7/2/12 - A Weak Sun Hanging Low

So, in a nutshell, son? We're !@#$ed.

GORGON has succeeded where I don't know how many !@#$ing other groups of science terrorists, super villains, and would-be world-conquerors failed. They took over the !@#$ing world, while I was away rescuing the !@#$ing President from Alter-Earth.

Not that I hadn't intended to get back and kick their !@#$es in time, of course. But then my !@#$ing trans-dimensional taxi had to go and blow a !@#$ing brain-gasket on me, do who knows what to poor Mr. USA, and toss me and the President into the !@#$ing future, making sure that I missed any and all chances to stop the takeover.

While I was away, the past and present American Presidents, and probably 9/10s of their Cabinets and various Agency Directors, were all tried for their supposed crimes against humanity and shot into !@#$ing space in their gods!@#$ space elevator. They also turned the entire world into a !@#$ing labor camp, too, and gently held their kids hostage against their continued good behavior.

I've come back to a world in chains with no heroes. There's no masses of American Strategic Talents, anymore. They all either ratted on their bosses, and got !@#$ing ratted out in return, or got killed for holding the line.

And I know some of them were probably smart enough to !@#$ing duck and cover. And I know I left instructions with some of them, but...

*sigh*

Yeah, son. No COMPANY, no Super Soldiers, no Liberty Patrol, no nothing.

And maybe that wouldn't be so bad, except that the global satellite communications grid is !@#$ing down, too. So I have no eyes in the sky, anymore. No ears, no ways to ping for info I'm not supposed to have. No nothing.

I don't even have any !@#$ing tjbang sticks left, son. And with all that radioactive kumis I drank I think I really should be clearing my head, right about now.

But you know what? !@#$ it.

Exactly one year ago, today, I was waking up in a !@#$ty little room in a private hospital in Jakarta, after narrowly surviving a really !@#$ing bad run-in with GORGON. I made the mistake of trying to take them on their own turf, with minimal planning and prep, and hardly enough people. I paid the !@#$ing price for that stupidity, too, but worse than that?

They almost !@#$ing killed me. 

I lucked out, son. There's no other way to say it. If they hadn't obeyed what could have been my final instructions, right when I told them to, and sent that plowshare's payload down onto West Papua like I said, I'd be rattling around in a very nasty skull, right now.

They almost killed me, son. And that made me really !@#$ing mad. And when I get mad, I make really !@#$ing stupid mistakes.

And everything I did after that to try and take down GORGON was a !@#$ing stupid mistake, son. I'm not going to mince words, anymore.

I should have been sneaky. I should have been slow. I should have crept up behind them, at night, with a knife in my hand.

What do I do instead? Kick in their front door dressed in a bright yellow rubber Issey Miyaki suit, shooting a gun the size of !@#$ing Rhode Island, and screaming some number from 'Guys and Dolls' at the top of my lungs.

And I don't know how much you know about wetwork, son, but take it from SPYGOD: that does not !@#$ing work.

So I !@#$ up. I fail. I get my !@#$ and my job handed to me on a plate. And then, while I'm in the middle of feeling !@#$ing sorry for myself and trying to figure out what to do next, all the little things I didn't notice while I was really !@#$ing mad all come up and make themselves known to me at last.

And you know what that makes me? Really !@#$ing mad. So I make another really !@#$ing stupid mistake, and... well, I figure you know how that ended up, son. Wrong place, wrong direction, wrong time.

And because of that, the President paid a terrible price. And things spiraled right the !@#$ out of control.

Now, I don't need my ears all up in some mother!@#$ing satellite to know what you're going to ask, next. "But SPYGOD, you say that every time you get really !@#$ing angry, you make really !@#$ing stupid mistakes. Doesn't that mean that, now, you're !@#$ing doomed to make yet another big !@#$ing mistake?"

And you know what, son?

...

You're right. You're totally, absolutely right.

I am not merely really !@#$ing angry, right now, son. I am so !@#$ing angry it's a wonder I'm not eating sand and pounding rocks into powder with my !@#$ing space alien love penis. I have never !@#$ing been this !@#$ing angry in my entire !@#$ing life, and all I want to !@#$ing do is grab the !@#$ing neck of the world and !@#$ing squeeze it until it stops !@#$ing moving through space, leans sideways, and !@#$ing dies.

