by Libbylawrence
In California, Courtney Noble found herself alone in the wooded area near her family home. Dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a pink shirt, the pretty blonde teen was examining the locket that hung around her neck.
This locket is proof I wasn’t just imagining the conversation with that old lady, she thought. She gave me the locket — I know she did. The question is, who is she? I don’t remember ever reading about a super-heroine named USA or ‘Usa.’ I know Mom was Miss America, and the famous pin-up girl of the war was Phantom Lady, who stayed on in the Freedom Fighters. I don’t know of any other women in costume back then! Of course, there could’ve been some who were obscure or just wanted to remain unknown to the public.
“Could I have given myself the locket?” she said aloud. “Could my dreaming mind have activated my matter-transforming powers and whipped up the locket while I slept?” She laughed at the idea. “I don’t think so, or my room would have already been filled up by assorted guys from school!”
As she pried open the locket, she gasped as her fingers made contact with tiny woven fibers found within. “The threads from the first flag?!” she said, touching the fabric.
At that moment, she experienced a powerful vision that caused her to tremble. She saw the old lady from her dreams, and she heard her crying out to her for help. “She needs me! I can even tell where she is! She’s in Brooklyn! I’ve never been there, but I just somehow know that’s where she is. She’s being held captive there by someone powerful and dangerous!”
Courtney was a practical girl, but she also trusted her instincts, and didn’t hesitate before making her decision. I’m the only one who can free her, she realized. Somehow, just as I’d planned to follow Mom as a new Miss America someday, I’m supposed to follow in the old lady’s footsteps!
Thinking about her matter-transmutation powers, she tried to figure out how they could best transport her from California to New York. Could I make some kind of plane? she wondered. I sure don’t know how to fly one!
She concentrated for a moment as she always had before using the superhuman ability she had inherited from her mother, but this time something was wrong.
Nothing happened.
Her powers were gone.
“I don’t have them!” she whispered, frowning in confusion as she tried to grasp for the truth. Before panic could set in, she began wracking her brain. Somehow she thought she might already know what had happened to her, but she needed to voice it aloud. “I think — I think that maybe when that old lady gave me the locket… she — she must’ve done something to me that removed my powers… and gave me new ones!”
Acting on the same strange but comforting instinct that had once guided her mother when she first received her own powers from what had appeared to be a dream image of the Statue of Liberty, Courtney Noble closed the locket and concentrated on her extended arm and open right hand.
Suddenly, a gleaming torch appeared in her grip as she closed her fingers around its base. At the same time, her clothing changed until she was wearing a brief blue tunic with three white letters emblazoned across the chest that spelled U.S.A. Courtney also now wore silver sandals and felt soft fabric drape over her bare shoulders — a cape that resembled the American flag. Her long, blonde hair now flowed freely in the breeze, which she hadn’t noticed at all moments earlier.
I am USA! thought the altered teen. I’m the new embodiment of the feminine Spirit of Freedom, with a costume like her own but with a few new additions! The old lady was once known as Usa the Spirit of Old Glory, but now she simply calls herself Old Glory! And she is a Freedom Fighter! I seem to know all about her now!
Regarding the torch in her hand, she thought, I also have more power than ever before! I sure hope I can prove worthy! As she raised the torch, she soared up into the air and flew above the woods and across the countryside below
“This is the coolest thing ever!” she cried.
***
As the Red Torpedo guided his namesake craft through the skies over California, he smiled with satisfaction. This is where I was born to be, he thought. I love flying this baby! I hated to leave Klitra, but she accepted my promise that I’d be back. Her kingdom makes a terrific base for me, and I have to admit that I’m crazy about her, too!
“The cities sure look different!” said Magno. “I still can’t believe how much we’ve missed while we were trapped!”
Valkyrie nodded in agreement as she peered at the skyscrapers. “When last my sword sisters and I traversed this planet,” said Kriemhild, “such towering structures only existed in golden Asgard itself!”
The Invisible Hood sat lost in silent thought. While in the realm of the Mermazons, he had read much about what had occurred in the upper world over the last four decades. Uncle Sam survived the bombing that left us dazed. He recruited other Freedom Fighters from the ranks of costumed heroes, and his magic enabled many of them to remain young in order to wage war for decades! The others are world-famous, but we’ve been forgotten by most people. I guess that is just as well. I was never in it for glory. I just wanted to fight crime like my Dad did. It will be interesting to solve this mystery concerning Joan, not to mention the larger threat Neon detected.
Neon the Unknown was speaking with Magno in hushed tones. The two of them had formed a close friendship within the group, and Tom Corbet seemed to be more comfortable with Tom Dalton than he was with anyone else. “The mind I sensed has the power to literally change reality,” explained Neon. “His name is John Grant. If he chooses to serve the Axis cause, Dalton, we’ll be sorely pressed to stop them! But I detect something even more troubling than the idea of Hitler’s thugs being backed by a cosmic-powered mutant!”
“What do you mean?” asked Magno. “Are you saying this Grant guy is worse than Hitler?”
