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Post By Silver Aegis Mon Mar 26, 2007 at 04:13:20 pm EDT |
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Silver Aegis #3 | |
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“The Secret Origin of the Silver Aegis: The Golden Years” The Silver Aegis set the tray down on the conference table and handed his guests each a mug, “I thought we could all use a cup of hot Ovaltine before we get started.” “Gee, thanks, Mr. Aegis!” Lewis Hollander drank heartily of the chocolaty, vitamin-enriched beverage. “Yes, it’s all very nice. But I doubt SPUD trained you and put you in that get-up so you could act as a glorified waiter for members of the press,” Josie Hart stated before clicking her pen, “So, what’s your story?” The man in the gray chain mail smiled broadly, an act that caused the ace reporter no small amount of consternation (‘curse those dimples!’), so much so she almost forgot to take notes when the Silver Aegis began his tale. “My real name is Scott Scoggins, though growing up everyone called me ‘Scrapper.’ I was born in the borough of Seedy Town in 1925. My father worked as a porter in the railyard, until he was caught loading a crate of furs onto the truck of a local hood. When he was sent to prison mother and I went to live with her parents. I was seven years old. “Mother had to take a job as a maid at the Parodiopolis Arms Hotel. At least that is what she told her family. Now, knowing what I do about the world, it was obvious Mother did more than clean rooms for a living.” Flashback #1 Young, tow-headed Scott Scoggins: Gosh, mum, you sure are putting on a lot of perfume tonight. Tired looking woman in faded red housecoat sitting at vanity: I need it for work, dear. To smell nice for the customers. “I can’t, I can’t find fault with Mother for what she did. It was the Depression, and not only did she have a son to care for, but an invalid mother and a jailed husband who was in Dutch with the neighborhood’s criminal element. “Not that my behavior helped matters any. As a youth I had a talent for mischief: truancy, petty theft, grifting. I hadn’t fallen in with my father’s old crowd yet, though the local beat cops were aware of me.” Flashback #2 “Scrapper” Scoggins behind peach crate shuffling cards: OK, gents, find the lady, find the lady, find the lady and win- Ulp! Hello, Officer Lepke! Big, beefy patrolman pushing his way through crowd: *Tsk tsk* Scapper, m’ boy, you need to pay your lookout a little better next time. “Despite my various run-ins with the police, they took enough pity on me and my family to keep me out of major trouble. It was only a matter of time before the most serious kind of trouble would come to Parodiopolis and to America. “1940. Even a drop-out like me knew enough current events to see that the war in Europe was going to be felt here. I was too young for the draft, though I knew a lot of boys in the neighborhood who were called up. A temporary barracks, Fort Simon, was set up at the old Parodiopolis Polo Grounds. I began hanging out there, first because it was a chance to work the grift on the yokels who were experiencing city life for the first time. But when it became clear Golden Aegis was stationed at Fort Simon, it made the camp even more inviting for a young kid looking for a hero. Flashback #3 Newsreel footage of man in golden armor and winged helmet running obstacle course: No, that’s not Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick decked out for a costume ball, that’s The Golden Aegis, America’s latest mystery man showing off his athletic aptitude for the brass at an undisclosed military base. Watch as the man breaks Olympic record after Olympic record in contests of strength, speed and endurance! Not one frame of this footage is doctored in any way, folks. That’s a real cow he’s lifting!! The Aegis is a master of the martial arts. Here he is facing off against a former Judo Grand Master and the current heavyweight boxing champion AT THE SAME TIME! [Aegis flips former opponent across ring into a nearby water barrel] Ouch! Sayonara means goodbye, little feller! That shield he carries isn’t just for show, either! Made from a mystery metal, it can ward off attacks even as deadly as a barrage of machine gun fire, like so! [RATATATATTAT!! PING PING PING!] And the Golden Aegis has learned to throw his shield, turning it into a deadly weapon in his hands. That bull’s-eye he just split is one hundred yards away! But the Aegis’s greatest assets are his sense of duty to his country and the indomitable spirit that comes with being born a PROUD AMERICAN! So have a care, Adolf! Watch out, Ivan! Say your prayers, Tojo! Because if you decide to start trouble with the