Morrie had a good belly-laugh at that one. “All this time an’ it still cracks me up. Think about it, kid. Spectrum has hologram powers. He just whips up a fake beard to turn into Elliott. His secret identity could be a friggin’ armadillo if that’s what he wanted. Sheesh.”
“You paint quite a picture.”
“I’m gonna get your paperwork together, kid -- contracts, insurance forms, I’m sure you know the drill. You go take a load off in the lounge.”
I managed to suppress a chuckle at the thought of an organization like this requiring paperwork. “Sure thing, Morrie,” was all I said.
And as I left the office, I felt Mental Maid’s cold eyes following me.
WHERE THEY LET THEIR CAPES DOWN
At first I’d expected “Lounge” to be a euphemism, thinking I’d find some reinforced rumble area, or maybe a seedy bar. Nope. The Lounge had couches, snack tables, vending machines, video games, pool and ping-pong tables and a television area where several Capes and Masks were deeply engrossed in a repeat of some basketball game on late-night ESPN. Flux, apparently a big Georgetown fan, was using his gravity power to squeeze the Marauder against the ceiling.
“Say it...” Flux hissed.
“No!”
“Say it was a foul!”
“Never!”
If nothing else could have convinced me that gaining super-powers didn’t change a person’s fundamental guyness, this did the trick.
“Hey, ‘Pretender’! Over here!”
I glanced in the direction of the voice to see the Conductor waving me over with a pool cue. Sindy was there too, along with the ugly growth she called a boyfriend.
“So did you do it, man? You in?”
“Yeah, bro. I’m in.”
“Whooptie-freakin’-doo,” Noble said, chalking up a pool cue. “Break out the goats.”
“C’mon,” the Conductor said. “You know we don’t use goats until after his first rumble.” He took another cue from a rack on the wall and held it out to me. “You play?”
“A little.”
“You any good?”
“Nope.”
“Good, I suck too. You can be on my team.”
Noble got to break. As he hunched over, cape woefully inadequate at disguising his beer belly, he piped up with, “So what pissant Mask ID is Morrie giving you for the big debut?” I could almost see the venom dripping from his voice.
“I haven’t been assigned yet,” I said.
“Small wonder, with such a wealth of powers to choose from.” The cue ball rocketed forward and broke up the cluster, sending two solids straight into the pockets.
“Nice break,” I said.
“I know.”
“Why are you so congenial, anyway?”
Sindy frowned. “He’s like this to anyone who doesn’t have a solo character.” She turned to Noble. “Not everybody gets one right off the bat, you know.”
“I’m still surprised you did,” he snapped.
She sort of buried her face and half-whispered, “so am I.”
I found myself first glaring at him, then smiling at her. I grasped her shoulder in a friendly gesture and said, “Well, I’m not.”
“What?” she said. At the table, Noble finally missed and the Conductor stepped up to take his turn.
“I’m not at all surprised you’re not mucking around in a bunch of different costumes. You’re powerful, beautiful, talented...”
“Talent? What talent do I have?” She began chalking her cue as the Conductor missed.
“Well, you’re obviously quite an actress. Hey, you had me believing you were a cast-iron bitch.” She smiled and took her cue to the table.
“That’s not acting,” Noble grumbled. I ignored him.
“I don’t remember the last time I met someone so genuine,” I offered. It was my shot now, her boyfriend’s supportive words had caused her to miss. “If someone like you can convince anyone to dislike you, that’s talent. Um... green stripey ball in that pocket over there.” I promptly scratched.
“You are so sweet,” she said in a voice that indicated surprise more than anything else.
“Just relentlessly honest,” I said.
“Relentlessly cornball, maybe.” Noble stepped back to the table and ran it, sinking each solid in turn. Finishing with the 8-ball, he knocked the chalk from his hands and stuck his cue in my face.
“How’s that, loser?”
“It’s just a game, man.”
There was a wheezing noise as a voice called out Noble’s name and told him to cool it. Morrie was walking across the lounge with a manila envelope in his hand. Next to him, as always, was Mental Maid, looking straight ahead, not registering anything. “Your next assignment, Doc. Practice is tomorrow at four p.m. Don’t be late this time. How about you, kid?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Makin’ friends?”
“Yeah, it’s great, Morrie.”
“Good, good. Come on, Em-Em.” He filtered away, leaving Noble standing there, holding the envelope, staring through me like I’d just run over his puppy with a steamroller and invited him to the barbecue.
“Come on, girlie, I don’t like the company around here.” He grabbed Sindy by the hand and dragged her away. On the way out, Sindy looked back at me with a glance that said, “Sorry, what can I do?” Then she waved, and then she was gone.
I turned back to the Conductor. “Have I mentioned lately how much I hate that guy?”
“That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Are you kidding? He had to have been using his telekinesis on those balls...”
“Not that. You actually stood there and complimented her in front of him. No one does that.”
“How could anyone not compliment her?”
“Because they’re all afraid of him.”
“What, are they afraid he’ll crush them with his enormous ego?”
