Steelhawk

Lance Champion flipped through the newsmagazine and sighed.

He couldn't avoid them, it seemed.

Superheroes were back.

The first generation of heroes had pretty much hung up their capes, so to speak - the villains that had plagued society were captured, retired or dead, and police forces had grown in firepower and professionalism. There hadn't seemed to be much of a need for costumed heroes anymore.

But lately, the pendulum seemed to have swung the other way. New villains were popping out of the woodwork. The Marauders, the Sorceror, the Chain Gang, Summer Silversmith, Doktor Geist.

And rising up to face the threat were the sons, daughters and proteges of the earlier heroes - though significantly fewer in number. Captain Thunder, Celerity, Iron Ace.

Lance wasn't as dismayed, as some seemed to be, that the problem of super-crime had merely faded for awhile rather than disappeared. In fact, he had considered becoming a hero himself, like that Black Cougar guy - using his keen mind and mastery of the martial arts to combat crime!

Well... until he had to admit that his mind was not nearly so keen, and his fighting skills, though not bad, were really no match for bullets. He just pictured himself being shot, like that swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that set his twenty-two-year-old mind straight.

Superheroes were a rare breed - that was probably why there weren't that many of them.

Especially in Portland, Oregon.

Lance sighed again and rolled down the garage door, then flipped off the station's sign.

He didn't really mind being a mechanic; pay was good, work was steady - far steadier than the farm, that's for sure. The station was on a county road, about a mile and a half from the tiny Model A Market, far enough outside the city for his tastes yet close enough so he could ride in to see the Beavers play when he wanted.

Monty was impressed with his work. Making noise about retiring in a couple of years. Maybe he'd sell Lance the station - wouldn't cost much, his boss reckoned.

He double-checked the locks - they had been burglarized twice in the past six months, and they weren't making so much money that they could afford to replace those tools again.

He straddled his bike and patted the gas tank, twice. No particular reason - it was just a habit he had developed.

Still, he was plenty proud of his Indian Chief Deluxe - though the Indian Motorcycle Company would probably be amazed at how he had rebuilt the Power Plus 105 engine to deliver nearly 145 foot-pounds of torque, and reconfigured the suspension and braking systems.

If they think that's cool, Lance smiled as he rode to Cole's, they ought to see the other one.

Cole's was a dark yet friendly little corner bar at the end of a row of nicely-kept houses. It primarily catered to a neighborhood clientele of railroad and factory workers, though there was one rather wealthy-looking fellow who Lance had seen on more than occasion.

Tonight, though, the bar was empty save for the skinny fellow at the end of the bar - Lance had seen him often enough, but had never heard him addressed by name.

He wouldn't bother him. Some people just prefered anomitity.

"Cascade, Charles," he called out, settling in to watch the Blazers game.

"Here ya go, bud," the somewhat chubby bartender said as he slid one of Rogues' better beers on down.

Lance didn't mind. Charles called everyone "bud".

Even the women.

The young man was wondering why the Blazers kept Berkely as the man fouled constantly, when he became aware of the others in the bar.

Specifically the one hollering orders to open the register.

Lance turned around to find himself looking directly into the leather-clad barrel-chest of a biker.

The wrong kind of biker.

"Stay put, twerp," the bearded man grinned.

There were six of them, Lance realized quickly. Six big, muscular guys.

Shaking down a veteran.

Still, what could he do against -

Then one punched Charles.

Lance flew off his barstool, ramming his fist deep into the gut of the man before him.

Before the bikers could react he was already slamming a second biker across the face, knocking him into a third!

Lance grabbed onto a stool and swung his legs in a powerful kick that sent a fourth biker to the floor!

The second biker made a grab for him, but Lance elbowed him in the ribs!

He whirled to face the fifth man, who was rushing at him, and brought both fists slamming down on his shoulders!

Then he turned toward the sixth -

Just in time for a bottle of scotch to come crashing down on his head.

The sixth man's burly fist smashed into his jaw, and within seconds, meaty fists were crashing into him from all directions.

He managed to lash out and hit one in the jaw, another in the eye, but there were too many opponents and it was far too constrained a space.

Mercifully, he eventually passed out.

