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

by Petit, Blake M.

  The battle, it seemed, hadn’t taken place in Boston after all, but in Siegel City, where 99 percent of all superhero activity seemed to center these days. The Wraiths, according to a the story, had tried to leech away the citizen’s “Christmas Spirit” to power their latest attempt at world domination. And as always seemed to be the case, at least once a year since she’d lost Edward, some second-stringer had died in the fighting. A villain this time, a guy named Photon Man. Nancy hoped he didn’t have any family, for their sake, but at this point the news of a death just didn’t faze her that much.

  She tossed the magazine aside and turned to her computer, where chapter six of her latest novel was waiting for her. Writing what her mother had always called “trashy romances,” even as she read them by the truckload, turned out to be the perfect occupation for the post-Edward Nancy Drake. Human contact was limited to shopping excursions and the occasional conference call with her editor, plus she had an outlet to focus all the scenarios she kept imagining where Edward miraculously returned. Her first few books had followed pretty much the same pattern -- the long-lost boyfriend or husband or fiancé returned from certain death, each scenario getting more elaborate and unlikely. Sometimes they were reunited. Sometimes not. Nancy didn’t restrict herself to the happy ending. Eventually she got out of the trap of the long-lost hero and began conjuring up more creative plots, but her earliest works were, for the most part, blatantly autobiographical. She suspected the same held true for most writers.

  Her powers made the job even easier. Most media outlets -- even Powerlines -- had screwed that up pretty consistently over the years. Everyone seemed to be under the misconception that she had super-speed powers. In fact, she had the ability to speed up or slow down time itself, like she’d done to the waitress on Thanksgiving. After only a few hours worth of trials, Nancy had learned how to synchronize her personal typing speed exactly to the rate that her computer could process what she was inputting. She could literally write as fast as she could dream up the stories. In the nine years since her first sale, she’d turned out twenty-six lonely heart novels and, to her utmost shock, people actually seemed to be reading them.

  Time slowed down around her as she shifted into the writing groove. A shadow crawled across the window as, in regular time, a bird flew by. The second hand on her clock moved infrequently at best. She and the computer were a perfect match for the time she was going to spend writing.

  She’d made it five pages into chapter seven, where the tortured Monica Gacey was finding evidence that her husband had died at the hands of her own father, when the room began resonating with a low, thrumming sound. It was like a drawn-out “whump.” Nancy recognized it at once -- it wasn’t the first time she’d heard this particularly sound while in her writing zone. She restored time to its usual flow and the “whump” shortened and the pitch rose until it was a rapid tapping on her window, which she reluctantly opened. “Come on in, Jay.”

  The red-and-black clad Cape drifted into her office from her sixth-floor window, pulling back his mask to reveal the grinning face Edward had recruited only a year before they lost him. “Hey, Nance,” he said. “How are you.”

  “Same as usual. What brings you to Boston?”

  “Air currents. Heh.” His grin vanished in about as much time as it took him to accept that his joke had fallen flat. “I wanted to let you know we took care of those Wraiths for you.”

  “So I read,” she said, pointing to the magazine on her desk. “Good work. How much damage did they do before you got them?”

  “It was pretty bad, actually,” Jay said, “they managed to set up shop in nearly every major city in America before we caught them, but we should recover. Particle ran some calculations, said that the worst that will happen is a few less crappy Christmas specials this year. I say as long as they keep rerunning Charlie Brown, I’ll be happy.”

  Nancy allowed herself one of her few genuine smiles. The kid (she didn’t care if he was 29 now, he’d always be “the kid” to her) always did know how to make her laugh. “You could have told me that on the phone, you know. And don’t try to convince me that you just happened to be in the area. You guys never leave Siegel anymore if you can help it.”

  Jay sat down. “Truth? Some of the guys wanted to check up on you. I volunteered for the job. We just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Hey, Frontier Trace just hit number four on the New York Times list. I’m fine.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “We just... hell, I just know how tough this time of year is on you. It was always... his favorite.”

  “Yeah. It was.”

  Jay’s smile dimmed a little with guilt -- guilt that he’d survived when Edward didn’t? Yeah, Jay was that type. He glanced over at the mini-tree that served as her primary decoration. “Hey, at least you’re keeping things festive.”

  “I try my best. If you don’t mind, Jay, I was in the middle of a chapter. Cut to the chase?”

  “Right. Well, Harrison and Erica are having a sort of reunion thing on Christmas Day. Most of us don’t have a family, not in any traditional sense, anyway, and they asked me to extend the invitation.”

  Nancy turned it over in her head for a moment... the prospect of seeing Harrison and Erica, known to the world at large as Condor and Oriole, of getting together with her old teammates, of the whole team, the whole LightCorps being reunited.

  With one exception.

  “I... I don’t think so, Jay. Give ‘em a big ‘thanks anyway,’ but I just don’t think I’ll be up for it.”

  “Are you ever going to be ‘up for it,’ Nance?” he asked. She didn’t answer.