“Let’s just say that what he has accomplished is far worse than anything Hitler ever did, or at least as far as I know it is!” said Neon.
“Corbet, we’ve all read about tragic things!” said Magno. “Death camps! Wholesale slaughter! Cruel experimentation! What could be worse than those things?”
“The world around us has been changed, Dalton,” said Neon. “We are possibly the only ones who did not experience it. With merely one thought, this John Grant changed history and retroactively made himself the ruler of the world. He didn’t just take over the present. He altered global perceptions so that everyone thinks or remembers him as the rightful ruler of the planet — and always has been so!”
“Mind-control on that scale is beyond belief,” said Magno. “I guess the Nazi scientists who engineered the period of global domination by the Germans that Klitra told us about weren’t as dangerous as this guy!”
Neon agreed. “When the Nazi forces ruled the planet, you could pick up an old newspaper from before their conquest, and its contents would be the same as they were originally. This mutant has warped all of reality so that even written or recorded media sources now show his rule as an established fact. Had our shields failed, we would also believe he deserved his role!”
“If he’s so powerful, how come he hasn’t already detected us?” asked Magno. “Our free wills must stand out like the proverbial sore thumbs!”
“I don’t know,” said Neon, troubled. “My own mental probing revealed what I’ve told you. I dare not risk probing more directly. He might possibly still enslave us yet! It took some careful work on my part just to learn his name and how he changed history.”
Miss America sat quietly to one side with her legs crossed and her expression blank.
Joan’s becoming increasingly devoid of personality, thought the Hood. We’d better cure her fast!
Red Torpedo spoke up. “Neon, we’ve reached the coordinates you suggested. I’m going to land in that field by the woods!”
Neon nodded and gently helped Miss America to her feet. “Joan, I know my theories have been vague and disturbing to you. I sense your aura both here and within the house at the edge of the woods. If we can resolve this mystery, we may be able to help you feel whole once more!”
Miss America nodded slowly, but said nothing. She was still beautiful and powerful, but she was almost entirely devoid of expression of emotion.
Placing his arm around her, Magno said, “We’ll fix this, honey — I promise we will!”
“What if I scout around first?” suggested the Invisible Hood. “I can check the place out without alarming anyone inside.”
“Good idea, Kent,” said the Red Torpedo.
Kent Thurston raised his hood and vanished from view. Swiftly he made his way out of the craft and across the overgrown field to the house beyond.
The name on the mailbox is Noble, he thought. There were some prominent Nobles before the war. My folks used to occasionally mingle with them. Could very well be the same bunch. He deftly opened the locked backdoor with the expertise that made him so accomplished at various tasks.
I hate to just break in, but I want to find answers for Joan fast so we can help her and stop this mad mentalist! he thought.
Noticing a comfortable, pleasantly decorated kitchen, he inspected an envelope on the counter and saw the name Mrs. Joanne Noble. He frowned as he then spotted a framed black and white photo on the wall. It depicted a young Joan Dale in an elegant wedding gown. The groom in question was familiar to Kent Thurston.
Jerome Lawrence Noble, he thought. His father was Senator Walter Q. Noble, who knew my grandfather! He must have married Joan or someone who could be her twin sister!
He started to move closer to the photo when an elderly woman entered the room. She was leaning on a heavy cane, but she was unmistakably Joan Dale or Joanne Noble as she now apparently called herself. Neon was right as usual, he mused. There are two Joans! I’d better bring the others here.
Minutes later, the Freedom Fighters stood at Joanne Noble’s door. The Miss America who was with them had deftly altered their costumes until they resembled ordinary clothing. Kriemhild was clearly uneasy in high heels and a pencil skirt and white blouse.
“This is hardly fitting garb for a warrior maiden!” complained Valkyrie.
Magno chuckled. “Miss America can restore your metal mini-skirt when we settle things here. We don’t want to cause more of a scene than we have to. It is going to be upsetting enough for the lady inside!”
Miss America was wearing a dark dress, matching heels, and a veiled hat. Kent had figured there was no need to immediately alarm the occupant of the house by revealing her younger double at first glance.
As Joanne opened her door after hearing Kent’s knock, she looked the group and asked, “Hello, may I help you? You must be looking for my son, Jerry. He’s around your age!”
“Mrs. Noble, may we please come inside?” asked Kent. “We have a rather complicated situation that concerns you, and your family as well. I assure you we aren’t here to cause any trouble or harm anyone.”
Joanne frowned, then slowly stepped back and allowed them inside. “You look familiar to me,” she said. “I may have once known… your father? I can’t place you.”
“You actually knew us before the war,” said Magno. “We haven’t aged, but that shouldn’t be exactly shocking to a woman who knew Uncle Sam himself!”
Joanne Noble sat down abruptly as her eyes widened and her hands fluttered up to her mouth. “Tom Dalton — Magno?” she gasped, drawing upon knowledge of their real names that she’d discovered in the years since. “And you’re Kent Thurston, the Invisible Hood! Neon the Unknown! Red Torpedo! I thought you had all died! I can’t believe you’re all here!”
