This was the first time I’d made contact with one of our superhuman protectors since Lionheart rescued me thirteen years before, so I was going to take advantage of it. I extended my hand and he took it in a firm grip. When we shook, I felt that rush again, that excitement, that burst of energy I’d gotten during my rescue.
“Wow,” I said.
Noble grinned and an errant ray of sunlight sparkled off his teeth. “I get that a lot,” he said.
POWER
About five minutes after I got back to the office there was a tap at the entrance to my cubicle. A head poked around the corner with a warm, welcome smile. “Hey,” she said, “How did the interview go?”
Sheila Reynolds, my copy editor at Powerlines, was a cute brunette with deep brown eyes. I’d considered asking her out when I was new at the magazine, but she seemed to be perpetually torn between our star reporter, Scott Elliott, and the solar-powered hero, Spectrum. In fact, she often suspected Elliott and Spectrum and being one and the same, until someone pointed out to her that Elliott had a beard and Spectrum didn’t. She finally gave up on it.
“It was... interesting,” I said.
“You don’t sound too enthused. What happened? I thought Doctor Noble was always one of your favorites.”
“Well... you know how I’ve always been really into the big, tough, beyond reproach heroes?”
“Like Lionheart and the United Statesmen?”
“Right. I admire guys who do the right thing just because it’s the right thing. No thought of reward, no ulterior motive... that’s my kind of hero.”
“And Noble?”
I flicked my computer on. “He’s the most pompous ass I’ve ever met.”
“That bad?”
I took my tape recorder out and hit the “play” button. Noble’s tinny voice filtered out.
“…shortly after I single-handedly put away the Bloodsucker Gang I returned to the homeworld of the aliens that originally gave me my powers and liberated their slave class from the aristocratic bourgeois elite which I learned has been manipulating governments on Earth for some time now. I drove them all away by turning the Washington Monument into a giant negatively-charged magnet but this suddenly left Earth without some vital energy programs, so I rounded up all the villains I could find with electrical powers and used them to power the entire town of Luling, Texas for six months. Well naturally they gave me the key to the city which I later used as bait in the ingenious trap I set for Colonel Coldsnap and his Refrigerator Rangers--”
I shut the recorder off. “The entire fifteen minutes was like that,” I said. “One long, rambling run-on ego-stroking session. I have no idea where to insert the punctuation marks in his quotes.”
“Geez,” Sheila said. “How many questions did you get to ask?”
“Just one.”
“What was it?”
“‘How are you?’”
She grimaced. “Ow. I’d better let you work, then -- you’ve got it cut out for you.”
“Thanks. Hey, are we still catching a movie tomorrow?”
“You bet.”
Sheila left and I turned my attention back to the interview. I was contemplating turning the story into an attack piece, but that wasn’t really my style. Besides, I’d promised Abadie approval. While I sat there trying to figure out how to make him look like less of a self-absorbed cretin, I felt that same rush (could it be adrenalin?) I’d gotten when I met the caped bozo on the roof. Even before I turned my head to see him hovering there, I knew I would find Dr. Noble outside my window.
I raised the glass. “Can I help you?” I asked.
“Morrie forgot to give you this. It’s my favorite.” He reached out and handed me an 8 by 10 glossy of himself, a full body shot. He was lean in this photo -- you could count his abs if you wanted to, and my immediate reaction was to assume it had been retouched. Then I saw a billboard in the background featuring a cigarette mascot that had been retired six years ago and I suppressed a chuckle. The guy was using outdated publicity shots because he couldn’t keep himself in shape.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll--”
“Where’s Elliott?”
There was a sound like a wall being ripped apart and the partitions that made up my cubicle began to tremble. I tried not to worry -- when I got the job I was warned that irate super-villains had a tendency to show up at the office hunting reporters who made them look bad, although this was the first time since I’d been there that one of them was tearing up my floor.
Before I even left my chair, Noble blasted in through the window and flew into the hall. I followed just in time to see him catch a rather satisfying blow to the jaw, sending him tumbling.
“Where’s that slimeball Elliott?” shouted his attacker. A shock of blonde hair fell across her eyes and she brushed it back with one blue glove, finally allowing me a good look at her masked face. It was Miss Sinistah, late of the Malevolence Mob. My mental reporter’s file clicked to her entry -- she’d been part of an illegal program to genetically enhance athletes, but it was only a partial success. She had highly increased strength, endurance and durability, but the more the used her powers the weaker she got and had to resort to periods of almost no physical activity to recharge. Still, when fully energized she was invulnerable, super strong... and shorter than I’d imagined.
“You!” She grabbed me by the front of the shirt and lifted me into the air. “All right, big boy, where is he?”
“Who--”
“Elliott! Scott Elliott!”
“He’s not here--”
“Stop trying to cover. He’s hiding, right? He knew I’d be coming after him for that piece he wrote about the Mob. We were never brought in by that milksop Lionheart! I never even met him! I’ll rip his arms off when I--”
She was only halfway through the rant when the sudden burst of energy broke us apart. I fell safely to the floor and she went crashing into a cubicle wall, making it collapse on Danny Cardigan from the graphic design department.
