We Could Be Heroes

by Harmon Cooper

  He dropped to his knee and placed his fingers on her neck, checking for a pulse. “Don’t just stand there!” Sam shouted to the cosplay club’s manager. “Call a teleporter!”

  “Wait,” Zoe Goa Ramone said. “Don’t call anyone yet.”

  The woman in tiger print tights stood behind Sam, still a little wobbly yet managing to hold up Helena, the lean combat dancer dry-heaving every now and then.

  It was a miracle they’d made it down from the turbine, but here they were, Sam crouched before Ozella while Helena and Zoe tried to get their bearings.

  “She’s still alive,” Sam said, his nostrils expanding. “She’ll make it.”

  “But what if they consider what she did a heroic act and the three of us as accomplices?” Zoe asked. “Also, how would we explain getting up on the wind turbine?”

  Sam was about to protest this absurdity when he quickly realized that his ex wasn’t making this shit up: Centralian authorities would see that Ozella was with the three of them, and three of them had a rap sheet.

  If they showed up at the hospital with a battered female, the hospital would certainly treat her, but they’d also inform law enforcement. One thing would lead to another, and boom, three strikes and they’d be sent to jail, at least Sam and Zoe would, as they wouldn’t be able to mount a legal defense like Helena.

  “Do something!” Bobby Gass screamed.

  He was a shit manager, and being under pressure only made him that much worse. If what Zoe suggested was true, and it likely was, Sam and the two exemplar impersonators were lucky Bobby didn’t have the wherewithal to have already called for a hospital teleport.

  “We need a doctor. Anyone know a doctor?” Sam asked. “Think!”

  “That was terrible,” Helena said, her cheeks ballooning as she tried to stop from vomiting. From the looks of it, it was taking all she had to keep down the small afternoon snack she’d eaten earlier.

  “Can you stand on your own?” Zoe asked.

  “I think…” Helena slowly removed her arm from Zoe’s shoulder. She coughed, her hands coming to her knees almost immediately.

  Rather than stay in this position, the flexible woman crouched, eventually placing her rear on the rooftop. From there she stretched both legs wide, and shot her arms forward, breathing deeply throughout the process.

  “I don’t see how that will help,” Zoe said under her breath, “but whatever.”

  The dark-haired wannabe tiger girl joined Sam, her hand coming to his shoulder. Sam was now on his knees, a strange look on his face as he closed his eyes and inhaled through his nostrils.

  What Sam suddenly saw crouching near Helena had the hair on his arms and neck at attention.

  A nude woman with bluish, translucent skin was bent over Ozella, her hair covering her face as she… kissed Ozella?

  Sam shook his head, figuring the ghost-like woman was a hallucination, but upon opening his eyes again he saw the same ghostly blue lady kneeling over Ozella.

  She’s… she’s healing her? he thought after another inhalation, but he didn’t say anything out loud.

  Self-control sometimes came hard for Sam (which was why he got caught hooking up with a sex doll in a family field), but he was trying here, and he wanted to be sure of what he was sensing before he said anything.

  Besides, Sam was also sensing something else, the same thing he’d felt a few days back.

  It was just a hint, but Sam sensed that Ozella would play a part in his future, that she would become a great asset to his cause.

  But what cause? he wondered as he inhaled deeply through his sniffer, a million images coming to him at once. He swiped his hand at the bluish ghost woman, watching as his hand moved through her, the woman only focused on kissing (?) Ozella’s forehead.

  “Anyone else see that?” he whispered.

  “See what?” asked Zoe, giving him a ‘knock it off’ look. “She has a pulse, right? We really should arrange a teleporter. Maybe we could send you,” she said, nodding to Bobby Gass.

  “I’m not going anywhere!” the sniveling manager said, backing away from them. He stopped near the turbine’s emergency shut off switch and turned it back on, the blades starting to spin overhead.

  Zoe shook her head at him. “Also, just so it’s out there, the assholes who did this to me were up to something, and they took my cat claws. Those things cost a fortune.”

