldly to her father.

“Why did you abandon me?”

“Why? Because you are my daughter. Of course you should sacrifice yourself for me.”

“But I love you. I served you because I love you. I made myself a mere tool for you. But you threw me out like all those Ogasawara prisoners. I will never forgive you for that. Never.”

The father could not understand what his daughter was talking about, so Flare cut in with her voice low.

“Disorder has never felt love, so he wouldn’t understand how easily a betrayed love or a lost love can turn to hatred. You have no idea how many times I tried to kill you after losing my mom.”

“If you hate him that much, sister, then why did you save the two of us?”

“Because I promised my mom I would become a superhero. And a hero never takes a life. A hero never gives up on a life.”

Flare held her still-healing right arm out toward her sister.

“Please, Eclipse. Do not kill him. Give him to me instead. I’ll make sure he goes back to eating nasty prison food. That will humiliate the arrogant man more than death ever could.”

“Fair point. Killing him now would feel good, but then it’s over. But if he’s rotting in a cell, I can go see him suffering as many times as I like. But there is one thing I must do now.”

Eclipse’s right hand moved just like high-speed precision machinery. By the time the Doctor noticed his daughter’s action, her index and middle fingers were already stabbed deep into his mechanical head.

“Wh-what are you doing!?”

“Stop, don’t kill him!”

Before Flare could move in, Eclipse had pulled her fingers from his head. She held a few chips between them now.

“I know his body inside and out because I studied his medical program so I could heal him if he were injured. These here are his memory chips.”

Her mighty grip crushed the chips into metal powder before the Doctor’s eyes.

“Now his collected scientific knowledge and his memory of the Thunderclaps’ identities is gone. He might still carry the name of Doctor Disorder, but he can no longer even solve a linear equation.”

“No. That can’t be true. I still have my memories.”

The Doctor spoke his real name, his parents’ names, his birthdate, and his life story. But he could not bring to mind any of the scientific and mathematical knowledge that had been such a large part of his long life. He tried to recall the numbers of the elements on the periodic table, but he could not recall a single one. In fact, he could not even remember the names of the most basic elements. Even though he was the man who had discovered a new quark two years ago that none of the world’s scientists had even predicted existed. But now he was not even sure what a quark was.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The man feared as the world’s most evil mad scientist collapsed to the ground in tears.

Perhaps a superhero should have felt some sympathy at the sight, but Flare could not help herself.

“It’s what you deserve!”

“So even heroes take cheap shots. That’s a relief, honestly.”

Eclipse’s feet floated up from the ground. Her destroyed chest was almost entirely back to normal, but her bondage outfit had not regenerated, leaving her alluring breasts exposed.

“Wait, Eclipse!” shouted Flare who was entirely nude. “Why don’t you come with me? We’re the only two of our kind, so there must be something we can gain from each other. I’m sure Star Thunder and the others would accept you.”

“You expect me to become a superhero? No, thanks. The next time we meet, I will fuck every last hole in your body with my penis and fill you to bursting with my cum. Look forward to it!”

“Wait!” called Star Thunder as she came running over, but the black figure turned her back, rocketed off at supersonic speed, and vanished into the blue sky.

“Oh, what a shame. I was really hoping I could convince her,” said Star Thunder.

“Rei, you just wanted Eclipse to do you in the ass,” said Ocelot.

“N-no, don’t be silly. W-wait, look!”

Star Thunder blushed, but then she pointed at the crying Doctor. Joy Division was seated atop his half-mechanical head.

“My, my, my. Isn’t this an amusing fate for the old Doc.”

“I thought the machine in your brain knocked you out!” said Flare.

Joy only grinned.

“I’m a djinn, so why would you even think that scientific device would work on me? I mean, look.”

She spread her right ear hole like something from a gag anime and stuck her right hand in up to the wrist. She easily grabbed the small device and pulled her right hand back out.

“See? Do you really think this silly thing can control me? Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

The Thunderclaps were all offended as living beings when they saw that djinn stepping on the weeping mad scientist’s head.

“Hold on. Whose side are you on?”

Joy hopped down from the Doctor and boldly pushed her chest out.

“I’m on whichever side’s more fun. If it’s fun, I’m there.”

“That attitude only makes the world worse, meow!”

Ocelot extended her claws and leaped high into the sky, but the djinn snapped her fingers to transform the jaguar woman into a cute Persian cat. The Persian cat landed back on the ground and began running around in confusion.

“What have you done?”

Star Thunder’s hands glowed a bluish-white and lightning raced out toward Joy.

The djinn raised her index finger.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

When the Arabian beauty pointed her finger down on the “moe”, the lightning dropped down right in front of her face and vanished into the earth.

“Spatial stasis field!”

Rose Device’s words announced that the space around Joy had been solidified. Not a single electron should have been able to leave.

But the djinn knocked on the statis field without a hint of panic or concern. A wooden door appeared along the invisible field, so she turned the shiny brass knob and leisurely strolled outside the field. Shizuko’s jaw dropped within her emerald green mask.

“Humans like you are powerless against me.”

A white cloth appeared below Joy’s feet. It had “Flying Carpet” written on it in Japanese for the Thunderclaps’ benefit and it floated up with her on it.

“Nowww then, I think it’s time I performed a strip show on Nara’s Great Buddha. See you later.”

“There will be no later, mischievous child.”

A deep voice, like that of an old man, rang out.

A black starry sky suddenly appeared behind Joy where she stood in the blue sky.

The starry sky was the bottom of a large trench coat. A man had appeared in the air wearing a subdued brown suit and a coat patterned like the starry sky.

Below a felt hat the same color as his suit, he wore a golden mask with only two eyeholes. The sparkling surface of the mask had a large blue question mark drawn on it.

“I placed you in Ogasawara in deference to the Japanese police, but it seems I must keep a closer eye on you, Joy baby.”

“Oh, yes. Please capture me, Enigma darling.”

The bottom of the trench coat flipped up and wrapped around the djinn. Joy nestled herself up against the gold(?) masked man’s chest.

“Ladies, I do apologize for the trouble.” The masked man bowed, but there was an obvious smile in his voice. “And I must say, you are a nice sight for sore eyes. Yes, very…enticing. Goodbye.”

The man and Joy Division disappeared as suddenly as either one of them had appeared.

Ocelot had returned to her normal form and she opened her mouth to show off her fangs.

“I can see why even the spirit elders in South America view him as their superior. Master Enigma is incredible.”

“So that was the legendary Master Enigma, was it?”

“That magician is said to have moved the moon.”

“Ah!” Flare cried out in despair while looking up into the sky with her teammates. “A legendary hero saw my penis!! He’ll think I’m trans!!”