by Lucas Flint
“It’s not bad,” I said. “It’s just … I don’t know, I expected something a bit fancier from one of the first superheroes, that’s all.”
Nightbolt scowled. “Not all of us retired rich, you know. Some of us retired with as little under our name as we had when we first started. And some of us were scammed out of our savings.”
Nightbolt sounded quite bitter when he said that, but before I could ask him to elaborate, a loud barking noise came from behind the house. Then the largest dog I’d ever seen in my life bounded from out behind the house and rushed toward the fence. He was huge, some kind of German shepherd mix I think, with chocolate and white fur and paws that looked as big as my fists. He wore a spiked black collar and was barking like crazy, each bark almost as loud as a shotgun blast.
“Spike!” Nightbolt shouted in a surprisingly loud voice. “Get away from the gate! It’s just me, you dumb animal. There’s no need to wake up the whole neighborhood.”
I would have made a quip about how Nightbolt’s house was the whole neighborhood, but the loudness of Spike’s barking made it impossible for me to hear myself, much less say anything. Still, Spike did shut up when Nightbolt shouted at him, but he didn’t move away from the gate. He just stood there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his large tail waving back and forth excitedly behind him.
“That’s Spike,” said Nightbolt, shaking his head. “He’s friendly, don’t worry. He just barks a lot, especially whenever I bring anyone new over. Anyway, let’s go inside. Follow me.”
Nightbolt hopped out of his truck faster than I expected a man his age to move. By the time I climbed out of my side of the truck, he was already at the gate, shooing away Spike, who retreated toward a small building which looked like his doghouse, though it was the biggest doghouse I’d ever seen. I shook my head and followed Nightbolt through the gate. Spike didn’t move from his doghouse even when I entered, nor did he growl, but he did watch me carefully with his big eyes. I couldn’t help but feel nervous about the huge dog. I’d had a bad experience with a big dog when I was a kid, so I still felt wary around them even when they acted perfectly friendly.
That’s why I could finally relax when Nightbolt and I entered his house. The interior of the house was slightly nicer than the exterior, but I immediately noticed a thin layer of dust on the shoe rack near the front door, a shoe rack which had only a couple of old, dusty pairs of shoes and some cracked rubber boots.
“Welcome to my home,” said Nightbolt, spreading his arms to indicate the house. “What do you think?”
I stopped and looked at the house’s interior.
The front door was directly connected to the main living room. It wasn’t much of a living room, either. An old flat-screen TV stood against one wall, with two large, though clearly aging, red recliners and one wooden chair set around it. To my left was an entryway into a very small kitchen with an old-fashioned refrigerator and sink, with no dishwasher from what I could see, though there was a drying rack on the counter. A short hallway to my right was lined with three doors, which I guessed were Nightbolt’s room, my room, and the bathroom, though I didn’t know which was which.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Very small, but small is okay.”
“Small is good,” Nightbolt said. “Not quite as big as my old base, but let me tell you, after spending thirty years working in big places, a small place is a nice change of pace. It’s easier to take care of, at any rate.”
I nodded. “Right. Well, what are we going to do?”
“Eat,” said Nightbolt, clapping his hands together eagerly. “I’ll get some beans and hot dogs cooked up. Meanwhile, you can go unpack in your room now if you want.” He pointed down the short hallway. “Second door to the left. It’s unlocked, so don’t worry about needing a key. Also, the bathroom is the door to its right, so if you need to go, you know where it is.”
Once again, I nodded and made my way toward the hallway. I was pretty tired after such a long day and wondered if I could catch a quick nap before dinner. Nightbolt would understand if I needed to rest up a little bit after the long trip here. At least, I hoped he would; he seemed like a pretty reasonable guy, all things considered.
Unfortunately, I was so distracted by my own thoughts that I didn’t notice the small desk piled high with documents and envelopes near the entrance to the hallway until I bumped into it accidentally and sent a good portion of the envelopes and documents falling to the floor. I immediately dropped my suitcase and began scooping up the papers, trying to put them all back on the desk as quickly as I could.
“Beams, what was that sound I heard?” Nightbolt shouted from the kitchen. “It sounded like you knocked something over.”
“It’s nothing,” I shouted back. “Just knocked over some of your bills. Nothing’s broken, don’t worry.”
As I said that, I picked up the envelopes two or three at a time, trying my best to gather them all up as quickly as possible. I cursed myself for my clumsiness. First day here and I had already made a mess. Granted, it wasn’t a very bad mess, but it probably didn’t make me look very good in Nightbolt’s eyes nonetheless.
But as I gathered the envelopes in my arms, one of the envelopes on the floor caught my eye. It had Nightbolt’s real name (Joshua Owens, apparently) and his address in the middle, but in the top left corner, where the sender’s address went, was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; that is to say, the address of the White House. Even stranger, it had a curious name listed under it: Cameron Marcos, Director of the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs.
Extraterrestrial affairs? What did that mean? Was this some kind of joke letter? It had to be. Someone wrote a prank letter to Nightbolt, who for some reason hadn’t thrown it out. Yet why would it have the White House’s address on it if it was a prank? And why did it look so official? I remembered my dad getting a letter from the White House once, as a response to a letter he wrote to the President. The official letter had given a pretty generic response to Dad’s, but I remembered the envelope very well, which resembled this one almost exactly.
