by R. J. Ross
"So he figured it out," he points out as we head down the streets. "You know, that you're his granddaughter."
"I um, didn't expect to keep him in the dark at all--it's sort of impossible with Grandpa," I admit. "He's always three steps ahead, or more. I really think it's more. He just tells me it's three so I don't realize how far he really is," I tell him. I slow unconsciously, since Jason is slowing, then let out a yelp as someone grabs me far too fast to see.
"Noelle!" I hear Jason say, but it's far behind me now. I'm being kidnapped. Again.
"Don't scream," Great Grandpa Superior says. I feel it more than hear it, but relax a little unconsciously. It's not really kidnapping when it's family? Well, it is, I mean, I've watched enough news to know that sometimes it can be, but in this case--
"I'm not going to scream," I promise. He pulls to a stop, putting me down and looking at me for a long moment, curiously.
"So you're the granddaughter," he says, touching my chin and looking at my face. "Beautiful. Of course I expect that in a Superior child," he adds before the blush fully hits me. "Do you like Tatia?" he asks me. "Is that why you were heading for her house?"
"I wanted--um--to tell her that Mimic is loose," I admit, looking down. "We saw him get out of the base, and then Grandpa said she was going to die, and I don't want that to happen! I love her! I mean, I've only known her for a little bit, sure, but love doesn't have anything to do with time! And I know it's changing the past, but it's changing it for the better," I tell him defiantly, sticking my chin up and staring him straight in the eyes.
"That's my girl," he says with a little smile. It shocks me. This is the first sign of approval that he's shown. "And your powers? What are they?"
"I... don't know, exactly," I admit, looking down now that he's on such a sensitive subject. "I'm just now coming into them--I think I've got some technopathy, because I blew up my phone, but I also think I might have some gravity ability, because I made the tire swing float before I blacked out," I say slowly. "But I'm not a dud--I'm NOT!" I tell him defiantly. "Even if you always seemed to think I would be--I'm not a dud. I've got powers! I'm just--just a late bloomer." He's staring at me blankly, I notice as I dare to peek at him.
"Why would I think you were a dud?" he asks. "You're the result of several S class supers--the result of a Superior line and a Mastermental line combined. There's very, very little chance of you turning out to be a dud. If I was frowning, perhaps I was worried about what would happen when your powers DO come in," he admits. "I know I am, now. You're a very little thing, you know. That much power in a little body might be a bit much to handle."
I stare at him in shock. Not once have I thought about it like that. "But--" I start out.
"I need you to do me a favor," he says, digging in his pants pocket and pulling out a gleaming bracelet. It's far too big for me, I notice, but I don't think it's for me. "Careful--don't blow it up--"
"What are you doing with Noelle?" Jason demands from behind us. I turn, staring blankly at the boy. He's got pieces of metal floating around him, and looks ready for war. I... did not expect that, I think blankly. "Let her go, old man."
"Ah, much better," Superior says. "You won't accidentally blow up the tracker. Come here, boy, I've got a job for you and my granddaughter."
"Do a job for the guy that kidnapped my friend?" he asks. "I'm seriously tired of having her grabbed all the time," he adds, giving me a dirty look as if it were my fault.
"He's my great grandpa, Jason," I say. "Superior."
"So? That gives him no reason to run off with you! You really need to talk with your family about that, it ain't right!"
"He's right, you and Grandpa keep grabbing me, it's rude," I tell Great Grandpa Superior.
"I can't let Tatia see me," he says. "And you were close enough that she might have come out--" He stops, moving and looking at something behind us. "Where in the world is she going?" he asks, more of himself than us. I turn, watching blankly as Tatia puts Nicolas in the back of the gremlin. "Go, stop her," he says, shoving the bracelet into my hand.
I race forward, stopping at the window just as she's putting the car into reverse. "Tatia!" I say. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, Kitten!" she says, a smile crossing her face. "I have just seen that a friend of mine has been put into the hospital--I am worried, so I will be visiting her. Do you wish to come along?"
