"The Sceptre Strikes!"
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dochermes"The Sceptre Strikes!"
10/4/1941
I.
She came to her senses in cold clammy darkness, with her head throbbing abominably. For the longest time, Laura Salerno remained motionless, leaning back against something hard, half sitting up with her weight resting on one elbow. What on Earth could have happened to her? Where was she? Why did her whole body ache so much? It was hard to focus. Finally, she realized that the cylinder still strapped to her wrist was her Sceptre. Instantly, she concentrated on light. The blue gem on the end of the copper tube blazed into clear steady radiance which revealed her surroundings.
Wet slimy rock forming a sort of round room? No. A well. She was at the bottom of a well which was almost dry except for a thin film on the bottom. She glanced up, regretting the movement because the way it made her head pound mercilessly, and saw the mouth of the well high overhead was open. She couldn't actually see the night sky because of the glowing sceptre next to her. But the air wasn't stagnant so at least she wasn't going to suffocate.
Her thoughts began to clear. Yes, she had gone to negotiate a deal with someone named Grusel. Her well-paid contacts in the underworld told her that Grusel represented the German government and would pay well for military secrets. She had been carrying a thick manila envelope supposedly full of official papers. It was coming back to her. Weeks of setting up a meeting after spinning a yarn to shady characters about her admiration for how Hitler would fix the world's problems. Finding the long-abandoned farmhouse. She had been standing with her back to a well on the rundown property way out in the New Jersey wilderness. Grusel was waiting for her there with two gunmen and she kept up against the well so she could keep both thugs in sight. Laura had been holding the Sceptre in her right hand, ready to blast the first crook who made a threatening move. But she hadn't been quick enough, one of them drew and blasted off a shot before she could react. The next thing she knew... she was here.
Wait. Had she been shot? What was that burning pain high on her abdomen. Laura was wearing the blue slacks and bright canary jersey she affected when she was playing the Sceptre character, and now she dug under the shirt to find a hot chunk of metal stuck to her skin right below the sternum. She tugged it loose and touched her fingers to find a slight gouge in her skin, not even enough to bleed. It was a bullet.
A dozen thoughts raced through her mind as she struggled up onto her feet. Nothing was broken. But, even though she was bruised and sore, she should have been hurt much worse by falling twenty feet onto a stone surface. How was she still alive? Why had the bullet barely broken her skin? She knew the talisman she wielded could change the transcendental gralic force into light or heart or concussive impact. It did this when she willed it to do so. The only thing that made sense of her survival was that somehow the Sceptre was becoming more and more attuned to her mind... that it was acting before her conscious decisions told it what to do.
In the glow from that ancient gem, Laura's battered face broke into a wide grin. As the vigilante known as the Sceptre, her disguise involved a long curly black wig over her own short brownish hair, flaming red lipstick that changed the outlines of her mouth and a padded bra that distracted people. The bright yellow shirt and blue slacks and white trenchcoat were further distractions. The smile fell from her face as he realized that a spy like Grusel would not abandon such a priceless talisman as what she held. The Sceptre was unique and could not be duplicated, but they did not know that. They probably had dreams of an army of soldiers blazing away with Sceptres, toppling cities and conquering Europe. She realized her enemies had gone to fetch ropes to climb down to where she was.
Well, let them try. She would blast a beam of deadly force up at the first face that showed itself. But, she thought, they would simply fire down until she was a bullet-riddled corpse. What could she do? All these thoughts hurtled through her adrenalin-charged mind within seconds. Laura held the Sceptre up over her head in a Statue of Liberty pose. Her late husband Ray had first crafted this talisman and he had used it to generate light and heat. It had been her experimentation that had found the rod could project kinetic impacts. What if it could control still more forms of energy?
Like gravity?
As soon as the idea crossed her mind, Laura felt the ground drop away from beneath her feet. She gasped, more in delight than fear. She was rising, moving upward as if pulled by some inexorable pulley. Yet there was no sensation of hanging from the Sceptre, of having to grip it for dear life. It felt more as if she was floating weightless in a dream. She laughed out loud at the unexpected joy of it all. In another second, she rose up out of the well entirely and slowed to hang in mid-air twenty feet above the ground, light still shining like a beacon from the rod she held overhead.
II.
Revealed in that steady illumination, Grusel and his two gunmen froze motionless. One of them had a coil of clotheline sloppily slung over one shoulder. In the second before the men could get another chance to shoot her, Laura drew on the Sceptre again and lanced out a shaft of white-hot force that made the nearer gunman explode in a gruesome oily cloud of black smoke. His scream only rang out for a second before ending abruptly. The other agent dug in his waistband and drew a spike-noses automatic but the heat from the Sceptre burned right through him and only parts of his legs remained to fall to the grass.