Before I could puzzle this further, the envelope was snatched out of my hand. Startled, I looked up and saw Nightbolt standing over me. He was scowling again, just like before, only now I was sure that he was going to beat me up for looking at his mail.
“Oh, Nightbolt,” I said, standing upright, even though there were still a lot of letters on the floor. “I didn’t hear you come up. I was just picking up your letters and got lost in thought when I was thinking, um, about my upcoming training with you.”
“Lost in thought,” Nightbolt repeated in a voice that told me he didn’t believe a word I said. “Yes, Dennis told me you had a tendency to do that sometimes. Probably not helped by the long drive here, which can do a number on even a young person’s attention span.”
As he spoke, he put the White House envelope into the back pocket of his coveralls. I had a strong desire to take it and read what the letter said, but I didn’t even try to reach for it. I was under the impression that Nightbolt would break my arm if I tried to take that letter in particular from him.
“Since you are clearly very tired from the trip here, I think you should go to your room and rest until lunch is ready,” said Nightbolt. “Don’t worry about the letters. I’ll pick them all up myself. You just get some sleep.”
I nodded and, after depositing the envelopes in my arms back onto the desk, picked up my suitcase and walked past Nightbolt to the door to my room. I opened it and entered quickly, but before I closed the door behind me, I looked over my shoulder one last time to see Nightbolt—his back to me—reading the White House letter, the envelope in his right hand, the letter in his left. I wondered what it said and why Nightbolt didn’t want me to read it. It had to be very important, especially if it was from the White House, though that didn’t help me understand why anyone in the government would send an old retired superhero like Nightbolt a letter.
But maybe it wasn’t any of m
y business. I came here to train, not poke into Nightbolt’s private business. I closed the door to my room behind me, plunging me into darkness, but that still didn’t stop me from wondering if there was more going on here than I originally thought. If so, I was probably going to figure out one way or another over these next four weeks.
CHAPTER TWO
One short nap later, I sat at the table in Nightbolt’s kitchen, still in my Beams costume, although I had removed the helmet, which lay on the floor next to my chair. Nightbolt stood by the stove, humming a tune I didn’t recognize, but which reminded me of those old phonograph records my grandfather used to listen to before he died. On the stove was a small pot full of boiling beans, which actually smelled pretty good, even though I wasn’t a big fan of beans in general. Still, I was so hungry at this point that I was willing to eat anything, because I hadn’t had anything to eat since this morning.
“So, Beams,” said Nightbolt as he poured the beans into two small bowls. “Tell me, what’s your origin?”
“My what?” I said, snapping out of my thoughts and looking at Nightbolt.
“Your origin, kid,” said Nightbolt, glancing over his shoulder at me. “How you got your powers and why you decided to become a sidekick. Didn’t Dennis ever teach you that phrase?”
I frowned. “No, sir. He did teach me the term ‘debut,’ but I’ve never heard him use ‘origin,’ at least in connection with this business.”
Nightbolt shook his head, turned off the stove, and walked over to the table, two hot bowls of beans in his hands. “Back in my day, origins were all the rage. You couldn’t make it in this business if you didn’t have an interesting origin that you could use for marketing purposes. Whether you’re the last survivor of an advanced alien race or a rich orphan whose parents were gunned down in an alleyway, everyone had an origin.”
“I don’t get it,” I said as Nightbolt put his bowl on the table in front of me. “If origins were such an important marketing technique, why did superheroes stop using them?”
Nightbolt snorted as he sat down on his seat opposite me. “Because most of them were made up, that’s why. People believed they were true, but soon it became obvious that most origins were false, which led to a backlash that managed to take down quite a few superheroes who had particularly fantastic origins. I was one of the few who never had an origin of my own, mostly because I realized how harsh the backlash would be once people found out how fake most of them were.”
I began stirring my beans with my spoon. “Then why are you asking me about mine if no one uses them anymore?”
“Because knowing your origin is important for our training,” Nightbolt explained. “I need to understand how your powers came about so I can train you most efficiently. Otherwise, we could waste a lot of time that could be better spent getting actual results. I only have four weeks to train you, after all, so let’s not waste a second of it.”
I nodded. “Okay. Well, my origin isn’t that interesting. Back in April of last year, a friend of mine dared me to drink a serum made by our science teacher, who had originally made it to give himself powers. When I drank it, I got the ability to shoot lasers from my eyes.”
Nightbolt ate a mouthful of beans and swallowed. “That is a very simple origin. Do you understand the science behind why your eyes can shoot lasers or not?”
I shrugged. “Not really. All I know is that I can increase or decrease the potency of my powers by thinking about it. Also, if I use them too much, my eyes start to hurt, so I’ve got to be careful about how often I use them.”
“I see,” said Nightbolt. “Shooting lasers from your eyes isn’t as flashy as some, but it’s a good, practical power and it’s obvious that Dennis has taught you a lot about how to control it. Not surprising, given how Dennis is an empowered human like yourself.”
