Lockdown




Lockdown is Eon and Gus's first collaborative effort.  It's super-hero yaoi.

  It’s been hard for Brian, known to the world as the super-hero Invinci-Boy, to the fill the shoes of his father, the venerable Captain Invincible.  Forced to keep his sexuality secret, Brian has taken on more and more dangerous missions in the hopes of winning his father’s approval.  Help comes from an unexpected source when Brian finds himself trapped in a nuclear power facility with Captain Invincible’s greatest rival.

Ivy at Manic Readers says:

Invinci-boy, struggling against his domineering father, thinks he can take on Taro on his own. Well, he does, but not with the results he intended...

This reads like a comic book, which is exactly as it’s supposed to for its genre. You can almost see the brightly colored scenes in your head, because the author describes everything so well. The characters are superheroes of a sort, so of course there’s a supervillain. When the hero and the villain get trapped, they give in to their mutual passion. There are the expected insults, and when they get down to it the sex is very well done. A fun, quick read!

Read her review

Teresa over at Fallen Angels Reviews said:

Ms. Li and Eon de Beaumont have created a unique short story with two very strong characters placed in a situation that allows them to explore unknown aspects of their personalities. Invinci-boy has always lived in his fathers shadow, but maybe this time he can allow himself to open up to new possibilities. Taro is seen as the flamboyant and evil character, but beneath this could be someone with the same needs and desires as all men. Together they may learn that love and desire can open you up to new possibilities and situations. I hope their will be others stories about the lives of Brian and Taro.

Read the review here!

 

And here’s an excerpt!

                Exhilaration multiplied Invinci-Boy’s already phenomenal strength.  He’d succeeded in subduing the only man to ever elude his father, the famous Captain Invincible.  Sputtering in a ball at Invinci-Boy’s feet was Taro Miyake, Excellent First Son, Bright, Shining Prince of the Three Houses.  Though Miyake looked a young twenty, he’d tormented Invinci-Boy’s father over thirty years before.  Fathered by a kami on a turn-of-the-century English villainess, a woman who could transform into mist, Taro became heir to both his mother’s shrewd intellect and his immortal father’s limitless supernatural powers.  He hadn’t put the deadly combination to waste. Taro controlled nearly all criminal activity in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia.  His bold, grandiose crimes in America and Europe were almost as legendary as his ability to evade capture.  Most of the world lived in fear of his unpredictable whims.

                Until now.  Finally, Invinci-Boy thought.  I’ve finally done something that the old man can’t top.  Let’s see him belittle this achievement.  He knelt down beside Taro’s still body.  Like he’d always done, the criminal genius and half-demon sorcerer wore custom-made black clothes: a sleeveless silk blazer and tie over a tight fishnet shirt today.  Black make-up lined his fluttering eyelids.  Aside from a few cuts and bruises, Taro’s face was perfect enough to grace the cover of any magazine, part of the reason Captain Invincible referred to his nemesis as “pretty boy,” among other, nastier things.

                Just as Invinci-Boy was about to seize Taro’s wrist, the other man opened his eyes, smiled, and lifted his left hand.  A dusk-blue stream of gunpowder-scented light hit Invinci-Boy in the face and knocked him backward.  His head smacked the hard floor.  Pain erupted in his skull.  His inherited resilience saved Invinci-Boy from losing consciousness, but he needed a few seconds to clear the sparkles from his vision.  By the time he sat up, Taro had run halfway down the long hallway leading from the computer room to the reactor.  The strobe of the lights made him appear to leap from one shadow to the next.

                Pride and fear of his father’s criticism crowded out Invinci-Boy’s soreness and nausea.   He hauled himself up, choked back the bile rising in his throat, and pursued his foe to the massive, metal cylinder that sat fenced off in the center of a room as big as a football field.

                Taro stood rubbing his temples, hips resting against the barrier around the reactor casing.  He swayed slightly, like he might pass out again.  The pool of darkness at his feet blinked in and out of existence with the lights.

                “Surrender, Taro!” Invinci-Boy yelled, planting his fists on his waist and trying to look heroic even as Miyake’s silhouette wavered in his concussed vision.

                The beautiful, dark man sighed so heavily that his whole body inflated and then slouched.  “My name is not Tarot,” he said in a velvety voice.  “Not like the silly fortune-telling cards.  It’s tah-ROW, Invinci-Boy.  It means—”

                “Excellent First Son.  I’ll make sure your prison warden knows that,” the hero said.

                “Please,” Taro replied.  “Enough with the ridiculous lines.  This isn’t a Saturday morning cartoon.  Speaking in that way might suit your father, but you sound like an ass.”

                Irate, wounded from the gibe Taro had delivered precisely where it hurt most, Invinci-Boy hurled himself toward the villain so fast the light bulbs on the wall shattered as he passed them.  Just as he was about to tackle his foe, Taro whispered a word. Ephemeral wisps orbited his body, and then congealed at his feet into a puffy, glimmering dark cloud.  Tongues of lightning flickered beneath it.  The shimmering mass shot the villain up into the air, causing Invinci-Boy to somersault into the reactor housing.  His solidity and mass creased the side of the cylinder, making it screech and crumple like an aluminum can.

                The flashing lights changed from yellow to red.  An artificial feminine voice repeated, “Reactor breach.  Possible contamination.  Lockdown,” in English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Swedish, and several other languages Invinci-Boy couldn’t identify.  Looking up a few feet to where his enemy hovered, Invinci-boy met Taro’s eyes for a meaningful second, and then both men hurried back up the hall toward the control room.  Though he flew at top speed, Taro sailed past Invinci-Boy, riding the cloud like a skateboard, the strand of long hair flapping beside his face.  Shards of glass eddied in their wake.

                Neither was fast enough.  By the time they reached the main entrance, a thick slab of metal had blocked the door.  Invinci-Boy punched it as hard as he could without leaving so much as a dent.  He kicked it and pressed against it with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t yield.  Invinci-Boy could hurl a school bus half a mile, but he couldn’t even scratch the barrier.  He couldn’t imagine what the door was made of.  The engineers who’d designed the place to be airtight and disaster-proof had known their jobs.

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