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//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS
// || \\ || || --X---------------------------------------------
//======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #44
// || \\ || || Unfinished Business 3: Inauspicious Return
// || \\__// || || Copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen
___________________________________________________________________________
[cover shows Solar Max II in the same situation as Solar Max I
from the cover of ASH #43. However, it's now crystal clear,
and the shadow of a huge minotaur falls across him.]
ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL
CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS STATUS
-------- --------- ------ ------
Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control ACTIVE
"JakZak" Taylor
Comet Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed, Ice Body ACTIVE
Green Knight Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration ACTIVE
Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body ACTIVE
Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic ACTIVE
George Sylvester Living Light MEDICAL LEAVE
Essay Sara Ana Rodriguez Gadgeteer ACTIVE
Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage ACTIVE
Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control ACTIVE
Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis ACTIVE
Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts ACTIVE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[June 14, 2025 - Somewhere on Highway G-113, Wisconsin Sector]
"So, you've finally come to free me."
"SHIT!" JakZak almost jumped back from the warp bubble. The Minotaur
was looking straight AT him!
"No, wait...the colors are right, but the soul stench is different. You
must be a protege...ah, I can feel that a generation has passed," the
Minotaur mused.
"Who are you talking to?" the original Solar Max asked, strain in his
voice as he tried to seal the warp at his end.
The bull's head swiveled back to face Solar Max. "Your successor. My
liberator, whether he wishes that role or not."
"Quickly, seal it!" Peregryn urged, standing and placing his hands to
either side of the warp.
"What do you think I've been trying to do?" JakZak grunted. He couldn't
spare a moment to look, but he really hoped the troopers standing watch down
the road were running like hell.
The space in front of JakZak shimmered visibly as the Minotaur tried to
surge through the "window" created by the warp.
"I do so want to see how my curse unfolded," the Minotaur sneered as he
reared back for another try. He was now fully constrained in the past, but
paradoxically becoming freer and freer in the present. It was like watching
an old style multiple-exposure film. "The gods are in the details, after
all," he added.
"In the name of the Icosarchs and the Pillars of Reality, I command this
portal to seal!" Peregryn incanted, releasing a burst of mystic energy that
hurled the Minotaur back and merged his present-image with his past-image, if
only for a moment. "NOW, Solar Max!"
With a herculean effort, JakZak slammed the warp closed again, then
dropped to the pavement. "I think I pulled something," he muttered.
"It is clear why the Professor wanted this saved until last. And why he
said nothing of it...the Minotaur's curse clearly worked."
"Can we keep him sealed up?"
Peregryn paused, then frowned. "No. The Minotaur knows there's a weak
spot here now, the Barrier is no longer reinforcing things...he will emerge
soon. Fortunately, he shouldn't be able to emerge in our past, as your
scrying has tied down this end of the corridor...but I can't say how long we
have before he breaks through."
Then he returned to casting wards of binding and alarm on the space
occupied by the warp.
JakZak painfully stood and keyed his comm unit. "People, we're going to
need to make the barricade long-term and start evacuating everyone within,
oh, ten miles...."
* * * *
[June 14, 2025 - Mexico City]
Arin looked up at the thin membrane stretched out over the ASH HQ's
rooftop garden and then stretched lazily in her deck chair, enjoying the
Saturday afternoon lull. The awning cut ultraviolet levels down to levels
that were safe for humans without cutting them completely...some plants
needed UV, after all. But it let her sun herself without worrying about
getting burned. Even with supernormal recuperative powers, she was still of
Irish background and didn't so much tan as turn pink.
A couple of meters away, Sal was sitting up in his heavy-duty deck
chair, reading from a tabletcomp. He seemed to be having trouble
concentrating on it, though, and he probably thought she'd missed all those
furtive glances he kept shooting her direction.
"Okay, big guy...what's on your mind?" she hopped up to sit cross-legged
and leaned over to peer at his tabletcomp. "Your 'assigned reading' from the
Professor doesn't seem to be keeping your attention, and it's been long
enough I doubt my bathing suit is what's distracting you."
Not that it hadn't distracted the heck out of him the first few times,
Arin chuckled to herself. He'd turned redder than her 'tan'.
Sal sighed and put the reader aside. "Well, it's us. You and me."
