The black cloaked Karishi nodded. “Good,” he simply said as his gloved hand carefully moved away a branch so they could get a better view of the building before them.

“So,” Jolly Roger said after a moment, breaking the silence that Karishi seemed perfectly comfortable sitting in. “What kind of scoundrels are we trolling for tonight?”

Karishi gestured to the second floor balcony of the apartment building across the parking lot. It had a cement landing supported on the outside two ends by thick beams and with waist-high natural-colored wooden walls. There were no stairs. “My police liaison tipped me off to another bizarre murder scene,” Karishi explained. The apartment is rented by two sisters – Wendy and Lori Sharp. The younger sister was found savagely torn apart in her bedroom while the older one has not been seen at her job for over five days.”

Jolly Roger appreciated the succinct summary from his colleague. Straight and to the point. “They suspect the older sister,” he said, but it was more of a statement than an inquiry.

“Possibly. The odd thing is the apartment was found locked by the rental office staff. Only a small window in the kitchen was found open – too small for any person to enter or exit.”

“I’m assuming the killing was much more than a small animal could do, eh?”

Karishi nodded simply.

Jolly Roger pondered for a second. “If it were the older sister, she would have a key to come and go.”

Karishi shook his head. “Lori Sharp’s purse was found in the apartment along with the keys.”

“Some one else could have locked the door behind them when they left.”

“Maybe.” Karishi remained focused on the back of the building, looking at the kitchen window just to the right of the balcony wall. It was only two feet tall and opened maybe a foot wide at best. Just enough for a cross breeze.

“So,” Jolly Roger said as he moved forward. “Are we going to check out the crime scene for ourselves?”

Karishi nodded. “The coast looks clear.”

The two heroes moved from the woods. Jolly Roger approached the building in the shadows and then flexed his legs. With a leap, he propelled himself into the air. He caught the edge of the second floor wall with both of his hands and pulled himself over on to the deck.

Behind him, a wafting cloud of mist followed and then materialized on the balcony back in the form of Karishi.

Jolly Roger just smiled under his mask. “Being able to change forms like that certainly comes in handy,” he said.

Karishi just nodded as he examined the sliding glass door that was locked from the inside. “It does.”

Jolly Roger moved closer. The two had talked a bit since the incidents in Louisville, much to his relief. He was amazed to find out that his new partner had a number of interesting abilities, though Karishi seemed rather reluctant to discuss the origin of them. There was a dark and brooding side to this young man. “You think there might be an opening that you can mist your way through?” he asked.

Karishi turned to him, his full face mask hiding any sort of facial response. “I was hoping your cyber-based abilities might include something to get through a locked door.”

Jolly Roger interlaced his fingers and pushed both hands forward, palms out. The gloves he wore barely muffled the sound of him cracking his knuckles. Though he didn’t have any lock-picking skills currently in his microchip bag of tricks, he had picked up a few things over the years. “Let me give it a shot,” he said with some confidence.

After a few moments, the duo was working their way through the darkened apartment. The moonlight shining through the open window blinds was enough to allow them to move around with ease, and the portable flashlight Jolly Roger had in his belt was sufficient for closer inspections.

First they went to the bedroom of Wendy Sharp. Though the bed sheets had been taken along with the body by the police, there were still remains of blood stained into the beige carpet and the white painted walls. Jolly Roger let out a low whistle.   “Man, you weren’t kidding when you said ‘savagely torn apart’. This is like the stuff one would see in those splatter-horror films.”

“If one only had to see it in films, they could count themselves lucky,” Karishi said with a saddened tone.

Jolly Roger nodded to himself. Yes, definitely a dark and brooding side.

They then moved to the second bedroom that was occupied by the older sister Lori. The bed here looked ruffled with covers pulled back and rumpled. A closer inspection of one of the pillows enabled Jolly Roger to find what looked like short brown hair as well as blonde strands. “Looks like someone else has been sleeping in Goldilocks’ bed,” he suggested.

“Look here,” Karishi said as he pointed to the carpet at the edge of the bed. Jolly Roger brought the light over. “See, a few small drops of blood.”

