Thunderclaps 2: Chapter 2 - Announcer Reborn

“Offbeats? Superheroes? They get no praise from me. Nothing but attention-seeking troublemakers, and hypocrites to boot.)

(1962, from an editorial by the Daily Central’s editor-in-chief)

 

“Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

The naked boy called Barnstorm surrounded himself in a mini-tornado and flew spiraling between the buildings. He shrieked with laughter with typhoon-level winds blowing below him, dragging everything into the sky. More and more of the fleeing people were slammed against the building walls or the asphalt.

“Burn, burn, burrrrn! Leave nothing but ashes behind!!”

Crimson flames erupted from Rapid Fire’s naked body while he stood atop a streetlight. Innumerable fireballs followed, raining down on the people’s heads.

Many men and women were enveloped in flames just like Rapid Fire himself, but for everyone but him, that was a one-way ticket to hell.

Water Wraith said nothing. The naked woman’s mouth instead released more water than could possibly fit in a human body.

The narrow stream of water rushed straight out to tear through the building walls and sweep across the crowds with fearsome pressure.

When Miki saw the tragedies unfolding in Shibuya, she forgot all about her own situation and confronted Stonemason about it.

“How can you do this!? It’s unconscionable!”

The leader of Natural Law’s cold face was unmoved.

“This is a reasonable punishment given their sins.”
“Sins!? What sins have these people committed!?”

“The sin of living within a manmade city. The sin of wearing manmade clothing.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Hold your tongue. You are only allowed to live to convey our message to the world.”

Shino grabbed at Miki’s arm to stop her.

“Quit it. Don’t push your luck.”

But Miki did not even notice the girl’s grip on her arm. She held the mic out and raised her voice.

“That doesn’t matter. What’s wrong is wrong! What you’re doing here is evil, plain and simple!”

A great change came over Stonemason’s Socrates-like face. He was a charismatic leader within his group, so he had little experience in being criticized. Veins bulged in his forehead, but he made sure to keep his tone of voice the same.

“Well, your camera crew appears to have fled, so a superior station’s crew should be arriving before long.”

“No station is superior to Peace TV!”

“You are no longer needed, so you shall pay for your sins with death.”

A buzz like a power cable blowing in the wind came from overhead. When Miki and Shino looked up, they saw a large boulder appear out of thin air.

“I possess the power to summon and move rocks and earth, which I will now use to crush you.”

The boulder had to weigh several tons and it lost its invisible support and dropped toward the two of them as soon as Stonemason’s arrogant announcement was complete. Miki could only stand and stare and Shino focused her mind while still holding Miki’s arm, but then shock colored the girl’s face.

“I can’t dive!”

They no longer had time to jump down from the even larger boulder on which they stood. The one overhead had already begun to fall.

“Eh!?”

“H-huh?”
The boulder stopped a mere centimeter above taller Miki’s head. The several-ton mass had once more frozen in place. Shino hesitantly reached up and felt something solid. There was a transparent barrier less than a millimeter thick between her finger and the rock.

“Excuse meee!” A meek voice seemed to melt the tension. “I’ve set up a spatial stasis field, so you can’t touch those two now.”

An emerald green figure reflected the sunlight in front of the Cultural Hall’s 5^th floor window behind Stonemason. Green metal armor created the shape of a beautiful woman and jet flames burst from the bottom of her feet to keep her airborne. A ruby rose relief decorated the feminine curves of the chest armor.

Miki and Shino cheered in unison.

“Rose Device!”

“Are the Thunderclaps here!?”

The Thunderclaps were a four-woman hero team that had started two years ago. Rose Device was a newer member who had joined half a year before and she wore high-tech armor with a multitude of functions.

The spatial stasis field protecting Miki and Shino was one of those. It was a piece of super-technology that turned a localized piece of space into a pseudo-solid by manipulating physics at a higher dimension.

A mechanically altered but still beautiful woman’s voice came from the lovely armor.

“Please stop this senseless violence. If you do not, I will be forced to- kyah!”
Barnstorm spun in with his fierce tornado and slammed into Rose Device’s side. She was drawn into the great vortex of wind and lost control of her flight. She tailspinned into the Cultural Hall, broke through the outer wall, and vanished within.

“Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Barnstorm dove toward the hole in the wall, roaring wind and shrieking laughter trailing behind him.

“Kya ha ha ha- gwahhh!”

His tornado barrier was sliced through and two clenched fists fell from the sky above to strike him in the back. The blow knocked the wind out of him, so the literal wind around him scattered and he dropped to the asphalt below.

The woman who had punched down the wind-wielding boy yelled angrily with the miniskirt and cape of her white cheerleader-like costume fluttering.

“Give it a rest already!”

She was Flare, another of the Thunderclaps.

