Cassie held out the latest issue of “Double V,” flipping the front half of the magazine under the back to make it easier to hold. She pointed to an article titled “Twelve Threats: New and Notable.”
Halfway down the list of new supervillains was a picture of a group of men and women with automatic rifles. Below the text it said:
Syndicate L: A growing criminal organization originating in the northeast but with connections throughout the country, it specializes in acquiring materials-both legal and illegal. Staffed primarily by normal, unmodified humans, it employs a few supers as hired muscle.
“We could take them,” she said. “Not the whole group, but definitely a local branch.”
I stood by my locker, flipping my eyes between the magazine and her face.
This was the part where (in her mind) I should now be saying, “Great, let’s go out tonight and take on organized crime.”
Or to put it another way, it was a totally crazy idea. I was about to tell her as much when one of her friends stepped out of the between classes crowd and stopped next to us.
“Hey Kayla.” Cassie pushed the magazine into my hands.
“Thanks for showing me the article, Nick,” she said, leading Kayla down the hall.
Kayla gave me an odd look, likely mystified as to why Cassie would be talking to me at all.
At that moment, I was living proof that knowledge did not bring peace of mind.
Last year she wouldn’t have been talking to me. We moved in different circles. Hers: girl jocks. Mine: smart kids who spend more time on odd projects like building trebuchets or robots than doing their actual schoolwork.
The latter circle, by the way, was a group of one.
That changed last summer. My grandfather had died in May; Cassie had called to find out how I was doing. She also asked if I knew what any of the others were doing and mostly I didn’t. With the official dissolution of the Grand Lake Heroes League and the deaths of all but two of its members, I didn’t know where to begin.
I visited her a few times though. She was on bed rest for half the summer due to receiving some kind of treatment. I guessed cancer, but she didn’t want to talk about it.
We did talk about our shared childhoods-picnics in the park near my grandfather’s lab, almost all of the heroes being grandparents now and their costumes packed away. The only exception to this being Cassie’s father (Captain Commando), who, thanks to an acute case of immortality, was still active more than fifty years after World War II.
I remembered him manning the grill, joking along with all the adults, but sometimes going silent and gazing off into the distance. In retrospect, I wondered what was going on. Was it just his temperament or was he reflecting on the fact that all his friends – all the people he would ever meet – would die soon and he would just continue living? If so, it was ironic that he would be blown up four years before my grandfather died.
Not that Cassie and I discussed that much.
“DVD Night” was her idea. Get together all the kids again, hang out, watch a movie and remember.
It was a success of a kind. Most of the kids were older than we are and had left town for one reason or another, but we managed to get four of us most weeks, sometimes a few more.
Cassie and I were regulars, of course, but we also had Daniel, son of Mindstryke and grandson of the Mentalist (another war buddy of grandpa’s), and Jaclyn, a granddaughter of Hotfoot. Sometimes one or another of Jaclyn’s older brothers would be there and sometimes the grandchildren of Red Lightning or the Night Wolf but nobody else I considered a friend.
In August, Cassie began to feel better. The treatments stopped and I began to realize what kind of treatments they were. They weren’t treatments for cancer. They were treatments for being normal and she had definitely been cured.
She spent one week completely awake, occupying herself by doing things like running to and from Jericho, a town forty miles up the coast of Lake Michigan. Unlike Hotfoot or his grandchildren, she wasn’t spectacularly fast, so it really did take her most of the night.
I remember running into her at DVD night the next day.
“You’re… okay?” I said after hearing about what she’d done.
“I’m not just okay,” she said, “I’m not even tired.”
A couple weeks after that she signed up at the studio where I took martial arts. If this were any normal martial arts studio, I’d undoubtedly be telling you how she shocked the teacher with her intense focus and inhuman level of athletic ability, but it was not a normal studio.
So I’ll just tell you that she fit in-better than I did, actually. When I wasn’t wearing my grandfather’s armored suit, I didn’t have any powers.
Not having powers wasn’t a problem though. Unlike Cassie, I had no intention of going out in the night and fighting crime.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Interesting. I’m looking forward to more about their history – the league the parents/grandparents belonged to, etc.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:36 am
This was the part where (in her mind) I should now be saying, “Great, let’s go out tonight and take on organized crime.”
Hehehe
This was a nice, clean start.
The inclusion of so much information this early could have felt really clunky, but don’t worry, it was smooth.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
[...] browsing through the list of blooks I had earmarked as ‘must read’. I caught up with The Legion of Nothing and The Mutants, and then I returned to Pages Unbound for an inkling on how the blooking world was [...]
May 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[...] however, is the lack of visual identity a majority of these blooks possess. A prime example is The Legion Of Nothing, a work I love and one that I’ve been following religiously over the past few weeks. [...]
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
[...] Jim Zoetewey (writes The Legion Of Nothing) [...]