  “You shouldn’t have been doing any of that,” Sam snapped back. “You almost got all of us killed!”

  “Well, you didn’t have to come to my rescue,” said Zoe, finding it hard to put any sort of commitment behind what she’d just said.

  “We’ll be sure not to come to your rescue next time,” Helena said, still in her weird tantric pose on the ground.

  Rather than listen to them start to bicker, Sam focused again on his senses, noticing a subtle change in the air above Ozella’s fallen body. The fallen woman in the schoolgirl uniform opened her eyes, a gasp escaping from her mouth.

  The blue, apparently invisible woman, was gone, Sam still wondering if it had been some sort of hallucination.

  Ozella was breathing normally again, still not moving but breathing at least, looking better than she had just a few minutes before.

  “You really are a good guy,” she finally said, her pupils slightly dilated as she smiled at Sam.

  “What?”

  “You saved me…”

  “No, not at all. That was someone else entirely,” he whispered to her.

  “What the hell is going on?” Bobby Gass asked, now hovering over Sam and Ozella. “Do I call a teleporter or what? I’m ready to help, dammit!”

  “Coward,” Zoe said, lifting a fist in his direction.

  “Coward? I’ll have you know…”

  “Step the fuck aside.” Zoe pushed Bobby away, feinting a punch at him when he started to protest.

  “You better watch yourself, young lady!”

  “Or what?” Zoe said, baring her teeth.

  “Chill, Zoe,” Sam said. “Let’s bring it down a notch.”

  ***

  Ozella was feeling shy again.

  Lying on the ground, looking up at the four people standing over her was the last place she wanted to be at the moment.

  Her brain was still fuzzy; she was trying to better understand the woman named Zoe, classify her, but with all the fuzziness she was currently experiencing, she’d need her Book of Templates to really break things down.

  “Let’s call a teleporter and take her to my place,” the woman with gray hair suggested, the one from the other day.

  “Why your place?” asked Zoe.

  “Helena has a huge home that she lives alone in,” Sam said.

  “A mansion,” Helena said, in a way that didn’t sound as braggy as it should have. Regardless, Zoe took it this way, her arms crossing over her chest.

  “My books…” Ozella whispered.

  “Do you know what books she’s talking about?” Sam asked Bobby the manager.

  “Maybe her notebooks?” He scratched his ass for a moment and grunted. “She’s always scribbling something down.”

  “Good, get her books and whatever else she brought, and bring it to us.”

  “I will do no such thing,” Bobby started to protest.

  “Will you do it for me, Bobby?” Helena asked, reading a nametag pinned to his shirt. The combat dancer was suddenly standing before him, her head cocked to the side as she stared dreamily at the overweight man. She swept a bit of her gray hair out of her face. Her cheeks ballooned again, but Helena covered this by giving him a coy look. “It would really make me happy…”

  “It would?” Bobby asked, a sly look appearing on his face.

  “Please, for me…” Helena said, her voice all ‘damsel-in-distress,’ but her body language and her facial expression completely neutral.

  “You’ve got it!” the fat man said, spinning to the exit.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Zoe said under her breath.
<
br />   “Bitchy Bridget,” Ozella mumbled. “Jealous Jill, Secret Sharon…”

  “What?” Sam asked, but the instant he inhaled, he knew exactly what Ozella was referencing.

  “Known trigger points: you,” she whispered, her eyes flickering. “Exemplar or non-exemplar: non. Astrological sign: unknown. Temperature preference: warm. Family relations: unknown. Idiosyncrasies and nervous ticks: tonal change when referencing Sam. Known lovers and sexual preferences…”

  “That’s enough,” Sam said, clearing his throat about as loudly as he could. “Helena, can you order us a teleporter? Zoe, we’ll go to her house for a minute just to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Willingness to try new things: unknown. Public awareness: three…”

  “And what does she keep going on about?” Zoe asked.

  “I’ll explain later, or better, I’ll let her explain when she’s healed up.”

  Sam scooped Ozella into his arms, holding her close to his chest just as a male teleporter appeared. As gold glitter sparkled all around him, it became clear the teleporter was eating from a bowl of cereal, annoyed he had been called.

