Issue 24 YEAR FOUR DEC Author: Lonni Holland

HAWKEYE Armed with a high-tech arsenal and the surpassing skill to use it, Clint Barton dons the familiar purple costume and fires justice from his bow.

Meet Me at the Fair

Last issue:
Together with the twins and Alkhema, Clint Barton heads for his family home in Iowa, in hopes of forming a bond with the newfound off-spring he has never known before. Power fluctuations cause the airplane to start downwards. Hawkeye takes over the controls, hoping that he can land it on manual.

Well, this sure wasn't like flying a Quinjet. Wasn't like crashing one either. If I survived this, I was going to write a very nasty letter to the FAA recommending easily accessible manual backups to a helluva lot of an airplane's controls. I was trying to stop this puppy with flaps alone because I couldn't find a hand control for the brakes.

Sparks were still flying up beside the plane where part of it was dragging along the parched ground. Breaking a wheel off the landing gear hadn't been my best move of the day, but it had been an accident, really! We were sliding along some farmer's field and I could hear metal ripping, but I still couldn't get the plane to stop. It'd be nice if I could at least slow it down before it decided to start flipping over.

Off to one side I could see a row of scrubby trees. Farmers often planted them to cut the wind and prevent the soil from blowing away after the crops had been harvested. If I could just gently touch them I might be able to moderate our speed a bit. Of course if I clipped them too hard I just might send us into a series of rolls. Oh well, it was worth a try. I wasn't seeing a lot of other options at the moment.

"So, what's happening up here anyway?"

Nick! Damn!

"Sit down and strap in before you go through the windshield. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Well, I wanted to see what was going on. We've been thrown around for a while so I decided to check it out. Ash is chatting up the real pilots back there and Alkhema said it was okay for me to come visit you."

Alkhema? If she was functional again then… I looked down at the console and sure enough the lights were starting to flicker back on.

"Quick, those three switches under that section of green lights… flip them all down when I switch mine."

We threw the braking switches together and just about then I heard a tremendous ripping sound behind me. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw things swirling around in the cabin just as the gust of wind hit me. The division between the pilot's cabin and the passenger section was pretty much demolished and there was a big hole in the roof. I had no idea how it had gotten there but I didn't have time to find out either. I still had a plane to stop.

I turned back towards the front and through the windshield I spotted Alkhema flying along. That explained the hole in the roof. She was heading straight for us. She looked right at me, winked, then put her hands against the nose of the plane and fired some kind of jet from her boots. It worked. We started to slow right away.

Looks like someone up there was listening.

We had gotten out of the plane and, with the crew, had moved well back, just in case. With the power flickering in and out it didn't seem likely that emergency equipment would be arriving any too soon. I hauled Alkhema and the kids away from the others, because we needed to talk, alone.

"I have to try to get hold of the Avengers to find out what's going on, if my Avenger Card will work long enough. War Toy, I want you to get yourself out of sight somewhere." She started to protest but I cut her off. "Look, if the power dies then you are just a big gilded paperweight, and if I am trying to get somewhere I am not gonna stop and rupture myself trying to carry you. Not that I don't appreciate you stopping us from crashing, but we got troubles, right here in River City, and I don't have time to build you a monorail."

From her puzzled look I could just tell that she had never seen The Music Man let alone The Simpsons but she grudgingly agreed to slip into the cornfields and hide. "Just make sure you come back for me, lover. If I pop out again then revive and don't see your shining face soon after I'm going to get angry, and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Okay, so she must have seen some television somewhere.

I pulled my Avenger card one more time. Hallelujah! It was glowing softly around the edges, which meant it was working. I activated it quickly to respond to the last signal it had received. "Hawkeye, here. I got a red alert and I'm guessing it has something to do with all these odd power gaps."

Hank Pym's face came into view. He looked exhausted. Funny, I had expected to connect to the West Coast compound. If it was New York calling this thing was wider spread than I had expected.

"Clint, good to hear from you. I've been having trouble raising anyone outside the immediate New York area."

"Okay, YJ, what's up? Better talk fast before this card zaps out on me again."

