Confederated Justice

By Jim D. Scott

A tale that borrows freely from the satirical sensibility of Catch-22, the comic adventure of The Princess Bride and the complex heroes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Confederated Justice follows Captain Major's impossible attempts to protect her city, survive her secret identity's mind-numbing office job and raise her kids. The story delivers soft-core nerdery at its finest, with nods to Galaga, Settlers of Catan and super hero tropes from The X-Men #1 to Man of Steel.

Captain Major is a mid-level special resource in the Confederated Justice portfolio, Metroville branch. Her career is at a plateau when she has the opportunity to help the city's greatest hero. Her efforts lead directly to the worst performance review in Confederated Justice history, then set off a series of events that put the entire city in danger.

Captain Major can't focus solely on saving her city, because Dee Major has to manage the rest of her life without the aid of her super powers. Dee Major suffers through an office job that serves no purpose at all and a husband who serves even less. Her teenage children are struggling through adolescence, with the older dealing with bullies and the younger maturing into powers of her own.

It's a story that refuses to take itself seriously but works very hard to make the reader laugh.

Confederated Justice includes language and themes likely to be appropriate for those fourteen years and older.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim D. Scott
• Release date: Apr 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311091123

Jim D. Scott

Jim is a deeply silly person fighting middle age by corrupting the memories of his youth and satirizing contemporary mores. He prefers to use nouns as nouns, verbs as verbs and carbon dioxide for inflating bicycle tires.His stories are typically set in a recognizably modern world with a few elements wildly bent.Confederated Justice, his new series, is a super hero tale sent in 2010, following the rise to prominence of Captain Major: super hero, office worker, wife, mother, box wine drinker.

Book preview

Confederated Justice

By Jim D. Scott

February 28, 2015

Revision 4

Copyright

Confederated Justice

By Jim D. Scott

Published by Jim D. Scott at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Jim D. Scott

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Contents

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

About the Author

Preface

Friday, September 12, 1980

The last day of the first week of school at Greenview Elementary was ending as uneventfully as it began. Dee Heller, fifth grade honor student and safety patrol captain, was kneeling in front of John Collins, first grader, straightening the giraffe-shaped badge pinned to his denim jacket. His fingers, sticky with paste and paint, kept curling up the paper badge as he checked and re-checked to make sure he would get on the right bus.

Don’t worry, Johnny, she reassured him. I’ll get you on the right bus.

I’m a giraffe, Johnny proudly announced.

You sure are, Dee agreed. She stood up and straightened the legs of her overalls. A sunburst iron-on featured prominently on the chest. Should I carry your lunch box for you?

No, Johnny said. He hugged his Dukes of Hazzard lunch box tight to his chest and twisted his whole body from left to right to underscore his ownership.

Okay, but you still have to hold my hand, Dee prompted.

Johnny took his lunch box in his left hand and Dee’s hand in his right. They walked hand-in-hand toward the long line of buses waiting to take the children home.

Did you have a good first week of school? Dee asked.

Yes, Johnny said.

Who is your teacher?

Mrs. Smith. She’s nice. She said she liked my pants, Johnny explained. He looked down at his green Toughskins. His mother had preemptively sewn Space Invader patches over the knees for the upcoming football season.

Those are really cool, Dee agreed.

Yeah, Johnny declared. He walked a few more paces before he slipped his hand free from Dee’s grip to point at the sky. Hey, what’s that?

Dee looked up. A ball of fire raced across the sky, larger than anything Dee had ever seen. And she’d seen elephants.

Is that a spaceship? Johnny asked.

I don’t think so, Dee answered.

Is it going to hit the school? Johnny asked.

A woman screamed before Dee could answer. An instant later, the parking area was awash in panic. Some students tried to push onto the buses, while others tried to madly escape the buses and dash for the school. The teachers and administrators waved the children in both directions like a bowler trying to pick up both ends of a split.

Dee and Johnny were less than 30 feet away from the Giraffe bus when it roared to life and jerked forward. Dee tackled Johnny in a panic. Together they tumbled out of the path of the rapidly accelerating bus.

Dee landed atop Johnny and looked up to get her bearings. She cursed at the cowardly driver and scooped Johnny to his feet. They raced for the safest thing she could see — a giant cement culvert repurposed in the playground as a tunnel between the rocket ship monkey bars and the merry go round.

They raced across the black top and were halfway to the culvert when Johnny slipped and fell, scraping his palms and face in the process. He began to cry at the base of a tether ball pole. Dee tried to lift him, but he was too big. She leaned him back against the pole and put her arms around him in a gentle hug.

Shush, shush, now Johnny, she tried to calm her voice. You’re okay.

The fire in the sky seemed impossibly large, all the while growing impossibly larger. Dee marveled at how quiet it all was. She turned her head, unwilling to watch the approach any longer.

Out of the corner of her nearly closed eyes she saw a flash of pastel blue race across the soccer fields and suddenly leap into the sky. The blue flash moved to intercept the ball of fire. Dee watched the streak as it rose in the sky, then seemed to disappear in the brightness of the meteor.

Beyond the power of Dee’s vision, a young man caught the meteor in mid-air. He pressed his hands against it, trying his best to slow the beast. The heat of the burning atmosphere burnt his sport coat in a flash, then consumed the rest of his clothes as the meteor began to imperceptibly slow.

He shifted and reversed, pressing his shoulders and back against the meteor. The fire on his skin was excruciating. More and more the meteor slowed. Sweat appeared over his skin and evaporated instantly in the heat with a sickening sizzle, not living long enough to trickle across the rippling muscles of his chest.

