Chasing the Past
1
Cory Chase looked out the window at the passing landscape as his train rolled southwest along its tracks. His duffle bag sat on the chair beside him as the vehicle left Chicago behind. His next stop was Reagan City, a few hours away. The file Thomas Chantry had given him rested in his hand.
He was almost afraid to open it.
Chase watched the scenery for some time before he finally flipped the envelope's flap back. He took out the contents carefully, making sure not to spill it on the seat. He put the empty envelope aside as he started to read the copied newspaper clippings from the Sun-Times.
The stories dated from the Fifties, with an Associated Press byline. He expected that since the location in the stories was a thousand miles away. One picture showed a smiling man holding a man wearing primitive armor over his head. A cloth mask hid the smiling man's face, but Chase knew that he was Oliver Hunt. He knew it because of the ring visible on the man's hand.
It was the same ring he now wore.
There were gaps in the events, but Chase knew that was because the papers couldn't cover every detail of someone's life.
One story in particular drew his attention. It was the last covered event in the envelope. Hunt and an army of monsters had mixed it up at a charity banquet in Cutter Bay in 59. The black and white photo was fuzzy, but Chase recognized three of the creatures from personal experience. Chase read the story quickly, frowning at the end.
The former Ringbearer had won the battle but the list at the bottom showed extensive collateral damage to the hotel, and the residents who had attended the charity dinner. The names meant nothing to the new Ringbearer, but he had a feeling that this was his predecessor's swan song.
Chase read the story again, memorizing details that might help him with the monsters that seemed to be dogging him. He also checked the name of the supposed leader of the monster army. His identity had been exposed after Hunt had snapped his neck in three places.
Dylan Trail didn't mean anything to Chase right now, but maybe Chantry would look him up as a favor. Maybe the retired painter could find out how one army of monsters switched trainers.
Chase flipped through the clippings, reading them again for details. Some ring powers were noted by the reporters. He made a note, comparing what he found to the three he possessed. He had the strength, toughness, but his ability to split in two had not been catalogued in the papers.
Apparently Hunt had been able to conceal that power from anyone following his career.
Chase put everything back in the envelope. It went in his duffel bag while he considered the leads he had found to follow. He doubted that he would find anything useful, but he had nothing but time. Once he was done with his scavenger hunt, he could turn his attention on his mysterious enemy.
One detail of that last case stuck in Chase's mind as he turned back to watching the land pass outside his window. Hunt had shown restraint in dealing with his enemies, sometimes clashing with them again and again. Why had he finally killed one? Why this one man, and no one else before the raid by the monsters?
What had caused Hunt to do something so uncharacteristically after so many years as a public hero like the Leaguer, the Blinker, or Johnny Shield? It struck Chase as odd, but he put it away in the back of his mind. Maybe a better look at his predecessor's career would give him something more to go on.
Chase closed his eyes. He let the train's rocking lull him to sleep. His head leaned against his duffel as he snored. His eyes under their lids shifted back and forth as he fell into a dreaming state.
Chase dreamed he was walking on a street, the skyline reminded him of Cutter Bay. There were some slight differences. The sailor realized this was how his city looked before he was born. He oriented himself, started floating toward the bay. His sleep was deep and usually black until he woke up. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of a dream and remember some of the details.
It was never like this.
Chase reached the shore in two steps. He turned, heading along the water. Something had induced this, but he couldn't think what. A face in a period automobile passed him on the street, drawing his attention. The Ringbearer turned, following the car with his dream shifting speed.
At least he was invisible to the play actors performing for him.
Chase watched as the man in the car tied a cloth mask over his face. He spotted the intact ring on the man's finger as the driver stepped out of the car. The other Ringbearer headed for a warehouse beside the ocean.
Chase frowned at the realization that he was dreaming about Oliver Hunt as lucidly as watching a memory. He followed the memory to the building, wondering what was going on.
2
The Ringbearers approached the warehouse quietly. Hunt paused at the door just long enough to pull the lock out of place. The metal creaked some as he exerted the ring's power on it. Chase was one step behind him as the hero stepped inside the building.
