Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City)

by Petit, Blake M.

  As soon as I was done, Tom’s face shifted from rage to shock. “Oh my God. What are you gonna do? Can I help? I’ve got these walkie-talkies--”

  “Tom?” resounded Cynthia Harmon’s voice from the living room. “I’m home!”

  I swallowed. “You want to help, Tom, go make sure your mom doesn’t find us here. Oh, and find out where your sister is.”

  Tom gave me a smart little salute. “Aye-aye, sir!” He spun on his heel like it was razor-edged and left the room.

  “A good kid,” I said, “but way too excitable.”

  Hotshot stared at me, looking considerably astounded.

  “What? What is it?”

  He did a double-take. “You don’t see it?”

  “See what?”

  “He was ready to hand me my head when he thought I was going to hurt Lionheart, but you he trusts like you were Pope Josh Copycat the Fourth! It was the same when you proved you were Shift, his whole face changed.”

  “So?”

  “That’s because Shift saved his life, Josh. You saved his life.”

  I turned this over in my head for just a moment before it clicked. “No--”

  “Yeah. He’s one of us. Tom Harmon has the Heart of the Lion.”

  CAVALRY

  It took Tom about ten minutes to get back, and when he did he was practically bounding off the walls. “Sorry I took so long, guys, but I had the toughest time convincing Mom I was tired and wanted to go to bed.”

  “I wonder why,” Hotshot said.

  “Annie’s staying at our aunt’s house. Mom said she just needed time away.” My throat violently contracted as I wondered if she was, in fact, hiding from me. Hotshot must have seen something in my face, because he put a hand on my shoulder.

  “She’ll be all right, Josh.”

  “I know. I’m just... I’m worried about her.”

  “Don’t,” Tom said. “I’ll know if she’s in trouble.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “Yeah... Will Quentin be home soon?”

  Tom shook his head. “Nah, ever since he got to be a teenager he stays out until he knows Mom is gonna get mad at him.”

  “Good,” I said. “Why don’t you take a seat, man? We’ve got a story to tell you.”

  “And it’s not necessarily the nicest story,” Hotshot said, “but you’re a special kid, Tom, and you deserve the truth.”

  “But you’ve got to promise me you can keep this a secret, Tom. It’s too important for you to talk about to anybody who doesn’t already know.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

  That was all we needed. All three of us knew that Tom Harmon couldn’t possibly break a promise to me, even if he didn’t know why.

  Hotshot and I explained a lot to Tom -- about how Morrie’s world was set up, about our place and his sister’s place in it. Hotshot told what really happened to Lionheart and I punctuated it with what had happened to me, from the Gunk’s appropriation of Lionheart’s face through the truth about Morrie and Mental Maid (which Hotshot was hearing for the first time) and right through to our escape. And if you were to ask us later why we were sharing so much with a child, it would be because we simply couldn’t keep the truth from someone like us.

  “You see how serious this is, Tom?” Hotshot asked when we were done. “If we don’t stop the Gunk, he’s going to have everyone in the world thinking he’s Lionheart.”

  “Until he moves to crush them,” I said.

  “I don’t understand,” Tom said. “Why would they do that in the first place? Aren’t real heroes enough?”

  I turned to Hotshot, giving him a “Do you want to field this one?” look.

  “Just because fights are scripted doesn’t mean the spirit isn’t real, Tom,” Hotshot said.

  “And just because someone catches a Mask, that doesn’t make him a hero,” I added. “How many bad guys has the Gunk fought in the past ten years?”

  “But... why me?” Tom asked. “Why are you telling me all of this? Is it just because you have a crush on my sister?”

  Hotshot snickered and I felt my cheeks flush. “What, is everybody talking about that? No, Tom, it’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “Try me. I can handle it.”

  “I know you can,” I said.

  And for the first time in my life, I explained to someone what the Heart of the Lion meant. Tom nodded as he listened, keeping a smile on his face. It wasn’t a look of realization -- it was more like something he had always known was finally being confirmed.

  He sat down at his desk and began flipping through his playing card binder. “So you guys need to find a way to get past a whole punch of brainwashed good guys to get to one bad guy, right?”

  “In a nutshell,” Hotshot said.

  “Took us twenty minutes,” I laughed. “Leave it to the kid to encapsulate the whole situation perfectly in one question.”

  “When I’m playing the card game,” he said, “and my guys are outnumbered, the only way I can beat the bad guy is to hold him off until I pull more good guys out of the deck.”

  “A good thought,” Hotshot said, “but who can we call in as the cavalry? Every superhuman in the city is under Gunk’s spell, except for the two of us.”

  Tom turned another page and I saw two rows of older-looking, yellowed cards that leapt from the plastic at me. One of them I had seen before. The rest...

  “No, ‘Shot,” I said. “Not every superhuman. Just the active ones.”

  There were six cards on this page, all artificially aged, labeled “Vintage Series.” The first one was Lionheart, the card Tom had shown me the last time I’d visited him. The other cards completed the set.