Watching from twenty feet up, Laura felt only relief that those goons wouldn't be shooting at her. Less than a minute earlier, she had been terrified that the two gunmen would be sending a dozen bullets into her body. They deserved getting blown away like that. As she saw Grusel remain where he was, evidently paralyzed with fear at what he had just seen, Laura let herself slowly descend to the ground. She touched down with a slight stumble as she remembered how sore and bruised she was. Her legs barely supported her. In the back of her mind, she realized gleefully that the Sceptre could perform more than one function at a time. It had project heat, light and anti-gravity simultaneously. Good to know.
"The Sceptre is more potent than anyone dared hope," said the old man, shading his eyes with one hand.
"What makes you think you'll live to tell anyone?" she spat. Laura pointed the talisman accusingly and lessened its glare so she could see better. She felt something in her left palm and realized what she was still holding. "Here!" she snapped and lobbed it toward Grusel.
Automatically, the spymaster held out his open hands and caught the small metal pellet. The look of baffled confusion was comical despite the circumstances.
"That's the bullet your gorilla shot me with!" she yelled and readied the Sceptre to strike. Gralic force crackled around the blue gem at the end of the talisman but it did not discharge. She couldn't do it. It was one thing to blow away men who were ready to kill her, but it wasn't as easy to blast this old codger who was meekly awaiting death. "You're coming with me," she said finally. "Some nice young G-men will enjoy conversation with you..."
The sound of a car engine starting up nearby stopped her in mid-sentence. Two headlights sprang into life next to the dark outline of the deserted farmhouse and started moving away. Laura's eyes had only flickered toward the car for an instant but her attention snapped back toward Grusel to see his right hand already darting out from inside his coat with a Luger in its grip. Instantly, she launched a burst of concussive force that flipped the German spymaster backward in a clumsy cartwheel and sent him tumbling ten feet away.
Laura stepped closer, relieved to see that the pistol had fallen to one side. She turned up the light from the Sceptre to reveal dark blood pouring from the old man's nose and mouth. His back was twisted in a way that a normal spine could not achieve. "That was a stupid move," she said coldly, starting to feel that being ruthless was the only way to deal with these people.
"Hah, you fool," wheezed the man, coughing up more blood. "I am not Grusel. He..is in that auto..." With a final gasp, the body went limp.
Laura Salerno glared at where the fleeing car's headlights could still be spotted down the road. For a second. she started toward the spot where her own roadster was hidden under some trees but she remembered that now she had a better way to give chase. Extending her arm full length, concentrating on flight, she lifted clear of the ground and rushed forward through the air, only to start spinning. She crashed headlong into an oak tree. A thick branch slammed across her middle and drove the breath out of her. Laura fell to the grass with a thump and cried out in exasperation. She tried to get up, fell right on her face and contented herself with getting into a seated position. Everything hurt. After a few minutes, Laura caught her breath but didn't feel up to trying pursuit. This flying business might need some practice, she thought.
After what seemed like ages, Laura braced her arms against the cold ground and forced herself up onto her feet. Her legs were still stiff and she limped when she started to walk. Some beating she had taken that night, she grumbled, just falling down that well would have killed her if the Sceptre hadn't responded to her thoughts and slowed her descent. She needed to search the German agent's pockets for any lead to who the real Grusel was or what he was up to, but the prospect didn't appeal to her in the slightest.
When Laura reached the twisted body, she sighed and awkwardly got down on her hands and knees next to him. After a few minutes of sitting motionless, she realized she was stalling and gingerly pulled out each pocket in the man's clothing. Keys, a half-empty packet of Lucky Strikes and a pewter lighter, a five dollar bill and some change. The wallet was in his hip pocket and she had to roll the cadaver over slightly to get to it. She felt sick to her stomach. Maybe she should leave this for the tougher-minded FBI agents. This whole Sceptre business was more gruesome than she had expected.
The wallet held nothing to show that this man had been an agent for a foreign nation. No scraps of paper with cryptic numbers, no membership cards in the Bund hidden behind the driver's license, nothing useful at all. Laura got to her feet again, trying to stretch and loosen her aching muscles. What a disappointment tonight had been. If this man had been telling the truth, the real spymaster known as Grusel had gotten clean away; not only that, she had been exposed as a threat rather than a possible informer. Everything had gone wrong.
But, as Laura reached her rather sporty little two-seat roadster, her spirits lifted as she remembered what she had learned about the Sceptre that night. With a little practice, maybe staying close to the ground until she got the hang of it, she was now able to carry out what people had dreamed of since the dawn of time. She could fly. Despite the pain, she was grinning as she squeezed in behind the wheel.