The Ringbearers looked around the interior of the storage depot. Chase wondered what had brought Hunt to the waterfront. All he could see were bunches of boxes piled at one end of the vast space, but nothing else of interest.
"Why don't you come out, Floater?," Hunt called, straightening his suit jacket with both hands. "I know you're here. Come along quietly for once. A beautiful lady is waiting for me so I want to hurry this up."
A beautiful lady, Chase thought. Why didn't she get the ring? Did Hunt have a family? This is just a dream. None of this is real. What am I thinking?
The boxes at the other end of the large room broke open from the inside. A storm of metal balls danced in the air as they erupted from the broken crates. They joined together to form a vaguely human outline. One of the bigger ones had a parody of a human face scrawled on its front.
"Why can't you leave me alone?," said a scratchy voice from each of the dozen spheres hovering in the air. "Why do you insist on hounding me?"
"The police would like to talk to you, Floater," said Hunt, crossing his arms over his chest. "You can't expect to rob all those places and not be arrested. If you give yourself up, maybe they will go light on your sentence. Maybe you could work out a deal."
"Maybe I wreck your face," said Floater. "And then I will find somewhere else to live."
"Don't do it," Hunt said, holding up a hand. "I don't want to fight you."
The Floater charged forward, a cloud of mismatched grapeshot fired from an invisible cannon. A roar of rage leaped from the drawing of a mouth it possessed. The man trapped in the shells wasn't going to let some masked man in a business suit take him to jail. He needed to be working on a cure, and for that he needed money. If the only way he could get that money was robbing a few banks, so be it.
Chase tried to take everything in from his position behind Hunt. Maybe this dream could tell him what the assembled stones could do together. This had to be a result of those stories Chantry had dug up for him.
Hunt waited until his opponent was on top of him before he moved to one side. He seemed to flicker just like the Blinker had done when Chase had met him off Cutter Bay. The Floater kept going for a few seconds before he could stop his flight, and rotate his swarming mass to bear again.
Hunt stepped in, fist glittering as it sliced the air in a haymaker. His hand punched the head orb hard enough to send it crashing into the nearest wall. The rest of the body parts followed like puppets on a string. A chaotic drum roll followed the metal spheres crashing to the floor.
Hunt waited for his opponent to float back together. He didn't know how much Floater could take before being seriously hurt. He just wanted to use the minimum force required to get the job done.
The Floater extended his piecemeal hands on invisible arms, grabbing at Hunt with its metal fingers. The Ringbearer leaped forward as the appendages tried to secure a stranglehold on his neck. He swung his fist at the swarming mass of balls. He passed through the cloud and through the wall, punching a hole to the outside. Instantly the spheres flew toward the sudden exit. Hunt flickered as he grabbed at one of the fleeing globes. Drawn eyes glared at him for the few seconds it took to dash the head into the warehouse floor. The parts dropped to the ground lifelessly.
"You could have just turned yourself in," Hunt said to his silenced foe. "Now I am going to have to take you down to the nearest station myself and make sure you can't escape custody."
3
Cory Chase followed his predecessor, glad for the chance to see what the man was like even if it was just a dream. The animated globes went in a box with steel bands wrapped around it. Hunt put the crate in the back of his car and drove it across town to the main police station. He parked his car a few blocks away from the place, and carried his prisoner to the doors of the place. He turned the Floater over to the sergeant on duty, and used his speed to vanish from the station house.
Chase's perspective shifted to follow Hunt without him actually having to move. It saved him the effort of keeping Hunt in sight, but it also restricted him to standing within arm's reach of the man. That put him on edge. He kept expecting the other Ringbearer to notice and start talking to him.
Hunt drove across town, his cloth mask in the glove box of his car. He put a chauffeur's cap on his head as he pulled to the curb in front of a night club lit up like a Christmas tree. Chase stood at the passenger's door, wondering what was going on.
