The Superhero's Cure

by Lucas Flint

  “Where did you get these cannons from, if I may ask?” asked Fingerprints, his hands in his pockets as he looked at the weapons curiously. “I’ve never seen anything quite like them before.”

  “Katsuki built them himself,” said Hilda, “although we purchased quite a few of the parts from a weapons dealer friend of ours in New York. Captain Red Tide wanted the best, most advanced weapons available to us, and so far, they’ve proved to be some of our most dangerous weapons. Very few ships of any size can withstand a full blast from these babies. Even tiny islands are no match for the full power of our laser cannons.”

  That seemed almost like an exaggeration to me, but Hilda seemed quite serious when she said that. I could only assume that these cannons were a large part about why Red Tide and his crew had so far managed to evade capture from nearly every government in the world. I definitely didn’t want to imagine what would happen if I got blasted by those lasers.

  After the laser cannons, Hilda gave us a quick tour of the galley (which also doubled as a dining room), the storage hull, and the various other parts of the Red Tide that we needed to be acquainted with. It was almost too much for me to take in all at once and surprised me by how big it was, but I could tell that Fingerprints was listening very carefully, no doubt constructing a mental map in his mind of the ship’s general layout. I wish I was smart enough to do that, but I would just have to trust that I could rely on Fingerprints in the event we needed to find a particular room or part of the ship in order to pull off our heist.

  The tour ended at the equipment room, which was basically the room where all of the weapons were kept. It was a pretty large room, too, with a wide variety of guns, knives, and even swords that were available for use for every member of the crew. I will admit to spending an inordinate amount of time looking at the guns because even though Fingerprints and I were on a fairly strict deadline, I found it nearly impossible to say no to a bunch of fancy and interesting guns.

  “And that’s all,” said Hilda as the three of us stepped out of the equipment room. “You can take any weapons you want, but you need permission from me or Captain Red Tide before you do so because we don’t want all of our weapons to disappear or end up being used for things we don’t want them to be used for.”

  I nodded as Hilda closed the door behind us and looked around at the hallway we had emerged into. “I guess we’re going to head back up to the top deck, then?”

  “Of course,” said Hilda as she locked the equipment room door. “The top deck needs a good swabbing, so you two, as our newest cabin boys, can do that.”

  Fingerprints raised an eyebrow in reference to the ‘cabin boys’ line, but I just suppressed a grin at the idea of calling Fingerprints a boy. He might not have been a very old man, but he wasn’t a young kid, either. I wasn’t sure if Hilda would understand the joke or not, so I didn’t say anything about it.

  But then I noticed another door directly across from the equipment room. It was locked with a padlock, but it was completely unmarked otherwise. Indeed, if I hadn’t noticed the padlock, I doubt I would have noticed the door at all.

  “Hey, Hilda,” I said, pointing at the door. “What’s behind that door?”

  Hilda turned around to look at the door and scowled. “That? That’s none of your business.”

  “None of my business?” I said, looking at Hilda curiously. “I thought the whole point of this tour was to familiarize us with the ship’s layout. How can we know the ship if we don’t know what’s inside every room?”

  “Maybe I need to use different words,” said Hilda. “When I said ‘That’s none of your business,’ I meant that if you kept asking me about it, I would chuck you over the starboard and let you swim back to Florida. Got it?”

  The way Hilda glowered at me was enough to tell me that her threat was one hundred percent serious, so I simply nodded and said, “Aye, aye, ma’am. I completely understand.”

  But even as I said that I exchanged a quick, knowing look with Fingerprints which Hilda did not notice. I was glad to see that Fingerprints caught my look, because he nodded slightly and gestured at the door to indicate he was thinking what I was thinking: Namely, that this unmarked door that was none of our business was probably the room where the weapon was being kept, which meant we knew exactly where to look for the weapon once we decided to steal it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to investigate the room ourselves, because as soon as we reached the top deck, Hilda thrust brooms and buckets of soapy water into our hands and immediately set us to work scrubbing the whole deck.