"Your boss stopped by again while you were sleeping. He said he had to open the station? Said to tell you to take it easy for a few days."

"... thanks, nurse."

She ducked out, and Lance Champion winced as he pulled on his shirt.

One of them had stuck a knife in his gut, and that... hurt.

The hospital was kicking him out. He understood. Past the point where you're improving and insurance wouldn't pay - not that he actually had insurance.

Just another public assistance case, he sighed.

"Sure - superhero," he muttered as he slowly put on his jacket. "What the hell was I thinking?"

"Well, you saved my life."

He turned, to find Charles standing in the doorway.

How the heck did he hear, from way over there?

"No, I didn't."

"Yes. You did.

"You okay?"

Lance nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll be all right."

He started, realizing that this was the first time he had seen Charles not standing behind a bar.

"Thanks for coming down."

"It was the least I could do, Mr. Champion."

"Lance. Please."

Charles nodded.

"What kind of a world do we live in where a guy can't run a bar or have a gas station without someone trying to take it away?" Lance said in disgust, gathering up his wallet and keys.

"I'd... like it... if you could come out for dinner...

"Lance."

Charles limped across the room - a war injury, Lance had heard.

He handed him one of Cole's business cards, with an address scribbled across the front.

"I really don't - "

His voice trailed off.

Well, sure - he was a little odd, but surely one night wouldn't hurt anything. It wasn't as if he had anything else on his plate for the next few days.

"Um, I'd be happy to come. If it's not too much trouble."

Charles looked exceptionally pleased.

"Thank you... Lance.

"I promise you won't regret it."

Lance did not regret it.

Sitting back in the farmhouse kitched, he marvelled at the wonderful steak dinner Charles had prepared. He had truthfully never tasted anything like it.

And it was Charles, whose bar food tasted like, well... bar food.

Go fig.

"You know, Lance, I've thinking about what you said. About superheroes.

"Had you actually considered becoming one?"

"Uhh... " the young man replied, running his hand through his blond hair. "Well, sure, when I was younger. You know how it is."

"You very nearly had them, you know. Six dangerous men."

"Yeah, well," Lance smiled, "All the fight in the world doesn't do much against a knife in the gut, or bullets."

Charles paused.

"If," he said, swirling his wine in the glass, "you could withstand said knife or bullet - would you? Be a hero, I mean?"

Lance took a drink of his beer and thought for a moment.

"Yeah. Yeah, I would. Protect the people of Portland. Bring in those bikers."

He took another swig.

"A shame," Charles said slowly, gazing at the younger man through his wine glass. "There really should be someone to stand up to these criminals."

"Maybe there should be," Lance said quietly. "But I wasn't born on another planet or bitten by a radioactive werewolf or whatever."

He stared at his mug of Cascade.

"I can't even be a cop. Never graduated."

Charles... looked at him.

Then, he stood.

"Come on," he said.

"I have something I want to show you."

Curious, Lance followed the dark-haired man as he limped out to the old barn behind the house.

Charles flicked a switch, and lights illuminated the first ten feet of the darkened barn.

Laid across a wooden horse were two metal gauntlets.

He handed them to Lance. "Try them on?"

Lance could see that the gauntlets were actually made of thin strips of silvery metal, side by side. The result was that the gauntlet moved like some kind of metallic cloth.

"What are these?"

"My hobby.

"Go on, try them."

Lance pulled on the gauntlets, and much to his surprise, they were pretty light and comfortable.

"Mighty nice."

"Thank you."

Charles flicked on another switch, and another ten feet of space was illuminated.

In the center of this space, a tabard, seemingly made from the same material, hung from a wooden coatstand.

"You see, my hobby is fantasy role-play. Kind of... live action D & D, as it were. I was searching for ways to make my costume lighter - armor in conventions can be sweat-baths, I assure you."

Lance suppressed a grin. He had played the tabletop version of that game a few times, but had had trouble finding... well, normal people to play with.

Charles had never married - now he knew why.

"Oh, it was light. but it has other... unusual properties."

Lance's eyes widened when Charles produced a .357 Magnum and casually loaded three bullets.

The dark-haired man lifted the gun and pointed it toward the tabard, steadying it with his off hand.