Another Oliver Hunt stepped out of the club in a tuxedo, a lady on his arm. He opened the door for the woman so she could get in the back. Then he got in beside her, waving for the driver to pull away. The car started rolling as the twin kept his face obscured by his cap.
The Hunt in the back seat touched the driver's shoulder, and faded away. The tuxedo crumpled to the floorboard without a body to clothe.
"Did you catch the Floater?," the lady asked, leaning in the back seat.
"He's at the police station," said Hunt with a smile. "How was the dancing?"
"As if you didn't know," the passenger said, smiling. "I think you made some of the gentlemen in attendance jealous. I saw them eyeing you as we danced."
Hunt looked over his shoulder. He smiled wider before turning his attention back to the road ahead.
"I don't think they were looking at me," he said. "I think they wanted to trade what they had for you."
"I hope so," the woman said. "I paid a pretty penny for this dress so we could give you an alibi. I hope every woman on that floor ate their heart out when I passed."
"I have some company meetings I have to attend in the morning," Hunt said. "After that, the rest of my day is clear. What would you like to do?"
"I don't know," said the woman. "I'm supposed to help Millie Cartwright with her birthday party planning tomorrow. I don't know how long I'll be there. Why don't you come by her apartment after you're done and rescue me from durance vile?"
"We can go sailing on the bay," Hunt said.
"You're on," said the woman.
Chase frowned, wondering what had really happened.
4
The dream sped up as Cory Chase observed the events around him. He learned that the lady's name was Donna Drake, and Hunt was devoted to her. The future Ringbearer stood at Hunt's elbow as the dream's days became flashes of sight and sound.
Finally Hunt and Donna dressed in formal attire and drove to one of the ritzy hotels that didn't exist the last time Chase had passed through Cutter Bay. He followed them to the penthouse on the top floor. One look at the wide room full of guests told the dreamer that this was the last battlefield that the other man had fought on.
Chase felt a sense of foreboding as he looked at the happy couple mixing with the other attendees. Something had happened to Hunt to make him give up being the hero for the rest of his life, and Chase thought he knew what that was now.
The dream carried the Ringbearer forward even as he tried to wake up. It held him in its power, pushing him along as the party rushed to its demise. Some of these people never made it home from this fling for charity.
A window wall facing the ocean suddenly filled with monstrous things smashing the glass aside as they invaded the rooftop apartment. Chase studied them, noting the similarity between three of the things and the ones he had dealt with securing the stones he had in his ring. This might be the only chance he had to figure out how to counter the things when he eventually met them himself.
The monsters started attacking the guests with their various powers. One man was set on fire by the Devil as it flew around the room. The Knight of Wands beat on anyone close with its floating batons. A flying roulette wheel sliced through the floor in front of the entourage as a tuxedo wearing man with a white hood rode the serpent into the room.
Chase noticed that Hunt had directed Donna to the door, as he pulled the cloth mask he used for a disguise from his jacket. He tied it over his face as he rushed forward to deal with his enemy's intrusion.
Hunt was smiling as he crossed the room.
Cory Chase stood, knowing what was going to happen from the clipping Thomas Chantry had unearthed. He didn't need to watch the disaster that was going to/had already happened.
He knew why Oliver Hunt had given up being the Ringbearer.
Caught in the dream, he couldn't force himself awake to stop the events from unfolding in front of him.
The smiling Hunt grabbed the Devil with armored hands. He used the burning monster as a club on the spinning roulette wheel. The disc caught fire in an instant. It burned fast as it sought to slice the faster Ringbearer. Hunt flung the stunned creature he held at the Knight of Wands, as he leaped at a man in a robe, holding a lantern in his hand.
Hunt seized the lantern in one hand as he swung with the other. The Hermit flew through the air from the punch, cratering a wall. Hunt flung the lantern down. He stamped on the candle inside until the small flame was out.
Chase checked his phantom watch. His predecessor had taken out two of the twelve monsters in that many seconds. The Devil and the Knight were tangled up, and trying to get back in the action. Chase made a note of the two weaknesses he had spotted in case he had to use Hunt's methods on the next monsters he encountered.