“Hey, Noble may be scum, but he’s also probably the most powerful guy in Siegel City since Lionheart vanished. Physically, anyway.”
“So what? There’s bound to be enough guys around here to take him together, right?”
“Maybe, but after what happened to Photon Man...” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the Conductor clapped his hand over it. “Forget I said that.”
“No, wait a minute, what’s the big secret about Photon Man?”
“Let it go.”
“Uh-uh. You can’t give me pizza and then say no pepperoni, bunky. Cough it up.”
The Conductor sighed and put his cue down. “Every so often somebody... does something bad. I mean, a serious crime, something against one of our own. A while back, someone discovered that Photon Man was skimming money from his heists. Normally the cash our Masks steal is subtly returned to its owner, who then ‘forgets’ the whole thing. When wrongdoing is discovered, the suspect is taken before a review board.”
“Review board?”
“Okay, Mental Maid. The concept is the same. You get up, you state your case, someone is appointed prosecutor, and Mental Maid passes judgment. But sometimes... and this is what Photon did, sometimes they rabbit.”
“Run away.”
“You’re quick on the euphemisms, for a reporter. When someone runs instead of facing the review, we go after him and bring him in.”
“I’m guessing that’s not quite what happened in this case.”
“Noble was the one that finally caught up with Photon Man. Unfortunately, no one figured on what Noble’s electromagnetic powers, at full force, would do to a guy who was essentially made of energy particles.”
“Made of energy particles?” I said.
“The things you learn on this side, eh?” He chalked up his cue a little more, trying to find the proper words. “Noble caught him, and... Photon Man exploded.”
“Oh. Um. Ew.”
“Right. Anyway, Noble got cleared of any wrongdoing, but he’s still... there are some of us who think it may not have exactly been an accident.”
“Wouldn’t Mental Maid have caught wind if he did it on purpose?” I asked, remembering the way she’d waved me through my scan.
“Have you looked at her, Josh? Those eyes, that skin... hell, just those freaky powers. There are some of us who think she’s got an agenda of her own, too.”
“Oh.”
“Since then, Noble’s been even less popular around here than he was before. And folks are even more frightened of him.” He shook his head clear. “Another game?”
“Yeah, I guess. I guess I find it hard to be scared of someone so... so...”
“So Deliverance?”
“Bingo. It gets me sick, the way he talks about her.” I didn’t think I needed to specify who “her” was. “What’s worse, he’s been brow-beating her for so long she’s started to believe his crap.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t like you very much either.”
“I get the impression he doesn’t like anyone.”
“Yeah but dude, the minute Noble saw you just now his emotions went all nasty and sour. It was like listening to emo rock in my head.” He started arranging balls on the table. “He’s scared of you, man.”
“Scared? Of what?”
“My guess? That she’s gonna open her eyes and realize she can do better than him.”
“And how does she feel about all this?”
“Confused. She thinks you’re a real sweet guy -- and you are, Joshie, you really are,” he quipped, “but she’s also been convinced for months now that she deserves that SOB.”
“So what do I do?”
“Hell if I know. But if you figure that out I’ll personally sponsor you for ‘Smartest Man on Earth’.”
I laughed at that, but my reporter’s instincts welled just then, squeezing out the one question I really wanted the answer to at that second.
“Hey, Conductor... when Noble killed -- I mean -- when Photon Man died... was there anyone else there? Any witnesses?”
The Conductor shook his head. “Nope.” he tossed me the cue ball. “You break.”
GUIDED TOUR
“Come on in, kid,” Morrie said a few days later, waving me into his office. I was there to begin my official training, but Morrie asked me to show up an hour before my session. In fact, I came in even earlier to hang around the lounge and take in everything I could -- it’s amazing what you can learn just sitting on a couch and listening.
I also encountered the Gunk again. He sat down and tried to hold a conversation with me concerning an article I’d written about the United Statesmen, but as he buddied up to me his powers turned my limbs to goo and I found it hard to concentrate. I managed to maneuver my way out of the conversation when it was time to meet Morrie.
Morrie was at his desk, cigar smoke filtering through his nostrils and curling past his eyes. Mental Maid was by his desk as usual, still staring at me. I caught a nice chill off that. “Gettin’ yourself situated?” he asked.
“I’m doing all right,” I said.
“Meetin’ people? Learnin’ your way around?”
“More of the first.”
“Well, I’m gonna help you with the second. Hotshot’s waitin’ for you in the lounge. Guy volunteered to take you around the joint. The grand tour, as it were.”
“Sounds good, Morrie.” I left the office, still feeling Mental Maid’s eyes boring into the back of my head.
Hotshot had a big smile on his face when I met him in the lounge. “Hey, new guy! Nice to meet you -- officially, I mean. I’m Hotshot.”
“Yeah, I said, I know. Member of the original LightCorps. You knew Lionheart, didn’t you?”
“Everybody always asks that.”
“I’m Josh Corwood.”
“I know. The kid who duplicates other people’s powers. You’re either going to make a lot of friends that way or tick a lot of people off.”
“Don’t worry, I seem to be well on my way to both. So why did you volunteer to take me around?”