  On Christmas Eve, Nancy went to church more out of habit than out of any remaining faith. She saw a police chase on the streets and, just for an instant, felt the urge to leap in and interfere, but Liberator arrived on the scene and put a stop to it himself. Call it a Christmas present, she thought -- her overactive sense of responsibility didn’t have a chance to flare up and her exhausted guilt complex didn’t suffer an added burden.

  There was a Santa Claus on the streetcorner, and a poor excuse for one, too. He was rail-thin, and his beard looked tired and scruffy. His eyes were a deep blue, but sunken into his head, and his cheeks could only have been described as “rosy” if the roses in question were pale as the snow. Nancy tried to walk past him without incident, but as soon as she was within five feet of him, those cold eyes locked onto her. She felt her neck tilting against her will and she stared at him, looking straight down those eyes like a tunnel.

  “Help,” he whispered.

  “Um... I don’t have any change,” she said. She tried to sidestep him, but he moved in front of her.

  “Help,” he repeated.

  “I really don’t think I have anything,” she said, even as she dropped her hand into her pocket, searching for even a single to give him.

  “No,” he said, “help me.”

  Nancy felt a chill race through her that had nothing to do with the nip in the air. She shuffled past the old man without a word and headed for her apartment, a good five blocks away. She didn’t use her powers, but she got there as fast as any normal human could.

  She fished the key to the building out of her purse as she ran, hoping to get in before the strange man -- if he was so inclined -- could catch up to her. She tried to slide the key into the lock, but her hands were quivering a bit more than they should have been. He was probably just some homeless guy trying to get a meal or something, after all. Had it really been so long since she’d dealt with the unexpected that a simple plea scared her?

  “Nancy?”

  The key fell from her hand and clattered to the concrete steps. She turned remarkably slowly for someone once called the fastest woman on Earth. Five words, that was all she had heard of this tired, gruff voice before. It was unmistakable.

  The old man was standing next to her, right up next to her. On the right. She’d bee
n running from the left.

  “Please, Nancy. I need your help.”

  Secret identity be damned.

  Nancy dropped time down to a crawl. At this speed a snail at a greyhound track would only have two to one odds against it. She scooped up her key, opened the door and charged up six flights of stairs to her apartment. She slammed the door, flicked the lock and deadbolt closed, secured every window and only then restarted time so she could set the security system. She slumped behind the chair in her office and looked at the telephone, briefly contemplating calling Jay. Then she realized how absurd that was -- she had six years of experience on him, even if she had been out of practice for ten years. If she called him for a creepy old man, she’d never hear the end of it. Even a creepy old man that could teleport or something. A creepy old man who knew her name.

  “I need your help, Nancy.”

  She didn’t turn around this time. She didn’t need to. She was looking into the monitor of her computer, which was off, and quite clearly showed the reflection of an anemic Santa Claus with a glowing nimbus of light around him.

  “I need Lightning, Nancy.”

  She turned around, feeling her throat constrict. “Who are you?” she managed to hiss. A small smile upturned his lips.

  “Who am I Nancy? Surely it hasn’t been that long.”

  She flicked her leg outwards, tripping him. When he hit the floor she catapulted out of her chair and landed on his back, twisting his arm behind him. “No. I hasn’t been that long, only ten years, and I haven’t forgotten everything. Now you tell me who you are and how you know who I am or you carry your right arm away with your left.”

  “I’m Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. Saint Nick. I’d show you my driver’s license, but they don’t make you carry one for the sleigh.”

  “I’m supposed to believe a skinny Santa Claus that breaks into my apartment uninvited?”

  “I apologize. I’m used to having an open invitation in pretty much every home on Earth. You used to extend the same.”

  “I’m sure I did,” she said, twisting the arm a little harder. The Santa Claus grunted.

  “Must you do that?”

  “Must you feed me your line of crap?”

  “Easy Bake Oven!” he shouted. Her eyes opened wide and her grip involuntarily loosened a little.

  “What did you say?”

  “Easy Bake Oven,” he said. “That’s what you wanted for Christmas when you were seven years old.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t get one,” she said.

  “That’s because on December 23 you tricked your little brother into climbing the storm gutter outside your house. He could have been hurt. I even had the oven packed and ready to be loaded into the sleigh when I got the notice that I had to switch you off the ‘Nice’ list. I didn’t like doing it, Nancy. If you had waited 36 hours the loot would have been in your hands.”

  She let go of his arms entirely at that, standing up, her jaw open. He flexed his arm and pulled himself to his feet. “Does this mean you believe me?” he said.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “I’ve seen enough shapeshifters and mind-readers not to believe any weirdo who shows up knowing things about my childhood. But I’ve seen too much strange stuff to refuse to believe you, either. Convince me. Start with why Santa Claus is skinny this year.”

  “The Soul Wraiths,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t think I only lived off cookies and milk, did you?” he said. “My power -- my very existence is dependent on the faith people have in me, and in this season. Those Wraiths ate up so much of the hope and love that exist this time of year. It’s causing me to waste away, Nancy. I don’t have the strength to do it this year... not on my own, anyway.”

