Dial H for Heroics

Jack Lee pulled on his black and red Deadpool shirt as he walked along the

breezeway with his friend, Josie. His dark hair hid a scar above his eye that had faded to nothing in the years since he had received it.

Josie Fox also had dark hair, but it was shorter than her friend’s. She wore a Mage T-shirt that had faded from the original black, with the white lightning bolt on the front losing parts in the laundry.

“You got me on that,” said Josie. “Marvel does handle their shifting timeline better than DC. You don’t even know who’s alive or dead in universe. It’s like

Schrodinger’s Cat.”

“The one with the box?,” asked Jack. He hid a smile.

“Yes,” said Josie. She shook her head at the pretense. “The one with the box.”

“I wonder if the MCU is going to bring in the X-Men during this multiverse thing they kicked off with Loki,” said Jack. “Disney did buy out Fox for the rights.”

“You’ll probably get the Fantastic Four first,” said Josie.

“You’re probably right,” said Jack. “The X-Men have been on the screen for a long time. The Kev might want to let them cool off before he brings them in as backup Avengers.”

“I didn’t know you and Kevin Feige were on nickname terms,” said Josie. She almost laughed at the idea.

“We’re not on as good terms as you and Vic Mignogna,” said Jack. He reached the door of their destination and opened it to the sound of a cowbell hanging from the top.

“Ugh,” said Josie. She stepped into the store. “Don’t remind me.”

Jack and Josie had been coming to Warner’s for their comic books collections, tabletop gaming books and gear since they were kids. Every time they stepped into the store, a presence clamped down like stepping into a library.

Oliver Warner still ran the place despite time taking most of his hair, giving him a bent spine and knobby hands. Every Wednesday, he divided his delivery into their pull bags like clockwork.

“It’s the Dynamite Duo,” Warner said. He smiled with a set of dentures. “Something came for you, Josie. I have it in the back.”

“I didn’t order anything, Mister Warner,” said Josie. She frowned at the old shopkeep.

“I told the guy, but he wouldn’t take the box back,” said Warner. He waved at them to come up to the counter before heading to the storeroom in the back.

“What do you think is going on?,” asked Jack.

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “I haven’t ever ordered anything to be delivered here without letting Mister Warner know. Most of the time he has to order anything I want for me.”

“What do you think came?,” asked Jack.

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “I’m not buying DC anymore except back issues, most of my Dark Horse stuff came last week, and I have my eye on the Critical Roll Graphic Novel, but I’m waiting until the end of the month.”

Warner returned with a box about the size of a half sub. He placed it on the counter and slid it over.

“Josephine Antoinette Fox?,” said Jack. “Sounds like a name from the fifties.”

“The eighteen fifties,” said Warner. “You’re the only J. Fox I know, so I figured it was for you.”

“The both of you are so funny,” said Josie. Her expression said how funny she

thought they were. “I didn’t order this.”

“Let’s open it and see what’s inside,” said Warner. “If it’s something useless, we can send it back in another box.”

“All right,” said Josie. “I wonder how they got my full name. I haven’t used my

middle name ever.”

“It will still be on your birth certificate,” said Jack. “Maybe they got it from that

somehow.”

“This is probably for someone else and we’re tampering with their mail,” said Josie.

Warner used a pocket knife to cut through the tape holding the box closed. He pulled out a smaller box and an envelope. He handed the envelope to Josie.

She opened the letter and read through it. She opened the small box. Three watches were folded around displays in the box. She frowned at them.

“What did the letter say?,” asked Jack. He inspected the three watches.

“It said that as a fan of Robby Reed, I was gifted with watches to wear as facsimiles of his Hero Dial,” said Josie. “Only Robby Reed didn’t have a watch. He had a dial phone without an earpiece. They sent three in case I broke one, or wanted to give the extras to friends.”

“Robby Reed?,” asked Jack.

“He’s old school, slick,” said Warner. “He started out with Captain Comet, and

the Martian Manhunter.”