2/15/2020
10/4/1941
I.
She came to her senses in cold clammy darkness, with her head throbbing abominably. For the longest time, Laura Salerno remained motionless, leaning back against something hard, half sitting up with her weight resting on one elbow. What on Earth could have happened to her? Where was she? Why did her whole body ache so much? It was hard to focus. Finally, she realized that the cylinder still strapped to her wrist was her Sceptre. Instantly, she concentrated on light. The blue gem on the end of the copper tube blazed into clear steady radiance which revealed her surroundings.
Wet slimy rock forming a sort of round room? No. A well. She was at the bottom of a well which was almost dry except for a thin film on the bottom. She glanced up, regretting the movement because the way it made her head pound mercilessly, and saw the mouth of the well high overhead was open. She couldn't actually see the night sky because of the glowing sceptre next to her. But the air wasn't stagnant so at least she wasn't going to suffocate.
Her thoughts began to clear. Yes, she had gone to negotiate a deal with someone named Grusel. Her well-paid contacts in the underworld told her that Grusel represented the German government and would pay well for military secrets. She had been carrying a thick manila envelope supposedly full of official papers. It was coming back to her. Weeks of setting up a meeting after spinning a yarn to shady characters about her admiration for how Hitler would fix the world's problems. Finding the long-abandoned farmhouse. She had been standing with her back to a well on the rundown property way out in the New Jersey wilderness. Grusel was waiting for her there with two gunmen and she kept up against the well so she could keep both thugs in sight. Laura had been holding the Sceptre in her right hand, ready to blast the first crook who made a threatening move. But she hadn't been quick enough, one of them drew and blasted off a shot before she could react. The next thing she knew... she was here.
Wait. Had she been shot? What was that burning pain high on her abdomen. Laura was wearing the blue slacks and bright canary jersey she affected when she was playing the Sceptre character, and now she dug under the shirt to find a hot chunk of metal stuck to her skin right below the sternum. She tugged it loose and touched her fingers to find a slight gouge in her skin, not even enough to bleed. It was a bullet.
A dozen thoughts raced through her mind as she struggled up onto her feet. Nothing was broken. But, even though she was bruised and sore, she should have been hurt much worse by falling twenty feet onto a stone surface. How was she still alive? Why had the bullet barely broken her skin? She knew the talisman she wielded could change the transcendental gralic force into light or heart or concussive impact. It did this when she willed it to do so. The only thing that made sense of her survival was that somehow the Sceptre was becoming more and more attuned to her mind... that it was acting before her conscious decisions told it what to do.
In the glow from that ancient gem, Laura's battered face broke into a wide grin. As the vigilante known as the Sceptre, her disguise involved a long curly black wig over her own short brownish hair, flaming red lipstick that changed the outlines of her mouth and a padded bra that distracted people. The bright yellow shirt and blue slacks and white trenchcoat were further distractions. The smile fell from her face as he realized that a spy like Grusel would not abandon such a priceless talisman as what she held. The Sceptre was unique and could not be duplicated, but they did not know that. They probably had dreams of an army of soldiers blazing away with Sceptres, toppling cities and conquering Europe. She realized her enemies had gone to fetch ropes to climb down to where she was.
Well, let them try. She would blast a beam of deadly force up at the first face that showed itself. But, she thought, they would simply fire down until she was a bullet-riddled corpse. What could she do? All these thoughts hurtled through her adrenalin-charged mind within seconds. Laura held the Sceptre up over her head in a Statue of Liberty pose. Her late husband Ray had first crafted this talisman and he had used it to generate light and heat. It had been her experimentation that had found the rod could project kinetic impacts. What if it could control still more forms of energy?
Like gravity?
As soon as the idea crossed her mind, Laura felt the ground drop away from beneath her feet. She gasped, more in delight than fear. She was rising, moving upward as if pulled by some inexorable pulley. Yet there was no sensation of hanging from the Sceptre, of having to grip it for dear life. It felt more as if she was floating weightless in a dream. She laughed out loud at the unexpected joy of it all. In another second, she rose up out of the well entirely and slowed to hang in mid-air twenty feet above the ground, light still shining like a beacon from the rod she held overhead.
II.
Revealed in that steady illumination, Grusel and his two gunmen froze motionless. One of them had a coil of clotheline sloppily slung over one shoulder. In the second before the men could get another chance to shoot her, Laura drew on the Sceptre again and lanced out a shaft of white-hot force that made the nearer gunman explode in a gruesome oily cloud of black smoke. His scream only rang out for a second before ending abruptly. The other agent dug in his waistband and drew a spike-noses automatic but the heat from the Sceptre burned right through him and only parts of his legs remained to fall to the grass.
