Oliver Dunn: Black and White

This is a story about a character I created named Oliver Dunn. He's kind of a harsh, gruff old lawman. He's seen the world I created for my book change into something stranger. He's seen this group of misfits slowly become so commonplace that it blurs the lines between black and white. He plays a very minor role in my book but will be a bit more prominent in later stories. I think he's a decent enough creation to have his own books but we'll see. Hope you enjoy!




Everybody always talks about “the good ol’ days”, the days when things made sense and it didn’t feel like the end of the world was next week. But things have always felt like that. Captain Oliver Dunn’s daddy had told him that, years ago.


As the Captain sits in an El Paso park puffing on a cigar and reading a newspaper article titled “The Good Ol’ Days” by some right-wing Christian jackass. The article discusses a popular belief that a particular group of people are destroying America. It says that the world would be better off if these savages would go back from wherever they came. It pisses Oliver off that people still go through the same mess they did fifty years ago and fifty years before that and fifty years before that. It seems like the world will never escape those damned “good ol’ days” where some damned group is being persecuted whether it’s the natives, blacks, Jews, women, or now the “Enhanced Americans”.


Ol’ Captain Ollie is past his prime now. He’s been handed down his father’s wisdom, wrinkles, and graying hair. He hasn’t had an easy life nor has it gotten much easier with his fame and wealth. Since becoming the first unenhanced human to defeat a super-powered “savage”, as they used to call them and sometimes still do, Oliver has made the Dunn name very popular. He’s become something of a folk hero. The pictures of his first David versus Goliath type battle launched his career into something he wasn’t ready for. In the years that have passed he’s led a small army against the monsters, mutations, and science experiments gone awry and grown into his leadership role.


When Ollie thinks back to “the good ol’ days” he remembers running scared from blob men or being cut by bone spikes or trying not to get his head crushed in giant purple hands. “The good ol’ days” weren’t so nice for him. He’s lost a lot of friends over a lot of years. He’s fought a lot of battles that never did much to make the world any safer. He’d stop a fire-breathing dragon-woman and a couple of giant robots would show up. He’d beat them and something else would come up either trying to force its power on the world or get the world to make peace with it.
That was the hardest part of the job, convincing the public that the former janitor that’s now a giant yellow lizard person with a rocket launcher strapped to his arm doesn’t want to harm anyone. As ridiculous as it may sound a lot of those people that Captain Dunn had to handle were just misunderstood. They were just victims that had been kidnapped in the night, taken to some secret lab where experiments were conducted on them and then they were sent back into the world to wreak havoc. Even the career criminals that agreed to undergo these transformations didn’t know if they’d work out okay or not. Even the best people would snap if they had a fairly normal life and then one day they were slobbering “savages”.


Now everybody’s life is a bit crazier. When the Captain was a boy people were still people. They went to school, they had jobs, they committed crimes, and were arrested by officers, like Sergeant Howard Dunn of El Paso, for it. The definition of “people” is a bit looser now. In the years that Captain Oliver Dunn of the United States Rangers has been working in law enforcement the number of super-powered people has risen to include a quarter of the world’s population. He’s been fighting a losing battle to stop the production of these beings but someone, somewhere, often outside of his jurisdiction, keeps manufacturing new and more advanced super-people.


In his early days he got by on luck. Much like in the special effects of early movies important wires or machinery was visible and the creations weren’t that great anyway. The technology has gotten more and more advanced. There used to be hope of reversing what had been done to these people but oftentimes this is no longer the case.


Captain Dunn’s mission has changed. Instead of stopping these things from coming into existence the government has charged him with creating peace in a society that has an abundance of these creations and stopping those that would abuse their abilities to terrorize citizens. Captain Dunn has found that an unspoken challenge to the job is the society itself. Often small minded citizens find themselves afraid of these peaceful, although possibly dangerous, super-powered individuals. Dunn has to integrate these reborn citizens into a society that hates and fears them. No one wants a robot with laser eyes living next door to them even if this particular robot used to be a third grade teacher named Eleanor Kline with no prior arrest record.