"Yes, I do have a permit," he said, firing once, twice, three times!

He smiled and nodded toward the metal tabard.

Lance just looked at him.

"See any holes?" he prompted.

It took Lance a moment to realize -

"It's bulletproof?!"

Charles nodded.

"Tintagel, I call it. I designed it with an overlapping design - to absorb the blows from opponents' 'swords'," he said simply. "Wooden ones, live-action role-play. Couldn't even feel them."

Wow. What Lance knew about guns was what he saw on TV, but still - three rounds from a huge gun at point-blank range. That was impressive.

He fingered the tabard lightly.

"Son of a gun," he breathed. He would have expected the bullets to leave marks, or at least a scratch.

For a moment, neither man said a word.

"The gloves... they're of the same material. Hard. One solid punch will deck a normal man. Extend up your arm a ways, so you can block punches, knives."

Lance looked at the gauntlets on his hands, then up at Charles.

This guy was a bartender. A D & D playing bartender.

Whose hobby, evidently, was developing bulletproof metallic ceramics.

Or was that ceramic metals?

"The tabard's actually composed of overlapping strips, from an inch to five inches wide," Charles said, beaming with pride. "Flexible - there's a little give built in. Takes the... sting off of impacts.

"Got a helmet, too - around here somewhere.

"Based on a motorcycle helmet, you know."

He could see the wheels spinning inside Lance's head.

"It's my hobby. Some people built tables in their workshops, or fix cars. I, smelt -"

"Please, tell me you've taken out a patent on this!"

Charles brought his hand to his chin, and stroked it thoughtfully.

"No.

"I've thought about it - how it could protect policemen's lives and such... oh, if I could restrict it to that use. But you know as well as I that it eventually would end up in the hands of both sides. 'Nam all over again.

"Just... no."

"Okay," Lance nodded after a moment. "It's your stuff."

Charles sighed.

"Key to a patent is it's reproducibility. I'm a hobbyist, not a scientist - the particulars of the process I'm not clear on. I didn't exactly keep notes.

"I've tried, but the process simply can't be reproduced."

"Oh."

Charles stroked the tabard wistfully.

"You are correct, though - this... substance, is much too useful to be used at FARP conventions every couple of years... "

"I certainly didn't mean - "

"Lance. With these?

"You could be a superhero."

Lance blinked.

"What?" he said quietly.

"It's what you wanted, right?"

"I - I can't take this stuff - !"

"You can. Three reasons.

"One, I'm certainly not going to use it. Not with my war injuries.

"Two, you'd be surprised how well you get to know a man when you see him at your bar three nights a week. I'm a pretty good judge of character.

"And three, the way you leapt to my defense? Took on six bikers? For me?"

He grabbed the tabard off it's hanger and plopped it into Lance's arms.

"That's all I need to know."

Lance just stood there, overwhelmed.

Maybe he could do this.

Maybe he was suffering delusions of grandeur.

"... one more thing," Charles was saying, sliding open a drawer in an old wooden cabinet. "You didn't ask for it, which means you're in no great hurry to use it.

"Again, made of the same material - light and hard."

He held it out to Lance.

Lance Champion took it in his hands.

"A sword."

It was nearly three weeks later when Lance Champion found himself sitting astride his "other" bike.

It has started life as a Victory Kingpin, but after over a year of changing gear ratios, nearly doubling the torque, and adding gyroscopic stabilizers and a front cowl, it bore little resemblance to a factory-built motorcycle.

Lance wore blue motorcycle leathers with the gauntlets over them. His helmet was vaguely shaped like a cross between a cyclist's and a knight's, and his tabard was emblazoned with an old English hawk in the center of his chest.

It had, after all, been designed by a role-player.

The biker gang really hadn't been that difficult to find. If you rode you could find someone who knew someone who knew where the gathering spots were.

That, and two of them had just knocked over a gas station. Stole tools.

How familiar, Lance smiled sardonicly.

There were ten of them, and they had all been inside for quite a while.

The sign designated it a bar, but in truth it was just an old building out on a lonesome county highway.

Still, Lance couldn't see starting a fight inside - the owner might cater to bikers, but everyone had to make a living somehow.

