Beyond the Mirror, Volume 7: Heroic Worlds: Beyond the Mirror, #7

By Blaze Ward

Come with us as we explore Heroic Worlds, places where larger-than-life superheroes struggle to defeat their enemies, keep their secrets, and live a normal life. 

Visit the 1950's to help Kid Lexington face down Lady Mockingbird. Delve into the Watergate era as the Shield Maiden struggles to carve out her future. Struggle with Norbert over a broken toaster.  Watch Anna find the meaning of her power and discover who her friends are. Cook the best stake-out chili with Chef Tom. And Stand Up with Jocelyn, when nobody else is willing to be a hero.

Those already familiar with Blaze Ward's work will enjoy the diversity of these stories, while brand new readers can sample an author sure to become one of their favorites!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781943663774

Blaze Ward

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Book preview

Beyond the Mirror, Volume 7

Beyond the Mirror, Volume 7

Heroic Worlds

Blaze Ward

Knotted Road Press

Contents

Kid Lexingtom

Kid Lexington

Expectations

Part I

Part I

Part II

Part II

Part III

Part III

The Breakfast Dragon

The Breakfast Dragon

The Coffee Doctor

The Coffee Doctor

Ghosthawk

Ghosthawk

Chef Tom’s No Damned Beans Chili

Stand Up

Stand Up

About the Modern Gods Universe

Read More Modern Gods Stories

About the Author

Also by Blaze Ward

About Knotted Road Press

Kid Lexingtom

Kinjiro lurked quietly in the dark bushes, watching the warehouse across the street like a hawk spying wounded prey. Cool, early autumn breezes swirled the leaves occasionally, but otherwise, everything was serene. Calm. Lovely.

Boston in September was a nice place to be.

The building across the street from him was a warehouse in a quiet commercial district, not that far inland from the Inner Harbor waterfront. For a Friday night, it was remarkably peaceful around here. Half a block down, a brand new, 1953 Mallory 4-door sedan in dark blue, parked next to a telephone pole, was the only car in sight.

Something didn’t feel right, but the sealed envelope the Chief of Police had given him earlier had been clear. Be at this location at midnight, ready to sneak in and arrest a criminal gang Brad had been secretly following. Brad had even signed it with his full codename: 1776, Leader of the American Minutemen.

Brad could never do anything halfway. Even sign his name.

The outside of the heavy, linen envelope had been written in a pretty scrawl, addressed to Kid Lexington. The hand-writing looked wrong, but the wax was intact and bore the team logo. Everything was by the book.

It still felt wrong.

But at the end of the day, Kinjiro was just the sidekick, regardless of his opinions on the matter, and had to defer to Brad, in the man’s role as team leader. Those were the rules. If he wanted to be a hero in this modern age, he had to respect them.

Kinjiro adjusted his mask and made sure his tricorn hat was on securely over his short, wiry, black hair. His costume was as patriotic as he and Bonhomie Richard could make it: navy blue body suit and white leggings, with a white belt, red boots, and red gloves, all in sturdy, polished leather. His navy blue cape even looked like a half-cloak from the colonial era. Thirteen stars formed a small circle over his heart, like the original flag of the Colonies.

People had suggested that it might make a good target to shoot at, but he didn’t care. He could shoot back.

The musket in his hand had been carved from a chunk of the Washington Elm itself, the tree that General Washington had stood under in 1775 when he founded what would become the US Army, not far from here on Cambridge Commons, just across the river.

The gun didn’t actually fire, but that was okay. As Kid Lexington, he used it more like a movie prop than anything. It helped him focus his power when he fired his energy blasts, so that they went farther and hit harder than he could do on his own.

He was the team’s sniper, as well as being 1776’s sidekick. After all, Kinjiro wasn’t the one who turned into a giant. When Brad tripled his size to seventeen feet nine inches, he and Betsy Ross could pretty much handle almost any foe with their fists alone. The Midnight Rider could even run down cars, to say nothing of punks on foot. And Bonhomie Richard was always inventing new devices and gadgets. Usually only Kid Lexington and Betsy Ross used them, though.

It wasn’t that Brad and Whizzer were dumb. Immature and over-confident, maybe. Firmly convinced that being grown men, however barely out of college they were, made them naturally superior to everyone else.

Liz wasn’t the team leader of the American Minutemen, but she probably should have been. She was way smarter than Brad, almost as smart as Dick was, but the other two guys really didn’t like taking orders from a girl.

Kinjiro grimaced sourly to himself. He had a really good idea how the other three would react if they ever found out that Ken was actually Japanese. Kinjiro. Nisei. Born in Hawaii to immigrants themselves born in Tokyo. The kind who still weren’t even allowed to be citizens in this country.

No Asians allowed. We do laundry for whites only. Et cetera.

Only Bonhomie Richard knew.

1776, The Midnight Rider, and Betsy Ross were all too young to have fought in the Second World War. Brad, the oldest of the three, was born in 1928 and had been all of seventeen and set to enlist when the first atom bomb had leveled Hiroshima. Whizzer and Liz were each a year or so younger.

All three thought Ken was much younger than them, an energetic, teenage sidekick to 1776, like all the major heroes were supposed to have these days, when in reality he had been a twenty-five-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant, awarded a Silver Star with Oak Leaves and two Purple Hearts on that day, seven years ago.

European Theater of Operations. 34th Infantry Division. 442nd Regimental Combat Team. One-Puka-Puka. 34th Combat Engineers Regiment. Varsity Victory Volunteers.

Sweat, tears, and blood.

I am more American than you are.

And if I have to play a dumb, teenage kid sidekick because I’m only five foot six and one hundred thirty pounds, I’m still meaner than you are. More capable.