I want to gun-!@#$ the brains of the world out its !@#$ing skull, son. I want blood and veins in my teeth. I want brains in my hands. I want a line of organs stretched from here to !@#$ing Pluto and back ten !@#$ing times over.

I want to break reality in half and !@#$ in the wound. And...

...

And it still won't change anything.

And it still won't bring those people back.

And it still won't stop GORGON, or save the world, or free everything they've taken prisoner.

All it will do is leave me holding an even bigger !@#$ing mess than before. And this time, it'll all be on me.

All on me.

...

God help me. What have I done?

What have I done?

 ...

I need to go beyond anger, son. I need to get my !@#$ing head clear, or I'm going to be !@#$ing useless.

So I hope the President can fend for himself for a day or two, son. Because I need to go out into the desert with as much booze as I can carry, and go rip!@#$ until this white hot anger I'm just barely holding onto can be turned into something else.

Something...

...

You're going to have to excuse me, son. I don't want you to see me like this. Just go away, please.

Just let me go away.

...


(SPYGOD is listening to Love is a Catastrophe (Pet Shop Boys) and is about to drink things you never want to hear about)

2/29/12 - The Big !@#$ Story So Far - Presidential Assassination Version

SPYGOD.

Immortal. Superpowered. Drunk.

Highly conservative. Queer as !@#$. Out as Hell. 

Assassin of the President of the United States of America?  Well, it sure as !@#$ looks that way.

After a quarter century or so of eating out on having killed Hitler with his bare hands, rescuing the world too many times to count, and saving the lives of three Presidents (and having to shoot one), it would seem that SPYGOD has turned his back on his oath, and his country, and done the unthinkable.

For the President is dead -- shot down on live television. And SPYGOD's hand was on the gun.

How ironic that the former Director of The COMPANY, tasked with handling America's Strategic Talents, is now being hunted down by the organization he once ran! Especially since he was the one who had to kill rogue Supers when they went off the ranch.

What could have happened to him that would have made him sink so low? Was it losing a major battle to GORGON? Being fired by the President?

Something else entirely?

(Well, maybe we're !@#$ getting a little ahead of ourselves, here. Let's back up a bit.)

Since The War, SPYGOD had been a major player in the international spy game. He was the go-to man for America's part in the zero-sum dance that kept the world from being conquered, annihilated, invaded, eaten, or just plan vanished by way of Science Terrorists, Supervillains, aliens, or threats too weird to classify. Sometimes this involved the use of Supers, sometimes conventional forces, and sometimes just a single bullet in the right head. 

(And boy is that really !@#$ painful to consider, right now)

Until May of last year, the dance involved a detente tango with hideous partners like ABWEHR, HONEYCOMB, GORGON, and The Legion. In a sane and rational world, those boogie people would have been harshly dealt with some time ago. But they were dug into the world and its governments like fat bloated ticks, and had a marked tendency to create and use doomsday devices when attacked too massively, or thwarted too harshly.

So, under the circumstances, it was agreed that it was better to lose a few hundred civilians every year than risk billions.

However, last May, SPYGOD -- for reasons never fully explained -- decided he'd !@#$ had enough. The Outland that year was a real bang, much to the consternation of the International Spy Community, and all the evil people of the world were on notice.

The era of complacency was over. Complacency Kills. From now on, all their asses were belong to him.

The first dance was easy -- maybe a little too easy. The COMPANY came to call on the Ice Palace in Antarctica, and, faced with a massive attack not seen in decades, ABWEHR flopped over like a greenhorn nellie in a black leather dungeon. The Super Nazis' attempts to engineer a new Reich by way of repurposed alien technology -- some of it truly !@#$ terrifying -- could not withstand the assault, and their reserve guard turned out to be sadly pitiful. 

Buoyed by swift victory, SPYGOD extended himself a little too far, and went after GORGON's stronghold in West Papua with a skeleton crew. Saying the "plan" was the big !@#$ mother of all fiascos is extremely generous; If it hadn't been for new allies he didn't know he had, SPYGOD would likely have died there. 

However, his recklessness did have a price. The President -- already less than pleased with him for certain, highly embarrassing breaches of protocol -- decided The COMPANY's presence was no longer required at the South Pole. From now on the United Nations, along with America's favorite son (and SPYGOD's personal nemesis) Mr. USA would be looking after things, there. 