"Am I pushing things too fast again?" She reached for her robe and
started to pull it on. On the one hand, Sal seemed to like that she was
taking the aggressive role in their relationship, but on the other, he'd
freaked out the first time she'd suggested they do more than neck. Okay, it
had been a LOT more than necking that she'd suggested.
"No...it's not that. Not exactly. But, before we get more serious,
there's something you need to know. There was someone else last year," Sal
said, almost dragging each word out of his heart.
"Honey, it's not cheating if it happened before we started seeing each
other," Arin chuckled. How sweet of him to worry about something like that.
"I mean, unless she was a supervillain or something, then I might worry about
jealous ex-girlfriends."
Sal was silent for a long moment, as if not sure whether to continue.
Finally, he did. "*He* isn't a supervillain, no."
"Ah."
"Yeah. 'Ah.'" The words started to come out in a rush. "His name's
Arturo, and if I wasn't a public figure in a state where people still don't
really accept that sort of thing, I think I might be with him now. I still
care for him, and we talk once in a while, but..." he trailed off, sounding
and looking guilt-ridden as he ran out of steam.
Arin searched her feelings. Yes, there was an echo of shock and
outrage. She doubted she'd ever be completely rid of the values her parents
had all but beaten into her for eighteen years, even though Josh had helped
beat many of them right back out. But an echo was all there was.
"Do you still care for me?" she asked, carefully.
"Yes, but..."
"No buts about it. Okay. So you're bi, or at least somewhat unsure
about your sexuality. As long as whatever your preferences are include me,
and as long as you don't go behind my back with anyone else of either sex,
what does it really matter? Maybe some of that old time Greek attitude is
rubbing off on me, but it doesn't really bother me if you fell for a guy.
Was he a good person?"
"Very," Sal nodded, looking a bit dumbstruck.
"Well, that's okay then. For all your muscles, you're really a teddy
bear sometimes, Sal, and my only worry would be that you let yourself get
into an abusive relationship. And it's not like I'm planning to take you
home to meet my parents...they're still fuming that I'm seeing a CATHOLIC.
People in my hometown would condemn you for being bisexual, but burn you at
the stake for being Catholic, you know how some Protestant sects can be."
"I've had some experience with that," he replied, his composure starting
to come back.
She grinned impishly. "I was raised on stories of Catholics using the
blood of infants in their Masses, of the Pope being a pagan, of..."
Sal interrupted, "Actually, the Pope probably was...and is...pagan."
"Huh?"
"Our current Pope and his predecessors both turn out to be highly placed
in the old Conclave," Sal started to explain.
"Yeah, yeah," interrupted a voice behind the two. "Speakin' of pagan
gods, we got a live one comin' up. I just felt an old familiar twinge act
up," Peter the Satyr declared, pointing at somewhere on his shaggy chest.
"Someone from th' old stomping grounds has come out ta play."
As if on cue, Sal's tabletcomp flashed red with a priority incoming
message from Solar Max....
* * * *
[June 15, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]
Tina felt calm, and not in a good way. It was the same sort of "way
beyond freaked out" calm she'd felt when facing Rebus last year, and for much
the same reasons.
A god was coming out to play, and it played rough.
Okay, sure, it was more of a "demon" to use the terms Peregryn was
tossing about. Demons were nasty former gods, but they could be beaten. Had
been beaten. And that seemed to make the others less nervous, but Tina
wasn't buying it. A smaller infinity is still infinite.
Of course, it was probably for the best that this news alone was enough
to shock her silent, because she had no idea how she would have reacted
otherwise to the other bombshells dropped at this meeting: that Montreal
still existed somewhere, and that one of its residents was the child of
Rebus! All of this being revealed at once kept her from settling down enough
to gibber madly, she supposed.
"Okay, time to come to order," Solar Max rapped his knuckles on the
table of the meeting room. The last time they'd all been in this room had
been for the reading of the will, Tina realized.
"We're going to shelve Scott's news for now. Just remember, this is top
secret, need to know, all that stuff. Even leaving aside Scott's promise to
Coulter, the government agrees with me that we really don't need this news
getting out yet. Canada would freak about Montreal and insist on immediate
and probably pointless running around looking, and EVERYONE would freak about
baby Archangeli and start looking for Montreal so they could nuke it. Best
to keep a lid on this for the moment and concentrate on the problem that's
already about to blow up in our faces." He gestured to Peregryn.