“Not at all like the other room,” Jolly Roger said. “The contrast in quantity is extreme.”

“Yes,” Karishi said solemnly.

Jolly Roger noticed a small bookcase in the corner and began to thumb through the contents. “Some Judith Krantz novels,” he said reading aloud, “and a copy of Men Who Can’t Commit too. Not a heavy thinker this one.   Could point to some relationship issues with a guy.”

Karishi approached and picked up a framed picture off the top shelf. “Now this is interesting,” he remarked.

Jolly Roger shined the light on the picture. It was of young woman in her twenties with short blonde hair, sitting in the arms of a stocky brown haired young man about the same age. The body language implied a very familiar, comfortable connection between the two. “I think we found the source of the hairs,” he said. “Two lovers. Maybe two suspects?”

“Maybe,” Karishi said. “But what I found interesting was the man.”

“Why?”

“This appears to be Rick Casey,” Karishi said. “He’s another missing person case I was investigating before we left town to chase down the Spectrum.”

“So, we got one sister dead and this guy and his girlfriend missing,” Jolly Roger summed up. “Definitely sounds like a connection.   If he was frequently sleeping over with the older sister, he might have had a key to the place too.”

Karishi just turned and stared out the bedroom doorway which was in direct line with the murdered sister’s room. He was silent, deep in thought.

“Hey, Karishi,” Jolly Roger said. “You okay?”

“Just thinking,” he said.

“We’ll figure this out,” Jolly Roger said with encouragement. “After all, it can’t all be about beating up some crazed bad guys or dealing with some bizarre crisis…”

***

The next morning, the two heroes found themselves standing on the edge of a downtown parking garage which was partially demolished. Eyewitness reports told the police that a large black sphere measuring a few meters in diameter came crashing out of the sky and into the structure. The police had moved away the civilians, keeping them back with wooden barriers. They were willing to allow the heroes to investigate the situation for themselves.

“You were saying something about dealing with some bizarre crisis last night,” Karishi said to his teammate.

Jolly Roger shrugged his shoulders. “What can I say? Let’s go check it out.”

The two stepped over fragments of broken concrete and metal as they made their way towards the center of the parking garage. Before them they could see what appeared to be the black spherical object that had crashed through the roof and come to rest under the crumpled frame of a compact car.   Unlike the parking garage roof and the mangled car though, the sphere appeared unscratched.

In fact, it had almost a smooth sheen like texture to its ebony surface.

Karishi moved within thirty feet of the sphere and suddenly started to falter in his steps. As he moved back, he seemed steadier again.

“What happened?” Jolly Roger asked.

“A light-headed feeling as I approached the sphere,” Karishi said. “Let me try another way.”

He concentrated and turned into his mist form. The cloud moved closer towards the sphere and then began to waft as if in a breeze or something. It moved back, steadied, and then the mist reformed into the costumed man again.

“Same thing?” Jolly Roger asked. “That woozy sort of feeling?”

“Yes,” Karishi said.   “The sphere seems to be giving off some kind of undetectable energy that disrupts my nervous system.”

Jolly Roger pondered for a second. “Hmmm, that’s not good,” he said. “It might really mess up my cyber-implants if I try to get close to it.” He reached for his belt to open one of the compartments.   “Maybe we should blow that shell open…”

“Excuse me,” a voice called from behind them. The two heroes turned to see a black haired young man with broad shoulders dressed in a white polo shirt, kaki pants and a matching jacket. The oddest thing about him was the wild sunglasses he wore; the light seemed to dance off of them to create an effect like oil spilled on the surface of water. “Astronomer coming through.”

“And you are…?” Karishi asked.

“Sorry,” the man said as he noticed the heroes. “The name’s Mark Berlin, and I know about things like this. You could say things from space are sort of my specialty.” He started to approach the sphere.

“Wait,” Karishi cautioned.

Jolly Roger put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Let him try,” he said softly. “If he’s just being cocky, we can pull him away before he passes out on the floor.”

Mark Berlin approached the sphere, unaffected by anything as he got closer to it. “Hmmm,” the man in the sunglasses said as he touched the sphere.   He ran his hand along the surface, unaffected at all by whatever had caused Karishi some concern. This surprised the two heroes greatly.

