"Please, I don't have much. My profession is overrated. You can have my wallet, see? Take whatever you want."

  I fished my wallet form my inner jacket pocket, holding it out with one hand while I cringed away, closing my eyes. You may laugh, but I doubt you would have done differently.

  The steam-powered centaur burst out laughing. Was it not enough? Was he going to drag me away to work in some mine as I'd heard some of the villains did to get the materials they needed for their weaponry? I felt the ground under my feet, but was in such a state that I didn't recognize it and let my legs crumple beneath me. He held me in place for a moment until I opened my eyes and took control of my own balance.

  "I'm not a mugger, my friend. I'm just helping out the gendarmes. They are undermanned and if you've read the papers you know that the more famous heroes are at the Romanian front. I do what I can here." I nodded dumbly for a moment. "Did you need an escort home?" I shook my head, still stunned. "All right, then go straight home. Stay safe." The other backed up, his four mechanical legs moving just as real horses do, only louder and accompanied by small puffs of steam.

  The episode shook me. What if he had been a mugger? A thug, even a completely normal man with just a knife? What could I have done? What use would I be? The thought of doing something had already implanted itself in my psyche. I see that now. I started feeling like I needed to be able to defend myself. I began doodling things I knew I could move around with my breezes. I stayed up well beyond my usual sleeping time, drawing star shapes which I envisioned would rise up in clouds, distracting, perhaps delivering small cuts or pin pricks with needles sticking from the edges.

  It helped me sleep, anyway. When I looked at them in the morning, I knew I could do better. It wasn't until later that day, sitting at my desk, that I got inspiration for a new design. The pigeon came back, resting on the sill and for a test of my range and to see if I could push it that hard, I waved it off the windowsill from my chair. It squawked, surprised, and fell out the window. Feathers spiraled to the floor. I pushed them up, shot them forward. Beyond, I saw the pigeon catch its air and soar away. I let the feathers drop. I had never really watched birds fly, but I saw it flap its wings a few times, then glide along on the air.

  That afternoon, I left the office early. I was tired from the night's events, but I also had a goal in mind: the library. The bird had reminded me of flight and the childhood heroes who had directed me toward my original study of engineering: Daedalus and Leonard DaVinci. I located books on the latter's designs for flying machines and bird- and bat-like wings and started drawing my own designs.

  I began by following DaVinci's math, but realized I had an advantage. I didn't need to rely on normal winds to sustain my weight and that of my equipment. I could generate my own winds, and could employ a smaller wing, a lighter structure. I looked back at my notebook and saw designs for not just the wings, but symbols for the chest of the uniform. I finally chose a swirl of wind in the form of an ‘a’. I would be Aeolus, Master of the Winds! I do love my Greek mythology, after all.

  *****

  Two weeks later, I had built the wings and harness and painted my ‘a’ symbol on a leather long coat, which would also house a tail frame for more control. I used one of the company warehouses to test the suit.

  I stood in the dark warehouse, only a few lanterns lit so I could see to fly. A crate gave me a few feet of altitude to help me begin. I leapt a few times, feeling the wind swirl around me, begin to buoy me up, but landing near the other end of the fifty foot long open floor.

  I was sure I was mad, looking at the lofts, thinking of jumping off at ten or twenty feet. Surely if my wings failed, I would be injured. Was I Farley Carnaise now? I told myself my bat-like wings were more than a blanket. I reasoned that I had this power and it would save me.

  I climbed the ladder to the third level, stood between crates marked with letter codes I recognized, but didn't know the meaning of. Turning, I stepped to the edge, then back a few strides. I would give myself some momentum, anyway. I ran forward and leapt again, willing the winds to bear me up. I fell, my fear grabbing hold of my heart as I plummeted, but managed to thrust outward at the last moment, pushing my upper body away from the flagstone floor. Rafters spun into view far above.

  The next thing I recalled was the clash of metal on stone echoing through the huge chamber and a throbbing pain in the rear of my skull as I struggled to sit up.