Magno knelt before her and said, “Joan, we are alive and well. After the attack knocked us out, we were captured by the Axis. Eventually, they put us in some glorified deep freeze unit. It kept us young and out of touch with world events going on around us. We just got out a couple of weeks ago. The blonde lady with us is the Valkyrie Kriemhild. She helped free us. We came here because we wanted to see you and because we need your help!”
“I’d love to help you!” she replied. “I feel like it’s Christmas in the spring, seeing you all alive and well like this! I’d talked about you all many times to my family. You would have liked my poor late husband. Although he wore no costume, he was a crime-fighter and spy-catcher like us, you know! He was the Yankee Eagle!”
“Joan, we need you to be as brave as you were that day in the Pacific,” said Magno. “We need you to be calm in spite of something we have to show you.”
Joanne nodded and said, “I’m not that girl anymore, but I’m still willing to do my part, especially for you boys!”
Deciding to cut to the chase, Kriemhild abruptly pulled the veiled hat off of Miss America’s head and said, “We think this woman is also you!”
The men expressed consternation at Valkyrie’s actions, but to her credit Joanne did not shrink away or panic at the sight of her younger self.
“How can it be? She — is me! She’s a part of me! I can sense it! She really is me!” said the older woman as she gazed at the beautiful, athletic double of her past days.
“Joan, when the bomber dived out of the sun at us,” said Neon, “you tried to protect yourself by dispersing your own body, much like you could once transform a man into an animal or an object! It worked, but it worked too well! My theory is that some part of you failed to reintegrate with the rest of you. Your powers weakened and faded, and eventually you aged. Meanwhile, that missing part of you remained insubstantial, because she lacked the proper catalyst to re-form or rejoin you.”
Joanne took her double’s hand and touched her face. “She really is me!” she whispered.
“I have a theory that you actually did split into two separate beings,” continued Neon, “although only one was solid enough to have a real physical form. It must have happened during the attack in the Pacific. Remember, right before that bomber attacked, you saw it first! I think you tried to scatter your very molecules to avoid the attack, and you simply failed to re-form in your entirety.”
“Yes, I think you’re right, Neon,” the Hood said, frowning as he considered his ally’s words. “This might be a bit of a stretch, Joan, but it’s possible that your dispersed self somehow mingled with the residual neonic and magnetic energies that Neon, Magno, and I emitted during the battle. Following along this line of thought, perhaps it wasn’t until those precise energies were once more released in proximity to one another that your missing self was able to anchor and reconstitute itself!”
“We were not able to use our powers for over forty years, because we were trapped by the Nazi forces!” said Neon.
I wonder if those Axis creeps who used our names differed from us enough so that none of their own powers could summon or anchor the missing part of Miss America, mused the Red Torpedo. That would explain why she didn’t appear in their midst when they started using powers like our own.
Stepping forward, Joanne took her double’s hands. For a moment they looked at one another like some odd funhouse mirror image brought to three-dimensional life. Seconds later, there was a flash of light, and only one woman stood before the startled Freedom Fighters.
Joanne Dale Noble had been reborn as the young and vibrant Miss America. Joan now wore the famous red, white, and blue costume consisting of a sleeveless red top, red-and-white-striped miniskirt, blue high heels, and blue domino mask. Her hair was radiant and black, and her features were young and lovely once more.
“I have my powers back! I’m young again! This is all like some wonderful dream!” she said, twirling around in place and laughing merrily.
Magno rushed forward and embraced her. “Welcome back, honey!” he said. “It sure is great to see you happy and animated and full of life again!”
Glancing at the wedding photo, he abruptly backed away sheepishly. “Sorry, Joan! I got carried away!” he said.
Miss America smiled winningly and said, “It’s okay, Tom! I feel as if I’ve been frozen away with you all, and you’ve thawed me out of some icy block, too!” She chuckled and said, “My kids will be amazed! I can use my powers for the war effort again! I’ll make them so proud!”
“We need your help, but you know that, don’t you?” said Neon.
“Yes!” said Miss America. “The Führer of Brooklyn! When I joined my other self, I not only gained her memories of being with all of you, but I also gained the immunity you’d given her. John Grant is the ruler of the world now, but he wasn’t ruler a day ago. Somehow he took over and enslaved the world in a matter of minutes. He must be able to change history or something!”
“He is a mutant,” said Neon. “I think he was born with his power, and that his mental might came from the Nazi machines that once blanketed the world with mind-control rays. I think he was born the moment they were activated. I’m not a telepath, but my mental visions are usually accurate.”
“May I have my armor back?” said Valkyrie. “I want to fight this warlord Grant and feel the heady rush of epic battle once more!”
The Hood whispered to Miss America, “I guess you know about her from your merge, but she takes some getting used to!”
Miss America smiled and said, “Yes! I’m thrilled to be a Freedom Fighter again! I’ll leave a note for my daughter. I’ll just say I need to be away for a few days on an errand connected to the war effort.”
“Fitting words indeed!” said Neon.