Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?
I can certainly understand what you're saying here.
In fact I've had a character get caught in that "very gray area" myself.
Back when I was running Centurion (basically an Iron-man clone) our team had to deal with a bunch of lunatics from another universe that called themselves the Purifiers, their mission was to save humanity from the mutant hordes by exterminating eveiry mutant in existance. Once they had done so in their home universe they started to move into others and kept right on killing mutants. Their favorite tactic was to kill the mutants when they were still children, preferably infants.
Well to make a long story short after tracking them across 3 universes our team managed to reach their stronghold on their homeworld which held their dimension-breeching gateway. Unfortunately the fortess was protected by a force-field that was impervious to normal weapons and super powers. But, Centurion learned that this world had never developed atomic weapons and thus the forcefield was not proof against them. So he built a nuclear missile and used it to send the Purifiers to the Hell that they so richly deserved.
But for months afterward he was tortured by that decision as the passage below will show. Sometimes killing really has to be done but there are always consequences to doing so which is as it should be. Does Centurion's use of what was a Weapon of Mass Destruction make him less of a hero? To some people, yes it does. To others, no it doesn't. It's really up to each reader to decide for themselves.
From VORTEX, an unfinished, Strike Force/Star Trek crossover:
9 May 1997 - Boston, MA. USA, Earth
My heart turned to ice as I looked upon the mangled bodies of the children. Children who had died screaming in agony. Tortured beyond the limits of endurance until, while they still cried for their helpless parents, their beating hearts had been cut from their bodies and stomped on. Crushed lifeless by the beasts that cloaked themselves in religious dogma and spoke of protecting humanity from the unclean ones who were clearly the spawn of Satan.
It might be asked, what had the children done to arouse such hatred? Quite simply they had been born mutants. Some part of their genetic code had been different from that which was considered “normalâ€. It wasn't anything that they had any control over, it just happened by random chance. Rather like having a flair for languages or being left-handed. Come a long way from the Dark Ages haven't we?
One of the still forms resolved itself into an extremely life-like iron statue of a young Asian girl in her early to mid teens. The statue wore close-fitting costume of blue spandex and thigh-high blue boots. Her hair wasn't iron but long, black and straight, damp with sweat. Her features, although frozen in time, were contorted with pain the cause of which was readily apparent. There was a softball-sized hole in the girl's body just below her left breast. If she had been flesh she would be dead already.
Her name was Qui Chen and she possessed the mutant power to turn her body into living metal. She was one of my friends and teammates among the meta-human Strike Force, where she was known by the code name of Iron Blossom. I'd never liked the idea of her doing this work. I felt it kept her from having a childhood. Now it had taken away her life as well.
In the distance the buzz that I had been hearing resolved itself into chant and then beyond the bodies I saw them. The Purifiers, perhaps a hundred of them. Rage filled me as I activated my boot jets. Soaring over the tangled bodies of their victims I saw the beasts scatter at my approach. As I reached the apex of my arc I triggered the firing circuits of my proton projectors. Twin streams of energized protons shot from the palm-mounted release apertures, lancing into the Purifiers dropping them by the dozens. But for each one that fell two more appeared to take his place.
Then the ground trembled and was rent open as a huge black citadel rose up as if from the bowels of hell. Purifiers crowded the ramparts by the thousands, and they were killing, torturing innocents to death. As my boot jets howled to maximum power I sped toward the citadel and attacked, loosing off all the precision-guided munitions at my command. Everything from proton projectors and long-range high explosive missiles, to armor piercing lasers and electron beams. But to no avail, the ordinance all splayed off a powerful force field that protected the citadel. Suddenly there was a small black box in my hand; it had a large red button in the center and a radio antenna coming out the top. I knew what it was. I knew what it controlled. My thumb came down on the button.
I could see the missile approach from the western horizon. The nosecone popped off and the single warhead deployed. It whistled as it homed in one the citadel. Then it hit the force field and detonated in an eye-searing flash. Even protected by my armor and at a distance of almost a mile I felt my flesh burn from the heat of the atomic fireball. Almost instantly my armor shut down as the electro-magnetic pulse purged my command and control systems. I had just enough time to register this fact when the blast wave hit. Five hundred mile per hour winds picked me up and threw me over four hundred yards, slamming me hard into something solid. I felt as if a team of giants were playing baseball and decided to make me the ball. But the forces that I had unleashed weren't through with me yet, for it was then that the negative pressure wave sucked me back into the space that the blast wave had thrown me out of. I landed face first; my head rang with the impact. Struggling to my feet I felt like I was moving in thick, warm liquid, the wave must have thrown me into a pool of molten metal, I thought. But as my vision began to clear I saw that such was not the case. I was standing hip-deep in a vast ocean of steaming blood. Something grasped my leg, I looked down to see a skeletal arm, bits of charred flesh still sticking to it, clutch at my hip. Then more hands emerged from the blood, grabbing me, pulling me down. I activated my boot jets but nothing happened, my armor was so much dead weight. I tried to fight but the hands were too strong, their grips unbreakable. I struggled. I screamed. I went under.