“When DC redid their timeline after Crisis, he was in with heroes like the Creeper and the Metal Men after Superman appeared,” said Josie. “He’s a footnote. Why would anyone care enough to send me three watches dedicated to him. And they got the watches wrong on top of that.”

“They look okay,” said Jack. “Can I have them if you don’t want them?”

“You don’t even like DC,” said Josie.

“I never got a free watch either,” said Jack.

“All right,” said Josie. “We’ll split them. I don’t know why anyone would send me anything like this but we’ll each take one. That seems okay if the watch company wants them back.”

“I’m not giving mine back,” said Jack. “They can take my fake Robby Reed H Dial off my cold dead wrist if they can find my body when I go up in a ball of flames.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Josie.

She took the watches off their stands. They looked the same from a distance, but up close, she could see tiny differences. She kept the one with the lightning bolt on the back. It reminded her of the Mage lightning bolt on her shirt, and the Captain Marvel lightning it was based on.

He would always be Captain Marvel to her. Geoff Johns could sit in the Hell of the Upside Down Drowning Sinners forever for his crappy take on the mythos.

She handed Jack the watch with the star in a circle on the back. It reminded her of Captain America’s shield. She knew he would love that.

She handed Warner the last one. The marking looked like a boomerang, but maybe it was an A. He took it and put it on the counter.

“Are you sure about this, Josie?,” asked Warner.

“You can put it on display as a one of a kind thing,” said Josie. “It’ll be like your copy of Steve Ditko’s Fly from the Red Circle days.”

“All right,” said Warner. “Thanks for the gift.”

He put his watch in the shipping box and took the whole thing back to his storeroom.

Jack started putting his new watch on his wrist. He had trouble latching the release together. He paused for a moment to take a closer look at the thing.

“This reminds me of something,” he said, turning his arm this way and that.

“What?,” Josie said. She had her own watch around her wrist. She looked at the face. Where were the numbers?

“It kind of reminds me of an Omni,” said Jack. He finished securing the watch around his wrist.

Warner came out the back. Both of his customers were gone. He put it in the back of his mind as other customers demanded his attention.

They would probably be back later after they got over the excitement of a free watch.

Jack felt like he was falling. Everything was gray. The watch on his arm glowed. It looked more and more like an omni, and he didn’t like that at all.

Quest One:

Return Princess Lorelei to her family.

Quest Two:

Destroy the Dark Rider of Sachuminou

Quest Three:

Save the town of Accordly on the shore of Lake Myra.

Quest Four:

Use your heroes to survive your entry.

The gray cleared away from Jack. He blinked against the wind blowing against his body. The sky looked far below and coming up fast.

Use your heroes to survive? Josie’s description of Robby Reed made him sound like Ben Ten. Did their dials work in the same way? If it did, he needed something that could fly.

Jack battled the wind to check the watch with his other hand. The face glowed as he touched it. He saw a list roaming through his mind and recognized it as a list of Marvel characters. How did he pick the one he wanted? He tried turning the watch face. The names lit up. He stopped when he had the hero he wanted. He pressed what looked like a stopwatch button on the thing and hoped for the best.

Jack stood a hundred feet high, garbed in white fire with wings stopping the world. He could see everything as relevant as he wanted. He spotted Josie in the distance, falling to the ground like him.

She had been falling, but now everything was frozen while he made his decisions for the future.

And he only had seconds according to numbers on his watch. He may have frozen objective time, but his own time was still running out.

He decided to send Josie a message to meet him. He cast his arm out to send a lance of thought at his target. He checked to make sure she understood, then stepped down to the ground. The transformation ended and he became a tired guy who needed a tree to stand up.

He had beat the quest. That was all that mattered. He needed to get to the meeting place and hook up with Josie. They needed to hash this out, and see if they could get home.

Quest Five:

Meet Josie Fox at unknown city in the northwest.

Quest Six:

Find a way to get home.

Jack rubbed his face with his hands. Theoretically, he had a lot of heroes with

movement powers that could help him. Realistically, he had no idea what any of them did. He could kill himself just trying to figure out how to fly to that city with the watch.