  Normally, I wouldn’t care about scrubbing. A good deal of my time in the NHA, prior to being assigned to Showdown, had been spent helping the Hero Island Janitorial Team perform basic maintenance work on Hero Island. That included scrubbing the Justice Statue, a massive statue designed to symbolize the unity and trust between the Neohero Alliance and the Independent Neoheroes for Justice, the two largest superhero organizations in the country. I couldn’t count the number of times I spent scrubbing seagull droppings off the heads and shoulders of the Statue, a tedious task that left me feeling exhausted each day.

  But scrubbing the poop was a lot harder than scrubbing the Statue. For one, the Red Tide was constantly in motion and I wasn’t used to standing, much less working, on a ship. Fingerprints, who said he spent a lot of time on ships, didn’t seem bothered by the way the waves of the ocean made the Red Tide rise and fall, but I was. It took me a while to find my footing and even longer to figure out how to mop the poop without knocking over my bucket of soap water. It didn’t help that quite a few of our so-called crewmates would take every opportunity to mess with us, ranging from spilling drinks onto the deck to ‘accidentally’ knocking our buckets of soap water over.

  What should have been a fairly simple task ended up taking several hours to complete. By the time the lunch bell rang, Fingerprints and I were both exhausted from the work we did. I was glad when I heard the lunch bell ring, because I hadn’t eaten anything since last night (Hilda forced us to skip breakfast so we could keep up with the rest of the crew) and was looking forward to getting some food in my stomach, even if, as I suspected, it was no good.

  But before any of us could head down to the galley to eat our meals, Captain Red Tide stepped out of his captain’s quarters near the back of the ship and walked up to the railing separating the steering wheel from the rest of the ship. His mere presence was enough to make us stop and look up at him, every member of the crew wondering what he was going to talk to us about.

  Red Tide looked a lot better today than he did last night. His eyes were no longer bloodshot and he stood far taller. Although he was still a fairly short guy, from a distance and above us, he radiated an authority that even I couldn’t question. I now understood why the rest of the crew listened to him so much.

  “All right, you scoundrels and fools,” said Red Tide in a booming voice, which rang out in the air like a gunshot. “I can see the desire for food in each of your ugly, stupid eyes, but I am not going to let any of you eat just yet. I have some important news to share with you all because it has forced me to change our plans.”

  Despite my hungry stomach, I perked up when he mentioned the important news. I wondered what it could be and why it caused Red Tide to change our plans. Hell, I didn’t even know what our ‘plans’ were just yet. I could tell that the rest of the crew was wondering the same thing.

  “All right,” said Red Tide, resting his hands on the old wooden railing in front of him. “As you all remember, last week we successfully stole a prototype weapon from the G-Men at the behest of a client of ours, who told us he would pay good money if we could get it for him. Never one to turn down such a generous offer, especially for such an easy mission, I accepted his offer and led our successful raid.”

  All of the crew nodded when Red Tide said that. I noticed Fingerprints had his hands in his pockets, but based on his expression, I could tell he w
as pretty annoyed at being reminded of the G-Men’s failure to protect the weapon. I had to suppress a grin so Fingerprints wouldn’t think I was not taking this mission seriously and looked back up at Red Tide to continue to listen to his little speech.

  “The original plan was for us to meet our client at a private island of his somewhere between Florida and Cuba,” Red Tide continued, “but last night I received a message from our client asking us to meet him personally on his private yacht tonight after dusk.”

  Murmurs of surprise and confusion quickly spread through the crowd of assembled pirates before Red Tide raised a pistol and fired it into the air. The sudden gunshot made everyone look at Red Tide again, who cocked an amused grin before holstering his gun at his side again.