"Check. This thing doesn't just damp out power, it damps out super power, too. The mutants, the chemically induced, no matter how they got their powers, they are all helpless. Thankfully it hits the other side just as hard as it hits us. We have no data on the source of the problem at this time. You'll just have to deal with things as best you can. Assist civilians but be aware that power can go at any time so your trick arrows may become useless. We've also had reports of super-powered bad guys popping up all over the place, and their powers don't seem to be affected by whatever this phenomenon is. They have powers that other people here have, but they aren't anyone we know. It's almost like they were able to siphon off the powers of others…. zztt… zztt.."

Gone. Hank was gone, the card's glow was gone and I was stuck in an Iowa cornfield with no communications, no backup trick arrows, a pair of teenagers and a non-functional killing machine who thought she was my dead wife. Terrific!

It's been over four hours now and I can't believe how hard my kids have worked. I'm so proud I could just burst, if I could find the time. Back to the beginning though…

After I talked to Yellowjacket I marshaled the kids and we headed back to where we had left the plane's crew. I pinned a note to Wartoy's bosom, explaining that we were heading into town to see if we could be of any help and suggesting a couple of places that she could look for us if she powered back up. Otherwise I promised that we would be back as soon as we could be.

At the plane I grabbed the bag with my Hawkeye gear and changed clothes. The other super-heroes might be out of commission but I certainly wasn't. Okay, so a lot of my arrows wouldn't work, but some of them still would and no amount of power zapping could take my skill away from me.

Then we started to walk towards town, just two weary pilots in rumpled uniforms and uncomfortable looking dress shoes, two blond teens in jeans and t-shirts, and me, wearing my purple long johns. What a sight we must have made, if there had been anyone around to see us except a couple of crows. I filled in the pilots on what little I had learned from the East Coast. After that conversation just died and we scuffed along in the dust and the heat.

After about an hour we were overtaken by a farm wagon, being pulled by two big chestnut work horses. The man driving offered us a lift. He had heard about all of the problems in Waverly during the few minutes that power had kicked back in, and was on his way to help as best he could. His wife and daughters were in the back, along with sheets that they were cutting into bandages and as many first aid supplies as they had. We piled in amongst the hay and heaps of white cloth and headed on towards Waverly.

It didn't take long to get to where we could be of use. On the outskirts of town we were just about to pass the Waverly Fairgrounds when we realized that the grounds and buildings had been turned into an emergency relief station. People were arriving in assorted ways, some on bicycles, some on roller blades, some on scooters. Many were pulling wagons filled with children or the injured. Off in the distance we could see a line of women, wearing candy striped smocks, pushing wheelchairs as they brought the inhabitants of a local extended care facility.

Inside five minutes we were all hard at work. The farmer who had given us the lift was gone with his wagon and a couple of off duty cops to gather up any other supplies that were needed, especially bottled water. I'm not sure where our pilots ended up as the twins and I were soon involved in "Operation: Air Conditioning". Sounds great doesn't it? It's 95° in the shade, there is no power of any sort, and we're going to make an air conditioner. Well, the pioneers managed summers here, we figured we could too.

One of the locals was really hipped on environmentalism and alternate power sources and he had a bright idea. Sounded good to the rest of us so we got to work. It wasn't actually hard, just back breaking. First we raided part of the historical farm equipment display that the Bremer County Fair had at one side of the building. What we were after was the blade assembly of an old farm windmill. Then we scrounged wood and tools and started building smaller scale models. The more mechanically inclined took each of these 'fans' and began hooking them up to bikes that had the rear wheels removed. The entire thing was mounted on a broad wooden base. Then some of the younger guys started pedaling. Bingo! It wasn't actually cool air, but it was moving and three or four of these gizmos were enough to cool off most of the building.

Nick turned out to have my mechanical ability. I always thought it was just those years of making my own fancy gadget arrows before Stark's company took over most of it for me, but the kid didn't do anything like that with Khonshu so some of it must have been in my make-up. Ashley turned out to have a real knack for carpentry. After mashing my thumb and a couple of fingers I had switched jobs but she looked like Bob Villa on one of his good days.