They would not be getting their hands on The Chamber, though. He'd already seen to that, by way of America's fourth-smartest man, and his brilliant wife, who would also be looking after Mr. USA.

(America's premier Superhero is up to something, you see. SPYGOD's just not sure what, yet.)

Unfortunately, round two with GORGON would have to wait. They'd quietly and messily vacated their island paradise, and SPYGOD suffered a bad case of "animation sickness," requiring exile to a cartoon colony "for his own good." Not one to suffer big government, take-a-hammer-to-a-hangnail solutions gladly, he was deniably plausible when the other patients finally took matters into their own hands.

Was that what did it to him, then? Being Tooned for so long? Or was it the wave of assassination attempts, all involving his secret weakness, making him more paranoid than usual?  The President was one of the few people who knew what it was, after all.

Or maybe it was dealing with that truly monstrous assassin -- Moloch. After he challenged the monster a fight, Moloch pulled a really !@#$ dirty trick and killed SPYGOD. Sort of.

That SPYGOD kept dying and coming back from the dead over and over again was courtesy of a cloning trick, by way of some of the stranger equipment in The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. But the side effects were highly unexpected, and the fallout was truly disturbing.

And that, on top of having to interrupt his operations against HONEYCOMB -- a truly evil organization -- may have had a hand in future events.

The Science Terrorists' attempt to attack Neo York City during one of its citywide conversion processes led to a gruesome discovery in South Korea. That he expressed his displeasure at the revelation in his own unique way, and then capped one of the Legion's retirees to cover for his internationally embarrassing actions, could be seen as business as usual, or perhaps a warning of things to come.

For a while, it looked like things were going forward, though not without question or cost. After having previously tweaking the dictator's nose, SPYGOD and a small army of international Supers went back into Libya for an operation just prior to Colonel Khaddafy's inglorious end. Oddly enough, he not only allowed his reporter "protege," Alternet reporter Randolph Scott, to attend the proceedings, but also gave him free reign to publicize what took place, there.

SPYGOD's actions making the press made a few people up top less than pleased, as one might expect. But whether he did this to anger them or reward Scott has yet to be determined.

Following that successful action, SPYGOD shifted gears and fought a terrible war against the supervillain collective known as The Legion -- a battle that also pitted him against certain, highly-placed elements at the CIA. In fact, one of the other Company's pet monsters did a terrible thing in order to get closer to SPYGOD -- a thing that didn't become apparent until after SPYGOD had smashed the organization, and taunted its leader into sending out its best and deadliest weapon for a no-holds-barred fight with The Flier.

(A fight won only because of Deep Ten, and its mysterious and mercurial Director -- a man SPYGOD later became romantically entangled with, for too short a time.)

After that, there was just mourning and a mop-up. The Flier was all but destroyed, and many of his Agents dead, but yet another dark dance was finished -- maybe.

However -- did the self-sacrifice of that promising Agent send him towards the edge? And did the Legion's leader -- the Big Man -- manage to put an alien idea into his mind?

Was he really as immune to mind control as he claimed to be?

Yet another ill-timed detour put that issue on hold. Randolph Scott took the Ice Palace kids he'd been looking after since NAZISMASH to the wrong place, with tragic consequences. This set off an epic journey across two continents as SPYGOD took their kids from bolthole to bolthole, trying to evade assassins he initially thought were Israeli, but turned out to be BUSH -- seeking revenge over a terrible thing SPYGOD once did, decades ago. SPYGOD's revenge for the loss of his ward, and endangerment of the others, was somewhat delayed due to testicular difficulties, but was swift and all-engulfing when it finally came.

Meanwhile, back at the Heptagon, plans continued on without him. The reformed supervillain known as Underman -- Myron, if you please -- was given leave to assemble a tiger team from pieces of what remained of The Legion, and put to them work on the plan SPYGOD sort of had cribbed down for his return. The end result was that, by the time SPYGOD returned from his Big !@#$ Road Trip, OPERATION BUGSMASH was over and done with, and HONEYCOMB's central hive in Costa Rica was defeated.

Of course, as with the Ice Palace, the ruins of what had been left behind had to be taken charge of, cataloged, and defused. Some dark discoveries awaited -- maybe more than The COMPANY really should have tried to take on. But between the satisfaction of having an enemy stomped in his absence, and seeing that he'd been right to trust Myron -- however much work he still needed -- SPYGOD got back into his "came, saw, conquered, !@#$ up the !@#$" routine once more.