Better.

Kinjiro knew he could have been a No-No-Boy in 1942, like many other Japanese-American men had chosen to be. It was among the sharpest insults you could level within the Nisei culture today, but a decade ago, many had chosen to go into the concentration camps rather than serve their country.

The Army had made it amazingly easy to stop any one of the patriotic Japanese-American men short of serving their country. Just answer No on either of two questions, the ones officially doubting your loyalty or your patriotism, and you didn’t have go to war; wouldn’t serve under openly racist, white officers; didn’t end up bleeding and maybe dying on Italian soil.

Didn’t belong here as an American.

Varsity Victory Volunteers.

So only Dick knew the truth. The man who would later become Bonhomie Richard had fought in the First World War. And he didn’t care that Kinjiro Himura was Nisei.

Kinjiro had wanted to be a hero, and that was good enough for Dick. It was part of the reason Kinjiro was willing to play this minor part, second fiddle to an over-grown dumb-ass like Brad.

It was one of the only ways he could be accepted.

Today.

Kid Lexington took a deep breath and forced the anger back down where it belonged.

He had a job to do, regardless of his feelings. Brad was counting on him to be here, to back him up, to help save the day. To say something corny and gushing about what an awesome guy 1776 was.

Whatever.

There were bad guys that needed to be brought to justice. Maybe they’d get mouthy and give him a reason to shoot a few with the sort of painful energy bolts Kid Lexington could generate on a night like this.

He smiled.

Good thing it isn’t a school night, or they might expect me to have a curfew. Or maybe be off meeting some girl for ice cream after studying.

Kinjiro smiled at the thought. At least his lovely wife, Umeko, could handle the book store tomorrow if he was out late and had to operate on pots of coffee and almost no sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time. Probably not the last.

And she was the brains of the outfit, anyway.

Everyone assumed that he was the book-binder with the deft touch to repair and recover family heirlooms, when the truth was that he was just the pretty face and ready smile behind the counter. Umeko was the one that had the empathy with old tomes, the skill to stitch the spines tighter than anyone.

It was a vocation she had picked up in the concentration camp at Minidoka, Idaho, when her choice had been apprenticing to save old books from entropy, or learning to grow potatoes.

She had gotten over the shock and sadness of internment. Kinjiro doubted Umeko would ever get over the anger.

Fortunately, very few of the people who came into their shop spoke Japanese, so she could speak her mind and not drive away business. A few of Cambridge’s locals were even nice enough and polite enough that she would speak English with them.

Eventually.

Kid Lexington shook his head and checked his watch. All this wool-gathering was a distraction. He needed to be ready. The flag was supposed to be going up shortly.

Which was odd, because he had watched the warehouse for almost an hour now, and not seen any traffic in or out. And only a few lights inside, shining out from the spillover windows thirty feet up the red, brick walls.

Kinjiro shrugged, looked carefully around him one last time, and slipped from the shadows and the bushes.

Brad had said midnight, but he was notoriously late to everything. And the place was just too quiet to be a hideout. If 1776 was going to show up to arrest a criminal gang, he must be planning to follow them here. Possibly they were meeting someone.

One excitable, teenage sidekick could take a few minutes to scout the place ahead of time. Having a sniper on the inside of the building might be the exact type of enfilading fire that threw the bad guys entirely off step. After all, even stout, red brick walls might stop a seventeen-and-three-quarters-feet tall giant for long enough for the bad guys inside to do something stupid.

And it was just he and Brad tonight. If the rest of the American Minutemen were supposed to be here, the message would have come from Dick directly. He was the only one who knew how to contact Kid Lexington out of costume.

Good enough.

The front door to a place like this was always a trap. The Germans had taught him that one the hard way. He still had the scars and the Purple Heart to prove it.

Kid Lexington instead drifted down a narrow, trash-strewn alley on his right, a navy blue ghost against the dark red bricks. Liz was the only one of them that could actually fly, although Whizzer could frequently run fast enough to make it to the top of shorter buildings before gravity got the better of him.

Kinjiro would settle for sneaky.

There. A shadow. The sort of fire door you might prop open on a hot, Boston, summer day to catch any cooling breezes off the harbor. And barricade shut in a few months when it was time for winter to really bear down.

He paused and checked both ends of the alley, ready to open fire at anything that moved. The space was cramped for the four foot length of his musket, but he was being careful. The barrel even cycled once across the top of the alley, in case there was an ambusher hidden above him.

Nazis units dug into the mountains south of Rome had been a scrupulously effective teacher for that sort of paranoia.

Nothing.

Either they’ve all been in there the whole time, or they’re running as late as Brad normally does, and I’ve got time. If they were any good, they would have had someone on a rooftop.

Kid Lexington reached out with his left hand and closed it around the cool, brass handle, polished by numberless years of other palms, and aged by all the salt air. He turned it just enough to confirm that it wasn’t locked, but held the door in place.

The hinges were on his side of the frame, so it would open out, towards him. That meant that nobody could hide behind it when he opened it. None of this felt right, but 1776 had been specific.

Oddly specific.

Kinjiro supposed it might be an elaborate trap to capture 1776’s teenage sidekick as a hostage. Both The Hessian and the submarine pirate captain Njord had tried something like that in the fairly recent past.

Both attempts probably would have worked on a dumb, teenage kid, too.

Kid Lexington grinned fiercely to himself and pulled the door outwards with all the patience he could muster. He peeked in to confirm no alarm wires on the frame as golden light spilled out into the alleyway.

All safe.

The inside looked like a warehouse. There were boxes and shipping crates piled off to one side.