Over three hours later we were all hot, tired and dirty yet both of the kids had just offered to take over pedaling duties and were making a race out of it. I was ready to ask for the use of one of those wheelchairs while they were having the time of their lives as onlookers cheered on their favorite.

Moral was high even though conditions were still pretty primitive. A few more people had trickled in but were getting reports from the rest of town that everything seemed to be fairly under control. A group of volunteers had headed off to the hospital, lugging one of our fan mechanisms. Heat seemed to be our biggest enemy right now.

Every once in a while the lights had flickered back on and the radio had sputtered with static but that was about it. Most people just seemed to be contented to wait it out, since I had already explained the little bit that the Avengers had told me. I didn't bother mentioning the fact that odd bad guys were popping up. After all, this was Waverly, Iowa. With a population of about nine thousand it wasn't exactly a hub of activity. Big time baddies tend to head to large population centers, like New York, or Los Angeles. The biggest crimes around here were the odd auto theft, some petty larceny and the occasional rape. Not that any of those are minor, especially to the victims, but they still weren't quite in the same league with guys like Kang or Doom or Count Nefaria.

I was sitting in the shade and enjoying an ice cold lemonade. There was lots of ice in the big freezers at the back of the building, and as long as the doors weren't opened too often it would likely stay frozen for a while. I didn't care if it had been chipped off the back side of the moon, I was just enjoying the cold, tart drink.

So you know, I really need to learn to keep my thoughts under control. There I was, getting real pleasure out of something cold and the fact that I didn't have to fight anyone when what do I see zooming along Highway 218 on an ice slide but my old buddy, Iceman. Except it wasn't Iceman. He was smashing things with big ice hammers as he came along, for no apparent reason except the delight of seeing stuff fall. I knew Icemen too well. Sure he could be a bit of a clown at times, but so can I. This rampant destruction just wasn't his thing. The heat must have slowed the blood to my brain because it actually took me a couple of minutes to realize that this was one of those copy-cat super powered guys that Hank had warned me about.

This was Waverly, for Pete's sake! What the heck was this guy doing here? I didn't have much time to think about that because he was heading for us at top speed and there were a lot of fairly helpless people being sheltered right behind me. I grabbed my bow and quiver and headed farther down the road to meet him. Normally, as a distance fighter, I try to stay back where I can be most effective, but this one of those situations where I wanted to control where the fight was going to take place and right in front of the building wasn't my location of choice.

"Hey, Frosty! What the heck do you think you're doing?" I hollered but I didn't expect an answer. I just wanted to steer his attention towards me and away from the civilians. So what does he do? He answers. What does he think this is, the Tonight Show? Twenty questions? Who ever taught villains to talk should be shot!

"Aha! One of the denizens of justice in this forsaken world. Stand forth and prepare to die, you purple clad dolt." He laughed, a genuine Dishonest John Bwa-ha-ha type laugh, then fired an ice bolt in my direction.

Oh for the love of… He had either swallowed a cornball dictionary or else he'd been taking Thor lessons. I dove out of the way of the ice bolt, rolled and came up firing. A flare arrow would warm things up for him. I watched in horror as the shaft bounced off his icy hide uselessly and clattered to the ground. Of course! Flare arrows wouldn't work with the power gone. I knew that, I had just responded instinctively.

My instincts were usually one of my biggest weapons. Years of battling crooks had made a lot of my actions pretty automatic. Now I couldn't necessarily depend on that, since a big hunk of my normal arsenal was useless. Still, I had other arrows, and other talents. Pity I didn't still pack that boxing glove arrow, though.

I fired off one of my line arrows. They were purely mechanical and should work. The grappling hook at the end imbedded itself firmly in a wooden telephone pole. I pulled it tight and as he came forward on his ice slide he didn't even notice the taut wire right in front of him. It caught him just below the knees and down he went. Now all I had to do was keep him down, all by myself.