July 24th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
/The only exception to this being Cassie’s father (Captain Commando), who, thanks to an acute case of immortality, was still active more than forty years after World War II./
Teehee. I don’t know why I love that line, but I do.
I have just one question, though. Not to nitpick, but it’s at least 60 years after WW2 now, unless this is set in the 80′s, which I’m guessing it’s not because there are DVDs.
Sometimes you’ll trip up your tenses, but they’re easy to miss. It’s a bad habit I’m always having to make up for as well.
Otherwise it’s a solid set-up. I’m going to continue reading now…
(ZOMG! I’m actually getting around to reading stuff! XD)
July 24th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Huh. Amazing how you’re the first person to catch that (and how I er… didn’t).
I probably should have said more than fifty years ago since I’m imagining that particular scene from being when Nick’s 5 or so.
I trip up in tense more in the earlier chapters than later. I should go back and fix that at some point.
Thanks for checking things out.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I really enjoyed reading the first chapter. It’s original and catchy, I liked it. I guess I’m a little behind, though so I’ve got some catching up to do.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Thanks for checking it out.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
Yay, more online superhero fiction! Check out Zephyr — a superhero webcomic in prose (http://wereviking.wordpress.com).
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:03 am
Oddly enough, I already have. I saw it on Web Fiction Guide recently. It looks like a good story.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
interesting story. I saw you on Web Fiction Guide today and figured I’d give it a chance. Good thing I did. Great read!
June 29th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Very nice story. I found you likewise through Web Fiction Guide yesterday and read through night until morning. Brava!
June 29th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Thanks a lot. I’ve enjoyed writing it.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
[...] The Legion of nothing is an ongoing paranormal web serial. It can be read online at In my Daydreams. [...]
January 10th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
[...] can find The Legion of Nothing here, or by clicking on the image. Be sure to note down the password, as you’ll need it to access [...]
May 31st, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I’m LIKING it. Couple of things don’t flow for me, but excellent overall.
May 31st, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Thanks for reading. I’m happy to know the things that didn’t work for you as I’m always hoping to improve what’s there. Readers have sometimes pointed out things that needed improvement years after the original post and I’ve made the change.
July 10th, 2010 at 9:34 am
[...] Just Enough Power, DarkSight, The Peacock King, Strange Little Band (not caught up yet), The Legion of Nothing (also not caught up yet) and Tori’s Row, though I am reading many more, and apologise for all [...]
December 13th, 2010 at 8:04 am
[...] Zoetewey, Jim — Legion of Nothing [...]
January 13th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Finally, something I can read at work that isn’t immediately obvious as not-business-related!
January 13th, 2011 at 10:39 am
It’s nice to know I’m contributing to our trade deficit.
Don’t get fired…
May 6th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Well, I just read it again, and I don’t know what I was talking about. Maybe it is the way chapter changes tense here and there, along with quick flashbacks to different points in time, so it can be a little confusing to be sure where one is. Maybe it is the large amount of short paragraphs, which makes it feel a little choppy to me. Maybe I was having a bad day…
Anyway, I bookmarked it because it intrigued me then, and it still does, so I’ll be reading on as I find the time.
You turn a nice phrase; I like how “I was living proof that knowledge did not bring peace of mind” is the flipside of ‘ignorance is bliss.’
I like the “thanks to an acute case of immortality” line too, Miranda. I think it is the juxtopostion of ‘acute case’ with ‘immortality’. One invokes disease, and the other the opposite.
A few notes:
“Staffed primarily by normal, unmodified humans, it employs a few supers as hired muscle.”
I don’t think that last comma isn’t enough punctuation – try a period, colon or dash.
“We did talk about our shared childhoods” feels awkward. I keep wanting it to be “talked” instead of “did talk”. I understand it is a reference to the previous line, but that line is in the previous paragraph. So I have to stop and think about it, instead of letting the words flow. If you put those two paras together it would work better, I think.
“I remember running into her at DVD night the next day.”
You run into somebody when it not expected, like at the mall, or at a party. Not at a movie night for about four people. Try ‘talking with’ instead of ‘running into’. And depending on when this is set, you could consider changing it to ‘Video Night’ or just ‘Movie Night’. DVD Night feels cumbersome to me anyway, probably because I did NOT grow up with them.
All tiny things, really, and your MMV. I’ll be reading on…
July 15th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
You know, I didn’t really think I’d like this story, at first. Teen superheroes taking on a legacy, it wasn’t something in my mind as something I would read.
But I gotta say, this story actually held my attention. The plot is solid, the emotions seem real, and, in my eye, some of this actually seems plausible.
Keep up the good work, my man. I’d like to see this get better.
The General
September 3rd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
[...] Jim Zoetewey updates The Legion of Nothing Mondays and Thursdays every week. He’s at Book Two at the moment, and I everyone every last chapter; start reading here. [...]