“I don’t know. Just caught a friendly vibe from you, I guess. Come on, let’s get a move on.”
It started out amicably enough. We started at Morrie’s office and began to make our way through the bowels of the complex. The first thing I asked him was about Lionheart -- what really happened to him.
“Let’s not talk about that,” Hotshot said. “Sore subject.”
“But you knew him, right? You were his friend.”
“We were pretty close.”
“Was he as... as great a presence as he seemed?”
“Greater. There’s not a decent person on Earth who could have met Lionheart and not be willing to put himself on the line for the guy. He was the sort of person you would do anything to follow -- the sort that inspires courage and confidence just by walking into the room.
“One time the Sinister Squadron had deactivated the Tin Man’s armor and trapped him in it, disarmed the Defender, caught Condor and Oriole in cages and put Lightning in this null-time sphere so she couldn’t use her speed powers. They had me trapped in a gravity bubble, too, so I couldn’t reach anything to charge up. Nobody had a plan, nobody had an idea. We were all doomed.
“Then, bam! Lionheart shows up. He doesn’t lift a finger to save us because he knows he doesn’t have to. He charges after the Squadron and in about ten seconds, Tin Man has escaped from his dead armor and deactivated the traps Lightning and I were in. We freed the rest of the guys and wiped up the Squadron just in time to stop them from launching the Omega Device.”
“The Omega Device?” I asked.
“One of those contraptions old Masks used to use to try and conquer the world. I think this one would devolve the entire eastern seaboard into plankton or something, they sort of blend together after a while.”
“But that doesn’t sound like Lionheart actually did anything,” I said. “He had to have done something.”
“Why?”
“Because... because he was Lionheart.” It was the simplest thing in the world to me, why couldn’t his old teammate see it?
“You’re not getting the point, Josh,” he said. “There were plenty of times when Lionheart saved this planet by himself and saved our lives in particular. In this particular instance, though, he didn’t have to. Not directly, anyway. When we saw him, it jazzed us up again, enough for the Tin Man to break out and free us. From there, victory was a foregone conclusion.” He let out something of a sigh. “I miss that -- the excitement of a real rumble, not knowing the outcome beforehand. That was a real thrill, buddy.”
“Why did it stop?”
“Long story. After Lionheart was gone, Morrie tracked me down and said, ‘Hey, kid, I got me an’ idea,’ and we started to build this little organization. It just sort of snowballed from there.”
I didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. Hotshot, Lionheart’s own teammate, was one of the guys who started this mess?
“What would Lionheart say about all this?” I asked.
“Lionheart? He wouldn’t have liked it at all. The guy didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body. The closest thing I ever heard him say to a lie was one Christmas when he tried to convince Lightning he liked this incredibly ugly sweater she gave him. You could still see the truth in his eyes, though. Those always gave him away. He was good at a lot of things, but the worst liar I’ve ever met.”
“He was a good guy, then?”
“The best. You didn’t just follow him, you didn’t just respect him... you would do anything, anything not to let him down.” He sighed. “Y’know, there’s a reason you don’t see his picture stuck on t-shirts or cereal boxes like the rest of us. Morrie wanted to use him – begged me to, actually. It’d be like having an Elvis shirt or something. But I won’t let him. That was my one condition for going along with this – no Lionheart merchandise.”
By now I was furious. This guy was Lionheart’s friend, his teammate for God’s sake, and he’d betrayed him by constructing this organization, knowing Lionheart wouldn’t
have approved. The rage I felt was nearly blinding. How could he? How could he?
“But hey,” he said, “we’re supposed to be on a tour of the complex, not the cobwebs of my screwed-up head.” We’d ridden an elevator to the second level in the complex. As big as it was, the top level of the underground system only consisted of Morrie’s office and a few storage rooms and bathrooms. That was because everything on the second level extended up to just beneath the surface.
Right off from the elevator, and right beneath the lobby of Simon Tower proper, was an auditorium with lush wood paneling, flags of the United States and Siegel City flanking the podium, and tables set up for when used for arbitration.
“Whenever somebody here breaks the rules, commits a ‘crime against a Cape’, Morrie calls it, we take him here for his hearing. There are enough seats in here for every Cape and Mask in the city.”
“I hope you don’t get to use it much.”
“Only once in the last three years,” he said. “At least, only once for that purpose. We also have meetings here, general assemblies, that sort of thing.”
“Exciting?”
“You can’t imagine. Let’s keep going.”
Next down the hallway was a steel door with a keypad to open it. “The Arena,” Hotshot said. “It’s where we practice our rumbles.”
“Don’t I get to see it?” I asked.
“Particle runs the practice sessions. He likes to show rookies the Arena for the first time. Next door is the gym -- we have plenty of ordinary workout machines -- treadmills, bikes, a pool, weights, and we’ve also got specialized stuff for folks with unique talents. Morrie will probably have you practice using other people’s powers in there before he actually sends you into the Arena.”
“Thoughtful of him.” I was aware that my responses to his tour were becoming rather cold. I didn’t care.
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 6