by Erin Halfelven
 

1.2 "With This Ring..."

"Uncle Steve?" I yelped. How a big guy could move so silently kind of scared me; we hadn't heard him before he said something.

Kevin took it more calmly. "Is this your car, Unk?" he asked, putting a hand on the hood of the big blue sedan.

"Uh huh," said Steve. "Figured you boys would find it sooner or later. Never seen two teenagers so willing to sit on their fat asses and watch the boob tube as you two." He scowled at us. "Took you two days to look inside an unlocked door."

"But you have the pick-up truck parked out front," I said."You keep this one for special occasions?"

"Yup," said Steve. "Very special. This was my Skarabmobile, back in the forties and fifties."

"Wow, it's that old?" I said.

"Skarabmobile?" asked Kevin.

"Uh huh," said Steve. "As in The Mighty Skarab." Then he added in a softer voice, "And Damselfly."

"Who?" I said.

"Thought you kids read up on all the old-timey mystery men and crimefighters? Damsel and I fought street gangs and crimelords like the Scorpion Mob and Ruth Lester. We beat the crap out of them with our fists and feet at first, but later the Insect Lords gave us superpowers."

We stared at him. Uncle Steve was a super?

"Yeah, the Insect Lords," he said as if we had asked him. "They live in another dimension that can be reached sometimes when they need you. Needed me. Us." He looked glum.

"Do you still have your powers?" I asked.

"Insect Lords?" muttered Kevin. "What? Cockroaches?"

Steve glared at Kevin but nodded at me. "I'm old but I just keep getting stronger. I don't even need to wear the ring anymore."

"What can you do?" I asked. "How come I've never heard of The Scarab?"

"Skarab with a 'k'," he said. "When I first picked the name, the newspapers didn't know how to spell it." He smiled. "Josie used to tease me about it."

"Josie?" I said.

"Ring?" Kevin said.

The old man reached into a pocket of his coveralls and came out with a soft-looking leather bag. "Rings," he said. "We each had one." He shook them out onto his palm as we gathered around him. The old man's hands were so large, the rings looked like the toys for little kids that they give away with fast food.

Except they weren't. The bigger ring had a rectangular blue stone set in bright yellow metal. It had a design etched into it, a sort of beetle shape. The smaller ring, also bright gold, had an oval green stone with a narrower, winged insect.

"Cool," Kevin and I said at the same time.

"The Insect Lords say you two are to have these rings," said Steve. He handed the blue-stone ring to Kevin and gave me the one with the green stone. He looked sad when he let go of it.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"That was Josie's ring," he said. "She doesn't need it any more either."

"These will give us superpowers?" Kevin asked. "You're kidding us, right?"

Steve shook his head. "No, these rings are magic or what passes for magic in this world. They'll give you superpowers like Josie and I had back when we were Mighty Skarab and Damselfly."

Kevin looked at me. "What do you think, Darryl?"

"He's your uncle," I said. "And obviously, insanity runs in your family." Superpowers? Well, who wouldn't want to have superpowers, but magic rings?

"Ho, ho," said Kevin.

"Take the rings, kids," said Steve. "Yes, I'm a crazy old man, humor me." He scowled, a truly frightening thing to see and ice touched my gizzard, or whatever, for a moment.

Kevin took the ring with the square blue stone set in bright yellow metal. "Is this sapphire?" he asked.

Steve shook his head. "They're both beryl, it comes in lots of colors."

The second ring had an oval green stone in the golden setting. "Emerald is a kind of green beryl," I said, taking it. Why I had a memory for such trivia, I didn’t know.

"Wrong kind of green, see this is yellow-green? Emeralds are true green or blue-green." The old man knew something, too.

Kevin slipped his onto the ring finger of his right hand. Amazingly, it fit. "Huh," said Kevin. "Did you have these altered for us?"

The old man sighed. "They're magic rings. They fit whoever wears them." He shook his head like he thought we were too dumb to live. Okay, we were teenagers; it might have been true.

"You feel anything?" I asked Kevin since he had his ring on.

He shook his head. "Should I?" he asked his uncle.

Steve scowled again. He probably practiced looks like that in front of a mirror, in case he needed to scare a supervillain. "Maybe," he said. He looked at me.

Sighing, I slipped the ring onto my own finger. It fit perfectly but I didn't feel any sort of tingle or anything. "It's just a ring," I said.

