Post by The Wonderful Wachter on Jan 1, 2012 18:34:00 GMT -5
Ultimate Captain Marvel and The Shadowpact #2
I Keep Having Dreams…
By C_Miller
2 Years Ago…
“What’s his story, Mel?” Dr. Kent V. Nelson asked his assistant, a hand unconsciously brushing her back as he gazed into a padded cell that housed a boy who was no older than ten. He didn’t look distraught and he didn’t move. He just stared blankly at the wall, sitting in the corner with his arms wrapped around his knees.
Dr. Nelson’s assistant, Melissa Ortiz shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. The police found him and brought him in as a runaway… then he started talking about wizards, magic, and history. They brought him to us almost immediately.”
Kent nodded affirmatively. “And since my Uncle was a well known crackpot bent on proving the existence of magic to the world, they naturally send him to me…”
Ortiz rolled her eyes. “You’re also the best child psychologist in Fawcett City, maybe all of Iowa when dealing with abused children.” Dr. Nelson gave her a confused look and then turned his gaze back to the boy. “The hospital told us that he was covered in bruises and there was evidence of poorly set bones.”
A look of sympathy washed over Kent Nelson’s face. “I… I… didn’t know.”
“There’s no way you could have… I’m pretty sure mind-reading falls under your skepticism too, Scully.” She said sarcastically as she walked away leaving Dr. Nelson in the hallway alone with Will Batson.
A few moments later, Kent opened the cell and they relocated to his office. Dr. Nelson’s office was warm and inviting, not at all like the rest of the Asylum, which took an extreme utilitarian and Spartan design. Apparently Iowa had a lot of mentally ill people. But that didn’t stop Dr. Nelson from creating the best office he could with a large amount of texts lining the walls, an elegant Persian Rug in the center of the room and a handmade cherry wood desk in the corner. The other noteworthy feature was a fireplace that already had a fire going.
“Now, William, please have a seat.” Dr. Nelson indicated towards an overstuffed leather chair that was situated near the fireplace. Will nodded and complied as Dr. Nelson gathered his notes and joined him. “So, William, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”
The boy remained silent for several moments while gazing intently at the fire. “Will.”
“Excuse me?”
He looked up at his psychiatrist with fire in his eyes. “My name is Will. Not William.”
“I’m sorry. Let me take note of that. So… tell me about yourself.”
A devilish smile spread across Will’s face. “I’m the champion of the Wizard Shazam and I am here to save the world. You’re going to help me.”
Dr. Nelson squinted his eyes at his young patient. “I am?”
Will nodded affirmatively without hesitation. “Of course you are. You’re the nephew of Doctor Fate. We magical beings have to stick together.” A faraway look crossed the boy’s face and he stared somewhere around five miles past Kent’s head. “I think I was Doctor Fate once.”
Dr. Nelson continued to write every word that Will said in his journal. Most of the other Doctor’s at the Mental Asylum had resorted to computers or recording sessions, but Dr. Nelson was somewhat of a Luddite when it came to modern technologies. He preferred the simplicity of a pen and paper. “Will, I’m sorry, but can we stick to your real life… your Uncle wants you back and I need to make an evaluation before that can happen.”
“I’m not going back there.”
Dr. Nelson’s ears instantly perked up at the potential breakthrough he made with his young patient. “Why is that?” Will flashed his psychiatrist a mean look as he slowly lifted his shirt, revealing a large bruise over his rib cage. “Oh my God, Will, how did you get that?”
Will continued to focus on the Doctor with a dangerous look on his face. “Why don’t you ask my Uncle when he gets here? I’m sure he’d love to tell you… although I will have gotten out by then.”
“I know how it may seem like I’m trying to “get” you, but that’s not the case. Not at all. At the end of the day, I just want to help you get better.” Dr. Nelson tried to sound as sympathetic as possible.
The look on Will’s face shifted for a split second, but quickly shifted back to the angry gaze. “What does that mean? Do you even know? It seems to me that get better to you means to forget about what I am. You may be able to do that, but I can’t. I’m not a coward.”