  Card two featured a man in gleaming silver-and-blue chainmail with a red tunic and a white star. He had no powers, according to the body text on the card, but was a master swordsman and skilled in almost every martial art. His shield had served as an inspiration to American servicemen in every war since the 1900's began, until he vanished after Lionheart was gone. He was the Defender.

  The next card showed a flying man in black, red and brown. The one-foot warrior had a pair of wings, like an angel, but a razor-sharp pair of talons that could be brutal in combat. A brilliant scientist, the card said, his intellect was only rivaled by his rage at the injustices of the world. He was the Condor.

  The card after that featured a woman in an identical costume, but her color scheme was orange, yellow and white. Her wings were not as harsh and her hands had no blades. Her calm demeanor and boundless compassion was a tempering influence -- not only to her husband, Condor, but to all who met her. She was called Oriole.

  The fifth card was a modern knight in shining armor -- high-tech armor complete with Tasers, rocket-boots and bulletproof glass for the faceplate. The armor was gun-metal gray, but a slick paint job of red, black and blue racing stripes gave him a sleek, powerful look. It was the Tin Man.

  The last card was an attractive, long-haired blonde woman in a black leotard with yellow leggings and a red-and-yellow electric motif. Her most obvious power was super-speed, the card said, but in fact that was only a manifestation of her ability to speed up or slow down time itself. She had been known as Lightning.

  Those five cards, along with the Lionheart and a more recent Hotshot, would comprise the old LightCorps. None of the others, alone, carried quite the level of reverence that Lionheart did. But together... making a stand...

  “Can you get them?” I asked Hotshot.

  “Christ, Josh, those guys retired...”

  “Because they didn’t want to fight without Lionheart, I know. But this is different. We’re asking them to fight for Lionheart. For his legacy. You can’t tell me that none of them would be willing to fight for that.”

  He couldn’t.

  “Are any of them still in Siegel City?”

  “Yeah, the Defender.”

  “Go to him,” I pleaded. “Tell him what’s happening and send him out to get the rest of them.”

>   “Not all of them,” Hotshot said, staring at the pages. I saw his finger trace gently across the Lightning card. “Some people have suffered enough. I won’t call them all back. Not even for this.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Get whoever you can.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “But I don’t have to like it. Be good, Tom,” he said. Then he climbed out on the window and then he was gone.

  “Now what?” Tom asked.

  “Now... I guess we wait.”

  We sat for about ten seconds before Tom couldn’t stand it anymore. He picked up his game cards.

  “Wanna learn how to play?” he asked.

  TOM’S SECRET

  After I finally had a marginal understanding of the game rules, Tom proceeded to soundly defeat me three times (twice, I grudgingly noted, with alternate versions of Animan.)

  “Another round?” he asked with a mildly annoying grin.

  “I dunno,” I said. “There’s only so many times a man can get whipped before he decides to move on to a new game. You don’t have a cribbage set around, do you?”

  “A who?”

  “Never mind.” I picked up the deck I’d been playing with and began shuffling through the cards, examining the pictures, reading the body text and getting a pretty good laugh over some of the things I saw -- Spectrum’s flight speed, for instance.

  I stopped shuffling when I came across a Miss Sinistah card. I gazed at it for a long moment before it spilled out of my fingers and on the floor. I sighed deeply.

  “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” Tom asked.

  “A little, yeah,” I lied. I was actually worried a lot. “I just have this nasty feeling that Todd’s going to be after her.”

  “You can relax,” Tom said. “She’s all right.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He smiled. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “After today, you have to ask? Spill.”

  “Well... every so often I get this... feeling. This sensation -- I can’t really explain it, but I always get this flash -- like I’m seeing through Annie’s eyes, and I know she’s in trouble. That’s how I really knew she was a Cape... or... Mask, I guess. I never really saw enough to tell which side she was on. But she’s always gotten out of it. She can take care of herself.”

  Was that it? I’d sensed the first time I ever met Tom that he had a power -- was it this “danger sense” that linked him to his sister? “How often does this happen, Tom?”

  “Not often -- maybe every couple of months.” That made sense. With Morrie’s positively anal concerns about safety, the chance of Annie ever having been in real danger often were pretty slim.

  “And you always have this -- ‘feeling’ -- before you get that flash?”

  “Always. It kind of starts in the pit of my stomach, like I swallowed a feather duster.”

  “And then it moves up, right? Into your chest... into your throat?”

  “How did--” then he choked, like there was something fluffy lodged in his windpipe. “Oh no... it’s happening.”

  “I know,” I gagged as the sensation traveled up my neck and into my head. “I feel it too.”

  As the sensation hit my nose I sneezed. When it reached my ears, I began to hear a sound like somebody breaking things.

  When it reached my eyes, I saw.

  It wasn’t entirely clear -- it was like looking through a blue filter, but I could see a small apartment, meticulously decorated in a country motif. The color scheme, I’d be willing to bet, was either sunflower yellow or cream -- I couldn’t tell.

  Over the kitchen counter was one of those charming painted menus that read “Tillie’s Diner. 1 -- Take it. 2 -- Leave it.” In the corner was a water cooler with a knitted cover and fruit magnets peppered the refrigerator.