She was an Offbeat with a bulletproof body, superhuman strength, and the ability to fly with the power of her mind.

Her white cape flapped behind her just like the legendary Super Offbeat and she curved through the sky toward Rapid Fire atop his streetlight.

Rapid Fire brought his arms together and directed them toward Flare.

“Keh. Burn! You burn too! Everyone must burn!”

A blast of fire as thick as a flamethrower flew straight toward the superhero and the crimson hellfire enveloped her feminine body, but it did nothing to hinder Flare’s flight.

This barely registered as hot to her superhuman body. Her costume was made of a material from the home planet of Thunderclaps Leader Star Thunder, so it was astoundingly fire resistant.

“Shit, why won’t you burn! You’re supposed to burn!”

Rapid Fire’s flamethrower grew thicker, but Flare shrugged it off and charged straight toward the flame man. However, a great boulder fell toward her just before she reached the burning terrorist.

The truck-sized rock sent a tremor through the ground and embedded itself in the road with Flare squashed below it. Almost like it was the superhero’s massive gravestone.

Miki envisioned Flare looking just like the gruesome corpse of Lily Dynamo lying in front of her, so she screamed.

“Stop! Flare will die!”

Her earnest plea was answered by the boulder shaking and then rolling to the side. Flare stood back up with her pure white costume stained with dirt. Stonemason’s face twisted with rage.

“Stubborn fool. But all stones on this planet are my ally. The Earth itself is your foe.”

Sure enough, more and more rocks appeared from thin air to rain down on Flare. Her hands darted out to punch them aside before they could reach her, but more fell to take their place. She shouted into the communicator inside her costume while her iron fists continued to swing.

“I’m at an impasse here. Rose Device, can’t you help?”
The response from Rose Device’s armor sounded deeply apologetic.

“Sorry, but he got a lucky hit in and my power control circuits still haven’t recovered. The auto-recovery is going to take a bit longer.”

Flare’s Offbeat abilities came from her physical body, but Rose Device’s came from the link between her nervous system and the armor. She was a normal girl without the armor, so Flare could not expect any support from her at the moment. And unfortunately, those two were the only ones here today. Their other two teammates, Star Thunder and Ocelot, were in Osaka on business. And not even Flare had unlimited stamina.

Once the rest of the Thunderclaps did not show, Stonemason laughed arrogantly.

“Wa ha ha ha ha! Your attempts to defy nature are laughable. How long will that absurd strength last?”

The terrorist laughed some more while the boulder sitting atop Miki and Shino’s spatial stasis field floated up and over toward Flare. It must have been easier for Stonemason to reuse a nearby stone than to teleport one from afar.

Once that weight was no longer bearing down on it, the spatial stasis field vanished. Shino’s eyebrows rose and she tugged on Miki’s hand.

“We are outta here.”

“Eh? Oh.”

Before Miki could respond, they had already jumped down from the enormous boulder. The younger girl dragged Miki along as they ran toward Shibuya Station. Stonemason’s anger exploded behind them.
“Do not let that woman get away. Kill her!”
His environmental protection justification was gone and he was now motivated by anger over Miki’s rejection of his claims.

A whirlwind picked up some trash as it descended in front of the pair. Barnstorm floated within the spiraling wind now that he had caught his breath. Heat and a chill approached from behind them. Burning Rapid Fire and soaked Water Wraith stood there.

“Damn! You people don’t quit, do you?”
Shino focused her mind, but she failed again.

(It’s no use. I still can’t do it. My power is too unstable.)

A shriek of laughter left the whirlwind.

“Kya ha ha ha ha- huh?”
Silver lightning approached with blinding speed from the direction of Shibuya Station behind Barnstorm.

“Hwaahhhhhhhhhh!”

The silver lightning immediately arrived behind the boy and began to run around his mini-tornado in the opposite direction of its rotation. With a roar, a new spiral of wind formed and the two whirlwinds crashed together.

“Barnstorm!”
Rapid Fire cautiously burned his flames even hotter.

Something white touched his scorching flames from behind. It was a strip of paper about 30cm thick. The inside was covered in writing and symbols of an unknown script. It was a scroll written in an ancient language.

The dry old paper should have been reduced to ashes as soon as the raging fire touched it, but the fire did not spread to the scroll. In fact, the flames were suppressed as the scroll wrapped around Rapid Fire’s body.

“I don’t know how you can stand this kind of heat.”

The woman who appeared in the air behind Rapid Fire looked like she had just left the Hollywood’s Academy Awards ceremony. Instead of flying or floating, she was truly seated in an invisible chair.

She was a bewitching woman in her mid-thirties. Her attractive figure was adorned with a long, wine-red dress that left her shoulders bare and covered only a third of her large breasts with twin triangles of cloth. The dress fell to her high heels, but it had a slit that rose up to the base of her thigh.