The man he was facing would be taken by surprise if he hadn't changed the formula making his own creations.
Hunt turned to the serpent. Its huge maw dropped down on top of him. He waited for it to cover him, before he straightened his body inside the jaws. The former Ringbearer burst through the top of the beast's head like a bullet. Purple ichor dripped from his ruined tuxedo as he grabbed a crowned rider with a giant sword by the neck and threw him into the hermit stuck in the wall. Hunt used the large blade to pin the two together in a death throe.
One of the monsters, a woman in a crusader's tabard, gestured with a ringed hand. Light sparked from the air, forming a bee swarm as it encircled Hunt. The bewitched light lifted the Ringbearer off the ground, holding him in place, as the rest of the creatures and their creator regrouped from the sudden onslaught that had made their advance stumble to a halt.
"It's time for you to die, Ringbearer," said Dylan Trail, the Tarot. "Once I have your ring, I can turn my eye to the other artifacts on my list."
Cory Chase reminded himself that he was watching a dream. He didn't know why he had been given this recalled memory, but suspected it had something to do with the ring he wore. The three jewels he had amassed glittered in sympathy with the recollected version that Oliver Hunt wore.
The monsters Tarot commanded struck at the panicked bystanders in the crowd as the Empress held Hunt off the floor. His cloth mask didn't hide the hatred and anger in his eyes as he struggled against the force holding him. His great strength was stymied by the lack of leverage from floating in the air.
Trail laughed out loud as he watched his captive.
Then the Tarot stopped laughing, surprised and shocked by what Hunt had decided to do.
The Ringbearer split in two, separating as Chase and Trail watched. The duplicate fell outside the sparkling cage, free to exact Hunt's anger on his enemy. An invisible movement and devastating blow sent the lady in the cross decorated tunic flying straight through the ceiling. The other Hunt landed lightly on his feet, claws extending from his hands as he leaped at a court jester. Both went down in a flurry of movement. Hunt left his motley foe trying to hold the ribbons of his face together.
The twins fought through the crowd until they were close enough to merge into one again. Blood covered Hunt's tuxedo as he literally smashed the creatures and foes that tried to halt his rampage. Trail retreated, using his creations as a screen as he headed for the opening he had carved to enter the room from outside the building.
Chase knew that the Tarot was too late to get clear as the last creature fell.
Hunt's hand fell on the back of his enemy's neck, picking him up in the air with casual ease. He squeezed until Trail's neck crackled into dust under his grip. Chase turned away, knowing why tears dripped from the hero's eyes.
There was nothing he could do about that.
Hunt dropped the corpse. He turned, walking across the wreckage carefully. His bloodstained hands lifted Donna's lifeless body from where it fell. He screamed silently as he held his lost love to his chest, rocking back and forth in agony.
Epilogue
Cory Chase snapped awake as the train bounced along a bridge fast enough to blur the ground below it. He rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up fully before trying to make a decision about something to eat, or drink, in the dining car forward from where he sat. A yawn escaped him as he stretched his upper body out.
His eyes fell on the clippings' envelope. It might have been a dream, but he was sure that he had actually stood in the past, experiencing what his benefactor had suffered from Dylan Trail's persecution. That one encounter had ended both men's careers, and public faces.
Chase was sure that his predecessor's career would have been longer if the love of his life had not been killed while he had been trying to exterminate the monsters from the cards Trail had used in his crusade. He might not have been given the ring with its empty settings and trouble following in its wake.
Chase put the yellow papers away, made sure his duffle was still secure before he got to his feet. Some grub would go down nicely while he wrote what he could remember about his dream. If the new Tarot decided to attack in mass while he was still gathering the rest of the jewels for the ring, he would be killed while he was trying to think of a tactic to use to defend himself from the onslaught.
Chase headed for the dining car. He wanted to fill up before getting off in Reagan City. That was where the next gem hid according to Jack Dragon's list. That was where he would have to catch another train west when he had gotten that jewel.
No monster was going to get in his way.