But you remember what we said about how complacency kills.

A looming threat was made plain to him by an agency he dared not ignore. It was in keeping with something he'd been told earlier, by someone else he could trust, along with other bits and pieces he'd picked up along the way.

The message was clear: something bad was going to happen, and soon. And whatever it was, he already knew its face.

Was it panic that set in, then? Making him behave somewhat recklessly and mysteriously? If so, it may have been justified. A Republican Presidential Candidate was assassinated, and certain fingers of suspicion pointed to his involvement. And while he might have been overseeing the rebirth of The Flier at the time, in his line of work that was no guarantee that he didn't have a hand in it.

Disasters piled up. First a moment's carelessness led to the escape of Zalea Zathros -- one of the most deadly supervillains on the planet, and the only person The Big Man ever feared. Then the head of BUSH was "rescued" from a cell in Africa, only to be found dead, most likely courtesy of a truly nasty GORGON operative, which meant all he knew is now known to them, too.

Then total disaster: a tripped deadman's switch caused a volcano to explode, destroying a large portion of Northeast Costa Rica. SPYGOD offered to massage the results to save America's face, but the President, tired of his seeming incompetence, came clean to the international media, and began to take steps to remove SPYGOD from his position.

No sooner did SPYGOD hear about that then he found out Randolph was in a medical coma in San Francisco -- a victim of a hit and run that might leave him severely brain damaged. Someone tried to kill his Second in Command, too, on board The Flier, but somehow SPYGOD was more worried and upset by Scott's dilemma. (Go figure.)

But this critical juncture is about where the story gets more than a little befuddled.

SPYGOD effectively vanished from detection for a couple days, which isn't outside of his power set, of course, but highly unlikely during a crisis. What happened to him was something he didn't want to discuss, but it clearly bothered him a great deal. It may also have lasting repercussions, either now or in the future, depending on what he does or does not do.

Then, when he got back to The Flier -- only to find it wracked with cascading malfunctions -- his Indian ally, Dosha Josh, was there, along with his age-old enemy/ally/love interest, The Dragon. He'd been found in Paris, apparently, and Dosha had handed him over rather than leave him to the French to deal with. Saying SPYGOD was happy to see him was a massive understatement, and before long the two were !@#$ inseparable (and inseparable !@#$).

Apparently taking this as a good omen, SPYGOD activated long-stalled-out OPERATION DECAPITATION, intending to deal with GORGON. He told the President off while promising him victory, and then called up every operative and spare Agent, press-ganged every useful supervillain, and turned in every favor he had on the gamble of a lifetime.

It failed. Badly. But even in the wake of that colossal failure, SPYGOD tried to rally the troops for one more push. He might have succeeded, too, if he'd been allowed. But the President of the United States of America had other ideas.

He fired SPYGOD, then and there, bringing about the end of an era in super crime-fighting.

True, SPYGOD was initially infuriated, homicidal, suicidal, and despondent, but after a truly dark night of the soul he seemed resolved to his fate. Maybe the President was right. Maybe he had gone too far, too fast, after too long of hanging back and doing nothing at all. Maybe his instincts had failed him, and he, in turn, had failed America.

Maybe it was time for a long !@#$ vacation, someplace where he didn't have to worry about saving the world.

(Plus, he could get the !@#$ away from The Dragon, who'd gotten more than a little weird on him.)

But one trip to The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G later, a harmless musing while packing up led SPYGOD to a whirlwind of discovery, which led, in turn, to a number of very distressing concerns. This is, of course, a nice way of saying that everything he knew was either wrong, very wrong, or !@#$ wrong.

And the next time anyone saw him, he was in the White House Rose Garden, shooting the President on live televison.

What happened in the penthouse atop The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G? No one can say. METALMAID is missing in action, and SPYGOD's rather peculiar -- and outright dangerous -- cat, BeeBee, was last seen kneecapping several elite commandos with that gun she's always dragging around behind her.

But it's fair to say that, right now, outside of maybe the robot and the cat, SPYGOD doesn't have a friend in the world. They've disbanded the SPYGOD SCOUTS, and the story about what he had to do to President McKinley is no longer a secret. Right and left alike hate him with renewed venom, and the Republican Candidates for America's upcoming elections are taking turns explaining just how badly they want him dead.