“What was that?” she spat out as she scrambled to her feet.
“It looked like Noble used his telekinesis to break them apart!” Sheila shouted.
Sinistah grumbled. “How is it somebody always has the time for expository dialogue during these fights?”
Her next announcement was cut short when Noble slammed into her. I pulled myself to my feet and half-walked, half-stumbled to the stairwell. I wasn’t concerned about the fight, Noble would catch her. Those guys always did. All I wanted was for the rush to fade, which it did as I put some distance between myself and the superhumans.
It was logical to accept Sheila’s explanation, just as it was typical of a winning fella like Noble to take credit. But she was wrong, I knew it. The whole time Noble had been there, I’d felt the rush. When Sinistah showed up, it lanced upwards on me, and I felt stronger than ever before.
Then, when she insulted Lionheart -- a genuinely good hero -- I’d felt a veil of anger like I’d never experienced. And when that happened, something inside me exploded.
The teke-burst that bowled over Miss Sinistah didn’t come from Dr. Noble. It came from me.
ISSUE TWO
ACCIDENTS HAPPEN
How many people ever stare at a quarter? I mean really stare at it? Do they wonder why Washington is facing the left instead of the right? Why it looks like he’s not wearing anything but that stupid bow in his hair? I didn’t think about any of those things either, until I spent the better part of an hour staring at a twenty-five cent piece that night, trying to make it move with my mind.
“It’s just sitting there,” Sheila observed.
“I know it’s just sitting there,” I hissed. “Maybe it’s a magic quarter or something.”
“Yeah, there are lots of those in circulation.”
“Hey, we’ve seen stranger things. In this office. Today. Sheila, I know I fired off that telekinetic burst this afternoon.”
“Doctor Noble did that.”
“Th
at overstuffed moron couldn’t hit anything that didn’t come from a keg. Move, dammit!”
“Maybe you should try being polite to it.”
“Oh be quiet.” I slapped the quarter away and it rolled under the desk. “Maybe it needs to be sparked by anger or something.”
“You’re not mad enough at it?”
“You’re getting on my nerves right now. How do you feel about being a guinea pig?”
Sheila sighed and planted a light, sisterly kiss on my forehead. “Aw, Josh, sweetie, we all know how bad you want to get into the game. Heck, that’s why most of us came to work here in the first place. But sooner or later, you’re just going to have to accept that it’s not going to happen, okay?”
“Hey, Sheila,” Danny said, poking his head into my cubicle. “We’ve got a rumble in the streets between Deep Six and Flambeaux. You might want to pull out those files to prep the story.”
“Okay, Dan. Where’s the rumble, anyway?”
“Right outside. I think Flambeaux read Scott’s last column.”
“I tell him to think before he writes that sort of thing. Later, Joshie-bear.” Sheila patted my hand and left me alone.
“Darn quarter,” I mumbled, fishing in my pocket for another one. I cleared everything else off my desk, sweeping it into my already-cluttered top drawer, and placed the quarter dead center. As I concentrated on it, I heard a whistling sound outside -- Flambeaux used his fire powers to make himself lighter than air. The result was, he could fly, and apparently he was doing so right outside the building. I didn’t catch this yet. I was staring at the damned quarter.
I didn’t notice it at first, but as the whistling sound rose and fell, I started to feel minor peaks in energy -- like the rush was starting to creep up on me. With each minor scale in the energy I redoubled my concentration. Finally my eyes were beginning to hurt and I was ready to throw the blasted thing just to get it to move. I didn’t listen to the whistling outside, paid no attention to the crescendo of a human body hurtling through the air at supersonic speeds. I paid no heed at all to the fact that it was getting louder and louder and I was feeling stronger and stronger.
Two things then happened at once. The first is that the whistling got so loud, so intense that Flambeaux must have flown directly past my window. I could hear this, even though I was paying no attention to it.
The second thing that happened was, as the whistle reached its loudest point, a massive burst of flame erupted from my eyes and charred off the top of my desk. My concentration broke immediately -- in part because the flames were threatening to burn my face off -- and I fell back in my chair.
The fire alarm went off just as I flopped out of my cubicle shouting incoherent syllables with the intent of alerting people to the situation. “Fire! Gha! Cubie! Fire!” were my exact words. Fortunately, between this and the four-foot wall of flames that was roaring behind me, Sheila was able to translate the message.
She grabbed the fire extinguisher and rushed into my cubicle. There was a spitting sound and the light was replaced by smoke. Sheila came back out and shoved the extinguisher in my hands.
“Some hero,” she chuckled. Crisis averted, the rest of the staff was returning to work. This sort of thing happened far too often around here.
“How did Flambeaux blast you like that? The window is still closed,” Sheila said.
I dropped my voice and leaned into her. “It wasn’t Flambeaux. Sheila, it was me.”
“Josh...”