  “I know I told you that it would be another few days before we arrived at our client’s island, but instead we have mere hours before we meet him,” said Red Tide. “So I expect all of you to be on your best behavior and don’t act like the idiots you are. The money we’re being paid for this project is the most money we’ve ever been paid for a single raid. Once the transaction is complete, we’ll be so rich that I’ll be able to cover the whole ship in gold plates and buy us all the beer we can drink!”

  It seemed to me that the comment about buying all the beer we could drink must have been what set everyone off because the whole crew cheered and whistled upon hearing that. Fingerprints and I were the only ones who didn’t cheer, but that was because I found this change in schedule troubling. It meant that Fingerprints and I had even less time to retrieve the weapon than we originally thought. And if we were going to meet on a yacht, then that meant that getting away with the weapon would be even trickier than we expected.

  “Now, you can all go and stuff your faces, because tonight we are going to have so much money we won’t even be able to count it!” Red Tide declared.

  More cheering from the crew as they made their way below deck to the galley, except, of course, for me and Fingerprints. The two of us hung out toward the back of the crew, speaking in low enough voices to make sure none of the pirates could hear us.

  “They’re going to deliver the weapon already?” I said under my breath, walking close to Fingerprints to make sure only he could hear me. “I thought we would have a few more days, at least.”

  “Agreed,” said Fingerprints in an equally low voice, “but I guess their client wants his weapon now. That means we have even less time than I thought.”

  “Then we need to push up the theft,” I said. I looked over my shoulder. “With everyone at lunch, I could slip out right now and—”

  Fingerprints grabbed my upper arm, making me look at him in surprise. He wore a very serious expression, which became slightly covered in shadow when we went down the steps into the lower decks with the rest of the crew.

  “Don’t,” said Fingerprints. “If you go now, someone will notice. Plus, I suspect the weapon’s room is protected by a variety of security measures, meaning it won’t be easy to break into.”

  “But if we wait until tonight, then we might not be able to get it at all,” I said. “I mean, they’re going to find out about us either way, so why not just do it right away?”

  Fingerprints shook his head. “Still too risky. It would be difficult to escape once we do it. In order to pull this off, we’re going to need to time it just right so we can escape without being caught.”

  I scowled. “So what, are we going to have to wait until later?”

  Fingerprints nodded. “Yes. The best time to do it will be once the weapon has been removed from its room. If we can get it sometime between the moment it’s taken out of its room and the moment it is given to the client, then we might be able to pull this off.”

  My scowl deepened, but at the same time, I couldn’t really argue with Fingerprints’ point. It would be suspicious if both of us ran off to try to steal the weapon right now. The plan was to retrieve the weapon and get off the ship without anyone noticing. This change of plans on the client’s part almost threw off our own. I just hoped that Fingerprints was right about retrieving the weapon later because I didn’t even want to think about what the consequences might be if we didn’t.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The rest of the day was spent cleaning the deck, as well as helping out with any other odd jobs that needed to be done around the ship. Fingerprints and I often worked together, but sometimes we had to separate to do different tasks. That always made me worried whenever that happened, because I didn’t want us separated for long in case someone found out who we really were.

  Mostly, however, I was worried about the incoming transaction tonight. I still disagreed with Fingerprints’ idea about waiting to retrieve the weapon until tonight, but at the same time, I wasn’t so sure that my idea of breaking in and taking it right now was the best response, either. I reasoned that I could potentially fly both of us off the ship to make a quick escape if I had to, but then I thought about how far away from shore we were and how long I would be able to keep that up. I was pretty strong and Fingerprints wasn’t a very big or fat guy, but having to hold both him and the weapon (the size and weight of which I didn’t know) as I flew across the ocean sounded exhausting even to me. It made me wonder if Fingerprints had an escape plan or not. If so, I imagine it probably wasn’t useful anymore, because it had probably been designed with the thought that we were going to the client’s private island, not that we were going to meet them on their private yacht in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

  At this point, I was hoping that Fingerprints had sent a message back to the G-Men to let them know about this change of events. I still didn’t like or trust the G-Men that much, but I did trust them a lot more than Red Tide or any members of his crew. At the very least, I would appreciate the backup. Perhaps Cadmus would feel nice enough to send someone to rescue us if things got dicey. Then again, Cadmus’ ‘niceness’ had nothing to do with it. He would only help us because the mission needed to be complete, not because he was a nice guy at heart or anything like that.

