“Quentin? No, I don’t think so. He’s 13, he spends a lot more time on basketball and girls than Capes and Masks.”
“Girls? Poor kid doesn’t know what he’s getting into.” This prompted another laugh and a dirty look from Annie that probably would have led to an incredibly sarcastic (and therefore adorable) remark on her part, but at that moment Cynthia called her from the kitchen to ask for help. Their backs were turned to me and, with their similar voices, I had trouble picking out who was saying exactly what. I did get a few snippets of conversation, though.
“Seems very nice...”
“...handsome thing, isn’t...”
“...reminds me of Tom...”
“...oh cut that out...”
“...very sweet...”
“...stop it!”
They turned around, Cynthia holding a tray with three glasses of lemonade, Annie holding a half-full pitcher and wearing a look that anyone who has ever known a girl between the ages of 14 and 23 could translate into “if you embarrass me I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
Cynthia handed me the lemonade with a wide, warm smile. “So Josh, Annie tells me you’re a reporter at the magazine, right?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s such a good job,” she said. “It must be exciting.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m out there covering wars or anything, but it pays the bills.”
“Pays well, does it?” The Look returned to Annie’s face and her eyebrows arched up. She was probably getting furious with her mother, but I was starting to enjoy the hell out of this conversation.
“Hey mom!” There was a slamming door and the two boys came running in tossing a basketball back and forth. “Hey, Annie!”
“How’s your game, squirt?” she asked.
“Hah! Quent’s got nothing. I took him in three sets.” He tossed the ball to Annie, who deftly began twirling it on her finger.
“Impressive,” I said.
“This is my friend Josh, guys. He works at Powerlines. Josh, this is Tom and Quentin.”
“Hey,” Quentin mumbled. “Mom, did Heather call?”
“Thrice.” She handed Quent a handwritten message from her pocket. He gave the rapid-fire “Howyadoingnicetameetcha” of a teenage boy with a teenage girl’s phone number and vanished.
“What do you do at the magazine?” Tom asked.
“I’m a reporter.”
“Cool. Does that mean you get to meet a lot of Capes?”
“Well... well yeah, recently I have.”
“Did you ever meet LifeSpeed? He was there yesterday when Shift saved me.”
“Yeah, I have met LifeSpeed. Nice guy, that one.”
“Will you be staying for dinner, Josh?” Cynthia asked.
“Um... I don’t know, am I?”
Annie nodded. “I think we can pencil you in.”
“Then we need to start cooking, Annie. Tom, can you keep Josh entertained?”
“Sure,” he said.
“You don’t mind, do you Josh?” Annie asked.
“Not at all. I think Tom and I will get along great.”
The Harmon ladies left Tom and me alone as they began rifling through cabinets and refrigerator drawers.
“Have you ever seen a rumble?” Tom asked.
“A couple. Once I got real close. You really like these Capes, don’t you?”
“They’re great! I wish I could do what they do.”
“Disrupt traffic and cause wanton property damage?”
“No! They stop Masks and they save people and... look what Shift did yesterday. Did Annie tell you about that?”
“Yeah. I heard.”
“I think, maybe, he should be a Cape instead of a Mask. If he was all bad, he wouldn’t have saved me, would he?”
“I don’t know, Tom. Just because someone’s a crook, does that mean he’d let an innocent person die?”
“Maybe not, but... I don’t know, the way Shift acted -- he seemed concerned, you know? Like he actually cared what happened to me.”
“You know what?”I said. “I think maybe he did.”
Tom grinned at me. “Want to see something?
“Sure.”
He took me down the hall to a bedroom that obviously belonged to a couple of boys whose ages were just creeping into the double digits. There were a couple of beds with blue sheets and a floor littered with sports equipment, comic books, and tons of toys, clothes and school supplies littered with the images of various Capes and Masks. Morrie probably made enough money for a new car just on this room alone. On the wall were posters of the Spectacle Six and Spectrum and a somewhat provocative shot of Glamour Girl near Quentin’s bed. I knew it was his because that’s the bed he was lying on, chattering away on a cordless phone, when we walked in. He gave us a glare as to indicate that we had interrupted an incredibly meaningful conversation about who was dating who since third period and he quickly left the premises.
Tom must have noticed me looking at the Glamour Girl poster because he wrinkled his nose and said, “I don’t like that one.”
“Why not?”
“I... I just don’t.” It hit me as he went to his desk -- he honestly believed that was a poster of his sister on the wall.
On his desk was a binder full of plastic sheets. In each sheet, arranged in a clear little envelopes, were nine “Capes and Masks” game trading cards. Spectrum. Flambeaux. The Shell. Swoosh -- an old card, before he changed his name to LifeSpeed. At least four cards of Animan in various guises.
Tom flipped through until he got to the last page. “Hey,” I said, “is that the card Shift signed for you yesterday?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“Your sister told me. Cool card, man.”
“Did you ever get an autograph from one of them?”