  “So you’re telling me your power wouldn’t build up eventually? Why come crawling to me?”

  “A thousand years ago, it may not have mattered, Nancy,” he said, “but we live in such cynical times... times where people believe only in what they can see and touch. The faith of the children in a Santa Claus is one of the few intangibles left. If I miss even one year’s worth of my rounds, the loss of faith would be so devastating I may never recover.”

  “And that would be the end of Christmas, I take it?” she said. “I’ve seen this Rankin-Bass special, I think.”

  “Not at all, child,” Santa said. “I am not vain enough to believe this season exists because of me, or even that I am the primary participant. The season would survive, even if Santa Claus were to die.”

  “Then why should I help you?”

  He smiled again, and in that smile she caught a hint of a twinkle, one that almost made her think there was something to this after all. “Oh, Nancy, I saw the way you almost tried to stop that car chase this evening. I was listening in on the phone call when you warned Jay about the Soul Wraiths. I see a thousand other things you do every year, even out of costume, that prove to me you haven’t stopped caring entirely. Wouldn’t be enough for you to know you helped save a life?”

  She folded her arms and gave him a skeptical smile. “You know what buttons to push, mister, I’ll give you that. What are you asking?”

  “The toys are made,” he said, “and the route prepared. And I’ve found the help for the deliveries -- never you mind how. But I need your power, the power of Lightning, to slow down time for me this evening, or the toys will never be delivered in time.”

  “You want me to slow down the entire world? I’ve never tried anything that big, I don’t even know if I could.”

  “You could,” Santa said. “If you believe you could.”

  “Oh man, this is a television special, isn’t it?”

  “Nancy, will you help me?”

  “I still don’t know that I believe you.”

  His red-gloved hand reached into his natty beard with a scratching motion. Then he smiled and waved his hand in the air, a sack appearing from nowhere. She couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t quite as full as she would have assumed.

  “How about this,” he said, reaching into the sack. “I have two presents for you this year, if you help me. One, you may open now, as evidence. The other will have to wait for Christmas morning.”

  He pulled his hand from the sack holding two brightly wrapped parcels. They were both about six inches long, thin enough to be candles, and wrapped at the top with a bow. He placed them side-by-side on her desk. The wrapping of the one on the left looked like it consisted of a many multicolored cords wrapped together all the way up the package. The one on the right, on the other hand, looked like the cords hadn’t been woven at all, and were branching out in all directions with no discernable pattern or logic to them.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Something you want.”

  She considered this for a long moment, then reached out and picked up the package on the left. She took the ribbon between her fingers and was about to pull, but looked up at Santa first.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She slid the ribbon off and opened up the paper. She never saw quite what was inside the package, because the light that consumed her at that moment was far too bright.

  “I love it,” Edward said, holding up the sweater she gave him to his chest. It was orange and brown striped, and looked like something someone’s nearsighted grandmother would have crocheted just to get rid of the extra feet of yarn that was cluttering up her sewing closet. “It’s absolutely grand.”

  “You’re lying,” she said.

  “I most certainly am not.” His British accent still gave her gooseflesh, and the smile he wore was quite possibly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  “Yes you are. You’re a wonderful man, Edward, and you’re the most beloved superhero on Earth because you’re so good and honest. And part of the reason you’re so honest is because you’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen. You hate the sweater.”

  “I do not hate the sweater,” he insisted. “I’m not particularly fond of the way it l
ooks, I admit, but I don’t hate the sweater itself. What is it, wool?”

  “Cotton.”

  “Oh, good. I’d hate to think innocent sheep are wandering around naked for this monstrosity.” She laughed and hit him at the same time. That was the sort of relationship they had, where either of them could slap the other on the arm or shoulder and it meant the same thing as a kiss, which is what he gave her in response to the blow. “All right,” he said, “my turn now.”

  He stood up and walked around the apartment, which looked the same as it did when, in another time, Nancy wrote solitary novels about broken-hearted damsels. The only significant difference was the much wider array of Christmas decorations, including a four and a half-foot tree, and the bare bookshelf. He picked up the bag he’d brought in with him, which began beeping as he started rummaging through it.

  “Edward, you’re smart enough to know not to give a woman something electronic.”

  “It’s my mobile, darling.” He said “darling” in that wonderful, sarcastic tone that he only used when he knew she’d hit him with a particularly clever wisecrack.

  “Uh-oh. Which one?”

  “LightCorps.”

  “I’ll go suit up.”

  “No, don’t.” He turned off the device and dropped it back into his bag. “I made arrangements with Condor and Oriole tonight.”

  “What kind of arrangement?”

  “The kind of arrangement where they remember what their first Christmas together was like and graciously agreed to supply us with something of the same. Don’t worry, they promised to call if something tremendously difficult should come up, such as a giant alien threatening to eat New York or something. But no less, if the alien’s only going to munch on New Jersey I say let him have the bloody thing.”