"I have warded the time loop as tightly as I could manage, with both
alarms and bindings, but this will only slow the Minotaur down. It may be a
'mere' demon now, but it retains enough of its Pureblood nature to be aware
of the passage of time outside its prison and to effect an escape. We need
to be ready to move at short notice to contain and possibly capture him,"
Peregryn said, a bit optimistically in Tina's opinion.
"From what I saw of the battle that sealed him up, one key to making it
possible to defeat the Minotaur is to remove the amulets he wears," Solar Max
called up an old film frame of the Minotaur from 1996 and pointed at the mass
of chains and necklaces around his neck. "He boasted of having power enough
of his own to defeat the Professor, but every advantage we can deny him is a
good thing."
"Not ta mention," Peter the Satyr chimed in, "if'n he invokes th' power
of any of them amulets, it might attract th' innerest of th' real, live gods
who empowered th' things."
Tina started to shake, a little. "Oh, that would be *perfect*," she
interjected, more than a little hysteria giving an edge to her voice. "What
the HELL are we supposed to do if THAT happens?"
"Where gods are involved?" Peregryn shrugged. "Pray."
* * * *
[June 16, 2025 - Italy]
"The danger," Simon Smith wheezed as he picked himself up off the floor
and sat back in his chair, "in opening yourself up to the cosmos is that
sometimes the cosmos is...painful." He then looked over to make sure he
hadn't knocked the recorder off the side table during his spasm. "This is
the second time in the past few days I've felt this sensation while
meditating, and this time was...stronger," he smirked quietly at the
understatement.
"Something very powerful is hammering at the gates of this world. But
will it be a power that will help me, or one I will need to hide from?"
* * * *
[June 17, 2025 - Site of the Warp, Wisconsin Sector]
Sarah waited nervously with the rest of the team in the freshly-cleared
area around the warp bubble. Peregryn had convinced the trees to go
elsewhere, and most were glad to go, he'd said. There was still nothing
visible, but Peregryn claimed his wards were screaming, and her husband was
eying the empty space with expectation. Not the good kind, either. Oh, he
had his helmet on, but she knew his moods well enough that she didn't have to
see JakZak's face to know what expression it'd be wearing. Not that anyone
was exactly calm.
Oddly, the old accelerated impatience Sarah always used to feel was
gone, had been gone since she more or less returned to the world of the
living after months in that icy hell. A lot of her old emotions were gone,
in fact. Not her love for JakZak, of course...but the passion, the physical
longing? That was missing. She was afraid of what would happen today, but
it wasn't a gut-wrenching terror, more of an intellectual appreciation that
she might well be hosed. She'd joked that she was getting cold feet, but
nobody seemed to appreciate that. Especially not Tina, who'd almost been
left behind. But...it was still strange to Sarah. She didn't have what the
psych boys called "flattened affect," it was just that her physical,
adrenalin-pumped reactions were missing. Emotional responses that didn't
depend so fully on chemistry were fine. Peregryn had explained that she was
like the higher soul divorced from the lower, her lower soul still being
bound to her body in the ice, somewhere.
CRACK! The air itself was rent asunder!
"This is it!" JakZak shouted, getting ready to slam whatever emerged
from the hole into the ground at high grav.
Obligingly, the Minotaur burst from the torn air with a howl of fury and
victory intermingled. "FREE!"
Then he grunted and went down on one knee under Solar Max's
gravitational assault. Now it was up to her and Tom.
Streaking towards the Minotaur, she angled away and reached through the
heavygrav field to snag a handful of chains, ripping them away as she
passed. She'd practiced all day yesterday with clipping JakZak's fields, so
she made it through without spiraling out of control. She could see that Tom
had made a successful run as well.
Still some left. Sarah dropped the pendants into the special box
Peregryn had prepared and returned for more. The Minotaur had something in
his hand, spinning around? Have to grab from behind, cutting it fine....
An axe blade smashed through Sarah's gut, spraying ice everywhere.
The cracks spread from the hole in her center.
Have
to
out
run
the
cracks...
"SARAH!" Solar Max screamed as Comet seemed to explode into a flurry of
shards that was barely holding together. Peregryn watched with guarded
hope. He knew that the ice wasn't her body, her "body" was a portal to the
quasi-elemental plane of ice. If she held together long enough to get away
from the location where the damage had been done, she would be whole again.