The strip of paper extending from the scroll in her left hand wrapped around Rapid Fire until he looked like an Egyptian mummy, restricting his movements and turning him into no more than baggage.

Water Wraith frantically launched pressurized water toward the midair woman, but the current was blocked by the black metal that landed in front of the naked woman. That water could destroy a building wall from a distance of several meters, but it was scattered by this superalloy.

The water had been deflected by what looked like a piece of avant-garde art that represented a human form with black metal cylinders and variously sized spheres. It did not at all look like a robot with an artificial intelligence that possessed sentience and a personality.

The robot looked slow, but its thick arms moved swiftly to restrain Water Wraith’s hands with mechanical strength. A nozzle appeared on its round alloy chest and a clear goo sprayed out.

The powerful adhesive sealed Water Wraith’s mouth. Two red lights flashed on the robot’s round head and it spoke with a gentlemanly robotic voice.

“I do apologize for the inconvenience, but I had no choice but to seal your mouth with a special adhesive. I will later remove it painlessly with another of my chemicals.”

Water Wraith struggled as much as she could with her weapon taken from her, but the robot’s fingers would not budge.

The wind supporting Barnstorm was swallowed up and eliminated by the wind produced by the silver lightning. He was tossed about by the first wind he had ever found beyond his control and was slammed against the road.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck!”

He thrashed on the asphalt in a sweary tantrum and the silver lightning finally came to a stop. Only then could anyone see it was actually a woman in her mid-twenties wearing a silver body suit and boots.

The tense beauty of her face was covered by yellow goggles, her body suit and boots had black lightning marks on them, and she wore intricate wooden rings around her neck, wrists, and thighs.

She directed a grim anger toward the brutal boy.

“How dare you kill Lily. She was the nicest girl I ever met.”

“Shut the fuck up. Not my problem.”

The boy tried to summon his wind back, but the silver woman circled behind him like lightning and hit him in the neck with a karate chop. The blow to the back of his neck dropped him unconscious to the asphalt.

The silver woman was not even out of breath after moving at such impossible speed and she addressed Miki and Shino next.

“Sorry we were late.”

Miki joyfully spoke the name of the superhero team that had so easily defeated the terrorists.

“The Justice Circus! You actually came!”

That name was a symbol of justice. They were Japan’s first and strongest hero team, formed in 1965 with old members retiring and new members joining all the while.

The woman who could run at supersonic speeds and create a tornado from her own movements was Silver Bullet, Japan’s fastest speedster.

The woman who used scrolls containing all sorts of magic was the mystical lady known as Madam Scroll.

The kindhearted robot with a metal body and a gentlemanly mind was Black Might.

Those three had been regular members of the Justice Circus for the past few years, dealing with crises not just in Tokyo but all over Japan. They had even saved humanity from extinction.

Miki searched for the man she knew would be with them. Her voice contained the excited admiration of a small girl.

“Is he here?”

Silver Bullet directed her yellow goggles in the direction from which Miki had escaped.

“Of course he is. Look over there.”

Miki and Shino both looked back to see someone floating in the air to confront Stonemason atop the giant boulder.

His muscular build was evident through his blue costume and he wore a blue mask over the top half of his face, but the most notable feature were the large white bird wings growing from his back. Everyone in Japan knew who that was.

Miki spoke the name of the Justice Circus’s leader.

“Captain Sky!”

He had become Japan’s first superhero in 1962 and he continued to fight on the front line. He made a suggestion in a booming voice.

“Surrender, Stonemason. Your companions have been defeated and you cannot escape.”

“Nonsense!”

All the rocks that had attacked Flare now flew toward Captain Sky.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

The Captain’s snow-white wings flapped forward and several feathers left them. As soon as they parted from the wings, they turned to glowing white arrows that flew toward Stonemason.

The first of the stones and the glowing arrows collided at the midpoint between the two men. The stones had far greater size and mass, but the arrows accelerated all at once and passed right through the stones.

Before the stones could reach Captain’s powerful body, the speedy arrows passed through all of the stones and stabbed into Stonemason’s bare chest.

“Ohhhhh!”

The terrorist was not injured. He was only hit by a powerful impact that paralyzed his nerves. The many stones left his control, falling to the pavement below, where they moved as much as stones were meant to: not at all.

Stonemason’s limbs continued to tremble while he let out an indistinct roar.

“Ohhhh! Th-this is not over! Activate the Elemental Embodiment, my brethren!”

The naked superhuman forced out one final cry before collapsing from the boulder.

“It’s over,” sighed Miki, Flare, and Silver Bullet at the same time.

But then something like black lightning slipped past Stonemason’s dangling tongue to leave his gaping mouth and fly up into the sky.

