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

by Petit, Blake M.

Her lips turned in and quivered.

  But only for a moment.

  “Of course I believe you, Tom,” she said. Then, turning to Noble, added, “Josh may not be perfect, but he’d never hurt an innocent man. If you weren’t so thick-skulled, you’d know that too.”

  “He does know that,” I said. “He’s in on it.”

  There was a sudden smash against the back of my head and the “Tilly’s Kitchen” sign showered my shoulders with splinters. It didn’t hurt, really, but it was enough to break my concentration and free Noble.

  “Word of advice, punk,” Noble said, smacking my face. “Pinning a guy down isn’t good enough when he’s telekinetic.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said, giving him a roundhouse blow to the gut, which I quickly followed with a good old-fashioned ear boxing. Noble shrieked and fell back, then telekinetically hurled me at the ceiling, which split apart on impact. I found myself outside, crashing to the roof of an apartment building not that far from the one where Hotshot and I had pulled our fire rescues.

  Noble, as expected, popped up through the hole a few seconds later. What he didn’t expect was for me to be waiting. I grabbed his cape and he executed an incredibly awkward arc, crashing face-first to the roof.

  “Havin’ fun yet, Joshie?” he said, picking himself up.

  “Oh, loads.”

  “I’m glad. You’ll be short on it once you get a taste of the Soul Ray.”

  “I’ll never feel it,” I said, driving a kick to his jaw. I came in for a follow-up, but he caught my foot and spun me through the air, away from the building. I slammed into a smokestack one building over just in time to see Annie scrambling to the other roof, shouting at Tom (with absolutely no success) not to follow her.

  Noble leapt across the chasm between buildings, aiming his fist at my head. I darted out of the way just in time to see him smash into the steel smokestack, which buckled with the impact. I hurled myself into the air, trying to get the battle as far away from Annie and Josh as possible. I lost track of how far I’d gone or even where the hell I was until Noble caught my cape and yanked down. I sputtered in the air and smashed face-first into a roof that was more ash and soot than any building material. It was the apartment Hotshot and I had helped evacuate. It seemed very long ago. At least no one would be hurt here.

  “Bastard,” he growled. He piledrove his knee into my back and I’m pretty sure I heard something crack. I know I felt something crack.

  He yanked my head back and began smashing my face into the roof, mixing my blood with ash, shouting all the while. “Think you can get away?” Smash! “You’re nothing!” Smash! “Just a measly little worm.” Smash!

  He was then politely suggesting an anatomical atrocity he would like me to perform when two now-familiar Rushes came over me. Heroes were approaching -- thank God.

  “That is quite enough, Doctor,” said a high, proper voice. “We will see to it Copycat is taken into custody.”

  “He’s whaling on the kid!--That’s enough.--You’re telling me.--No need to brutalize the guy.--What a jackass.”

  First Light and Five-Share had no doubt been combing the city for me, ready to take me in and send me to the stars. Showing up exactly when they did, though... they probably saved my life.

  I only wish I could have returned the favor.

  WHAT HAPPENED TO PHOTON MAN

  Noble stood up from his position at my back and cracked his knuckles. “You folks better back off now. Copycat is my capture.”

  “If you were just capturing him, we would back off,” said a Five-Share.

  “You’re beating the kid,” said another.

  “This is excessive.--Unnecessary.--Barbaric.”

  “Do you five share one brain, too?” Noble howled. “I’m taking him in. Now get out of here.”

  I pushed myself up and looked over at my would-be saviors. First Light was hovering just out of reach, looking more nervous than a Starfleet officer in a red uniform, while Five-Share had formed a semi-circle around Noble, trying their best to look imposing.

  “Aw, let ‘em stick around, Todd,” I grunted. “Or don’t you want them to see a replay of what you did to Photon Man?”

  Noble’s boot lashed out and made contact with my jaw. My lower lip split against my teeth and I felt the blood begin to trickle from my mouth. I didn’t move to wipe it. “There you go,” I gurgled. “Perfectly rational conflict resolution.”