To Dr. Kent Nelson, Will was not a child sitting in front of him, but something more. It was as if he were wise beyond years, maybe even an old man trapped inside the body of a child. It wasn’t as if he spoke like any nine year old he had ever met. Quite the opposite in fact. But that was crazy talk. He vigorously shook his head to parish the thought.
“Son, I think we’ve had enough for today.”
***
Later that night, Kent couldn’t get Will out of his head. There was just something about the boy that ate at him and he wasn’t the type of person who could easily hide his feelings. His wife instantly realized that something was wrong.
“Marissa, I don’t know what it was about him, I just see his face everytime I close my eyes…” Kent put his head in his hands and rubbed his face vigorously.
His wife reached out across the table and rubbed his hand lovingly. “What did he tell you?”
“He said that he was The Champion of the Wizard Shazam and that he was going to save the world with my help. I’ve heard a lot of pure insanity in my time, but that’s about as worse as I’ve gotten and you could tell… he believed every word of it.”
Marissa sighed. “And what makes it so hard to believe?”
Kent took his face from his hands and looked up at his wife. “You can’t be serious? Wizards? Champions? Saving the world, really?”
“You remember what happened in Central City last year. How do you explain that one?” She was clearly referring to the tears in reality that had been created by Professor Eobard Thawne, which led to the death of The Flash.
Kent shrugged. “I can’t. I’m not a physicist or a natural scientist. I’m sure there’s some explanation. That’s been the problem with society since its inception. People are too quick to call things magic that they don’t understand.”
His wife rolled her eyes in exasperation. She got up from the table, taking her plate and glass and brought them to the sink where she aggressively began to wash them and put them away. “You’re so closed minded, Kent. The reason that you’re called the best child psychologist in Fawcett City is because you squash any type of belief in the impossible out of these kids. Have you ever thought that that method might not actually help?”
Kent shot up out of his chair, throwing a defiant stare towards his wife. “I don’t tell you how to run a library, you will NOT tell me out to treat my patients.”
“This goes far beyond your patients, Kent. This is about you. Why do you find it so hard to believe these things?”
Kent looked up at his wife in disbelief. “Are you saying that you believe in magic and wizards and all that?”
Marissa exasperatedly rolled her eyes and sighed. “No.” She collected her thoughts and started again. “Every day we see things that defy explanation. Like The Flash. Like Sandman who can teleport or Proton who could shrink. How is it that a wizard who works through a boy is that hard to picture?”
Kent closed his eyes in anger to settle himself down. “I… I just can’t.”
“And what of your Uncle? He spent his whole life trying to get people to believe in magic.”
Kent let out a cynical chuckle. “My Uncle? My Uncle was an embarrassment. My Dad almost resorted to changing our names… no, my Uncle is not the person you want to bring up here.”
“But you were named after him.”
The psychologist simply shook his head. “I was named after my grandfather, Kent Nelson. His son was just in between… unfortunately. Look, my Uncle is a really sore subject, can we drop it.”
Marissa sweetly smiled at him. “Of course, honey. Here, I’ll give you a backrub tonight.”
A twinge of guilt flashed through Kent’s gut. A feeling he quickly squashed and hid from his face.
***
Dr. Kent V. Nelson arrived at the Asylum at noon as he did every Thursday and Friday, but rather than stop by his office first, he made a b-line for Will Batson’s padded cell, where he was staring at the same spot on the wall as the day before.
“Hello, Will. Did you sleep well?” Kent asked, making idle conversation to try and connect with the boy.
With a non-phasing expression, Will looked up at Dr. Nelson and nodded. Knowing that he wasn’t going to get much more, he opened up the cell and guided his young patient to the office.
When they got there, Will plopped on the couch in front of the television, which Kent noted was the first thing that he had done that reflected his age. “Doc, does this TV work?”