Of course, if he were smart, he'd just call the cops.

But the only phone available was inside the bar. By the time he rode and found a phone the gang would be gone - not to mention the time it would take the cops to get here.

He half-wished he made enough to afford one of those newfangled cellular phones - but somehow he doubted even one of those contraptions would work all the way out here.

What was it his dad used to tell him?

Use it up, wear it out, make it due or do without.

Hph. Hadn't thought of his dad in a few months.

Not that he disliked the man. Far from it.

It was just that Robert Champion had had little use for the fantastic. He never had approved of Lance's childhood fascination with, depending upon the year, magicians or detectives or knights or space heroes. He wasn't rabidly anti-imagination, but then, neither did he understand it.

Maybe that's why they had never taken him to Disneyland. Too much fantasy.

Heh. Maybe he -

Wait. The door was opening.

They were coming out.

O-kay. Here, we, go.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, walking toward them. "I'd like a word with - "

"Rarggghgghghhhh!" roared some, or something very much like it, as they turned and charged toward the startled Lance!

"Cripes!" the blue-clad biker cried, as he belted the first one in the jaw! What the he-

Oh, he realized as the bikers swarmed him and he smelled their breath.

They're drunk.

Grea-a-t.

Lance fought smarter this time - he ducked.

He blocked.

He got the hell out of the way.

The few blows the bikers landed hurt, sure - but the main force of those blows was absorbed by the tintagel-infused helmet and tabard.

Tintagel - he had no doubt Charles had named it after some fantasy metal or something.

He ducked a chain and threw a blow into a greying man's chest.

He'd look it up, provided he survived this. These jerks were trying to kill him!

He thought he had been fairly polite - as he threw a blow into a scarred cheek. Imagine if he had opened with an actual threat!

Maybe, he grunted as a big man's fist crashed against the tabard, they don't like knights or something.

Punch after punch, his metal-clad fist slammed into a bearded jaw or a beer belly, until he suddenly realized that there wasn't an opponent left standing.

Ten bodies were lying piled across fallen motorcycles, trash cans and even the remnants of a low fence.

His body ached; his stomach felt like it was going to throw up.

But he felt pretty good, considering.

A burly man in an apron appeared in the doorway.

"Called the cops," he grunted, looking around the drive at the unconscious bikers.

"Heard... the fight, huh?" Lance breathed heavily.

He looked up at the approaching siren. How'd they get out here so quick?

"Fight, hell. They stiffed me on the drinks."

A sheriff's car pulled off the road, and only then did it dawn on Lance that these cops would have no idea who he was.

The officers looked around.

"We got a call about some unpaid drinks?"

"Yeah, they walked out. This fella stopped 'em."

"Hi. These are the guys who attacked that man at Cole's a few weeks back. And actually, they attacked me."

"An' you kayoed them?" the older cop asked. "All of them?"

"Well... they were drunk."

"Heh. Just makes 'em meaner."

Lance smiled. "Guess so."

Then he heard the click.

He looked over and saw the other officer pointing his pistol - at him.

"Mind telling me what you're doing?" the older man said calmly.

"I-I'm arresting him," the other officer said. "For assault. Battery. Disturbing the peace..."

"Uh, huh."

The rookie looked at him.

"I'm... not?"

"He only took down a whole gang of bikers who've likely got multiple warrants out on each of 'em," he shrugged. "For things like fighting, drugs, killing, that sort of thing."

"But... but he - "

"That we woulda had to go up against, ourselves.

"He's a superhero, Mack. Like those guys in the big cities."

"But they... they take the law into their own hands. They... "

"Mack," the older officer said gently. "He hasn't, yet."

Slowly, the rookie lowered his gun.

"Thank you," Steelhawk said. "For what it's worth, officer... I never will."

He climbed onto his bike.

"Don't take it personal, bud, but there's a lot of folks who feel like Mack. You're gonna have to earn their respect."

Lance gave him a grim smile.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he said as he hit the ignition. "It's Portland, after all."

The old cop pushed his hat back and smiled slightly.

"What do we call you?"

Lance's grin widened as he wheeled his bike toward the highway.

"Steelhawk."