Gideon Stevens sat bolt upright in bed with aloud gasp, his sea-green eyes wide with shock as the nightmare released him. He sat for a few moments waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal, then got up and went into the bathroom. Turning on the cold water he splashed some on his face. Gideon pushed back the hair that fell in a thick black comma over his left eye, giving him a youthful appearance that belied his near forty years. He stared at the deceptively young face in the mirror. Thanks to the Perpetuon anti-aging treatments he knew that he would look no older for a very long time, and yet he could see the weight that his soul bore in that face. In the set of his jaw, the lines at the corners of his mouth and most of all in his eyes. The vast majority of people couldn't see it; he was good at hiding the pain, the agony of the soul that damned him. But he could see it and so could Bren.
"You had the dream again." She said from the bed, it was a statement, not a question. She knew him far too well to need to ask what had forced him from their bed at three in the morning.
Gideon looked at his wife. Even at this hour, awakened from a sound sleep, hair in disarray and no make-up what so ever Brenda Stevens was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Four years younger than her husband, Brenda stood 5' 11" tall and distributed 138 pounds over a figure that would have Marilyn Monroe green with envy. Dark blonde hair framed her face and hung down to the middle of her back in cascading waves. Her lips were full and luscious, her nose strong and straight and the eyes that gazed at him with concern were sea-green mirrors of his own. The powder blue silk chemise she wore accented every curve and yet concealed just enough so that she looked incredibly sexy without appearing wanton.
"I thought you promised you wouldn't read my mind." He quipped, consciously thrusting the thoughts of the dream away.
"Don't change the subject." She said getting out of bed and walking over to where he stood in the bathroom doorway.
As she did Gideon could see that the chemise was just the tiniest bit snug around her waist. He felt the apprehension over the dream melt away as he thought of the reason for that. Brenda was three months pregnant with their first child and was just beginning to show the tiniest signs of it. She wrapped her arms around him and said.
"If you can't tell me your troubles, who can you tell?"
Gideon kissed his wife gently as he hugged her close.
"You're right." He sighed. "And yes, I had the dream again."
"Oh, Gid." She said, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. "When are you going to accept that you did the right thing? The Purifiers had killed millions across four universes that we know about, and god alone knows how many that we don't! Even Patriot says you did the right thing! And you know how Patriot feels about killing."
Gideon pulled away from Brenda's arms and walked over to the window to stare out at the black night.
"Patriot didn't come up with the idea, I did. Patriot didn't build the nuke, I did! Patriot didn't make the decision, I did!! Patriot didn't push the button, I did!!! And Patriot didn't kill a hundred thousand people!!!!" His voice, which had risen to a loud crescendo, now dropped to an anguished whisper. "I did."
Brenda strode over to the window, grabbed her husband by the arm and flung him on the bed with a textbook perfect judo throw. Then she jumped on top of him, straddling his stomach and holding him down with her left hand on his shoulder, while the index finger of her right poked him in the chest.
"Now you listen to me, Gideon Stevens!" She began, her eyes seeming to flash in the semi-darkness. "You did what had to be done. The Purifiers had exterminated every mutant in their home universe, but that wasn't enough for them. They had to export their twisted ideas into other universes, killing millions more, and they weren't going to stop either!"
"I should have found another way, Bren. I mean I'm not just some guy off the street. I'm Centurion, the Strike Force commander. I'm a superhero for christ's sake, I'm supposed to save people without wiping out a whole city. I'm…"
"And if there had been a way," Brenda interrupted, "you would have found it. But there wasn't! The Purifiers had tied their perverted ideas to religion. And you know damned well that once they did that any shred of rationality went right out the window!"
"But…"
"No! No buts. Maybe your answer wasn't a perfect solution, wrapped nice and neat with pretty ribbon and big bow. But it was the only one open to you."
Gideon thought it over for a few moments; rationally he knew she was right. But emotionally the stench of blood on his hands had been so strong that he didn't think it would ever wash away.
"You know they would have killed me…" Gideon locked his eyes on his wife's when she said this. She was right of course. Brenda Stevens was a mutant herself, a skilled and powerful telepath she had fought crime for years as Mindstar. Although she was now in what she called semi-retirement for the duration of her pregnancy.
"…and the baby."
"No!" Gideon thought his eyes widening in horror. "Not the baby!"
But he knew that it was true, knew that the Purifiers would have slaughtered their child. The twisted bastards had done it before, hundreds of times on this world alone. They liked going after children, they were easy targets and infants were the easiest of all. Gideon had gotten so wrapped up in the thought of what it was like to nuke a city out of existence that he had forgotten who the people on the receiving end truly were. What they had done and would have continued to do.
Suddenly the stench of blood was gone. Not completely, there was still a faint trace of it, but he could live with that. Brenda saw the weight that he had borne for so long lift from her husband's shoulders. She didn't need a mind scan to tell her that the man she loved was finally whole once more.
"Thanks, Bren." Gideon said gazing up at his wife. "Thanks for making me see."
Brenda bent down and kissed him tenderly.
"Just doing my job, Love."
Gideon returned the tender, loving kiss and as Brenda melted into his gentle embrace a sense of peace descended upon them and they soon fell into a deep sleep. Neither suspecting that their greatest trial lay just around the corner.