"It's just a ring," Steve mocked me in a falsetto. "Reach with your other hand and turn it around counterclockwise, 360 degrees. Full circle."

While I hesitated, Kevin did so right away.

The transformation happened immediately. He grew about six inches, put on sixty pounds of muscle and was suddenly wearing a costume — dark blue with freaky magical designs in gold on his arms and legs and across his back and chest. Most of his face was covered, too, and he had two small antenna on his forehead.

The antenna looked stupid, actually.

"Whoa!" said Kevin.

I just stood there goggling at him.

Up until then, we had only sort of believed Uncle Steve that he used to be a superhero named Mighty Skarab. The man was older than some geological formations and smelled like stale wine. Yeah, he was big but kind of fat and his face had creases in it deep enough to lose the TV remote in. Of course, there were those scowls….

"This is bitchin'," said Kevin. Even his voice had changed, a deep, baritone, growly sort of sound. He stared at his arms and hands, flexing them and looking like a dork on steroids. "Is there a mirror where I can see what I look like?"

"Bathroom," said Steve, pointing at a door beside the big map wall.

Kevin lumbered off in that direction. "Holy crap," he said. "I feel like I could wrestle bears or crocodiles."

I couldn't stop staring at him. This was real, these were real magic rings.

"You gonna try your ring?" Steve asked me. "Just turn it around to activate the magic."

I looked at Steve, since Kevin had gone down the hall and I couldn't see him anymore. Something else occurred to me. "He looks just like that Saturday morning cartoon character, The Tick."

"Uh-uh," Steve disagreed. "Wrong way around. The Tick looks like me, Mighty Skarab. My costume had a red belt, though, not the gold doodads."

"You mean Kevin's costume has gold patterns on it. Huh. I'm not going to end up looking like Arthur am I?" I asked, thinking of the Tick's sidekick, a guy in a moth suit.

"Don't think so," said Steve. He didn't sound that sure of it.

Kevin came back. "Hey! I look like The Tick!"

"We were just saying," I commented.

"The Tick is a satire, based on me and a couple of other old guys from the 30s to the 60s," said Steve. "He can't sue you for looking like him. Besides, you've got those yellow patterns all over you. Trademark." He stared off into space for a moment. "Everyone who wears one of the rings has a different costume." He seemed to be remembering.

"Yeah, well. The Tick is sort of stupid," said Kevin, not quite complaining. He reached up and touched one of the antenna on his forehead. "I almost freaked when I saw these. What the hell are the dealie-bobbers for, anyway?"

"Your super-senses, you can hear and see and smell things humans can't," said Steve.

"But they look stupid," Kevin complained.

"Anybody laughs, bust them in the chops," said Steve. "You're super-strong, hard to hurt and faster than any human athlete. I think, if you've got similar powers to the ones I had."

"Oh, no," I said. "Hard to hurt? You mean he's nigh-invulnerable?" I snickered.

"Something like that," agreed Steve. "Like I said, The Tick is based on me. They had a superbook about me in the forties, called me the Blue Beetle." He shrugged. "Same kind of thing. I used to get royalties off it but back in the fifties some lawyers took that away from us costumers, part of the crap went on about the Overman Act."

“The fifties sucked, they taught us that in school,” said Kevin.

The Blue Beetle? I wondered. I knew I'd seen a picture of what the superbooks called the "Golden Age" Blue Beetle. Blue tights and tunic, red belt, boots and visor, I thought I remembered.

Kevin frowned at me, what I could see of his face not covered by the mask. "Let's see your costume," he said. "Twist your ring around."

I must have had a premonition; I didn’t really want to find out what my costume looked like. But I couldn't be afraid of something Kevin had already tried, so I twisted the ring around

I felt something kind of like what a movie ripple effect might feel like, a sort of swirling electric sensation all over. It didn’t hurt, in fact, it left me grinning because it felt kind of good. I shook my head when it stopped and said, “Wow, better than the roller coaster.”

I looked down at my hands, covered in green-and-yellow gloves. Where Kevin's yellow pattern zigged and zagged, mine seemed to just circle my hands and wrists and up my arms. I looked down to see the rest of me and almost screamed. "Oh, crap!" Okay, I did scream.

"Damselfly!" said Kevin, staring at me.

I turned and dashed for the bathroom, feeling my chest and even my butt jiggling as I ran.