They'll have to get in line, though: all Armed Forces branches are on alert, all law enforcement agencies are engaged in the hunt, and The COMPANY -- now under new management -- has been tasked to find him, and to shoot to kill when they do. All NATO countries and many of America's spying partners have also sworn to find the man and deal with him, which means his old network of allies, friends, and people he could pressure doesn't mean !@#$, anymore.

He doesn't have a flying car to get away in (someone blew it up) or a massive armory to pull weapons out of. He doesn't have an army of Agents willing to kill and die for him, or the backing of any Supers who want to maintain good relations with the organization he used to run. Except for his powers, and whatever he had on his person when he did that terrible thing, doesn't have !@#$.

He is disgraced and disavowed. Hunted and harried. Cursed and condemned.


But all that probably means is that he's never felt more alive.

SPYGOD. A massive !@#$hole, yes. But hopefully he's still our !@#$hole.

Hopefully there's some reasonable explanation as to what happened that day in February.

Hopefully he'll live long enough to tell us, and save us from the !@#$ that's coming.

Sometimes hope is all we have in the face of the bad times to come.

(SPYGOD is listening to Warriors of the Wasteland (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and watching the Sunset with new appreciation. 

2/11/12 - Now the Sun Has Finally Had Its Say (IV)

I woke up at Noon, today. I meant to be up earlier, but I shot all my !@#$ alarm clocks, yesterday morning, and Sand Island doesn't exactly have a Behemart down the block.

Fortunately, ever on the hunt for some way to help me in my time of need, The Dragon fixed my sleeping position so that the noonday Sun would shine down right in my face like a stream of !@#$. In fact, that's almost exactly what I thought was happening to me, which is why my window is now a lot larger, and much smokier, than it was last night, when I finally managed to drink my !@#$ dead asleep.

As you might imagine that takes some !@#$ doing. I have to pound about three times my own weight in high-test booze in order to even !@#$ come close to being that drunk, and then keep it up for hours at a time, without stopping to eat, drink water, !@#$, or have a tjbang stick or two.

So, in the warm light of a lost morning, I witnessed a scene of depravity I didn't think myself still capable of. Every flat surface of my quarters, including the !@#$ floor, was occupied by either an empty bottle of beer or an empty bottle of hooch. Every single one of them was lined up perfectly, like the tombstones at Arlington.

And, seeing them all, I could remember strategically drinking myself into bed, one bottle at a time. Maybe it was the news that the President sent investigators to find out what had happened, but that they refused to talk to me directly. And maybe it was the fact that the President would not take my call, and it was left to the VP to tell me to just be cool, and he'd call me when he had something to say.

But at some point last night I just said "!@#$ this !@#$" and barricaded myself with alcohol, literally and figuratively.

Looking at the room, I had a weird moment of recognition. It's the same feeling I got when some liberal !@#$ sat me down to watch that "Wall" movie, and Bob Geldof tries to put his trashed hotel room back into some weird semblance of order. That's the only piece of that whole !@#$ movie that's stayed with me, possibly because I'm the only one in the world who will watch that sobbing, self-indulgent piece of !@#$ film stone cold sober, and most likely because I've done that exact same thing way too many times to count.

(That and had my fate lorded over by a giant walking pair of butt-cheeks. That's Secret Senate Subcommittees for you.)

As you might well expect, trying to extricate myself from that situation was kind of difficult. But I heard a commotion out in the hall, and when I realized who was saying what to whom, I said "!@#$ it" and leaped over the bottles for the door, which still didn't feel like Star Treking open.

One kicked-down door later, I'm standing there nude with bloody, gashed feet, and watching The Dragon hold Underman down with one foot and Second up against the wall with one hand. He turns around and smiles his special little smile at me, which says "I didn't want you to be disturbed."

And I give him the look that says "I'm !@#$ disturbed enough already," and he drops his smile and lets them both go.

"Why the !@#$ did you do that?" I ask him as they get up off the floor.

"They wished to make their grievances known at a time when you were not ready to hear them," he says.

"I think I can decide when that is."

"A mother hen who attends to every peck of her chicks is soon without feathers," he says, but no sooner does he say that then Myron's pulling out his piece and aiming it at The Dragon's head. He doesn't get the chance to fire it, courtesy of one really vicious and swift footstrike from his intended target, but there's no mistaking the anger in his eyes, now.