Suddenly I wasn't all by myself anymore. As he started to get back to his feet he was hit by several small wooden objects. I glanced to my right and there was Ashley. She had a sack of wood scraps from our earlier building attempts and she was firing them at him like a machine gun spitting out wooden bullets. I remembered the crescents and throwing discs I had carved for the priests of Khonshu in the past * and realized that the weapons must have caught on. I knew that the current Moon Knight used them; little did I know that my own kids were trained with them as well.

* it happened in AWC 23 in the now classic Lost in Space-Time arc

Nick had a more direct approach. He and a few others had grabbed some folding aluminum chairs and were whacking the guy like crazy. Looked just like the last wrestling match I'd watched. Normally I don't favor hitting a guy when he's down, but, in this case, I'd make an exception. It didn't work though. A large ice and snow form burst upwards, looking just like a giant white Popsicle. It knocked all the chair wielders back on their butts.

Ashley kept throwing things at him but it barely slowed him down. I clipped him with a couple of hunting tip arrows and that seemed to make him hesitate for a couple of minutes. Then he shot off an ice bolt that took both of us down.

This was getting serious. Now he was annoyed and heading towards the building where all of the people were. At least he wasn't talking, so I was thankful for small blessings. I hacked away at the ice that was holding me down, reflected that, at least, I had found a way to cool off. It didn't take me long to get free and I realized that, while this guy might have Iceman's powers, he certainly didn't have his skill in using them. If the real Iceman has frozen me I'd still be there, heat or no heat. I wondered if there was some way I could take advantage of his lack of experience when it hit me. I had often wondered what would happen if Iceman froze himself. Here was my chance to find out.

"Quick, everyone. Throw water at him. Anything you can find. Get it from rain barrels, wells, bottles, I don't care if you throw Perrier at him, let's just get him frozen up. Go for his legs and arms if you can but douse him!"

My fellow townsfolk were as quick on the uptake as my kids. Pails, bottles, pitchers, everything that could hold liquid was being used to soak the pseudo-Iceman. He didn't have enough control of his powers to keep from freezing himself up. In minutes he was encased on enough frozen liquid to stop him cold, no pun intended. Now we just had to keep him that way until the world managed to right itself.

I noticed that there were some yellow stains in his ice enclosure and I figured that someone had doused him with a pitcher of lemonade. That gave me an idea. We dragged him to the back of the fairgrounds building and shoved him into the walk-in freezer. Not only was it insulated enough to keep the ice around him solid for a few hours, but the door didn't open from the inside unless you knew where the release lever was. We didn't bother to show him.

Just about then the lights came back on and it was over. I buzzed the Avengers and they told me that the power was back all over the world and the emergency had been dealt with. We called the cops to come and pick up our frosty buddy, but when they got there he had disappeared. Maybe he went back where he came from, or maybe he just melted. I didn't know and, frankly, I didn't care. I got us a lift out to the airport, picked up my rental car and we drove back to where our plane had crashed so we could find Alkhema.

As we went along the highway, with the air conditioner going full blast, Nick spoke. "So, that was really fun, Is that what your life as an Avenger is usually like? It was really boring back at the compound."

Boring? Hmmm… "Yeah, well it's not exactly like that but similar I guess. I normally have some other teammates with me." I reflected a minute. "Still, I did have teammates with me this time, just not the ones I'm used to." I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw them both grinning at that. "So, why did you find it boring at the compound? I thought you had lots to do there. What are you used to doing in Egypt anyway?"

This time it was Ashley that spoke. "Oh we did fitness and weapons training but that wasn't it. At least there people talked to us, the priests and Khonshu when he had time. At the compound we got shoved off in a corner with a television and some video games. It was almost like you were ashamed of us."

"Uh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it look like that. I was just…" What? Confused? Surprised? Embarrassed? "I didn't quite know how to handle being a father so abruptly. Face it, I didn't know how to handle being a father at all. I'd like to try again though. That's why I brought us all here. What do you say? Can we take a shot at being a family?"

There was total silence from the back seat. Had I totally screwed this up already? I waited then heard them softly whispering to each other. It seemed like hours before Nick finally spoke.

"Yeah, I think we'd like that… Dad"

Dad.

Yes, life is good after all.

lonni@paratime.ca