  “What’s he talking about, Todd?” a Five-Share asked. “Don’t say he’s lying.--Seems pretty sure of himself.--We can see right through you.--You suck.”

  “He’s talking out his ass!” Noble yelped. “Come on, if you were rabbiting, wouldn’t you say just about anything to turn folks to your side?”

  “Well...--Got a point...--Who knows--”

  I cut off the remaining Five-Shares. “Yeah, Todd?” I said. “Then why don’t you tell them what happened?”

  “Photon Man was rabbiting after he was caught burglarizing Morrie’s quarters. I chased him down and I accidentally accelerated his energy production. That’s a danger you gotta face when two guys with electromagnetic powers face off. That don’t mean I did it on purpose.”

  “Like hell,” I said. “First Light... I’ve got to borrow something from you for a minute.”

  I pulled in energy from her and created an image in the air above the roof, the way she had done at Icebergg’s trial. What I was displaying, though, were the images Mental Maid planted in my head right before Hotshot broke me out of Simon Tower.

  “Here’s what really happened to Photon Man,” I said as the hologram flashed. It looked like a comet streaking across the Siegel skyline at first. As it approached, though, we could see it was a man in midnight black. His clothes were covered in swirls of yellow and milky white -- it was like he was wearing the night sky.

  “You remember what Photon Man looked like before you nuked him, Todd?” I asked.

  “You son of a--”

  “Shut up!” I telekinetically lifted a stray support beam from the burnt-out shell of the building and slammed it into Noble’s gut. He went down easy at that point -- we’d both been beaten to the point of collapse. He said it himself -- pinning him down telekinetically just wouldn’t have been enough.

  The hologram shifted as Photon Man got closer and a second streak appeared in the air behind him. “There’s the Doctor,” I hissed. “I know you guys can’t hear this, but when Mental Maid dropped the scene into my head, I heard every word this mockery of a Cape said. Every syllable. Right now, Noble is telling Photon Man he’ll never make it out of the city alive.

  “And Photon there is screaming, ‘I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t do it’.”

  In the hologram, Noble caught Photon Man by the boot and hurled him to a rooftop. “Oh, this is my favorite part. Noble’s saying, ‘I know you didn’t. That’s because I did it’.”

  Noble placed one large hand over Photon Man’s entire face and smiled. “‘Not that you’ll ever get to tell anyone’, he says.”

  There was a crackle of energy around Noble’s hand and Photon Man began to glow. Noble dropped the man, now writhing in pain, and smiled. “Maybe that will teach you to lay off my woman.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’d tell you what Photon Man is saying,” I said, “but most of it is just unintelligible screaming and the rest... well... you don’t want to know.”

  We watched in mute impotence as Photon Man flapped around like a catfish on a pier. Energy sparked and danced, seeping from him like white blood.

  Clawing about like a maniac, Photon Man finally tore the mask from his face and looked at the sky. He had a kind face, with light brown hair and a full beard. Crow’s feet were just beginning to appear at the edge of his eyes, which were a crackling blue-white by now, and hemorrhaged energy into the air.

  He screamed so hard I could almost hear it.

  Then there was a flash and his body was ripped apart in a veil of sparks that looked like an electric snowglobe.
The holo-Noble wiped his hands like he’d just finished working in his garden. He gave a quick glance to the “camera,” then took off. Then the hologram ended.

  “God...” muttered one of the Five-Shares. For once, only one of them could bring himself to speak.

  “The man whose eyes we saw that through was hiding,” I said. “He didn’t think the good Doctor saw him. He was wrong.”

  “Who was it, Copycat?” asked a Five-Share.

  “Who else? The next victim. Icebergg.”

  “Well...” there was a groan as Noble sat up, shaking his head. “Well ain’t you slick?” He got to his feet. “You guys don’t believe this crap do you?”

  The Five Shares resumed their circular position around him. I joined them, and First Light drifted into a position above us, probably to keep him from escaping. She didn’t have time to regret it.