"I am not a !@#$ chicken!" he yells, cradling his broken hand: "I am a !@#$ Agent of the !@#$ Company, and I demand to talk to the Director!"

"He is clearly indisposed-"

"I'll hear what you have to say, Myron," I say: "You, too, Second. Just let me put on some !@#$ pants, okay?"

Whatever anger Myron had in him just then flattens like a pile of leaves when a kid jumps into it. He just nods and stands there, slowly aware just how badly The Dragon !@#$ up his hand. Second just looks at me, and when he nods it's really unnerving. Obviously, we really !@#$ need to talk.

Back in the room, The Dragon's two steps behind me the whole time, getting my wardrobe and trying to slip Zen bull!@#$ in my ear. Nonsense about how the general has to show strength even in weakness, and sternness even in kindness. I'm too tired to really !@#$ argue with the man who let me drink myself catatonic and arranged my wake-up sunshine, so I just look at him, half-in and half-out of my vest, and tell him, simply, "If you don't respect my Agents, you don't respect me. They just went through Hell for the mission. If they want to talk about their burns, they get a hearing."

Dragon doesn't seem to like that. I can tell because he's run out of advice. Score one for me, but something tells me that's the last victory I get today.

I tell Second and Myron to walk with me. We go in silence down the broken, unlit halls of The Flier, still busted and without power after that horrible !@#$ we got from a pod of supposedly mythological creatures. And since the nanotech Dr. Yesterday supposedly fixed had the !@#$ gall to unfix itself at the worst possible moment, and hasn't refixed itself since, repairs are coming along really !@#$ slowly.

That isn't the worst, though. The worst is the makeshift hospitals in the hallways, just like when we fought The Skull. And even worse than that is the scarcity of makeshift morgues; most of the Agents we lost are still in the Ocean, bobbing along in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

We will most likely never !@#$ recover any of them. This is going to be a special heartbreak to their families. And I'm going to shatter anew with each crack, and every tear at every funeral, knowing how badly I let them down.

The silent tour ends on the flight deck. I don't have to see it to know what's coming. The Eye let me know, some time before, what I was walking into. Who was waiting for me.

Every single Agent that was on The Flier at the start of OPERATION DECAPITATION is standing there, in formation, along with the surviving Strategic Talents I called in. Their ranks have been significantly decreased, and their cold, silent stares let me know exactly what they think about that.

They clearly want an explanation. Myron tries to say something to me but can't get past the whimpers, now that the pain of his hand's finally reared up and chomped on his !@#$. So my Second has to be the one to tell me the obvious.

"Please just say something," he whispers: "It's all I can do to keep most of them on board. We're looking at mutiny, sir."

I nod. I knew this was coming. Maybe that's part of why I did what I did, last night, too.

Without these Agents I am less than nothing. I am !@#$, baking in the Sun, waiting for flies to come give me some semblance of use.

So I take a deep breath, look around at all the people I brought into this !@#$ mess, and shrug.

"You know what?" I say: "If you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you. After what happened, two days ago, I wouldn't want to stay here, either. I'd want to get as far away from the !@#$ madman in charge of this !@#$storm as I could.

"Any Strategic Talent who I got into this, you're free to go, and I will never call on you again. You can do whatever you like from here on out and I won't stop you, unless I have to stop you. I think you know what that means.

"And any Agent who wants out? Talk to Second after this speech is over. You can take retirement today with full pension and benefits. No black flags, no blackballing, no bull!@#$. You walk away clean as a whistle.

"But before you do any of that, please listen to me. Just once more."

I take another deep breath, close my eyes, and think. What on earth could I possibly !@#$ say? Then I open them again and look around, and remember where we are.

It comes to me, then.

"You know, it's funny we had to put in here, on Midway, for repairs," I say, gesturing to the visible part of the Atoll, quite visible from the top of the Flier: "I remember when the Japanese took us at Pearl Harbor, they tried to take Midway, too. They failed. Somehow, the handful of soldiers on this tiny little island told them 'no,' and kept that awful day from being a total loss.

"Not more than six months later, not far from here, we handed the Japanese their !@#$ again. We sunk four of their ships in a tremendous victory. It wasn't clean, of course. We lost the Yorktown, that day, along with other dear things, and many people. But that was a turning point for the Pacific Theater. Maybe the turning point.