United States of America, you’ll have to answer to him! “The Golden Aegis kept busy before the war broke out, smashing spy rings, exposing war profiteers, fighting the Syndicate. It became sort of a cottage industry to find out who the man really was behind that domino mask. I remember a young lady reporter who got herself in all kinds of scrapes to learn his secrets. Sound familiar, Miss Grant? “But no one made more of effort at unmasking Aegis than me. I was always underfoot, and in the way. By this time the men at camp had adopted me as a sort of a mascot, though sometimes it felt like they just kept me around for scullery work. Flashback #4 Teenaged “Scrapper” sitting on a stool in front of a mountain of potatoes: This is so unfair! It’s only two nights until the Secret Society of Saboteurs promised to blow up the Gothametropolis York Shipyard! I should be out helping the Golden Aegis sniff out clues, not here, pulling KP! Private Roger Cranston: You know, Scrapper, you probably should stop trying to help the Aegis out. Someday you’re going to get yourself hurt! “Scrapper”: Aw, nuts to that! [hurls his paring knife] Say, Cranston, I’m going to sneak off and see if I can learn anything at the wharf. Cover for me in case the Sarge shows up, won’t you? “Heh. Private Roger Cranston, the camp screw-up. Or so he would have us think. The incompetence was an act, a way to divert attention from the truth, that he was in fact America’s Supreme Soldier, the Golden Aegis. Really, it’s an embarrassment that I didn’t figure it out sooner. It was only by accident I learned the man’s secret.” Flashback #5 Distraught nurse: My Lord, that boy ran right out in front of that truck! He’s barely alive! Hospital corpsman: He’s lost a lot of blood! He’ll need a transfusion! Private Roger Cranston, ripping away the sleeve to his uniform: Take mine! “Fate was indeed fortunate that day, because the blood transfusion did something that all the eggheads in the country could not do: duplicate the process that made Golden Aegis the paragon of human accomplishment. He explained it to me later. Flashback #6 Cranston, in his Golden Aegis attire: Son, Providence has given you an opportunity to help your country. It has made you an instrument through which it can strike out at the forces of fascism that seek to bind the human spirit and bring darkness to the world. Now I ask you, will you help me protect our beliefs, our values, and help fight for a better tomorrow? “Scrapper” Scoggins: Gosh! Will I! “So six weeks of intense training and a costume of my own made me into Scrapper, the Youth of Liberty. I fought alongside the Golden Aegis both at home and abroad, in the European and Pacific theaters, against the most rotten menagerie of ne’r-do-wells the Axis Powers could throw our way. Werner Von Waxköpf, disfigured master of disguise. The ever scheming Grey Specter. Kabuki-san. Doktor Khimera and his Monstrosities. And the worst of the worst, Hitler’s personal answer to Golden Aegis, Der Krieghändler, a Frankenstein of flesh and metal that challenged us at every turn in every conceivable way. He was the very embodiment of what we in the Allies fought against: barbaric savagery directed by a merciless intelligence, whose goal was the conquest and corruption of everything that makes humanity great. Even before Krieghändler did what he did, I hated him more than any man alive.” There was a long pause as the Silver Aegis seemed to be reliving a terrible memory. Finally, Josie asked, “What happened?” “He shot the Golden Aegis. On June 7, 1945, one month after V-E Day. He bragged later it was to let America know the war would never be over for him, and that he would destroy all of America’s symbols and then America itself. Like I said, Krieghändler was a monster. “The Golden Aegis- Roger, died at the scene, right there in my arms. I had been through nearly four years of war, I had seen death, from Bataan to the Black Forest, from Nanking to Stalingrad to Dachau. You would have thought I’d have built up a tolerance to man’s brutality…. Flashback #7 Scrapper, clutching the bloodied form of the Golden Aegis: Hold on, GA, the ambulance is coming! Golden Aegis: I think… too late for me, Scrapper. It’s awfully hard to see you… now. Scrapper: NO! You can’t give up! ‘Never stop fighting’, that’s what you always said. Golden Aegis, chuckling Not really fair… to throw that back in my face, now, is it, old chum? *Wheeze* Scrapper: Please, don’t die! The world still needs you! Golden Aegis: The… world will be fine… without me, as long…. as you… keep fighting for it, Scott….. Make me proud…. Scrapper: GA? Roger?! No. Oh, no. Next: Alone on the New Frontier |
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