  “But...” Noble was sputtering, “the field--”

  “The susceptibility field makes you more willing to accept the lie,” said one of Five-Share.

  “We’ve always known you were a jackass,” said another.

  “Fine,” he said. “It don’t matter. It’s not like anybody’s ever gonna hear it anyway.” As often as he said that, I wondered what movie he’d seen it in.

  Three of the Five-Shares were about to question this statement when Noble leapt from the roof in a cloud of ash. He was flying wobbly, like his head was still clouded from the pounding I gave him. That didn’t stop him from flying high enough to grab First Light by the ankle, though. There was a blast of energy and he threw her to the roof. She was screaming and clawing at her leg like it had been dipped in acid.

  “I’ll get him,” I said, ready to take off.

  “Forget him!” Five-Share howled. “Look at her!”

  First Light was twisting around like a feather in a hurricane. Light screamed away from her in waves and she gave off sparks like a downed power line.

  “He did it to her, too!” somebody screamed.

  I swear, I tried my best to save her. I used Noble’s own power to try to reverse the flow of energy in her body and restore her to normal, but he’d boosted the output so high there was no way I could leech it away in time. I threw myself on the nearest Five-Share and put up the strongest teke-shield I could manage, what with Noble flying away like he did.

  In the split-second before the blast, I could hear Tom’s voice tearing through my head. “JOSH! NO! JOSH!” My head began to bloat again, like it did when Tom teleported before, but I forced the sensation back. I wouldn’t let him through.

  Then First Light convulsed, screamed and her entire body went off like a magnesium flare. The echo of the blast tore at my eardrums and I felt a white hot sensation consume my body.

  It’s actually surprising that the shield worked as well as it did. The Five-Share I’d protected was fine. And the upper half of my body didn’t have a scratch on it.

  The bottom half of my body, I cannot speak for. It no longer existed.

  ISSUE FOURTEEN

  DESPERATION

  You would expect having your body vaporized from the waist down would be incredibly painful, but that really wasn’t the case. The only way to describe the sensation is that it felt white -- my head looked down and I saw that I had no legs or feet, but my nerve endings were trying to argue the point. I supposed I was in shock. It’s funny to think that I’d reached a point of panic so intense that I was completely rational, but that’s really what it was like.

  The blackened roof was now just a crater where First Light had been. A passerby would look into the gaping maw and not even guess the bomb that created the hole had been shaped like a human body.

  There were charred bones and chunks of meat lying around the hole and rolling down into it. Of the four Five-Shares I hadn’t been able to save, only one of them was even marginally intact. The entire front of his body had been scorched totally beyond recognition. His hands were burnt off and the blast sent him flying into the brick and mortar railing that enclosed the roof, snapping his back. I rather hoped he was already dead when he hit.

  The remaining Five-Share crawled out from under me and screamed in a high pitched voice that betrayed her as the female. She ripped her mask off and grabbed her most intact brother, cradling him in her arms like a child with a shattered porcelain doll. She was sobbing too hard for me to make out most of what she was saying, but I could hear the occasional name -- “Stevie” was one, “Vince” another.

  A few sentences did escape: “Oh you bastard I’ll kill you, you bastard,” over and over again. She rocked her brother back and forth. It was to be expected -- to say she’d only suffered a nasty shock would be a grave disservice, but I had a somewhat more pressing dilemma.

  “Five-Share... Five-Share, help...”

  She ignored me entirely. I clawed at the roof, dragging myself towards her, constantly trying to push with my legs and having no effect.

  “Five-Share... help...”

  I may as well have been talking to her brother. Five-Share was beyond panic, she was bordering on lunacy, and she was screaming for Noble’s head.

  My knuckles cut and bleeding from the crawl, I finally made it close enough to reach her. I placed my hand on her back, hoping it would jolt her back to reality.

  Instead, it sent a jolt of energy into me. The Rush I got from her was stronger than before, perhaps because her power was no longer diluted between six people, and it made me think of a possible escape route. Screaming through gritted teeth, I grabbed at the air, collecting all the power I could from her, pulling it into myself.