“Nah, it’s not really considered proper etiquette to ask for signatures when you’re interviewing somebody.” I flipped through the pages a bit -- DeVinity, Goop, Deep Six, Colonel Coldsnap... knowing the truth about the people on those cards gave the game a whole new dimension. “So which one’s your favorite?”
Tom took the binder and flipped to the first card on the first page. The card was printed to look old and yellowed, with fake frays on the edges. Across the bottom was a silver banner that read “Vintage Series.”
“I had to swap my brother for a First Light, a Justice Giant and a Doctor Noble for him,” Tom said. “I still miss Justice Giant.”
It was Lionheart, one of the few items ever allowed with his picture.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m... how do you even know about Lionheart, Tom? You must have been a baby when he disappeared.”
“I read a lot,” Tom said. “Old magazines, books, comics... he was the best of them, you know. The best of them all.” He took the card out and looked it over. As he admired the hero for what must have been the thousandth time, I felt a rise from him. There was a swell of energy and a Rush.
He handed me the card to look at, and I took it, shaking. Tom had powers. They were raw, undeveloped... no way to even tell what they were yet. But they were there. It made sense, I suppose -- if his sister had powers, why not Tom? I’d have to remember to ask Annie if Quentin had ever displayed unusual talents.
My hand quivered a bit and I dropped the Lionheart card on top of a picture of the Goop with a big, dopey grin on his face. Tom slid Lionheart back into the plastic and closed the binder. “Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“Sure, buddy.”
He slid the binder back on its shelf. “Are you dating my sister?”
I regret not having brought my glass of lemonade with me, because I’ve never had such a wonderful opportunity to perform a spit take. “No,” I finally said, more than a little wistfully. “No, I’m not.”
“Oh,” he said. He sounded disappointed.
“Why? Did she... um... did she say something to you?”
“Not really. But she talks abo
ut you a lot, and I thought... once I heard her tell Mom she wishes Todd -- that’s her boy-friend -- saying she wishes Todd were more like you.” He said the word “boyfriend” the way most people would say “dung beetle.”
My head simply nodded. My heart, on the other hand, was resisting the urge to physically leap from my chest and perform the “Red and Black” number from Les Miserables. “Oh,” I said. “I see.”
“It’s a shame,” he said. “I like you a lot better than that Todd guy.”
“You’re a wise, wise young man, Tom,” I said.
RESEARCH
Foosball, it seems, is one of the most intense, strategic sports ever devised by the human mind. At least, that’s what you’d think if you saw the way Ted was cleaning my clock at it the next day at the lounge. Not that it was entirely a fair game, mind you. He kept distracting me by talking about Miss Sinistah.
“It sounds to me like you’ve got the brother and the mother on your side,” he said, scoring his fifth consecutive goal without me even getting my little twirly guys near the ball. “Dude, you’re in good shape.”
“Brother... mother... Ted, I could have the Pope getting a piggyback ride from Lionheart dragging a ‘Josh loves you’ banner behind them through the air. As long as she’s with Doc Noble, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t do that sort of thing. If I was the ‘reason’ they broke up, if I got her that way, I’d feel so damn guilty about it that I’d never be happy.”
“That is an incredibly warped perception.”
“Oh, like I don’t know that.”
Ted stopped moving, stood straight up and glared at me with a “you moron” look on his face.
“What?”
“I’m just thinking that maybe we’ve got the wrong guy in the Doctor Noble suit.” Without bending down or even looking he twirled a row of foosball players and scored another goal.
“Are you sure you’re not telekinetic?” I asked. “Why are you so stunned, anyway? You think I’m not telling the truth.”
“Empath, remember? I know you’re telling the truth. That’s what bothers me. That and the fact that you’re scared of something and you don’t want anyone to find out about it.” He shot another goal.
“If you must know,” I said, “I got a Powerlines assignment to profile the Goop and I didn’t know quite how to go about it. Do they have air hockey here? I’m good at air hockey...”
“Is that all?” Ted gave me a look that indicated he didn’t for an instant believe that was all, but he respected me enough not to pry if I didn’t want him to.
What he was really sensing, I suppose, was my growing apprehension about my notebook. I’d filled it with more than enough info to expose Morrie’s little charade once and for all, but I just couldn’t bring myself to start on the exposé. I told myself I needed more info. I told myself I could make it better. I told myself there was a deeper story here.
Truth was, there were only two reasons I hadn’t gone ahead with the story. First, I was afraid if I blew the whistle, I’d never see Annie again.
Second...
Second...
Dammit.
Second, I was just having too much fun.
“If that’s all you’re worried about,” Ted said, “why don’t you look in the archive?” He scored again.
“Archive?”
“Yeah. The computer system here can tell you everything there is to know about every Cape and Mask since Morrie took over -- both the legitimate stories and the ‘official’ spin jobs we release to the public.” He pointed me toward the row of computers Nightshadow had read my news article from a few days earlier and scored another goal. “Check it out. This game is getting too easy anyway.”