  In any case, nighttime came far too quickly. As the sun set on the horizon, casting its orange rays onto the darkening sea, Crow, sitting in the crow’s nest, called out, “I see a ship heading toward us!”

  Fingerprints and I—who were busy scrubbing algae off the side railings of the ship—looked out in the direction Crow pointed. At first, I just saw a tiny dot on the horizon, barely bigger than my thumbnail, but as it drew closer and closer, I got a better look at it. It was a fancy-looking yacht, so sleek and modern that it looked almost like a jet than a boat. It moved quickly and easily through the ocean waves, although I couldn’t see anyone on board. I did, however, catch a glimpse of an outlined figure standing in what looked like the control deck, but then the windows darkened and I couldn’t see anything else.

  “There they are!” said Red Tide, who I had not heard come up behind me. He shoved past me and Fingerprints and leaned against the railing, a big grin crossing his deformed features. “My, that yacht’s a beaut, ain’t she? Not as beautiful as the Red Tide, of course, but beautiful enough for a yacht.”

  I had to admit there was a certain beauty to the yacht and the way it glided across the water without making a noise. Indeed, if Crow hadn’t pointed out the yacht at all, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it until it was right next to our ship.

  As the yacht drew closer, the rest of the crew began to gather around the railing, until it seemed like the entire crew of the Red Tide was watching the yacht approach us.

  “Wonder if that hot lady will be there,” said one of the pirates behind me in a low whisper to another pirate standing next to him.

  The other pirate chuckled. “I hope so, too. Need me some eye candy after being around a guy as ugly as you all day.”

  The two pirates then began to argue among each other, but I paid them no attention because my attention was on the yacht, which had finally reached us. It was a fair bit smaller than the Red Tide, but something told me
it was no less capable of defending itself in the event of an attack, even though I didn’t see any weapons on it.

  And still no one stepped out, which made me wonder if the yacht had any people on it at all until a woman stepped out onto the main deck. My jaw dropped when I saw her—fact, I think the jaws of every man on the ship dropped in perfect unison.

  She was absolutely gorgeous, possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Tall and thin, she had a figure that you only saw in certain videos on the Internet kids weren’t supposed to watch. Her pale skin contrasted beautifully with her black hair, while her tight-fitting white dress left nothing to the imagination. She seemed really athletic, too, which really added to her appeal. I had to tell myself that Blizzard was my girlfriend and I wasn’t interested in any other women, but that was sadly harder than it should have been. I didn’t know her age, but she looked like she had to be in her mid-twenties at the latest.

  “Whoa,” I said under my breath to one of the pirates standing next to me. “Who is that?”

  Unfortunately, the pirate who stood next to me apparently did not hear what I said. His eyes were locked on the woman below as if she was a delicious meal prepared just for him. Now that I noticed it, every man on the ship was looking at her that way. Even Fingerprints couldn’t hide his interest.

  The only man who seemed unaffected by her charms was Red Tide, who raised a hand and waved at her. “Hello, Janet! Pleased to see you again. Is your husband on board?”

  The woman, apparently named Janet, brushed back her hair in an undeniably sexy way and said, in a voice that made me melt, “Aye, Captain Tide. Seth is ready for the exchange if you have the weapon.”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I found myself wondering what husband would send such a beautiful woman out by herself to greet a bunch of lustful pirate men who weren’t exactly known for respecting women. But it was hard to think about such things when she was out there, her beauty akin to the sun in its radiance and power.