“It looks a bit familiar,” Berlin mused. He clenched his fist loosely and tapped on the surface, observing the results. “It seems to have a solid yet at the same time kind of hollow quality to it.” He rapped on it again, a little more firmly this time. “Hello! Anybody home?”

Jolly Roger started to move towards the sphere, but he too started to feel as Karishi felt. He stepped back. “Hey, Mr. Astronomer,” he said in a rather short tone. “Why is it that we’re effected by that thing if we move closer to it but you aren’t?”

Berlin smiled. He had a mouth full of perfectly straight white teeth. “Beats me,” he said as he approached the heroes. “Maybe it just likes normal people and not super-human types like you two.”

Jolly Roger got right into the black haired man’s face and stated firmly, “I am normal,” he said.

Karishi meanwhile stood back and concentrated his gaze completely on Berlin. Finally he said, “You said it looks familiar. Why? Have you observed it as it travelled through space, perhaps?”

Mark Berlin just threw up his hands. “Hey, I said I’m an astronomer. I study stuff from space with high powered telescopes. You’d be amazed what you might find if you look to the skies long enough.” The man seemed a bit on the defensive. “And as to why it affects you and not me, no clue. But, hey, I’ll let you guys handle the investigation if you want.” He held up his hands in a surrendering gesture to emphasize his point.

“Maybe you should,” Karishi said flatly.

“Uh, guys,” Jolly Roger said. “You might want check this out.” The two turned their attention to the sphere that Jolly Roger had kept his eye on while listening to the exchange between the other two men.

The sphere began to shimmer and dissolve back from the top down. As it did so, it revealed the form of a man inside, the right half of whose body was pure white and the left half pure black. The man wore no clothes but his body seemed to have a sheen surface similar to that of the sphere, smooth and featureless. His face too was featureless except for two eye slits.

The man’s eyes suddenly snapped open. They were both white with not pupils. In a hollow voice that projected without a mouth opening, he asked “What city is this?”

Mark Berlin smiled and said, “Baltimore, Maryland. Welcome to Earth.”

“What do you think you are doing?” Jolly Roger jerked the man with the sunglasses backwards, though it surprisingly took a considerable bit of effort on his part.

Berlin didn’t have time to answer.

“Baltimore? Good!” the hollow voiced figure said. “Then I don’t have too far to go to exact my revenge!” He looked to the sky as if to plan for departure.

“Hold,” Karishi said with a pointing gesture. “Who are you?”

“My former name is no longer important,” the white-black man said. “I am the one who survived the immersion into the heart of destruction of a black hole, every atom of my being torn apart and then restructured! I am what was, what is and what never can be!   For seven years, I was lost and forgotten but no longer! I am the Anti-Man, and those who left me to my doom shall meet theirs at my hands!”

“They?” Jolly Roger asked.   “Who are ‘they’?”

“NASA!” the Anti-Man exclaimed. “I shall destroy them for abandoning me with no way to return home!”

The hero with the skull and crossbones on his chest whipped his Tozuku rifle around from his back and positioned it in his hands to fire. He trained the rifle’s site directly upon the strange being from space.   “Not so fast, space man,” Jolly Roger said. “Move one more inch and that’s all you’ll be moving.”

Anti-Man ignored the threat and began to rise.

Jolly Roger squeezed the trigger of his weapon.

The bullet squarely hit the Anti-Man’s chest, penetrating the exterior surface and bringing forth an oozy black substance from the entry wound. Still, the being was not deterred by this. “Fool, do not detain me further or you too shall be destroyed!” He reached his left hand backwards where a swirl of white energy formed in his palm and then thrust his hand forward.

The blast of energy hit Jolly Roger, knocking him ten feet backward into the side of a red Ford pickup truck.

“Jolly Roger,” Karishi exclaimed as he rushed to his friend’s side. “Are you okay?”

Jolly Roger shook it off.   “I’m fine! He just caught me off guard.” He glanced about quickly. “Where’s that astronomer?”