  Then I said a very brief, very fervent prayer that her remaining brother would be more rational than she, and I teleported.

  I immediately regretted this decision.

  As I remembered from the last time I did it, Five-Share’s teleportation powers did not work the same way Tom’s did -- a brief sensation of falling and you were just there. When I teleported with Five-Share’s power it was a gut-wrenching ride, one that threatened quite persuasively to void my stomach of the cookies Tom had scrounged up for me (I suddenly realized I hadn’t had a decent meal since before I visited Flambeaux in the infirmary, two days before.)

  The transit somehow popped me out of my numbing shock and I began to feel the pain one would expect when his legs had been blown off and his groin shredded. It was like getting hit by fire and razors and clubs all at once, and the fact that I was even still conscious when I arrived is much more than a small miracle.

  As the world re-formed around me, my stomach calmed and my legs continued to inform me they were no longer connected to my body. I struggled to get my bearings. I was obviously in Simon Tower, in somebody’s living quarters -- the dorms didn’t vary much -- but this living room/kitchenette was slightly larger than any I’d been in before. There was a full-size dining table near the kitchen and a large sectional sofa stretched through the living room.

  It was on this couch that I materialized, right next to a familiar-looking man in blue sweatpants and a white t-shirt. His feet were up on a coffee table next to the remains of his dinner -- a half-eaten burger and a small logpile of fries -- and there was a scar on his cheek, but other than that the face was the same as four men I’d just seen die.

  “Sweet Christ!” he shouted as I locked into existence. “Copycat? What’s going on? What happened to you?”

  “Noble,” I moaned. Even talking hurt at this point. “Used your sister’s powers... your brothers...”

  “My brothers? What about my brothers?”

  Damn my honest streak -- I probably shouldn’t have brought up his brothers until after he got help. “Explosion,” I grunted. “Please... help.”

  “An explosion? Are my brothers all right?”

  “Five-Share, please...”

  “Where are my brothers?” He shoved me off the couch and I crashed into the coffee table. The food he’d been munching spilled to the floor. I landed on a squeeze bottle of ketchup and a pool gushed out at my si
de.

  He stood up and clenched his face in a look of concentration. Before I knew what he was doing, before I had a chance to stop him (not that there was much I could do), he vanished in a hiss and a spark.

  “Help me!” I moaned as loudly as I could, which was actually pretty pathetic. I flailed out with my arm and wrapped my fingers around the ketchup bottle, hurling at the door as hard as I could. It made a good, loud “thump,” but nothing more.

  “Help me,” I groaned again, as the world finally began to swim.

  I’m not entirely sure what happened next, things began to mush together in my head, but I am certain the following events occurred:

  There was shouting outside the door. I answered it with agonized moans.

  There was a loud crash as someone broke the door down.

  I looked up and saw a face that I hoped to God really was Animan and that I wasn’t just hallucinating.

  I managed to croak out, “Totem...”

  “You want one of my totems?” he seemed to ask. “Josh, I can’t--”

  “Please. No time.”

  I think he shook his head. “Of course. Which one?”

  I told him and he left me alone in Five-Share’s apartment, shattered and bleeding.

  The pain from my legs began lancing upwards and my temples started to throb. Crap, I thought, all I need is a headache on top of everything else.

  I slumped to the ground and my head rolled to the side. I was looking at the door, but I was no longer seeing much of anything. I thought about the Gunk and I wondered who would stop him, although even at that point I had no doubt that somebody would. I thought about Dr. Noble and hoped that the girl from Five-Share would have a chance to tell people what really happened before he got her. I thought about Annie, and I prayed that Tom and Hotshot would make sure she was okay, and I knew that they would.

  Somehow I became aware of a pair of feet racing towards me and I felt something press into my right hand. The five points on the object jabbed into my flesh as I clutched it as tightly as I could. I poured every ounce of concentration I had left into that hand, and I felt a tiny jolt, and the very act of thinking that hard was enough to make the world finally go away.