Oliver’s reflection in El Paso is cut short as he hears shouting behind him. A group of young boys are obviously picking on another boy. Ollie folds his paper and sucks the last bit of smoke out of his cigar before he puts it out and trashes it. He adjusts his cowboy hat and his knee pops as he begins walking towards the scuffle.


“You boys got a problem here?” Oliver speaks with the weight and authority of a man that’s stared down men with the ability to end his life a dozen times over. It’s the only way he knows how to speak anymore.


The boys stop what their doing and stretch their circle to reveal the beaten boy they’d been picking on. The boy, instantly recognizable even if you’d only seen him once, tries to stand but his arms are too weak for that now. Blood runs from the boy’s face and fattened lips. His clothes are tattered and dirty but not because of the beating.


Captain Dunn knows the boys last name is Walker, he could never forget his first. Walker inherited his father’s purple skin and black eyes but not his strength. “My name’s Captain Oliver Dunn.” The boy takes the captain’s out stretched hand.


The captain helps the boy to his feet. “I’m uh I’m J-Jon Walker.”


“You know I had a scuffle or two some years back with a Henry Walker. You wouldn’t happen to be any relation to him at all would you, Jon?” Oliver asks already knowing the answer.


“Y-Yes, Sir. You aren’t gonna ugh” Jon cringes in pain for a second, “arrest me now are you?”
Oliver chuckles lightly “Heh, I ain’t arresting you unless you done somethin’ wrong. Now, what I do consider wrong is gangin’ up on a boy and beatin’ him like these damned fools did here.” Oliver speaks a loud and clear truth, “What the hell were you boys thinkin’? How can you treat someone like this?”


That doesn’t sit well with one of the boys who picks up a few rocks and chunks them at the pair. Dunn is hit across his brow and again in the shoulder. The other boys pick up rocks and follow the boy’s lead. Oliver wishes he could draw his gun on ‘em and make things easier for himself. Jon does.


Jon slams his fist down on the ground and concentrates. He shouts as his body begins to bubble like boiling water. The boys stop throwing rocks as Jon grows several sizes larger.
“He is a freak!” one boy shouts. The stoning resumes.


Jon shouts in frustration. “AAAARRGH!!!” His arms swing wildly knocking over his classmates. Joe Forrester with his red hair and buck teeth, Ben “Bean Pole” Stowe, Jorge Mendoza the son without a father all go down in the first swing. Just as many go down in the second. Jon grabs the ring leader of the bunch by his leg and hold him upside down.


The kid doesn’t learn. He throws his last stone at the giant, purple, Jon. It hits Jon square in the eye, only making him angrier. He growls and lifts the boy higher ready to slam him into the pavement.


“Jon!!!” Captain Dunn stands between the little hate monger and his paved doom.
Jon stops.


“It’s okay, Jon. It’s okay to be pissed at that little piece of trash. He hit me too. I gotta gun and I coulda pulled it…but I didn’t. I’ll make sure these boys get in as much trouble as they can. But I can’t let you kill. You kill, I gotta take you down too. You gotta choice in how you wanna deal with him.”


Jon’s almost all instinct now. He’s shaking he’s so angry. No one could blame him. He was walking home from school. Happy to be alive since he found out that Jessica Gonzalez actually wants to go see a movie with him this weekend on a real date. He knew there might be repercussions in the form of whispers or words. He hadn’t expected his classmates to actually follow him home. He hadn’t expected them to fight him. He hadn’t expected them to call him a “savage” or say that the girl he’d spent most of the school year pining over was just some “gutter trash slut”. More so than anything else it was the revelation that the boys he’d called his friends felt that way about him. They thought he was a monster. They didn’t consider Jon to be a human. Now here Jon was proving them right with strength he’d kept hidden so he’d never be used like his father was. Jon’s hate and hurt were using his strength now.


Jon lowered the whimpering boy into Oliver’s hands. The captain laid the boy onto the street. Jon’s strength seemingly evaporated into nothing. The transformation back into his scrawny purple self was much less violent and took much less effort. Jon cried and wrapped his arms around Captain Dunn. “Shh shh, it’s okay, big guy. It’s all okay now. It’s all over.” They watched the boys run away. Oliver looked down and young Jon cried into his chest.


As more rocks hit Oliver and Jon they both realized that Captain Dunn was a liar.