  He nodded to Helena, and together, the group of five waited for Bobby to bring Ozella’s things.

  Chapter Thirteen: Future Digs

  (All heroes, both authentic and fake as fuck, need a lair.)

  “You have a mansion all to yourself?” Sam asked.

  Sure, he’d sensed this several times, and he already knew Helena was the sole heir of the Knight Corporation and apparently the head of the board, but knowing someone has a mansion and seeing the extent of their wealth are two different things.

  “Yes, just me,” Helena said as their forms took shape in a grand living area, floor to ceiling stained glass windows, plush seating areas, built-in bookshelves visible in a den not far from where they stood, and a spiral staircase off to the right. Portraits, elaborate yet minimal lighting, polished wood floors—Sam had never seen something like this in person.

  “Must be nice,” Zoe said, trying to sound like she didn’t care but clearly impressed.

  “It is really nice,” came Helena’s reply, “but I’d prefer to downsize. I don’t use half the rooms in the place. Just this area, and a few of the attached bedrooms, and the gym. My family insists that I stay though, something about property tax being lower if someone lives here as opposed to the place being a second home.”

  “Idiosyncrasies and nervous ticks… Astrological sign… known sexual preferences… ” Ozella continued to mumble, much of what she was saying completely incoherent.

  “Where should I set her?” Sam asked, trying to breathe out of his mouth. It had been a long day, and he really didn’t want to have to deal with any additional sensory information if he didn’t have to.

  “Right this way,” said Helena, light on her feet as usual as she led Sam and Zoe to a guest bedroom, a large space with its own bathroom.

  “Not bad,” Zoe said, sitting on a green Victorian-style sofa upholstered in velvet. She swept her hand through her curly black hair, pushing her bangs to the side.

  “Let’s get you tucked in,” Sam said as he laid Ozella on the bed, still mouth-breathing.

  “No blankets, hot…” she said, her eyes locked on Sam in a dreamy way. Ozella held on to his neck for a moment as he tried to move away, her grip much stronger than Sam had anticipated.

  “Just sleep,” he said as he finally got her to let go.

  “You still haven’t explained how she did it,” Zoe said, referring to the fact that Ozella was able to move her arms again. “How did she heal herself?”

  “Yeah, about that,” Sam said as he sat on the sofa next to her. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees for a moment.

  Helena returned from a different room with a spare pillow and a white blanket. The sexy tomboy now wore tight sleepwear consisting of a pair of low-waisted flowing black pants and a top that bared her midriff.

  As nonchalantly as someone would be at a sleepover, Helena slid onto the king-sized bed, placed her pillow near Ozella and relaxed, both arms coming behind her head as she looked over at Sam and Zoe.

  “Comfy?” Zoe asked, a cracked grin on her face.

  “I just thought I’d keep everyone company, and I’m tired, so if I fall asleep, I’m already on a bed.”

  Sam yawned. “Not a bad plan.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Zoe said, dropping a playful elbow into his side.

  “She’s a non-exemplar, like the rest of us, well you two. Sorry, that came off as rude. You know what I’m saying though.”

  “But she can heal?” Zoe asked. “Because that doesn’t sound like a non-ex to me.”

  “From what I can tell, she just has the predisposition to heal. Ozella is half-powered, but if she were full-powered…”

  “That’s pretty impressive for a non-exemplar,” said Zoe. “She fell from like thirty or forty feet up.”

  “There may be more to it than that…” Sam almost said out loud what he was thinking but stopped himself just in time. He needed to know more about the bluish ghost woman he’d seen sucking on Ozella, if he’d even seen it at all.

  The truth was, Sam had just come down from being hooked to the blade of a wind turbine, where he’d been having weirdly sexual hallucinations of having a threesome with Helena and Zoe.

  So he could have hallucinated the blue ghost woman as well.

  Luckily, Zoe continued speaking before Sam had to come up with a reason as to why he’d stopped mid-sentence.