The roar of the meteor devouring the atmosphere finally reached Dee and Johnny, who covered their ears and screamed in terror at the awful cry. Dee was transfixed. She kept her gaze on the naked man, close enough now that she could distinguish his form from the rock he was trying to stop.

When he was less than 15 feet from the ground, the man shifted his grip again and pulled the meteor to the earth was a giant crash. He dug his bare feet into the pavement, digging deep trenches across the parking lot.

A map of the continental United States about 20 yards across had been painted on the blacktop in 1976 for patriotism and geography. The man’s feet created a latitudinal continental divide from Massachusetts to southern California before the man and meteorite finally came to rest.

Dee, relieved to be alive, could think of nothing to do but smile at their savior. Johnny opened his eyes and squirmed free of her hug. He took a step toward the meteorite and man, but the glowing heat of the rock and the replete nakedness kept him at bay.

Whoa, Johnny gasped. That was amazing.

The man saluted Johnny and nodded to Dee. In a blink, he was racing away, a peach and pink blur that disappeared around the corner and out of sight.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Much more happened in the next 30 years. Even more didn’t happen. Set the latter aside for now.

The first super hero known to our world became known to everyone as Amazing Man. In short order, he was recruited by a multitude of organizations looking to change the world. He chose to stay in his hometown of Metroville, a sprawling amalgamation of architectural mistakes trying desperately to be seen as a metropolis by its bigger brothers on the coasts.

A little known entity called Justice, Inc. managed to secure mineral rights in the meteorite on the condition that the proceeds would fund its not-for-profit efforts to promote peace, justice and security. Justice, Inc.’s first move was to align itself with Amazing Man.

In the next few years, dozens of new heroes appeared. For a short time, it looked like the world would soon be cape-deep in fantastically powered heroes. They had the run of the place for the first dozen years or so of what came to be called the Super Era. During that time, it looked as if the march toward justice and fairness for all would be inexorable and short.

Some of the new super heroes were digging wells in Africa. Others were cooperating with basic research toward providing sustainable, clean energy to power the globe. To a hero, they all endorsed childhood vaccinations as a way to prevent the transmission of disease and, specifically, protect the most vulnerable in society.

That hopeful future vanished. After the promising start, everything went back to normal in a hurry. And, normal remained pretty damn shitty for most of the residents of planet Earth.

First, a counterbalance appeared. Super villains began to find their footing and strike out, first from the shadows, then from protected havens in the failed nations across the globe. Their resources seemed as limitless as their ingenuity and lust for dominion.

Battles arose between hero and villain which left a trail of destruction across the planet. Mom-and-pop shops like Justice, Inc. adapted. They merged into ever-larger organizations capable of sharing resources more efficiently and wielding larger influence in the halls of power. Most importantly, they provided legal protection for their affiliated heroes.

The consolidation began slowly, but picked up pace in the 1990s as a new breed of management took control and sought new ways to maximize revenue opportunities. By the end of the century, only one organization remained under which all super heroes in the United States operated. It was called Confederated Justice.

As this story begins, the reach and power of Confederated Justice was felt not just in America, but across the entire world.

Also, they were kind of a bag of dicks. But that didn’t ruin everyone’s Thanksgiving.

CHAPTER ONE

Friday, November 19, 2010

A woman stood in the center of a perfectly white room that was perfectly empty but for her. In the corner, a bank of lights flickered and hummed. With a pop, the white corner of the room went slightly gray.

She seemed even smaller than her five foot and three inch frame in the silent enormity of the ceaselessly geometric room. She was primarily clad in navy blue, with a loose short-sleeve tunic hanging over harem pants tied with a thin sash looped into a neat, decorative bow. She wore a long-sleeve white thermal tee decorated with tiny purple Godzillas for warmth and violet Converse kicks for awesomeness.

She wore a double diamond black mask for she was a hero.

She stood, fists clenched, face tight with concentration. The air around her popped and crackled with static energy causing the fine dark violet hairs that had escaped from her pony tail to reach to the four corners of the room.

The room went dark. Mesmerizing swirls of golden light chased one another in the black pools of her eyes. A golden shimmer quickly formed around her as she gathered her energy. Sparks jumped from the tips of her fingers as she waited.

And waited.

Just a second, an anonymous man’s voice broadcast over the comm system.

She shuffled her feet.

Ready when you are, she called out.

You’ve got to...I’ve tried that. Wait, repeat that, the voice returned.

You’re still on comms, she called out. Her golden shimmer subsided. She reached into the holster pocket beneath her left arm. She grabbed her phone, checked the time and shook her head in disgust.

The voice on the comms continued: Do I press control, then shift, or do I press them both together? So, control and shift and F and 7? Still nothing. What’s that? Where? Oh, I see.

Red lights flashed into existence and began to rotate in alarm. From all directions, squadrons of autonomous flying robots buzzed into attack formation. Their eyes glowed red in the darkness as their targeting lasers and thermal sensors scanned the room.

Captain Major secured her phone and gathered her energy. In seconds, her skin was again glowing gold. She began to shoot bolts of plasma from her fists. The plasma bolts crashed through the waves of insectoid bots leaving glowing holes and charred wiring in their wake as the nonfunctional hulls fell to the ground around her.

For each attack bot she blasted, a new squadron took its place. The surviving bots formed up in rows above her and began to peel off in twos and threes, dropping down toward her and loosing their bombs all around her. Captain