  "You again," a familiar voice accused. I had designed a helmet and mask, but neglected to don them as I didn't think I would be seen. I had apparently also not considered the possibility of flying headlong into something. Hindsight....

  I thrust myself to my feet with the aid of my ability and stood, unsteadily, facing the massive centaur.

  "Hello again," I said.

  "And are you just on your way home again? Late night at the office?"

  "That was all true. In fact, this warehouse is owned by my company."

  "Mmm, doing inventory, then?" the other asked pointedly.

  "No, I was just... hey now! Are you suggesting I am stealing?"

  "And your much more logical explanation for being here in the middle of the night is?" he prompted.

  "Testing out my new suit."

  "Mmmm," he said again. "And what are you supposed to be, then? A superhero, or a supervillain?"

  "I admit, I'm no Silver Cane, but-" The brute burst out in laughter again. By this time, I was getting annoyed with his accusations. My temper overwhelmed me. Before I knew it, I was in the air, circling above the centaur's head, looking on the great shelves for something I could throw down at him. I found a small crate with an unmistakable profile stamped on the side and threw it down to smash open on the stone floor.

  "Ha, is that all you can do? You missed terribly!" The other continued to laugh, only egging me on.

  Leaping off the platform, I felt the rush of wind around me, buoying me up and raising over a hundred brass-pointed darts into a swarm of painful, if not deadly, stings. The cloud of wood, feather and metal shifted to my whim as I rose twenty, thirty feet farther into the air and hovered. The brute still laughed, his eyes closed or tearing up so that he did not see my silent squadron. I loosed a handful at him, guiding them around his armor, piercing his arms and abdomen.

  "Hey! That hurt! What did y- Oh, hey now, it was just a joke. I- Ow! Look, now! Stop!" The other bent and picked up the wreckage of the crate and threw it, but I brushed the tangle of wood aside with my winds, smashing it against a heavy pillar between storage areas. The pieces fell, but I caught them and flung them toward the centaur. Most fell away, but one jammed in his gearworks, a nail grinding the mechanisms to a halt. His left side dipped, paralyzed and unable to hold his weight. "I give up!"

  I dropped back down to the twenty-foot platform, piling the darts to either side of my feet. He tried to pull the nail and wood from the mechanism, but couldn't reach. He turned his great spear against the obstruction, but his own armor stymied him. I watched him struggle for a moment and remembered how he had let me go the night we'd met, how he'd said he was helping out the gendarmes. I had little to go on but instinct. Leaving the darts behind, I swooped down and landed beside him, reaching around the steel haunch and taking hold of the shard of wood and iron. I pulled, I twisted. I wasn't strong enough to relieve him.

  "I'm going to shift my weight. Perhaps that will free it," The other suggested. I nodded, watching him lean over to his other side, the whine of machinery quieting, almost vanishing. I took hold of the broken plank again and managed to wrench it free. "Thanks, I call myself Chiron. And you?"

  "Ha, like Hercules' mentor, yes, very nice. I'm Aeolus."

  "An apt name."

  "I don't suppose you have an exceedingly strong sidekick who wears a lion skin cloak, then?"

  "Sadly, no. It's just me. There are a few others in Rouen, but we... don't get along. So you work for DeJardins?"

  "I'm a bookkeeper." I nodded. "And you?" I asked.

  "Books as well, but I sell them rather than scribing numbers in them. I was an engineer, once. That's how I built all this." He indicated the horse-like mechanical quadruped, which once again rose to full height.

  "It's quite impressive. I had an interest in engineering when I was younger. I was steered away from the field in favor of more 'acceptable' pursuits."

  "Acceptable to whom?"

  "My father, mostly," I admitted.

  "Does he approve of you flying around a warehouse in the late hours?"

  "I think it's obvious the point here was to practice unseen. Clearly, that hasn't worked out very well."

  That's when the shots rang out. A hail of bullets came from the door Chiron had left open on his way in. Most of the bullets flew wide, striking wooden beams and crates, throwing splinters and pulverized wood into the air. A few of them struck Chiron's armored body, sending up sparks. One ricocheting into a lantern. It exploded in a burst of light. A liquid curtain of fire splashed down along the wall and pooled on the flagstones.