It was over in a fraction of a heartbeat, for all that it had seemed to
take forever. Comet skidded to a stop, unconscious and prone but whole,
several hundred meters away. Her spirit had taken a hard shock, but she
would live. Assuming any of them did, of course.
The Minotaur was now surrounded in a nimbus of shifting energies. Flame
wrapped in golden force and peppered with actinic bursts from hastily
constructed UV lasers. High-speed projectiles shattered on the Minotaur's
shaggy pelt and rivers of pure fury splashed around him to no apparent effect
save for disorienting him. Slightly.
It was time for the next step in the plan to be enacted, now that as
much of the Minotaur's outside support as possible had been removed.
Peregryn withdrew the amulet he had been given at the reading of the
Professor's will. It had been fully translated, and its meaning divined.
And it would hopefully be the key to victory...because nothing else seemed to
be working.
"With this prayer, Robert Mayor invoked you," Peregryn chanted, holding
out the amulet. "With its destruction, I banish you!" He crushed the soft
gold in a grip that, while weak for his ilk, could still bend steel. It
cracked and crumbled, bits of gold falling to the soft loam.
The Minotaur screamed in pain, his pelt now catching fire in several
places under the relentless onslaught of Peregryn's teammates.
"It...doesn't work...that way, mage!" the Minotaur snarled.
"Looks like it works *some* way!" Scorch shouted. "Glad I got filters
on this rig...burning fur, yuck!"
The Minotaur, with great effort, slammed the butt of its axe into the
ground. The concrete and blacktop road rippled like water, throwing several
off their feet and sending their aim wild. Scorch and Solar Max had to pause
in their assaults to avoid friendly fire.
The Green Knight had apparently been expecting that sort of thing, and
hurled himself at the Minotaur before the demon could take advantage of the
opening. The Green Knight barely registered the swipe of the axe that took
off his left arm, slamming his powerful right fist into the Minotaur's snout.
Peregryn started to ready a spell, but the Minotaur paused. He didn't
want to fight, he wanted to run, that had become obvious. With his left arm
writhing uselessly several meters away, the Green Knight couldn't wrestle the
Minotaur to the ground, but Contact was closing the gap, and the Minotaur
clearly knew his position was...untenable.
With a snort of contempt, the Minotaur leapt into the air, an
unnaturally dense cloud of dust rising up in his wake.
"I can no longer sense where he is," Peregryn admitted after a long
moment. "He must have cast a spell of concealment."
"Damn," the Green Knight spat as he went to pick up his arm.
* * * *
[June 18, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]
Tom rapped his knuckles on the doorframe before leaning in. "JakZak?
You in?"
"Yeah," was the terse response. The room's lights were on, but it felt
dark anyway.
"Um, Sal finally got his arm to reattach. There was some kinda mojo on
that axe the Minotaur pulled outta nowhere, Peregryn says." Tom paused,
deciding not to rub it in how close Comet had come to dying because of that
"mojo". "Anyway, I have something for you."
"Oh?" JakZak swiveled his chair around to face the doorway. "What?"
"A letter. From the Professor," he held out a simple clasp envelope,
the sort of brown paper container that hadn't changed much in generations.
"The university president back in K-ville gave me a packet, which had this
and some instructions. The Professor wanted me to give the envelope to you
after you resolved your part in his will...and not before."
Tom put the envelope down on JakZak's desk and then quietly left.
"To Jonathan Zachary Taylor: To be opened only after completing the task
set before you in my will," read the clasp envelope, in a somewhat shaky
printed hand. JakZak stood and walked to the door, closing it and setting
the privacy indicator. Then he leaned back against the door and opened the
envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper and a smaller, letter-sized envelope
addressed to "Solar Max". JakZak looked at the cover sheet.
"When you read this, I will be dead," the letter opened. "It's the only
way I can even write this without pain...I sincerely do not intend for you to
read this until after you already know about the Minotaur and have freed him
from my trap. Even this little loophole is making me uncomfortable. I
expect it may be taking a few months off my life every time I think about
this old business. Back when I wrote the enclosed letter, I could only
manage a few lines at a time before I'd almost black out from pain. Looking
back, I think most of the Minotaur's curse was just him being a blowhard,
knowing what was coming and trying to take credit for it. But he wasn't
kidding about the part where I'd die if I revealed what happened that day
back in 1997. I'm sorry I had to leave you so much in the dark, and I hope
that you defeated the Minotaur, or at least didn't lose too badly, but it was
the only way I could handle this. With everything else you've been through,
though, I hoped it would be enough. I've arranged so that the enclosed
letter would reach you specifically...back when I wrote it I could only hope
that any successor I had would eventually want to go back to my alma mater."