"Um--yes, of course," I say, not daring to glance behind me as I run around to the other side of the car and slip in. "Oh, and I found this," I add, holding out the bracelet to her. "It's pretty, right? You can have it!"
"You found it?" she asks, looking at the bracelet. "Are you sure you should just be giving it away? I am sure that someone is missing it--"
"I was in the woods," I lie, guilt burning in my belly, “where we're training. It needs to be worn, not grown over, right?"
"This is true," she says as she slips it on. She reaches out and pats my head with a beautiful smile. "I will wear it with pride."
I smile, more because she's smiling at me than because I'm proud of giving it to her. But Superior wouldn't make me give her something dangerous. He's the one that was married to her, right?
I... just totally abandoned them, didn't I? Whoops.
CHAPTER SIX
Superior looks at Jason, Jason looks at Superior. "She just ditched us," Jason points out.
"We'll follow them as soon as they won't notice," Superior says, looking at him. "You, are you the son of Aubrey?"
"Ye--yeah, why?" Jason asks.
"Can you heal?"
"A little?"
"Talk your parents into having more children," Superior orders. "Perhaps daughters would inherit the healing ability better than sons."
Jason just stares at him, taking in the fact that the biggest name among heroes is a massive jerk.
***
A cloaking device, the Nico from 2014 decides as he floats among the night clouds. A cloaking device would be perfect at the moment. The chances of a super finding him are still higher than he likes, but at the same time, he still hasn't found Superior. The longer Superior is off on his own, the more likely he is to do something bad. It's like babysitting for a two hundred pound super power having kid, he adds in disgust.
"I think I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," a familiar voice says from behind him, "simply because you remind me of someone. Who are you and what are you doing in Hall's territory?"
Nico turns slowly, looking at Banshee with a sigh. "I'm--"
"Superior," she says, looking shocked. "Or... not? What's with the hair?"
"I'm..." Think. How does Superior come up with so many stupid lines? "I'm from the future," he says honestly. "I'm here to warn you about something that's about to happen--something big. But if I tell you too much then I could distort the future and never be born--" Well, technically he's already been born, but his sister hasn't! "And if too many people find out that I'm a time jumper they might think I'm a threat to society."
"How?" she asks.
"How what?"
"How would you be a threat to society?"
Nico thinks about it for a moment. "Let's say there was a butterfly--the butterfly turned a certain direction and flapped its wings twice, which kicked up the wind and started a massive thunderstorm several hundreds of miles away by changing the wind direction, the thunderstorm crashed into--"
"Stop, please," she says dryly.
"I'm like that butterfly," Nico says completely straight faced. "If I move too much I could cause a massive disaster in the future, and not even mean to." Which, now that he thinks about it, isn't too far off. "I don't want the future changed. I like how it is now. But I've got a problem to solve before I can go back to my own time--one that could cause the same kind of problem as me."
"Let's say I believe you," she says, hesitating, “for the most part. What is it that you need to change to keep things from changing?"
I need to stop someone from stopping someone from killing
my mother. The words refuse to come out of his mouth, though, because even to him they sound ridiculous. He runs a hand over his face and then lets out a sigh. "I need to find a Superior clone," he says. It's all he can go off of.
"I see. I should have known that it came from the future," she says. "We put it in the lot."
"It?" he repeats, his eyes widening before he mentally curses himself for doing too good of a job at creating the fake clone. "I'm not looking for an it--I'm looking for--a clone," he finishes lamely.
"That's it. Tatiana destroyed it earlier," she says. "Really, if it's from the future you would think it would be tougher," she complains. "Well come on, I don't have all night, you know."
Nico looks at her, inwardly sighing. "Fine," he says. "But I'm sure you've got the wrong thing."
"There's no way someone could make it in this time--it probably took months, maybe even years for it to be as good as Tatia said it was."