I migrated over to the computer and clicked on the “archive” icon (which, I was irritated to see, was Hotshot’s emblem.) Once in the program, the computer asked me for the name of the Cape or Mask I wished to study. The program was rather bland, without the sort of flashy graphics and colors and animated features you get accustomed to with a computer.
“It’s a beta version,” Ted said. “Morrie just wants to make sure he can get all of the info in and the mechanics working properly. When he releases the full version to the mass market on CD-ROM, it’ll blow your eyes out. Of course, it’ll be sans the non-official files.”
I typed in “Goop” and hit the send button. The computer hummed and whirred for a minute, then asked me “official or unofficial version?” With Ted standing right there, I decided it would be more prudent to simply look at what I’d need for the story. I clicked on “official.”
The computer sang to itself for a few more seconds before a somewhat lengthy document appeared on the screen. I glared up at Ted, who shrugged. “That’s what you asked for,” he said. “Hey, Animan! Feel like getting your butt kicked?”
I turned back to the screen and began reading the ludicrous story of the Goop, according to Morrie’s spin writers. This is it, in a nutshell:
During one of the brief periods the Gunk regained the intellect of Dr. Richard Newell, his original identity, he abducted a brilliant young biochemist by the name of Edward Plante. Gunk forced Plante to try to help him find a cure for his condition. The two slaved away for weeks, analyzing samples of Gunk’s body and trying to figure out a treatment that would restore his DNA to a human state.
Plante finally developed a serum he believed could revert Newell back to human form. Unfortunately, by that point, Newell’s mind was again retreating into the personality of the Gunk. The slime-beast raged when Plante tried to present him with the treatment, destroying the laboratory and bathing Plante in the serum. The doomed researcher managed to escape the lab, only to be struck by lightning.
The next morning the Gunk, now with Newell’s identity completely submerged, found Plante lying unconscious outside the complex. The serum, combined with the lightning, had transformed him into another slime-creature like the Gunk.
Gunk felt a kinship to this new, familiar creature and took it under his gooey, dripping wing. The childlike Goop had no recollection of his former life, and was probably better off not knowing what he’d lost.
I turned away from the screen and looked at Ted. “This is total crap,” I said.
“Most of the ‘official’ stories are. Score!” As he shot Animan cursed and pounded the table.
“It doesn’t even make sense. If Goop doesn’t remember his old life and Gunk doesn’t ‘officially’ have the brains God gave sea algae, how did this story get out at all?”
“That’s probably one of the reasons the official story never became that popular,” Ted said.
The rest of the document was just a rundown of all the known activity Goop and Gunk had taken part in since his debut. I gave it only a cursory glance before scrolling all the way to the bottom of the document, where there was a link. “Unofficial history,” it read. I clicked on it, read every word in the new document and looked over at Ted, who was pissing off Animan at the foosball table.
“Hey, Ted... ‘unofficial’ histories are the real ones, right? I mean, the stuff that actually gave people their powers?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Have you ever read Goop’s?”
“No. Why, what does it say?”
I turned back to the screen to make sure I got the wording right.
“He followed the Gunk home one day,” I read.
“And then?”
“No ‘and then’,” I said. “That’s all it says.”
“Hey, little guy.” I jumped nearly a foot into the air when I heard Goop’s fluid voice behind me. When I turned to face him, he had his typical, friendly grin plastered across his face.
“Oh. Hey, Goop.”
“Good story, huh?” he said. “I like the part where I get hit by lightning. And Morrie says it really happened, too.”
I shuddered. For the first time, I started to get the feeling Goop was feeding me a line, whether he int
ended to or not. “Yeah... I’ll bet he does. Goop, does the name ‘Edward Plante’ mean anything to you?”
He reached up in a motion to scratch his head that resulted in his bony fingers digging into his flesh and scraping his skull. “It sounds right, but... it’s like there’s something...”
“Wrong?” I offered.
“Missing.”
The lights fell suddenly and turned blue and there was an alarm. It fired off three high-pitched, staccato beeps in rapid succession, then repeated. Everyone else in the lounge jumped up, some looking angry, but most dismayed.
“What?” I said. “What’s going on? Is it a fire?”
“I wish,” Animan said.
Ted kicked the table. “It can’t be. Not so soon after Photon Man, who’d be that stupid?”
“Ted, what the hell is going on?”
Ted picked up his helmet. “We’ve got a rabbit, Josh.”
“A what?”
“Remember what I told you happened to Photon Man? Somebody did... something. A crime against a Cape, that’s what Morrie calls it.”
“So you sound an alarm?”
“No. The alarm means the guilty party, whoever the hell it is, is rabbiting... running away. And that means we’ve got to catch him.”
HE’S A COLD-HEARTED SNAKE
As we rushed down the halls to the main auditorium, I kept trying to hustle information out of Ted and Animan. “What do you mean we’ve got to catch him?”
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 12