  When I realized what was happening, I ducked behind Chiron and sent wind up to the darts I'd left above. A troupe of men and women, seven in all, entered the shifting light in an untidy array, spreading out to stand in an arc before the doorway. Each had a pair of pistols or some kind of two-handed guns with monstrous protuberances underneath or on the sides which I learned later held excessive numbers of bullets.

  My heart rate, having slowed while speaking calmly with Chiron, now sped up as I’d never felt it before. My face flushed, my chest worked to give me enough air and pump my blood so hard I thought that itself would propel me into the air. Heat from the fire joined with my own as I began to perspire in my leather suit.

  Behind the small army, two more figures strode out of the night. One wore a wide-brimmed hat with a ridiculously large purple plume rising from one side of the band. She looked like a cross between a musketeer and a pirate, with leather boots that challenged her knees and a subtly gleaming silk blouse, also in purple. The other was like a man made of iron. A steam engine poured white and black clouds into the air behind it. He whirred and clanked behind armor plates.

  "And who 'ave we 'ere, then? We saw an open door and thought we'd take a survey for valuables. Didn't expect no competition," The woman said with a British accent.

  "There's nothing for you here," Chiron said. "Just take your little traveling circus down the road, or better yet, retire before you end up in jail."

  As he spoke, he turned to face the newcomers. This left me in plain view. I wondered idly if I could generate a strong enough wind to blow bullets off course.

  "It appears there is quite a lot of potential value here. I see many crates and not much to stop us from taking them," the armored one said in a hollow voice which seemed male, but the suit muffled it enough to make any other distinction difficult.

  "I-" I began, cursing myself for not showing a strong face. This was why Papa steered me away from being a barrister. I tried again. "I can't allow that. I work for DeJardins."

  I stood up taller, putting my hands on my hips as I'd seen on comic book covers. I had never felt any particular loyalty toward my company or the family that founded it. Now that it was threatened, I felt a need growing inside me, a need to claim this fight as my own. I spread my arms dramatically, rising into the air, flying up faster than I intended. I felt the heat from the fire more intensely, realized it was augmenting my influence on the air.

  In response, the woman whipped off her hat, throwing it, spinning, toward me. I blew it away, unmindful of where it landed. In the fraction of a second this distracted me, great brown coils of hair rose from her head like snakes from Medusa's scalp. They reached out and grabbed the pillars, easily fifteen feet on either side of her lithe form, and drew her into the air above her team.

  Startled, I backed off, turning over in the air and concentrating on the barrage of darts I had readied. I took better position a few feet from the ceiling of the great warehouse and directed a dozen darts at Medusa, as I now thought of her. The woman swung out of the path of darts and a few of them slipped my winds' grip, flying toward the gun-toting infantry. The rest of the darts I managed to pull around for a second pass as Medusa flung herself straight toward me, feet first.

  I saw this coming too late to evade it. There were too many things to think about, my own flight, the darts, the soldiers below beginning to fire again as they dodged darts, and a charging Chiron, who made for the mechanical armor. I tried to lie back as I had done accidentally before, and received a heel to the shoulder and another to the cheek for my trouble. It stung and I fell, distracted further. I had given myself room to work, though, and regained my balance in the air, creating a trio of dart clouds, which circled Medusa as she regained her composition.

  I sent in one flight. Two of her braids released their grip on the rafters where she'd settled, batting most of the darts away. Even as they fell, though, I blew them back up toward her while sending in the second. I was learning. My aim was still in need of work, though, and Medusa was fast. Her hair defended her admirably. It allowed a few scratches here and there, but nothing to immobilize her. She even caught a few of the darts with her braids and sent them back at me, but the constant flow of wind I used to keep myself aloft blew these astray.