"Twenty minutes," Nico says without thinking.
"What?"
"I'll give you twenty minutes," he corrects himself quickly, "but it might just be the wrong clone."
"So there's more than one of them?" she asks.
"Aren't there always?"
***
Who does Tatiana know that could wind up in a norm hospital? That question is stuck firmly in my mind as she pulls the gremlin into the hospital parking lot. She unsnaps her seatbelt and gets out, walking around the car as I open the door and get out. She brings my seat forward and gets Nicolas out, placing him on her hip. She's not in uniform and she's wearing a pretty hat that covers up most of her hair. Thing is, she's still over six feet tall and twice as broad through the shoulders as any woman I've ever seen, including the super heroines. A hat isn't exactly enough to hide her secret identity, I think a bit dryly as I follow her into the building.
The real question is if someone will mention it--I know I won't. She heads for the desk in front and smiles at the ladies behind it. "Hello, I am here to visit a friend of mine--her name is Marilyn Franks. She was hit by a Mack truck?"
"Oh--um--" the lady behind the counter says, looking a bit panicked. "I don't know if she's accepting visitors--"
"She's in room 116," the lady sitting next to her says. "Just go down that hall. She's doing amazingly well, I think she was merely glanced, honestly. When we brought her in I didn't even see a bruise on her. I honestly don't see how else she could have survived it, much less come out of it so well."
She was... hit... by a Mack truck? I'm stunned for a moment before I decide that it must be a heroine's secret identity. How else would you survive something like that? I look at Tatia, but she doesn't say a word about it. There's a strange expression on her face as we head down the hall, though. I think it's worry. Abruptly she stops right outside the room we're going to visit and turns to me. "Kitten, if you would watch Nicolas while I go in?" she asks. Nicolas easily goes into my arms, leaning against me as I head for a nearby bench in the hall. She doesn't want us going in. It's smart, I realize abruptly. With my powers starting to manifest who knows what I would do to the machinery inside. In fact both Nicolas and my being here is pretty dangerous, isn't it?
I probably should have thought of that before agreeing to come.
***
He has to get out before they try to get blood samples, Mimic thinks as he starts to get out of the bed. The fact that people keep trying to come in, look at him, and suddenly find some strange thing that they forgot to do will only work for so long. Even a doctor or two has done it, with a confused expression on their faces each time. They know that he's not what he seems to be--but they can't figure out mentally what their instincts are telling them.
He swings one slender, feminine leg over the side of the bed only to curse as the door opens. "I'm fine, I said--" he starts out in Marilyn's voice, only to stop as he realizes who's walking in. The hat doesn't do much to disguise who she is, after all. "Tatia?" he asks.
"Oh, Marilyn, I cannot believe that such a thing happened right after we were talking," Tatia says, walking to the chair next to the bed and sitting down. Mimic swallows, staring at the woman looking so intently at him. He can feel the earnest sympathy she's emitting, he thinks a bit light-headedly. It's all for him.
This is the perfect opportunity to take her powers, a little voice whispers in the back of his mind. She wouldn't think a thing of him reaching for her, in fact she looks like she's going to do it for him at any second. But... he's not sure he wants to. This beautiful, vibrant creature is bursting with power and promise. It would be like defacing the Mona Lisa of supers, he admits silently.
Before he can say anything else, though, a bustle comes from the hallway. Tatia turns and looks out the door as a rush of nurses race past them. He can hear them talking quickly about an emergency of some sort--a plane crash or something that has several injured people coming in all at once.
"I must go," Tatia says, standing abruptly. "I hope that you recover quickly, my friend," she adds, leaning down and lightly hugging him. She lets go before he can even feel her power, and heads out the door. "Come, Kitten, we must go."
"Yes, Tatia," he hears a girl say. Who had she brought with her? Was it a child? He can't see them, but he knows the chance is gone. Now he has a different chance. He heads for the window, stepping on it still in Marilyn's form and wearing that pathetic green sheet they call a hospital gown. He jumps.