  “I still don’t believe your nose is any different than when we were together.”

  Sam rolled his eyes at his ex. “You always were doubting my abilities, weren’t you?”

  “Well, when you go around making shit up, and then getting caught fucking a sex doll…”

  “Her name was Dolly, and they took the doll away from me. Not that that matters.”

  Helena laughed, covering her mouth with her hands.

  “I already told you what happened,” Sam said to Helena, “and I am ashamed of it, but that’s in my past. I was drunk. Does that help?”

  “You didn’t tell me you were drunk,” Helena said from her place on the bed, lying next to Ozella, who was already sleeping, snoring lightly.

  “My family makes wine on the farm now too, it’s sort of a new thing we’ve started. They had a batch that had been returned. So I partook. I didn’t mention that part because I’m embarrassed by it.”

  Zoe snorted. “And you aren’t embarrassed by the fact you were parading around on your family’s land pretending to be a hero and ended up trying to bang it out with a sex doll just as a group of school children happened to be touring the farm?”

  “Trust me, I’m not proud of that either! Look, I was in a dark place, and I was just roleplaying, and things happened. That’s all. We’ve all been there.”

  “You should be grateful they didn’t make you register as a sex offender,” said Zoe, “and no, we haven’t ‘all been there,’ as you say.”

  “We were under a blanket. It was a little cold out. The kids didn’t see anything.”

  “That’s so dumb, Sam.” Zoe buried her head in her hand, and with a quick sniff, Sam could tell she was regretting ever starting this conversation. Even stranger, the reason she was giving him shit wasn’t exactly because of the fact he was humping a doll in some field, she was jealous that he hadn’t just reconnected with her.

  It had been a while since Zoe had gotten laid.

  “Just how long had you been on the run that day when they caught you?” Helena asked Sam, her eyelids at half-mast now, her voice softening.

  “For a while. I thought I’d lose them if I ported back to the city. I was planning on laying low at a hotel, which I’d already booked, but I wanted to get some food for the next few days. So that’s why I was at the market.”

  “You aren’t going to outrun Centralian police,” Zoe reminded him, “they have telepaths.”

  “A
nd where do you live now?” Helena asked on the tail end of a yawn. “I mean, where do you normally live?”

  “With his parents. This guy’s a real winner here, Helena, let me tell you,” Zoe said, the tone of her voice somewhere between bitter and joking.

  Sam sighed. “They have a pretty big home and I have a private apartment.”

  “You mean you have a room with a separate entrance,” Zoe corrected him.

  “And where do you live?” Helena asked Zoe.

  “I live with my sister, and I pay rent.”

  “What do you do?” asked Helena.

  Zoe struck a cat-like pose with her hand. “Modeling. There are lots of people who like to see non-exemplars dressed as exemplars, and lots of people that buy exemplar clothing. I have an agent who sets me up with a few gigs a month. That’s enough to get by.”

  “Since when?” Sam asked.

  “Since about six months ago. Things have really taken off for me.” Zoe placed her fingers along her waist, jutting her chest out. “Wouldn’t you buy magazines with my picture in them?” she asked, making pouty lips at him.

  “Sure, and I’m super happy for you,” Sam said, doing everything in his power not to look at the way she was offering her chest up to him. He wasn’t sure where they stood and definitely didn’t plan to get to the bottom of it tonight. “I know that was always your dream.”

  “You remembered that?” she asked, her posture deflating some.

  “Of course I remember. I know I can be aloof at times, but I always thought you could do it. You just needed a lucky break.”

  “Oooh, that’s so sweet, Sam!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Why don’t you two move in with me?” Helena asked, her eyes all but closed by this point as she interrupted their little moment.

  “Excuse me?” Zoe asked. “Did you just ask us to move in?”

  “Why not? There’s plenty of room, and I could use some company. This place is too quiet. It’s like an empty museum at times.” Helena nodded over to Ozella, the woman cosplaying as a schoolgirl now curled up on her side, a bit of her ass cheeks visible due to her short skirt. “Her too, she should move in as well. Why not? She probably lost her job.”