Watching from twenty feet up, Laura felt only relief that those goons wouldn't be shooting at her. Less than a minute earlier, she had been terrified that the two gunmen would be sending a dozen bullets into her body. They deserved getting blown away like that. As she saw Grusel remain where he was, evidently paralyzed with fear at what he had just seen, Laura let herself slowly descend to the ground. She touched down with a slight stumble as she remembered how sore and bruised she was. Her legs barely supported her. In the back of her mind, she realized gleefully that the Sceptre could perform more than one function at a time. It had project heat, light and anti-gravity simultaneously. Good to know.
"The Sceptre is more potent than anyone dared hope," said the old man, shading his eyes with one hand.
"What makes you think you'll live to tell anyone?" she spat. Laura pointed the talisman accusingly and lessened its glare so she could see better. She felt something in her left palm and realized what she was still holding. "Here!" she snapped and lobbed it toward Grusel.
Automatically, the spymaster held out his open hands and caught the small metal pellet. The look of baffled confusion was comical despite the circumstances.
"That's the bullet your gorilla shot me with!" she yelled and readied the Sceptre to strike. Gralic force crackled around the blue gem at the end of the talisman but it did not discharge. She couldn't do it. It was one thing to blow away men who were ready to kill her, but it wasn't as easy to blast this old codger who was meekly awaiting death. "You're coming with me," she said finally. "Some nice young G-men will enjoy conversation with you..."
The sound of a car engine starting up nearby stopped her in mid-sentence. Two headlights sprang into life next to the dark outline of the deserted farmhouse and started moving away. Laura's eyes had only flickered toward the car for an instant but her attention snapped back toward Grusel to see his right hand already darting out from inside his coat with a Luger in its grip. Instantly, she launched a burst of concussive force that flipped the German spymaster backward in a clumsy cartwheel and sent him tumbling ten feet away.
Laura stepped closer, relieved to see that the pistol had fallen to one side. She turned up the light from the Sceptre to reveal dark blood pouring from the old man's nose and mouth. His back was twisted in a way that a normal spine could not achieve. "That was a stupid move," she said coldly, starting to feel that being ruthless was the only way to deal with these people.
"Hah, you fool," wheezed the man, coughing up more blood. "I am not Grusel. He..is in that auto..." With a final gasp, the body went limp.
Laura Salerno glared at where the fleeing car's headlights could still be spotted down the road. For a second. she started toward the spot where her own roadster was hidden under some trees but she remembered that now she had a better way to give chase. Extending her arm full length, concentrating on flight, she lifted clear of the ground and rushed forward through the air, only to start spinning. She crashed headlong into an oak tree. A thick branch slammed across her middle and drove the breath out of her. Laura fell to the grass with a thump and cried out in exasperation. She tried to get up, fell right on her face and contented herself with getting into a seated position. Everything hurt. After a few minutes, Laura caught her breath but didn't feel up to trying pursuit. This flying business might need some practice, she thought.
After what seemed like ages, Laura braced her arms against the cold ground and forced herself up onto her feet. Her legs were still stiff and she limped when she started to walk. Some beating she had taken that night, she grumbled, just falling down that well would have killed her if the Sceptre hadn't responded to her thoughts and slowed her descent. She needed to search the German agent's pockets for any lead to who the real Grusel was or what he was up to, but the prospect didn't appeal to her in the slightest.
When Laura reached the twisted body, she sighed and awkwardly got down on her hands and knees next to him. After a few minutes of sitting motionless, she realized she was stalling and gingerly pulled out each pocket in the man's clothing. Keys, a half-empty packet of Lucky Strikes and a pewter lighter, a five dollar bill and some change. The wallet was in his hip pocket and she had to roll the cadaver over slightly to get to it. She felt sick to her stomach. Maybe she should leave this for the tougher-minded FBI agents. This whole Sceptre business was more gruesome than she had expected.
The wallet held nothing to show that this man had been an agent for a foreign nation. No scraps of paper with cryptic numbers, no membership cards in the Bund hidden behind the driver's license, nothing useful at all. Laura got to her feet again, trying to stretch and loosen her aching muscles. What a disappointment tonight had been. If this man had been telling the truth, the real spymaster known as Grusel had gotten clean away; not only that, she had been exposed as a threat rather than a possible informer. Everything had gone wrong.
But, as Laura reached her rather sporty little two-seat roadster, her spirits lifted as she remembered what she had learned about the Sceptre that night. With a little practice, maybe staying close to the ground until she got the hang of it, she was now able to carry out what people had dreamed of since the dawn of time. She could fly. Despite the pain, she was grinning as she squeezed in behind the wheel.
2/15/2020
