Minister Faust by From (html) (librera reader txt) 📕

the F*O*O*J’s multibillion dollar appropriations budget. Even the mid-1980s retrofit of Asteroid Zed was a Pilt-Dyne project, “when according to Zenith,” said Kareem, “two dozen other contractors could have done this stuff for a tenth of the price. Or less. C’mon, fifty-thousand-dollar shower curtains? A half-million-dollar bidet? Who’s gonna use a bidet on Asteroid Zed?”

“I made regular trips up there to supervise reconstruction, Edgerton, and those of us on the winning side of evolution care about matters of hygiene. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Before Kareem could counter him, Festus’s security agents ushered in a contingent of the LDPD. Before the tycoon could say a word, the X-Man stepped into the path of the lead detective.

“This is F*O*O*J jurisdiction, officer. So why don’t you take your little men back to your brother-shooting clubhouse while we solve this case? ’Bye,” said Kareem, turning his back.

The lead detective flushed borscht red. “Now you listen up, ‘X-Man’—”

“No, you listen, Detective McDevil,” said Kareem, facing him, “I’ve got full jurisdiction here, and you’re standing on my crime scene. So unless you want me to arrest you, get out of here now. André!” he yelled into his wrist comm. “Get down here!”

The detective, outraged at being trumped in front of his men, looked toward Mr. Piltdown for support. Festus shook his head in sympathetic disgust and shared impotence.

“Don’t look at him. Look at me.” Kareem smiled. “The one ordering you to get your ass out of here.”

“You better watch yourself, Edgerton,” said the detective. “The bigger you get, the harder—”

“—the harder I’ll kick a fool in the ass. See ya!” said Kareem, walking away and waving bye-bye over his shoulder at the retreating LDPD.

“Edgerton!” snapped Festus, sticking a finger in Kareem’s face. “Leaving aside how you treated those peace officers, you’ve wasted ten minutes berating me about a man who tried to murder me in my own home as if I were the bomber when the real criminal blew himself to bloody burning bits! Maybe you should be leaving this investigation to someone who isn’t conflicted by pursuing a personal agenda—or a political one!”

“Irony—cute. Might want to reflect on that irony yourself, Festes. So you’d have me believe that out of nowhere, one of the most brilliant investigative litigators in the country—”

“Maybe never being able to finish his vendetta against my family finally got to him, and he snapped! Maybe he had terminal cancer and this was his last chance to get me! Maybe—”

“Maybe Menton got to him.”

Festus stopped, placing a thumb and crooked finger to his chin.

“Maybe. But…Menton wouldn’t’ve been able to mind-master the Tree’s bomb-sniffing technology. It’d take someone like the supreme khemist of ancient Egypt, Warmaster Set, to do that. He’d be eminently capable of devising an explosive my sniffers wouldn’t be calibrated to detect.”

“But why would Jack Zenith work with Set? I mean, Menton could’ve mind-chained Zenith, but Set doesn’t have—”

“The Scepter of Typhon. Obviously you’re not the Hawk King authority you think you are.”

The blackboard of X-Man’s face chalked with exasperation before he wiped it clean.

“The Scepter of Typhon,” said Festus, “discussed in the papyrus The Book of Lesser Portals as a staff of mental domination. It was lost around 1400 B.C.—but perhaps now found and used again.” He snorted. “Not that I disagree with Set’s choice of tools in this case.”

“You son of a bitch!” said Tran, suddenly at our side. “Jack Zenith wasn’t like all us, us clowns in the F*O*O*J prancing around in our three-color lingerie. He changed America more for the better than all of us combined. Combined a thousand times!”

“Well, evidently,” quipped Festus, “the author of Unsafe in Any Cape was unsafe in his final suit.”

And with that, Tran spat on Festus’s cravat and stormed off.

Toward a Total X-Sanguination

What’re you smirking at, Edgerton?”

“Admiring your spit-shine. Focus, Fes-face! There’s another angle to the Menton lead—I’ve finally finished analyzing all the data my medu-kem brought me from Asteroid Zed’s computers.

“Turns out Menton wasn’t the only prisoner missing from Asteroid Zed. Sarah Bellum should’ve been in lockdown since 1972. But she never made it! With her powers, she could’ve mind-scribed everyone concerned into believing she was up there. For all we know, she could’ve been the one who catalyzed Menton’s powers—”

The Brotherfly swooped down, brushing his feet on Kareem’s shoulders and head.

“Get the hell off me, you moron!” yelled Kareem. “What took you so long? I called you down here five minutes ago!”

André landed, ignoring the question. “Yo, Kreem, you gots a army out there, son. Army of reporters. Looking to talk to y’all.”

Kareem turned his back on Festus without so much as a word. I followed him toward the entrance with André flapping directly overhead.

“Got some fine-ass newsladies out there, K-dawg,” said André. “But what with your ‘investigation’ making you the Zulu flavor of the week, André gon hafta work his bzzzt!-mojo extra hard to get any attention, specially since you light-skinned negroes always get all the play—”

“What kinda bullshit have you been drinking, André? You and I are the exact same color! And you’re the one who was on the cover of The Source, on Essence, you were People’s Sexiest Superhero Alive, so don’t be giving me your—”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa! You redbone dodecaroons are so touchy! André gots to be calling you Detective Defensive! Don’t worry, bruh—soon you can be releasin all the tension you got to with them repor-teurs. They’s a fox from FOX out there with tadow who’s bizanging!”

“I’m in the Forty-Two Chambers, André! Vow of chastity, remember?”

“All that means is more for André, dawg!” he said, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “All-you-can-eat hoes!”

At the gates of the estate, cameras and reporters swarmed X-Man, demanding answers about the status of his investigation and his reaction to polls showing him with a 60 percent lead over the Flying Squirrel. And then a reporter in a pin-striped pantsuit and push-up bra shouldered her way to the front of the throng, holding up a book with the face of an angry hyper-muscular woman on its cover.

“Jaylene