He's going to get yelled at by that Kunnins man again.
***
"Good job," Superior says, dropping a huge hand on Jason's back. "Well handled, just enough jarring to get the paramedics called but not enough to kill any of the norms inside." He's being praised for crashing a plane, Jason thinks a bit blankly, staring at the wreckage below. They're standing on the roof of a towering skyscraper, several hundred miles away from the wreck, but he can see it all.
He feels guilty. "I didn't let it hit that hard," he says, almost as much to himself as to the older super. "But aren't you a hero? Shouldn't you be the one saving them, not wrecking them?" he demands.
"She was in the hospital visiting a woman that was hit by a Mack truck yet not even bruised," Superior says. "It was Mimic."
"How do you know for sure?" Jason demands.
"I can't risk it," Superior says grimly, his hand still on Jason's back. He looks at him thoughtfully, frowning slightly. "There's a reason you’re in this time, isn't there?"
Jason hesitates. "Technico brought me. Because my powers flare up in my sleep," he admits, thinking about Technico. “He said something about wanting to see how much damage I can do.”
"He did, did he?” Superior says. “When?”
"Yesterday," Jason says, looking at the flocking norms. So far no one seems to have been hurt too badly. He sees a scratch on a woman's arm and winces. It's bleeding, he thinks guiltily. He'd made a woman--a norm woman--bleed. Sure, he'd punched Noelle, but that was different. She's a super from a very long line of very impressive supers. One punch isn't going to do that much damage! But for a norm--
"You brought it in on its belly," Superior says in a calm tone. "They might have been jarred around a bit, but everyone is in one piece--one living piece. That's a perfect example of the silly super villain work that Mastermental agrees to. You should be proud of yourself. Now, I've got a real super villain to take out."
"What about Noelle?" Jason demands as Superior starts forward.
"Go find her, take her back to your training area. Neither of you are needed for this next part." Then he's gone, leaving a teen that can't fly standing all alone on top of a skyscraper. For a moment Jason walks over to the edge of the building, looking down at the ground far, far below. Then he heads for the door that leads inside. He's absolutely taking the elevator, he decides. Manly or not, he doesn't care--there's NO WAY he's jumping.
***
From the shadows of another building, Technico from the future watches silently as Mimic jumps out the window. The hospital probably won't notice until it'
s too late, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that from where he's crouching he can see another man jump off another roof.
This has all happened before--not exactly, of course, but Superior had found Mimic. At the time he hadn't been here to stop it. No, just as now, apparently, he'd been looking at the mocked up Superior robot that would never work, trying to think of an easy way to change Banshee's focus.
This is the most dangerous part of this mission, but it’s the real reason why Technico has come back to this time. This is why he'd waited for some eighteen years, he thinks as he jumps off his own roof. To change the future back to the way it would have been had they not come back in time the first time.
Time travel gives him SUCH a headache.
***
"Do not get too close to the plane with Nicolas," Tatia says as she hands the toddler to me as we race towards the fallen plane. I can hear the norms inside, I realize abruptly, even though they're two or three miles away.
"I don't know what happened," I hear one of the pilots mutter. "One moment we're flying just fine, then it's like the engines coughed twice and gave out--but that's not the creepy part."
"I know," his co-pilot replies in a quiet tone. I pull to a stop, hugging Nicolas gently as I watch the two. The other norms are sliding out of the plane on a blow-up slide, but the pilots haven't come out of the plane yet. "There's no sign of any tampering, but the wheels refused to come down--and the angle that we hit the ground at with no power--it's not natural. Did you see a super somewhere? Maybe they caught us?"
"I didn't see anyone, and no one came up on the scanner," the pilot says. "What in the hell just happened?"
"No one was seriously injured," the co-pilot says. "And even if we don't have an explanation we'll write it off as supers and faulty machinery."