Cautiously, Kent walked over to the TV and switched it on. “Here’s the remote, Will. I need a few minutes to get things ready. But when I do, you’ll need to turn this off so we can have our session.”
Will nodded, but grabbed his doctor’s hand before he could walk away. “I want to show you something.”
The doctor turned around and eyed his patient intently. “What is it, son?”
Will glared fiercely at the television set and then closed his eyes. “The Office. The episode where Jim impersonates Dwight.” He clicked the remote down a channel and sure enough that’s what was on. “Star Trek: The Next Generation. Riker just told Worf to fire on the Borg Ship with Captain Picard. It’s not working though.” He clicked again and an image of the USS Enterprise blasting a Borg Ship with the Deflector danced across the screen. “The Price is Right, The Daily Show, Press Conference from Keystone City,” he said as he rapidly pushed numbers into the remote and he was right every time.
He stopped on the press conference from Keystone City while Kent looked on with a shocked yet curious look of disbelief spread across his face while a wide grin came on Will’s. “How are you doing this?”
“Magic.” Will replied with a matter-of-fact tone. With a look of innocence on his face, he looked up at Dr. Nelson. “The new Flash… The Girl, she’s about to tell the world who she is. She’s going to say, ‘My name is Jessica Garrick, daughter of the first Flash and student of the second and right now, I’m The Flash. Keystone City deserves the opportunity to look its protector in the eye.”
Kent’s jaw dropped as she repeated word for word what Will had said not two seconds ago. “My… God…”
“Do you believe me?” All Kent could do was shake his head vigorously, leading Will to roll his eyes. “Fine… SHAZAM!” A bolt of lightning shot through the room and blasted Will in the chest. Kent looked away to shield his eyes and when he looked back at Will, there was a Wizard looking man standing in his place.
“Wh… who are you?”
The man stuck his hand out in a calming gesture. “I am Hallow. One of Will’s forms of magic. I get my power from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. This is the form I take when I channel through Zeus… I needed to prove to you my magic.”
“I don’t. . . don’t believe you.” Kent hung his head. “You’ve done nothing to make me believe you’re not just a Meta.”
The old wizard smiled sadly and shouted Shazam once more, leaving just the boy. “True. But you will one day. One day, your magic will rival Hallow’s and together, we will save the world.”
Edging his hand toward the underside of his desk, Kent earned a frown from Will. While he wasn’t scared of the boy, the presence of powers was above his pay grade. What’s more, the boy truly believed. The asylum wasn’t equipped… Why was he in an asylum? This… smelled like a con-game.
“I suppose you’re right on that one,” Will nodded as though he were answering Kent’s thoughts, “However, I hate to break it to you… I broke out of here four hours ago.” With that the image of Will began to fade as Kent dove to try and keep Will from disappearing, but there was no avail.
“Did I just… what just… oh God.”
Just then there was a knock at the door. Kent opened the door and there was a man there with a blue costume that was highlighted by yellow boots, gloves and briefs. The other discernable feature was a large gold helmet that disgusted him entirely. “Kent, my boy, it’ been a long time.”
“Who the hell are you?” Kent asked with a clear defiant attitude, which was mostly a coping mechanism designed to deal with strangers.
“Excuse me?” Mel, his assistant, exclaimed in disbelief.
The gold helmeted man was gone. In his place was the young woman. “I’m… I’m sorry. Been a strange day. What’s this?”
The woman handed him a piece of paper. “I found this in Batson’s room. His empty room. It was meant for you.”
“You don’t say?” Kent paused to control his heart rate before glancing down.
Of course, it was a picture of the gold helmeted man. Two actually. One depicted what Kent had imagined, the other was a more streamlined look. Will had filled in the sides with his thoughts such as getting rid of the briefs and making the cape bigger. Add abs cause even a Lord of Order needs to be ripped.
“What does it mean?”
“It means a highly delusional boy with unimaginable power escaped without anyone ever noticing.”
“Doctor?”
Kent did not elaborate. “How bout we go for lunch?”