The signature, a looping scrawl, was genuine. Words from beyond the
grave, taking care of an obligation that death itself wouldn't discharge.
Slowly, JakZak broke the old-fashioned wax seal on the enclosed
envelope. Almost no one used wax seals even in the 20th Century, but
Peregryn had once mentioned how it was fairly easy to enchant one to reveal
even subtle magical tampering.
"To my successor, assuming the Minotaur was telling the truth about who
he was talking to on the other side of that warp:
"I've spent a few months carefully visiting every mage I know, and none
of them can help...not that I can tell them enough to let them help me. If I
tell anyone about the Minotaur, how he's not just some punk with a bull head
and delusions of grandeur, it'll kill me. Just writing this now, firmly
believing that no one will read it while I'm alive, hurts worse than anything
I've ever felt. Including leading with my chin into Antiochus V's blades.
I'm glad that someone picks up the mantle after me, though...after deciding
not to have kids, I'd pretty much resigned myself to having no legacy outside
of my work. But I kinda like the idea of starting a tradition, hope you
manage to do a good enough job that someone takes on the name when you
retire.
"But back to business. I'm dead now. Either the letter found its way
to you after my death, or I'm dying right now because of the curse. If the
latter, you'd goddamn better avenge me and kill that bull-headed freak before
he breaks out of the maze I shoved him in.
"Speaking of mazes, I'm not proud of the fact I had to hide Mr. Maze's
body. He was a fanatic, but that doesn't make it right to just disappear
him and not let his family know. He's in a capsule in a long solar transfer
orbit, should end up in the Sun by, oh, 2013. Probably boil away a year or
so before that, though. His name was Robert Mayor, he was a postcog who
applied his talent to linguistics, guess that's how he knew to summon up the
Minotaur and ask him for power. If you can find any next of kin, I leave it
up to you whether to tell them or just let it go. I think one of the guards
in the prison transport got banished by Mr. Maze, you should probably let the
authorities know why he went missing.
"Anyway, I know you saw the battle, so you know about as much as I do
about the Minotaur. Stop him. Maybe after I get back from my surveying trip
to the fringes of the Planetary Confederation I'll have a better idea how to
deal with this.
"From one Solar Max to the next, good luck."
All that for nothing, JakZak sighed as he tossed the letter down on his
desk and slumped heavily into his chair. The Minotaur couldn't possibly have
made things worse in 1998 if he'd stayed free, and now he was unleashed on a
world battered and torn. And trying to find ways to not keep that secret had
been an extra burden on an old man already ravaged by his own powers.
Vengeance? JakZak had had way too much experience with that lately. He
didn't think anyone would come out ahead if he tried to pay the Minotaur back
for what he did to the Professor. The fire was there, but it was banked.
Still, wherever he had gone, the Minotaur would be dangerous. You don't
need to be seeking vengeance on a monster to have reason to kill it. In
fact, your odds were better if you didn't have an Ahab complex to blind you.
But how do you kill a god, even a little one?
* * * *
[June 20, 2025 - Shattered Hellas]
"I have taken your home!" the Minotaur roared, his booming voice tinged
with satisfaction. "Will you do nothing?"
The Minotaur paused and looked around the pillared hall. The gods had
reshaped the top of Mount Olympus to their liking when they arrived a mortal
generation ago, and none had braved the dangers of this shattered land to
explore it after they left. An earthquake or two had left its mark, and the
tapestries were looking slightly shabby and worm-eaten. The short and savage
battle with the Cyclopes who claimed the mountain had left its marks as well.
He chuckled. He looked "slightly shabby" himself. His amulets stolen,
his flesh bare in patches where the fires had finally broken through his
wards and seared his fur, his clothing torn by the Cyclopes. He fit in
perfectly.
There was a faint tinkling sound as the Minotaur let his last few
amulets drop from his grasp to the marble floor. Luck had not been with him,
all his talismen of real puissance had been stolen by those thrice-cursed
mortals. The ones that remained...well, the gods who gave them had never
been the most reliable of benefactors. And while he could feel the doors to
the immanent realms had opened a crack, it was clear that no one wished to
come through the doors and reignite the Causality Wars in this era.