“A what?”
“Empowered human. That’s the technical term we in the superhero biz use to describe heroes who have actual, inherent powers. Not all superheroes have powers; some just have very good equipment they use to give them an edge over criminals. Like Iron Angel, for example, before his fall.”
I’d never heard the term ‘empowered human’ before, but maybe it was another one of those old terms that wasn’t used as often anymore, like ‘origin.’ “Interesting, but now that I think about it, how did Rubberman get his powers?”
Nightbolt froze, his spoon full of beans halfway between the bowl and his mouth. “Do what?”
“Rubberman,” I said. “How did he get his powers?”
Nightbolt frowned. “You mean he never told you his origin? Ever?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. He’s never explained to me how he became a rubber man. I guess I always just assumed he was born with them or something.”
Nightbolt chuckled. “No one’s really born with powers, boy. Every empowered human gained his powers in some way, like how you drank that serum. Dennis is no different.”
I leaned forward interestedly. “Can you tell me his origin? Do you know it?”
Nightbolt hesitated. “I think I’ll let Dennis tell you about it. It’s his private business and I was raised by my parents not to blab about other peoples’ private business without their permission. If Dennis hasn’t told you yet, he has his reasons.”
I didn’t like that answer. I wanted to know Rubberman’s origin now, not later, but at the same time, I could tell that arguing with Nightbolt about it would be useless. Yet if Nightbolt didn’t tell me, I wasn’t sure if Rubberman would. If Rubberman had decided that I didn’t need to know it so far, would I ever learn it?
So I decided to change the subject. “All right, but what kind of powers do you have? Rubberman didn’t tell me.”
Nightbolt ate and swallowed another spoonful of beans before answering. “None.”
“None?” I said in surprise. “You’re just an ordinary human?”
“Biologically, yes,” said Nightbolt, nodding. “I never got any powers of my own. I’ve always had to rely on my fists and wits to fight crime, and a bit of luck, of course.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “But how could you possibly be an effective superhero without powers? Did you have any advanced equipment or something?”
“I used various equipment over the years to enhance my own natural skills, but by and large I relied mostly on my body’s natural talents,” said Nightbolt. “And that wasn’t unusual when I was younger, either. In the early days of the superhero industry, most superheroes had no powers at all. We were just men and women who wanted to clean up our streets and make our neighborhoods safe. You don’t need powers to be a hero, after all.”
I stroked my chin. “But how did you deal with supervillains? Surely they required powers, didn’t they?”
“Back in the old days, supervillains didn’t exist,” said Nightbolt. “Like I said, we started out fighting criminals on the streets. In fact, it never even occurred to us that we needed any sort of special or flashy powers to keep our towns safe. If police could handle most criminals without needing to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes, then we didn’t need them, either.”
“But apparently you felt a need to fight crime on the streets anyway, despite the fact that the police existed,” I said. “Right?”
Nightbolt’s frown deepened all of a sudden, as if I’d just stepped into a very sore subject. “I have a lot of respect for the police, but there are also a lot of bad eggs among them. Back when I was a superhero, there was sometimes no meaningful difference between police officers and the criminals they were supposed to arrest.”
I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t understand. The police in Golden City are always helpful and willing to work with us to keep the streets safe. Aren’t they like that in most parts of the country?”
“Let me put it this way,” said Nightbolt as he lowered his spoon into his bowl. “If the police of our neighborhoods had done their jobs, neither I nor my peers would have felt the need to put on our suits and take to the s
treets in the first place.”
Feeling a bit awkward, I ate another spoonful of beans and chewed them slowly before swallowing. Nightbolt’s response had been surprisingly bitter, as if he had still not gotten over the laziness of the police.
“But that is past now,” said Nightbolt in a brighter tone. He pointed his spoon at me, flicking some bean juice onto the table between us. “What we need to focus on is training you to battle supervillains effectively. Dennis has already told me about some of your experiences with supervillains, but I would like to hear about them from your own words.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “Let’s see, the first supervillain I fought was Fro-Zen, Rubberman’s old sidekick.”
“I remember him,” said Nightbolt. “Never met him, but Rubberman told me about him when he first hired him. He was very excited about having his first sidekick. Sad how he ended up going crazy, though. He had so much potential.”
“Kind of like Iron Angel,” I said. “Hey, didn’t you train Iron Angel, too? Rubberman said that was one of the reasons he went to train under you.”
Nightbolt nodded and lowered his spoon back into his bowl. “Yes, I did train Luke, and he was one of my best students, although Dennis was even better. I am disappointed to hear that he became a villain, however, yet not terribly surprised. He always had a tendency toward black and white thinking. I warned him it would lead him astray one day, but he never listened. Youth.”
He said that last word like an insult. I felt a little annoyed, because I was also a ‘youth,’ which meant that Nightbolt had either forgotten I was young or he didn’t care what I thought. Considering what I’d seen of his character so far, I was willing to bet on the latter.
“Anyway,” I said. “I’ve also fought Lord Mechanika, who was a guy in a big robot suit, and ZZZ, the—”
“The infamous assassin?” Nightbolt repeated. He sipped his coffee.