The twinge of guilt flashed through Kent once more and like the night before, he squashed the emotion.
I Keep Having Dreams…
By C_Miller
2 Years Ago…
“What’s his story, Mel?” Dr. Kent V. Nelson asked his assistant, a hand unconsciously brushing her back as he gazed into a padded cell that housed a boy who was no older than ten. He didn’t look distraught and he didn’t move. He just stared blankly at the wall, sitting in the corner with his arms wrapped around his knees.
Dr. Nelson’s assistant, Melissa Ortiz shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. The police found him and brought him in as a runaway… then he started talking about wizards, magic, and history. They brought him to us almost immediately.”
Kent nodded affirmatively. “And since my Uncle was a well known crackpot bent on proving the existence of magic to the world, they naturally send him to me…”
Ortiz rolled her eyes. “You’re also the best child psychologist in Fawcett City, maybe all of Iowa when dealing with abused children.” Dr. Nelson gave her a confused look and then turned his gaze back to the boy. “The hospital told us that he was covered in bruises and there was evidence of poorly set bones.”
A look of sympathy washed over Kent Nelson’s face. “I… I… didn’t know.”
“There’s no way you could have… I’m pretty sure mind-reading falls under your skepticism too, Scully.” She said sarcastically as she walked away leaving Dr. Nelson in the hallway alone with Will Batson.
A few moments later, Kent opened the cell and they relocated to his office. Dr. Nelson’s office was warm and inviting, not at all like the rest of the Asylum, which took an extreme utilitarian and Spartan design. Apparently Iowa had a lot of mentally ill people. But that didn’t stop Dr. Nelson from creating the best office he could with a large amount of texts lining the walls, an elegant Persian Rug in the center of the room and a handmade cherry wood desk in the corner. The other noteworthy feature was a fireplace that already had a fire going.
“Now, William, please have a seat.” Dr. Nelson indicated towards an overstuffed leather chair that was situated near the fireplace. Will nodded and complied as Dr. Nelson gathered his notes and joined him. “So, William, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”
The boy remained silent for several moments while gazing intently at the fire. “Will.”
“Excuse me?”
He looked up at his psychiatrist with fire in his eyes. “My name is Will. Not William.”
“I’m sorry. Let me take note of that. So… tell me about yourself.”
A devilish smile spread across Will’s face. “I’m the champion of the Wizard Shazam and I am here to save the world. You’re going to help me.”
Dr. Nelson squinted his eyes at his young patient. “I am?”
Will nodded affirmatively without hesitation. “Of course you are. You’re the nephew of Doctor Fate. We magical beings have to stick together.” A faraway look crossed the boy’s face and he stared somewhere around five miles past Kent’s head. “I think I was Doctor Fate once.”
Dr. Nelson continued to write every word that Will said in his journal. Most of the other Doctor’s at the Mental Asylum had resorted to computers or recording sessions, but Dr. Nelson was somewhat of a Luddite when it came to modern technologies. He preferred the simplicity of a pen and paper. “Will, I’m sorry, but can we stick to your real life… your Uncle wants you back and I need to make an evaluation before that can happen.”
“I’m not going back there.”
Dr. Nelson’s ears instantly perked up at the potential breakthrough he made with his young patient. “Why is that?” Will flashed his psychiatrist a mean look as he slowly lifted his shirt, revealing a large bruise over his rib cage. “Oh my God, Will, how did you get that?”
Will continued to focus on the Doctor with a dangerous look on his face. “Why don’t you ask my Uncle when he gets here? I’m sure he’d love to tell you… although I will have gotten out by then.”
“I know how it may seem like I’m trying to “get” you, but that’s not the case. Not at all. At the end of the day, I just want to help you get better.” Dr. Nelson tried to sound as sympathetic as possible.
The look on Will’s face shifted for a split second, but quickly shifted back to the angry gaze. “What does that mean? Do you even know? It seems to me that get better to you means to forget about what I am. You may be able to do that, but I can’t. I’m not a coward.”