  The heat grew more intense as we battled, and smoke gathered between the rafters. A glance down showed almost half of the wall to the right of the doors engulfed. The goods in that whole area were beyond salvage. This reminded me of my true goal here and I reached out, throwing gusts from many sides, trying to smother the flames. This only created a torrent of yellow and orange, which leapt out from the wood, across the unarmored minions of these two villains. Screams went up, and not just from them. Chiron had taken a wave of the excessive heat.

  I relented, only to see that the fire had spread to the opposite wall. The entire place would be aflame in minutes. I had to end it. Above, Medusa choked on smoke, forced to lower herself down. This gave me an idea. I gathered the smoke and curled it into a tight whirlwind around her. The gagging increased for a few moments, was followed by a cry, and then she was falling.

  I watched for a moment, uncertain of what I should do. Heroes saved damsels, didn't they? Even if the damsels were misguided thieves? While I considered if I could rate myself such a hero, I stretched out a hand and slowed her descent. A moment later, a bullet tore through her chest, spraying blood up toward me. The blood was caught in the winds and spattered all over her, then hissed into the fire. I lowered her as quickly as I could without letting her simply drop. There was a chance she'd survive. Maybe this was her opportunity for redemption.

  Bullets continuing to fly, I turned toward the floor level of the battle. Chiron had an obvious burn across his right torso and arm. He reared up, kicking with metal hooves at the metal-covered man, keeping the other back, but doing no damage. I could see other dings, though. Either Chiron had landed a few strikes already, or his own minions’ bullets had hit him. The man was backed up to the wall, a few feet from the fire itself. As hot as I was in the leather, I can only imagine how hot he was in that suit. I noted Chiron's spear, broken in three pieces, scattered across the floor.

  I knocked the rest of the normal minions from their feet and shuffled them out the door into a heap. The fire still giving more power to my winds, I called to Chiron, "Step back!"

  He nodded, moving away from the metal suit. As he did, I swept the fire itself as I had done before accidentally. Flames wrapped around the suit, heating it quickly. Spots of metal armor turned red in a matter of seconds. The man tried to step forward, but Chiron kicked him back against the now burning boards. The red spots grew white.

  "The door!" I cried, swooping in that direction myself, darts I held in reserve falling like dead birds from the sky. We reached the doorway as the boiler powering the suit exploded, propelling us out into the night. I went through the wood of the door, breaking my arm. This was an irony I appreciated as I lay face down in the street, barely holding onto consciousness. I heard a crash and crunch and screech of metal legs doing likewise nearby. An alarm rang out. The fire brigade knew they had work, but they wouldn't arrive to save any part of the building or cargo.

  The explosion had blown a hole in the wall, destroying the offices and knocking out boards from the outer wall into the alleyway. The force drew fire through the offices, up the outside of the building and onto the next. The fire brigade was able to save the building next door, but the DeJardins warehouse and all the goods within were destroyed. Medusa's body, they say, was utterly incinerated. No trace of her was found.

  A few of the minions escaped, rising to their feet and stumbling away before the gendarmes arrived. Neither Chiron nor I were in any shape to stop them.

  *****

  Weeks have passed, now. My arm is on the mend and the tide seems to be turning in Romania. I've been working on redesigning Chiron's horse aspect as well as incorporating a burner of some sort into my suit, perhaps utilizing some of the concepts from the mechanized armor suit, augmented by my own pneumatic powers. I'm thinking of changing my hero name to Turbine since a number of those devices have come up in our sketches. Maybe I'll add a cape as well. No, I don't want to be called The Kite.

  Blastbucket

  Christopher J. Valin

  Of course everyone thought it was a mechanical man when they saw it. What else could it be? A metal giant stomping around and leaving a path of destruction wherever it went, capable of crushing a man’s skull between its hands.

  I know, ‘cause I saw it happen with my own eyes. As long as that thing was in the employ of the good guys it was all fine and dandy. But when it was on the other side, it was the scariest thing you ever saw. Painted black as a locomotive engine, with red glowing eyes and a plume of black smoke pouring out of its back, even the bravest cavalry officer or Indian warrior ran screaming when it went for them.