"You see, up until then, the Japanese weren't just traveling the Pacific Ocean. They were the Pacific Ocean. They dominated it, and used it to dominate their neighbors. But then they made the mistake of trying to dominate us.

"And, no, it didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen easy. But we fought them, inch by inch, mile by mile, and island by island. And after a few years we were there, within landing distance of their mainland, and ready to take them apart for what they'd done."

I pause a moment, looking out at the Ocean. It rolls and surges on by, seemingly uncaring. I can't say as I blame it.

"We've been lucky, so far," I say, stepping down and walking along the line of Agents and Supers: "Those stupid supernazi !@#$ rolled over like a dead dog for us. The Legion came apart like a rotten pumpkin shot with a large !@#$ handgun. And, no, the aftermath of what we did with HONEYCOMB was not to anyone's liking, but the takedown itself? That was superb, and swift.

"Too swift. Too easy. Too lucky.

"We've gotten used to that luck," I say, looking everyone there in the eye in turn: "I've gotten used to that luck. I let it cloud my judgment. I let it over-inform my decisions. I let it take the place of good planning and sound strategy. And the result of that is what just happened to us.

"We can blame the mechanical failures. We can blame bad intelligence. We can blame everything we like, and anyone we don't like. But the bottom line is that the buck has to stop with me.

"I !@#$ed up, ladies and gentlemen. Big time. Badly. And I owe you all an apology for having been so reckless with your lives, and so willing to risk them on so paltry a plan."

I pause for a moment or two. I let the shock settle. Maybe let the anger subside a bit, too.

"But let's consider something. Let's consider that this is a war. Wars are made up of battles. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We've been outrageously lucky so far that most of the battles have been quiet little things, and the big, decisive ones have mostly gone our way.

"Well, I hate to say this, but it looks like that luck ran the !@#$ out.

"Obviously, we cannot expect GORGON to go down as easily as any of the others. Obviously, it was !@#$ stupid for us to even expect that they would. Out of all the others, they were always the most dug in, the best fortified, and the most frightening.

"We have met our real enemy, Agents. We have discovered our true nemesis. We thought we could just strongarm our way in and kick around a few tables, but it seems the bartender had a really large shotgun behind the booze.

"So what do we do now?" I ask, waving around: "Give up? No. I don't think so. This isn't the time for quitting. This is the time we learn from that !@#$ mistake and go forward.

"Give in?" I ask, and, god or gods be praised, a few mouths say "no." Not enough, but at least a few.

"Give it away?" I ask, and get more. Louder and stronger this time.

"No," I reinforce: "We fight. We go forward. We show them that we might bend but we don't !@#$ break. We get back to square one. We look into the mistakes and learn from them. We get ready to have a second round on our terms, and in our time.

"And next time, when we hit them, the !@#$ are gonna wish they'd lost two days ago, because we're gonna !@#$ them up so badly it'll make what they would have had then seem like a rap on the !@#$ knuckles!"

I get a cheer. Oh dear god, thank you. A cheer. Not from everyone, but from enough.

"It's not going to be easy. We're going to have to rebuild. We're going to have to change some plans and strategies. We're gonna have to put this crate back together again, and maybe with chewing gum and superglue this time."

Was that a laugh? Yes it was. Oh good. We have hilarity.

"But we will come back, folks. I promise you that. And I'm making one more promise on top of that. I will never, ever, in a million years fight a battle from the Deck. If you're going to be in the !@#$, I'm going to be there alongside you in that !@#$."

A greater cheer goes up. That's about as good as we can hope for, now, so I let it end there.

"You all deserve better than I've been able to give. You have worked for your country, you have given it your sweat, your blood. You've promised to give it your lives if needed. Please do me the honor of trusting this crazy old !@#$ with those lives one more time, and let's finish this job we've started."

The cheer is deafening. The cry rattles the air. Flocks of endangered birds take to the sky and whirl around us, wondering what the !@#$ we're on about.

!@#$ if I know, but I think I've got my COMPANY back, again. Now I just have to make sure I keep it.

(SPYGOD is listening to 4 In the Morning (Gwen Stefani) and having a big tumbler of alka seltzer)

2/10/12 - No One Here Gets Out Alive (V)

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