Crimson lightning passed through the old paper of the scroll covering Rapid Fire’s face to do the same. Green and blue lightning left unconscious Barnstorm and adhesive-sealed Water Wraith’s mouths respectively.

The four colors of lightning instantly fused together in the sky and a giant standing 20m tall appeared between the buildings.

It had a human shape, but it did not appear to be a living being at all. Black, red, green, and blue lights tangled together and spiraled around to create the giant human shape, making for a monster that was truly unpleasant to behold. Silver Bullet grimaced.

“The hell is that?”

Madam Scroll had descended to the surface and tilted her head while directing the ring on her right middle finger toward the giant. The ring was shaped like a human eye.

“My Eye of Adhagafl suggests it is a mass of energy with a will of its own.”

“I concur with the Madam,” said Black Might. “My multi-sensors have arrived at the same conclusion.”

Rose Device reported the same thing to her teammates and Flare complained while shoving the rocks out of the way.

“He called it an Elemental Embodiment. Why can’t these villains be more creative when naming stuff?”

Despite its monstrous appearance, the disturbing energy giant silently moved its glowing, four-colored hands. Light the same color as the arms shot from the hands and toward Captain Sky. It was hard to tell if it was firing separate beams or extending its body.

“You really don’t know when to quit.”

The Captain flapped his wings in front of his blue costume again. But instead of firing glowing white arrows, he covered himself with the wings.

The spiraling light fired by the Elemental Embodiment crashed into the overlapping wings.

“It hit the Captain!” screamed Miki.

“Don’t worry,” said Silver Bullet. “Energy attacks don’t work on him. Those wings can absorb almost any form of energy and convert it into his own power.”

Sure enough, Captain Sky was unfazed and the Elemental Embodiment shrank a bit.

“See? He’s absorbing the energy giant itself.”

“That settles this one. But what are we supposed to tell Lily-san’s family?”
All of a sudden, a voice reached the communicators on Silver Bullet and Madam Scroll’s costumes. The same transmission reached Black Might’s AI.

“Run away! Something is wrong with my body. Everyone get away from here!”

The Justice Circus members exchanged a glance and then looked to their leader in the sky.

“Eh? Captain!”

“What’s wrong!?”

“A malfunction?”
There was no visible change. The Captain continued to absorb the enemy’s attack and the energy monster was down to half its size.

“Did something happen to Captain-”

Before Miki could finish her question, a blinding flash of light spread from Captain Sky, enveloping Shibuya.

 

Miki’s entire body and all her senses were blotted out by white light. Her very existence was annihilated and she became a part of the white light. She could feel nothing…nothing but light.

(Is this what it feels like to die? Am I on my way to heaven?)

The light grew whiter and stronger.

And…

 

“Huh?”

Miki’s senses returned.

She felt the wind on her face and she felt a weight in her arms. The weight was from the unconscious man she held. And she recognized the man.

“Captain Sky! But how!?”

The muscular body and the blue costume and mask were definitely Captain Sky’s, but the trademark white wings were gone.

“Where are his wings?”
As soon as she said it, she heard a flapping sound behind her and white wings entered her vision from both sides.

“Eh?”
She turned her head to follow the right wing, finding it was growing from her own back.

“Ehh?”
She willed them to move and they flapped back and forth, causing her to ascend a bit. The Cultural Hall’s rooftop was far below her and she could see the city of Shibuya much like the one helicopter broadcast she had been forced to do once. The wind on her face felt very different from the wind at the surface.

“Th-th-the wings! Captain Sky’s wings are on my back!! A-a-a-and I’m f-f-flying!!!”

As panic filled her, the wings fell out of sync and she began spinning and wobbling every which way in the air like she was riding a rollercoaster. She screamed and held Captain Sky tight in her arms. She felt like that would keep her from falling.

“Kyahh! No, what is this!? Eeeek! I’m falling!”

She was rapidly descending despite her desperate wish to do anything but. The city was approaching terrifyingly fast.

“Ahh, it’s that monster!”

She noticed the Elemental Embodiment waiting between the buildings. It was half its original size, but it still had its human form.

“Eeek! Help!”

The wings did what she wanted for the first time. They surrounded her and Captain Sky like a cloak.

They became a white artillery shell and crashed into the energy giant’s head. The four-colored giant was squashed flat like something from a gag anime and then exploded. Its scattered pieces vanished as if evaporating.

Meanwhile, Miki and Captain Sky crashed into the concrete sidewalk, sending gray shards everywhere, but the wings’ protection left them both without a scratch. Miki was not over her panic, so the wings spread once more and launched her back into the sky, where she vanished with the hero still in her arms.

She left only a scream behind.

“Soooomeoooone stoooop these thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings!”