  The images all clicked into place just in time for me to see Dr. Noble shatter the water cooler with a teke burst. Water gushed out of the fabric, which collapsed in on itself, shards of plastic ripping through. Then Noble spun around and glared directly at me and, for a moment, I felt a jolt of fear, certain he could see me. This was ridiculous, of course, I was just seeing what Annie saw.

  Which meant, I realized with a churn of my stomach, that look of homicidal rage on his face was meant for her. Despite myself, I began to mutter, “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him if he hurts her, I swear to God...”

  “Where is he, you little bitch?” he snarled. His voice resonated through my ears, but it sounded empty, hollow, like someone talking through a balloon.

  “I don’t know, Todd!” she shouted, and my heart leapt. Not because she was angry or in danger, you understand, but because her voice did not crack or waver. She didn’t sound afraid, she just sounded mad, and I was proud.

  “Get out of my aunt’s house!” she said. “How dare you barge in here and start breaking things?”

  “Because I know you’re hiding that little prick and I want him.”

  “Go to Hell!”

  “Yes!” I shrieked. “You tell him, Annie!”

  My viewpoint suddenly darted around the room, as though I was frantically looking for something.

  “Who said that?” Annie asked.

  “She can hear me?” I squeaked.

  “I didn’t hear nothin’” Noble grumbled.

  “Sometimes she can,” Tom asked, “if I get really excited. I try not to do it, though. I don’t want her knowing I can do this yet.”

  As we watched Noble continue to tear up Aunt Tillie’s apartment looking for me, I reached out and grabbed Tom’s shoulder. “There anything else about this you think you should be telling me, Tommy?”

  “Well... sometimes, if I get really mad... I start to feel like I’m falling.”

  “Falling?” I asked. “What happens then?”

  “I don’t know... I’ve always pulled myself back.”

  “I swear, Todd,” she was saying, “if you don’t get out of here right now, I’ll--”

  “You’ll what?” he asked, charging right up to her face. His breath was a mixture of tobacco and cheap beer and I suddenly found myself wondering how many stereotypes it was possible to cram into a single being.

  “What are you gonna do, Miss Sinistah?” he spat. “Gonna call your new boyfriend? Sic that little psycho on me? He already killed the Gunk, who knows what he’ll do to you?” Then the right side of his lip curled up into a nasty little sneer. “Then again, maybe you like whatever he’s doing to you.”

  I saw a hand flash in front of me making solid contact with Todd’s cheek.

  “I can’t believe I ever had feelings for someone who can’t even use my real name,” she spat.

  “You bitch!” He raised his arm, clenched in a fist--

  --and I was falling. Unlike Tom, though, I didn’t even try to stop myself. I fell and fell and then--

  --I was there, my left arm holding back Noble’s right first, my right hand clamped around his incredibly thick neck.

  “You’re never hurting her again, do you hear me?” I raged. He choked and sputtered in my grip and I noticed all at once that the hollow quality of his voice was gone and the world was no longer blue.

  “Josh?” Annie shrieked. “Where did you come from?”

  “Your place,” I said, driving a fist to Noble’s gut and hitting his neck with a combination of Annie’s strength and his own telekinesis. I smacked him across the face with my elbow and nailed him with a strategically-placed knee in the jaw as he fell to the floor.

  “How did you get here?” Annie gasped. “It was like you just... appeared.”

  My immediate reaction was to tell her, “There’s something you should know about Tom,” but my jaw clamped shut before the words could even form. I’d promised him I’d keep his secret, after all.

  “Long story,” I said, but the point became moot a second later when I heard, echoing around in my skull, Tom’s voice.

  “Josh, look out!” he shouted. My head felt a little it was exploding for just an instant
and he snapped into existence. There was no pop, no flash of light -- it was like someone spliced two frames of a movie together, one without Tom and the next with him.

  He lashed out as soon as he was there, kicking at Noble’s hand, which had been reaching for my leg while I was talking to Annie. I use Noble’s telekinesis to mash him against the wall, and Tom and I both gave Annie a sheepish grin.

  “Tom? Josh, what is going on here?”

  I raised an eyebrow at Tom in a “we’d better tell her,” look and he nodded. “The kid’s been watching you for a while now, whenever you were in trouble,” I said.

  “Not just her,” Tom said. “When Noble was about to attack, just before I jumped over here, I could see through your eyes, too, Josh.”

  I high-fived Tom as Noble growled. “I never did like that little freak,” he said. “Come on, Annie. What do you do now? Harbor this wanted criminal?”

  “He didn’t do it,” Tom shouted. “Copycat is innocent! You’re the bad guy, he told me all about it!”

  “What?” Annie cried.

  “Thanks, pal.” I looked to Annie. “You know it, Tom. I know it. Noble absolutely knows it. Question is... does your sister believe it?”

  “You believe he’s innocent, don’t you Annie?” Tom asked.

  She furrowed her brow and her eyes darted between the three of us. “Tom... I...”

  “Annie?” I whispered. “Annie you know me. You remember what I said to you in the arboretum that night? Do you really think that guy could do the things they’re accusing me of?”