Karishi glanced about too.   Only they and the Anti-Man were in sight. “Gone,” he said. “A good thing too as we cannot be worrying about others when we try to stop this Anti-Man.”

“Got any good ideas how to do that?” Jolly Roger asked as he rose to his feet. “And if you do, let’s hear them fast! He’s about to leave.”

Indeed, the Anti-Man was slowly rising towards the hole in the parking garage ceiling that his sphere earlier had torn through.

Karishi focused on their fleeing quarry. “Anti-Man, return at once,” he commanded. Jolly Roger knew, from their conversations, that Karishi possessed some mental abilities that included the forcing of his will upon an enemy’s mind.   He assumed that Karishi was using his own mind to latch onto the Anti-Man’s to force him to do as he commanded.

The Anti-Man paused as if under the influence but began to move again.

Jolly Roger opened fire again, but his shots failed to hit the Anti-Man before he moved out of the structure. “Damn it!   We almost had him!”

“Need some help?” a voice called from behind them.

The two heroes turned to see a muscular black haired figure in a tight spandex costume. The man’s boots were yellow with two black stripes along the top. The leggings were black with gray trunks. The torso was mostly black except for a slight portion of gray along the right side. The rest of the torso was divided by a yellow starburst of sorts. The man’s gloves were black with two yellow stripes, just the opposite of the boots. The interesting thing was the wild shiny gray goggles that covered the man’s eyes.

“Who are you?” Jolly Roger asked.

“I’m called Stargazer,” the new comer replied.

Instinctively, Jolly Roger raised his weapon.

“Relax,” said Stargazer.   “I’m one of the good guys, like you two.”

“Really?” Jolly Roger asked.   “Prove it.”

Stargazer just smiled.   “If I was an enemy, I certainly wouldn’t be engaging you in conversation, would I? And since I can fly and easily carry you both, I think we should go after the Anti-Man, don’t you?”

Karishi turned to Jolly Roger and sent him a telepathic message: That’s Berlin.

Jolly Roger lowered his weapon and smiled beneath his full face mask. Another of Karishi’s mental tricks was to read minds as well as project his own thoughts into other’s minds. That could certainly come in hand. He was quickly seeing why Phaedrus had felt this man could be a good ally in their line of business. He turned to Stargazer. “Okay, hot shot, follow that space man!”

***

Ten miles outside of town, even with Stargazer carrying them, the heroes were barely able to keep up with the fleeing Anti-Man. “I can’t keep this up all day,” the black haired hero said. Signs of fatigue began to wear upon his usually positive face.   “If you’ve got a plan, now might be a good time to put it into action.”

“Karishi?” Jolly Roger asked with a look to his teammate.

The black caped hero nodded silently and concentrated.

Before them, the Anti-Man began to lessen his altitude and swooped downward to land in an open field.

Stargazer dropped down as well and released his grip on the heroes when they were a few feet from landing.

“Surround him,” Jolly Roger commanded as he hit the ground running. As he moved around to the left of the now stationary Anti-Man, he positioned his Tozuku rifle to be ready to shoot again. He made sure not to get to close, to avoid any ill effects from getting near the man. “If we circle about him, he cannot stop all of us at one time.”

“He will not stay still for long,” Karishi warned as he too kept his distance. “I can already feel him fighting my control.”

“Surrender, Anti-Man,” Jolly Roger demanded. “We’ll get you the help that you need and help foster any discussions with NASA in a peaceful manner if need be.”

“Peaceful?” the Anti-Man said, his mind clearing. “Peaceful!   I think not!” His hands began to glow with energy which he hurled at two of the three heroes. “The time for talk is over! NASA will pay for abandoning me in the outer space’s cold embrace!”

“Take cover!” Jolly Roger ordered as he dove to his right. With a roll, he was able to open fire on their enemy, scoring with three rounds from the automatic rifle. “We need to take him down!”

“I will go for his mind,” Karishi said.

“And I’ll go for the more direct approach!” Stargazer said as he flew into the Anti-Man, his arms wrapping about the enemy’s torso and holding him steady.

“Off of me!” Anti-Man exclaimed as he tried to break free.

“Just relax, fella,” Stargazer said. “I know NASA isn’t always so easy to deal with, but there is not need to all crazy on them.”