This suited him quite well, and he strode to take a seat on Zeus's
throne. "The gods may not be willing to aid me, but neither will they oppose
me. Once I weld the abandoned god-spawn who infest this wasteland into an
army, the mortal world will quake at my tread!"
============================================================================
Next Issue:
The Minotaur has mystically shielded his location, so it comes down to
old fashioned searching as ASH tries to locate this ancient threat before it
can become a modern threat! Plus, Robert Coulter is given a final offer by
the Academy...will he take it? Be here next issue for "Monster Hunters"!
============================================================================
Author's Notes:
As promised last issue, here's the outline for this issue. You may note
that I didn't follow it exactly. For instance, I realized later that letting
Solar Max I glimpse Solar Max II through the warp would have meant a
contradiction in the "Solar Max 2000" story, since he didn't recognize the
new armor when he saw it.
A few more comments will follow the outline.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[June 14, 2025 - Somewhere on Highway G-113, Wisconsin Sector]
[JakZak realizes that he's visible to both the Minotaur and to Solar Max
I. He barely manages to keep the warp closed, even with Peregryn's help.
The Minotaur taunts him, makes it clear he knows it's not the original.]
* * * *
[June 14, 2025 - Mexico City]
[Sal confesses to Arin about his feelings for Arturo. She's momentarily
shocked, but shakes it off, comparing it to how she used to feel about Sal
being raised Catholic. She then jokes about protestant views of Catholicism,
including the claim that the Pope worships pagan gods. Sal notes that the
last two Popes probably did, given that they were/are almost definitely
members of the old Conclave, and the Conclavers swore their loyalty to the
Egyptian gods. "An' speakin' of pagan gods..." Peter interrupts. He starts
to tell them about the return of the Minotaur, when *he* gets interrupted by
an official summons back to Chicago to help deal with the Minotaur.]
* * * *
[June 15, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]
[Reaction to the truth about Montreal, planning on what to do about the
Minotaur. It's a countdown...the warp is breaking down from inside, the
Minotaur is still godly enough to not be frozen in a time loop, and now he's
trying to get out. Peter the Satyr is around, and tells what he knows about
the Minotaur.]
* * * *
[June 16, 2025 - Italy]
[Simon Smith senses a disturbance in the Force or summat. Essentially,
he's reacting to the fact that the Minotaur is breaking through.]
* * * *
[June 17, 2025 - Site of the Warp, Wisconsin Sector]
[A "tracer" Peregryn placed on the warp has started to scream bloody
murder, so the time for planning is over. As much of ASH as could be
assembled rushes to the location, loaded for bear. Or minotaur, whatever.
Big ol' fight, the Minotaur is done sandbagging and he's nearly a match for
ASH in raw power. However, he's more interested right now in escape, and
manages to use his centuries of experience and cunning to do so. The fact
that he's no longer fully a god is of little consolation....]
* * * *
[June 18, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]
[Lightfoot gives the letter to JakZak. It's from the Professor, written
in 1997 to "whoever it was I saw in my colors on the other side of that warp,
in case the Minotaur wasn't lying and it's not actually me." Wrap up
unspoken details about the whole Minotaur thang.]
* * * *
[June 20, 2025 - Shattered Hellas]
[The Minotaur moves in at Mount Olympus, savoring the irony of using the
spawn of his hated rivals as his pawns (he's already beaten a cyclops into
submission). Perhaps he gets a mystic sending from Simon Smith? In any
case, set him up as a new worldbeater mastermind type, so I can take it slow
in developing Smith as a threat.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also changed some things for reasons of pacing. Originally, I'd had
Sal lay out exactly why he suspected the Pope of paganism, how he'd gotten
the info, etc. But I decided that this killed the flow of the scene, putting
in too much dry exposition between the "heart to heart" and the "we got's
problems" parts. And I decided to leave contact between Smith and the
Minotaur for later, give Smith more time to decide how to approach this new
power.
Finally, while this is the last part of the "Unfinished Business" arc,
you'll notice from the Next Issue blurb that some kinds of business are never
truly finished....
============================================================================
For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art,
and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH !
To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this
post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ !
============================================================================
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