To Dr. Kent Nelson, Will was not a child sitting in front of him, but something more. It was as if he were wise beyond years, maybe even an old man trapped inside the body of a child. It wasn’t as if he spoke like any nine year old he had ever met. Quite the opposite in fact. But that was crazy talk. He vigorously shook his head to parish the thought.
“Son, I think we’ve had enough for today.”
***
Later that night, Kent couldn’t get Will out of his head. There was just something about the boy that ate at him and he wasn’t the type of person who could easily hide his feelings. His wife instantly realized that something was wrong.
“Marissa, I don’t know what it was about him, I just see his face everytime I close my eyes…” Kent put his head in his hands and rubbed his face vigorously.
His wife reached out across the table and rubbed his hand lovingly. “What did he tell you?”
“He said that he was The Champion of the Wizard Shazam and that he was going to save the world with my help. I’ve heard a lot of pure insanity in my time, but that’s about as worse as I’ve gotten and you could tell… he believed every word of it.”
Marissa sighed. “And what makes it so hard to believe?”
Kent took his face from his hands and looked up at his wife. “You can’t be serious? Wizards? Champions? Saving the world, really?”
“You remember what happened in Central City last year. How do you explain that one?” She was clearly referring to the tears in reality that had been created by Professor Eobard Thawne, which led to the death of The Flash.
Kent shrugged. “I can’t. I’m not a physicist or a natural scientist. I’m sure there’s some explanation. That’s been the problem with society since its inception. People are too quick to call things magic that they don’t understand.”
His wife rolled her eyes in exasperation. She got up from the table, taking her plate and glass and brought them to the sink where she aggressively began to wash them and put them away. “You’re so closed minded, Kent. The reason that you’re called the best child psychologist in Fawcett City is because you squash any type of belief in the impossible out of these kids. Have you ever thought that that method might not actually help?”
Kent shot up out of his chair, throwing a defiant stare towards his wife. “I don’t tell you how to run a library, you will NOT tell me out to treat my patients.”
“This goes far beyond your patients, Kent. This is about you. Why do you find it so hard to believe these things?”
Kent looked up at his wife in disbelief. “Are you saying that you believe in magic and wizards and all that?”
Marissa exasperatedly rolled her eyes and sighed. “No.” She collected her thoughts and started again. “Every day we see things that defy explanation. Like The Flash. Like Sandman who can teleport or Proton who could shrink. How is it that a wizard who works through a boy is that hard to picture?”
Kent closed his eyes in anger to settle himself down. “I… I just can’t.”
“And what of your Uncle? He spent his whole life trying to get people to believe in magic.”
Kent let out a cynical chuckle. “My Uncle? My Uncle was an embarrassment. My Dad almost resorted to changing our names… no, my Uncle is not the person you want to bring up here.”
“But you were named after him.”
The psychologist simply shook his head. “I was named after my grandfather, Kent Nelson. His son was just in between… unfortunately. Look, my Uncle is a really sore subject, can we drop it.”
Marissa sweetly smiled at him. “Of course, honey. Here, I’ll give you a backrub tonight.”
A twinge of guilt flashed through Kent’s gut. A feeling he quickly squashed and hid from his face.
***
Dr. Kent V. Nelson arrived at the Asylum at noon as he did every Thursday and Friday, but rather than stop by his office first, he made a b-line for Will Batson’s padded cell, where he was staring at the same spot on the wall as the day before.
“Hello, Will. Did you sleep well?” Kent asked, making idle conversation to try and connect with the boy.
With a non-phasing expression, Will looked up at Dr. Nelson and nodded. Knowing that he wasn’t going to get much more, he opened up the cell and guided his young patient to the office.
When they got there, Will plopped on the couch in front of the television, which Kent noted was the first thing that he had done that reflected his age. “Doc, does this TV work?”
Cautiously, Kent walked over to the TV and switched it on. “Here’s the remote, Will. I need a few minutes to get things ready. But when I do, you’ll need to turn this off so we can have our session.”