“No, come on, I swear. I was trying to move that damn quarter again and... the quarter!” I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into my slightly-used work area. The top of my desk was black and burnt, except in the center. There, puddled on the desk, were the molten remains of twenty-five American cents.
“You see that?”
“Okay, Josh, this is going too far. Maybe you should see the company counselor--”
“Dammit!” I grabbed her by the arm again and tugged her into the stairwell, hitting the steps and going straight for the roof.
“Josh, what are you doing? Let go!”
“I’m proving my point! I know I’ve got something going on!”
When we made it to the roof we could see Flambeaux smoldering at the top of Barks Plaza across the street. Deep Six’s partners in the Spectacle Six had arrived, and he was getting a lift from the robot called V3OL.
“Look! I’ll bet I can send up a flare.” I thrust my hand towards the air and started thinking hot, heat, fire, flame... even mad and angry when nothing else worked.
“Josh, you look like an idiot.”
“Did Edison look like an idiot when he invented the light bulb? The Wright Brothers? Einsteeeaaaaaiiiigh!”
The scream wasn’t of pain, but of shock -- my hand was rocketing away into the air. I didn’t go with it, mind you, I stayed right there on the roof. Nor did the hand separate itself from my body. Instead, my arm stretched out to a length of at least twenty feet. The flesh hung in the gap like overstretched taffy.
When I realized what was happening, I shouted even louder, falling back into Sheila’s arms. She didn’t catch me, though. Instead I puddled through her fingers into a gooey mess on the roof.
“Josh! Josh, what’s going on? JOSH!”
Taking a deep breath (and feeling my lungs inflate like balloons) I tried to imagine myself whole again, 44-inch waist and all. I thought of myself as solid as human as complete.
And when I managed to stop panicking, I felt my body pull itself back together, and I was me again.
“Oh God, Josh, what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Sheila. I don’t. I--”
As I rambled, a purple-gloved hand stretched up onto the roof, pulling behind it an overly-long individual, wadding all over the place like mint and purple Silly Putty. As he stretched up onto the roof and solidified, we managed to place him as another of the Spectacle Six, DoubleGum Man.
“You people shouldn’t be up here,” he said. “It’s not safe. Get back inside the building and let us handle it.”
“Right,” I gasped, feeling that same old rush and, at the same time, feeling my knees turn to jelly -- literally. “We’ll... we’ll get downstairs.” I grabbed Sheila and headed for the door, just as DoubleGum bounced away towards the rumble. Once we were back inside, the door slammed behind us. I dared to test my limbs, flexing all my muscles and waving my arms around. They were solid. I was normal.
“Josh, what’s going on?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” I shouted. “Sheila... it’s happening. I’ve got super powers.”
“But so many? Teke-bursts and fire and stretching and... Josh nobody has powers that diverse, they say it’s impossible.”
“That’s not it, Sheila, don’t you see? I don’t have any of those powers.”
“I just saw you stretch.”
“But I can’t do it now. And I could only do the teke-burst while Dr. Numbskull was in the room, and that fire thing only worked while Flambeaux was right outside the window. Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“That’s my power. I can duplicate other people’s powers, so long as they’re nearby. It’s like I’m... I don’t know, picking up on ambient energy or something. Man... if I could get around a big, mess of heroes at once I’ll bet I could do anything.”
“Well... what are you going to do?”
I felt another rush this time... not the one that meant I had powers welling up on me... one of pure adrenalin. And I gave her a smile to indicate I knew exactly what I was going to do.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she said.
CALLING HOME
I spent the rest of the day shopping, getting materials together for my uniform and facing more than a little ridicule from Sheila in the process. I was ready to put the whole thing together, but there were a few things I was more than a little curious about -- and for all my reporting skills there was always one method of i
nformation gathering I turned to when all else failed.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me,” I said when she finally picked up her phone.
“Joshie! How are you, sweetheart?” she asked.
“Not bad--”
“If you’re calling to remind me of your birthday next month, I’ll have you know I already got your present, so you can just stop hinting around, mister. And no, it’s not as good as the Defender footie pajamas you got when you were seven, so you’ll just have to lump it.”
“Nothing like that, Mom.” I had her on speaker phone so I could work with the laces and accessories I’d bought while I talked. “I was just sort of wondering about... things.”
“What sort of things, honey?”
“Well... I had a normal childhood, didn’t I?”
“Let’s see, your father was creep, you nearly died in a fire, you were saved by a Cape... I guess you’d call it normal in a ‘Daytime Talk Show’ sort of way.”
“No, I mean... did anything really bizarre ever happen to me? Or did I ever do anything really bizarre?”
“You used to pour 7-Up in your chicken soup before you ate it. Does that count?”
My cat, a plump tabby, tried to hop up into my lap as I spread out my tunic. He looked up at me with big, wondering eyes (wondering, no doubt, if what I was working on was food and, if so, how was he going to get some). I called the cat Achilles. To this day I don’t know what he called himself, but he certainly never responded to his given name.
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 2