“You know nothing!” Anti-Man yelled. Again, he struggled to break free.

Jolly Roger held fast, waiting for just the right moment. He knew he would only get just one. Stargazer jerked their opponent around, giving him a clear shot at the chest once more. He squeezed off a few more rounds with his rifle.

The Anti-Man’s head jerked back suddenly and he collapsed into Stargazer’s arms.

The black haired hero had to use his considerable strength just to hold him up. “Ugh, he’s a heavy one! You didn’t have to go and kill him, did you?”

“My bullets only stun,” Jolly Roger said defensively. “But if killing him was the only way to stop him, then we would have.”

“Why?” Stargazer asked.   “Just because he was mad at NASA?   I know they can be a pain in the butt sometimes but that doesn’t warrant deadly force on our part.”

Jolly Roger held his ground.   “He threatened a national government agency. He deserved to go down!”

“I believe his collapse is in part my doing too,” Karishi admitted. “His mind could not take a direct mental assault, and it appears to have shut down temporarily. He will recover soon though.”

“So what do we do with him then?” Stargazer asked. “We can’t give him to the government. They’ll just want to dissect him.”

“It isn’t our responsibility to decide what to do with him,” Jolly Roger said. “Our job is to only stop those who are dangerous and would threaten innocent people.”

“I won’t let you turn him over to NASA,” Stargazer insisted.

Jolly Roger turned to Karishi. “Think our friends in the Justice Gang might know how to best keep him?”

***

Jolly Roger invited the new hero back to the Rough Justice offices while they waited to hear back from the Justice Gang. He watched as Stargazer paced about the reception area before finally plopping down on a leather sofa.

“So, this is your headquarters, huh?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jolly Roger said as he continued to type on the computer keyboard.

“Not bad,” Stargazer said.   “Sort of an urban feel to it.”

“If you don’t like it you don’t have to stick around.”

Stargazer frowned a bit.   “Oh, no. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Jolly Roger smiled beneath his full face mask. “So, you do want to stick around?”

“Well,” Stargazer said as he reclined on the sofa. “I guess I could, that is, if you need the help.”

“One of our members is off on a personal mission and another is laid up in the hospital,” Jolly Roger explained as he hit the print key on the keyboard. The attached dot matrix printer sprang to life and began to noisily output the results of the hero’s search on the green and white striped paper. “So, if you’re offering a hand, we could use one.”

“Cool!” Stargazer said with a smile. “So, what’s that you were working on?”

Jolly Roger pulled the paper from the printer and tore off the perforations that fed the paper through the spindles. “Anti-Man made a reference to having been ‘lost’ for seven years. I checked some news archives and found out that NASA had an astronaut named Tom Shilling who disappeared on a mission back in 1983. Shilling and his craft never came back to Earth. NASA covered it up.”

Karishi entered the room and put the communicator device he received from the Justice Gang back into his belt pouch. “That matches what Space Lord found out as well,” he announced.

“So, they are turning him back over to NASA?” Stargazer asked.

“No,” Karishi said.   “The Justice Gang was concerned about what NASA might do as well, so Space Lord suggested they keep the Anti-Man sedated. It turns out that he emits some form of radiation when he is conscious. That is why we could not get to close to him.”

“Ah,” Jolly Roger said.   “So, are they planning to keep him up in their satellite?”

“No,” Karishi said.   “Space Lord said they would be transporting him down to M.E.T.E. as soon as possible.”

“Meat?” Stargazer asked.   “What’s that?”

“M-E-T-E,” Jolly Roger clarified. “That stands for the Metropolitan Extra-Terrestrial Enclave. I ran across that acronym when I was digging up that information on Shilling.”

“Space Lord, one of the Justice Gang founders, also happens to work directly with M.E.T.E.,” Karishi added.   “While they do work closely with NASA, NASA will not be able to directly get at the Anti-Man without full authorization and documentation. He will be safe in their hands.”

Jolly Roger turned to Stargazer. “Does that sound like a good compromise to you, Gazer?”

The black haired hero shrugged his shoulders. “I guess so.”