Will nodded, but grabbed his doctor’s hand before he could walk away. “I want to show you something.”
The doctor turned around and eyed his patient intently. “What is it, son?”
Will glared fiercely at the television set and then closed his eyes. “The Office. The episode where Jim impersonates Dwight.” He clicked the remote down a channel and sure enough that’s what was on. “Star Trek: The Next Generation. Riker just told Worf to fire on the Borg Ship with Captain Picard. It’s not working though.” He clicked again and an image of the USS Enterprise blasting a Borg Ship with the Deflector danced across the screen. “The Price is Right, The Daily Show, Press Conference from Keystone City,” he said as he rapidly pushed numbers into the remote and he was right every time.
He stopped on the press conference from Keystone City while Kent looked on with a shocked yet curious look of disbelief spread across his face while a wide grin came on Will’s. “How are you doing this?”
“Magic.” Will replied with a matter-of-fact tone. With a look of innocence on his face, he looked up at Dr. Nelson. “The new Flash… The Girl, she’s about to tell the world who she is. She’s going to say, ‘My name is Jessica Garrick, daughter of the first Flash and student of the second and right now, I’m The Flash. Keystone City deserves the opportunity to look its protector in the eye.”
Kent’s jaw dropped as she repeated word for word what Will had said not two seconds ago. “My… God…”
“Do you believe me?” All Kent could do was shake his head vigorously, leading Will to roll his eyes. “Fine… SHAZAM!” A bolt of lightning shot through the room and blasted Will in the chest. Kent looked away to shield his eyes and when he looked back at Will, there was a Wizard looking man standing in his place.
“Wh… who are you?”
The man stuck his hand out in a calming gesture. “I am Hallow. One of Will’s forms of magic. I get my power from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. This is the form I take when I channel through Zeus… I needed to prove to you my magic.”
“I don’t. . . don’t believe you.” Kent hung his head. “You’ve done nothing to make me believe you’re not just a Meta.”
The old wizard smiled sadly and shouted Shazam once more, leaving just the boy. “True. But you will one day. One day, your magic will rival Hallow’s and together, we will save the world.”
Edging his hand toward the underside of his desk, Kent earned a frown from Will. While he wasn’t scared of the boy, the presence of powers was above his pay grade. What’s more, the boy truly believed. The asylum wasn’t equipped… Why was he in an asylum? This… smelled like a con-game.
“I suppose you’re right on that one,” Will nodded as though he were answering Kent’s thoughts, “However, I hate to break it to you… I broke out of here four hours ago.” With that the image of Will began to fade as Kent dove to try and keep Will from disappearing, but there was no avail.
“Did I just… what just… oh God.”
Just then there was a knock at the door. Kent opened the door and there was a man there with a blue costume that was highlighted by yellow boots, gloves and briefs. The other discernable feature was a large gold helmet that disgusted him entirely. “Kent, my boy, it’ been a long time.”
“Who the hell are you?” Kent asked with a clear defiant attitude, which was mostly a coping mechanism designed to deal with strangers.
“Excuse me?” Mel, his assistant, exclaimed in disbelief.
The gold helmeted man was gone. In his place was the young woman. “I’m… I’m sorry. Been a strange day. What’s this?”
The woman handed him a piece of paper. “I found this in Batson’s room. His empty room. It was meant for you.”
“You don’t say?” Kent paused to control his heart rate before glancing down.
Of course, it was a picture of the gold helmeted man. Two actually. One depicted what Kent had imagined, the other was a more streamlined look. Will had filled in the sides with his thoughts such as getting rid of the briefs and making the cape bigger. Add abs cause even a Lord of Order needs to be ripped.
“What does it mean?”
“It means a highly delusional boy with unimaginable power escaped without anyone ever noticing.”
“Doctor?”
Kent did not elaborate. “How bout we go for lunch?”
The twinge of guilt flashed through Kent once more and like the night before, he squashed the emotion.