by Paris, Sevan
Glop and I face each other. He can’t attack me without getting hurt, and I can’t attack him without … well, I just can’t attack him.
I think about telling the chick to run in the other direction, but Glop may not know she is there. I’m afraid I’ll just give him a hostage.
She’s almost close enough to touch him. What the hell is she doing?
The blond collapses and a free-floating, pink misty form vaguely shaped like a tweenage girl leaves her body. A round face, a few strands of wispy hair, and a Brittany Spears t-shirt are the only details I can make in the ghost-like form.
Pink.
Pink uses her powers of possession to take over the unsuspecting Glop. The last of the pink mist disappears into the back of Glop’s neck. He writhes back and forth for a moment, but his eyes eventually glow pink, telling me the member of HEROES has taken control of him.
He sticks out his hip and places his right hand on it, like Daphne from Scooby-Doo. “We need to, like, talk,” Pink gurgles through Glop’s mouth.
Oh yay. More fallout from out glorious “team-up” Friday.
“So what—”
Pink cuts me off with a punch to the chest, sending me nearly to the underside of the Michael Booth Bridge.
I stand. “What the hell, Pink?” I’m getting really tired of being knocked on my ass tonight.
She closes the distance. “The others, like, can’t know I’m talking to you. If they do, it will be suckville population: me.”
I put it together. She entered Glop’s body to appear to fight me, that way she could move in close without arousing suspicion. Suspicion that would be aroused from her talking to me in public as regular free-floating Pink, a well-known member of HEROES.
“What do you want?”
“Payback time,” she says.
I jump, barely missing the green jelly fist she’s turned into an anvil. I play dumb. “Payback?”
“Don’t even. I can just as easily undo what I did yesterday.” She extends her legs, which drops the mass of the belly enough to let more bills flitter to the sidewalk. People stare at their camera phones, me, Pink, and the money. With all this chaos, they’re actually thinking about the dough.
I increase my altitude and hover ten feet away from her. We look eye to eye. “What do you want?”
“Take this punch and I’ll tell you.”
M raises the force field enough to absorb the hit, but I still flip head over heels a couple of times before stopping to a hover above the river. Have to make this look good.
She shakes the fist she punched me with. “Balls, that hurt. I want you to do my job.”
I stop and flutter my eyelids (at least I would if I had any while being powered up). “Come again?”
“I WANT YOU TO DO MY JOB!” she yells from the shore. She raises her fists in the air to help her look all super villainy.
I shove her with a Grav Blast. It gives me a happy to see her bounce on her ass. I fly closer and give her two more blasts.
She back peddles, coating the artificial turf with a line of goo.
“HEROES is sending me after three guys this month. Three guys that I have to hunt down—three guys that I’d rather not be hunting and watching TV instead.
This is where the phrase “tragic hero” comes from.
I feel sick to my stomach. What do I do? I’m already a full time student, part time barista, and a full time Superhero. When am I going to have time to traipse around the country and gather up this chick’s bad guys? But do I have a choice?
Pink may have been exaggerating. She may not be able to undo everything as easy as all that, but she’s certainly in a position to do some damage. With that creepy power of hers—she could even follow me home one night without me even knowing it. Until I figure out how to handle this thing with Liberty, I don’t really think I have a choice. I play my cards right, she may even be able to help me find a way out of this … provided it proves advantageous for her too.
She looks at me and I think she raises an eyebrow. “Well, like, what’s it going to be, hero?”
She says “hero” the same way M says “Gabriel.” I sigh. “Where do I start?”
***
No, Gabe. No, no, no, no, NO!
I wince and almost spill Bo’s cappuccino. I hate it when M yells in my head, but I especially hate it when it’s my turn to work in the coffee shop at Rock Creek Books. Actually, he rarely talks to me while I’m at work. Instead, he listens to the elevator music the owner, Jessica Gem, pipes in. For some reason, he finds it oddly comforting.
“What choice do we have?”
Bo raises his eyes from his iPhone. “What?”
I sigh. “What choice do we have … but to keep on doing our jobs when we don’t want to?”
It isn’t our job, Gabe. It’s Pink’s job. You start this now, and we’ll be doing it forever. We have to find a way out. From the information she gave us, these three robots she wants us to hunt down look like Zyborg technology—which means they look like they could kill us pretty darn quick.
“Quit,” Bo says. “That’s what I did in the past, dude. I’m sure it’s what I’ll do again, when mom forces me to get another jay-oh-bee.”
I top Bo’s cappuccino with a milk leaf and hand him the drink. His first sip makes me envious. I used to love those things, but my life with M makes me jittery enough. And decaf cappuccinos just don’t taste right. You might as well make it with skim milk.
“I can’t just not work,” I say. “I need money. Besides, I’m not a registered Sup—” Bo looks at me, “Barista? I’m not a registered barista.”
“Yeah, you’re not. Did you put hazelnut in this thing?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Cause the hazelnut syrup is over there … and you, sir, pumped from that bottle right there.” Bo points at a syrup bottle next to the machine.
I turn the bottle so Bo can see the label. “See: H-A-Z-L-E-nut. We had an extra one show up a while back.”
Bo plops the mug on my counter, spilling foam in every direction. “Well, your extra bottle tastes like crotch. It’s like all nut and no hazel. Must say, I’m very disappointed. You usually make these things better than a gay dude.”
Being an unregistered Super wouldn’t be a problem if you would just stop this ridiculous superheroing, Gabe! If it doesn’t get us killed, it will land us in The Bend!
I wipe up Bo’s mess with more gusto than needed. The Bend is one of the world’s biggest penitentiaries for Supers. It used to be a mental hospital, but the increasing Super population made the governor convert it decades ago.
Given the nature of The Bend’s occupants, there had been a lot of talk about moving it to a less populated area, but the world thought Prose’s Super population problem was just that—Prose’s problem. It’s where Pink took Glop earlier, and it’s where HEROES could send me later. In the eyes of the law, an unregistered Super is the same as your run of the mill Supervillain.
But there are other concerns: “And my mother?”
Oh please. Liberty was just bluffing. He’s not going to bury your precious brood giver on the moon.
Bo picks up one of the many copies of the movie edition Twilight that we keep on the counter. “Don’t know. Never had one of her cappuccinos. Hey, have you ever noticed Kristen Stewart always looks like she’s just had the shit slapped out of her … and she really liked it?”
Oh my God, right?
“You two would be so suited for each other.”
Don’t tempt me. He just might be my type.
“Nah, would never hit a babe. Unless it’s Chun-Li.” Bo turns away from the counter, flipping through the book.
Revealing Reagan to be the next person in line.
Her arms cross, and the corner of her lip pinches inward. Her knee-high boots make two loud clip-clops to the counter.
Well, aren’t you going to take her order?
Chapter Two
Closing Rock Creek Bookstore is a lengthy process, espe
cially with only one person on the floor. First, I have to straighten the inventory and restock the bake case. Then, I clean everything in the café and anything that needs it on the floor. Depending on how busy it is that day, the entire process can take up to two hours. Tonight it takes two and a half.
Reagan waits the entire time.
I could force her to leave. In fact, I almost did. I had a whole speech lined up: “Reagan,” I was going to say after calmly taking a chair beside her and placing my palms on the back of her hand, “I know I behaved irrationally last night. I know I should have invited you in to discuss everything—but I had an extremely difficult night. Those robot zombie things were about to take over the city, and in the process of stopping them, I made the World’s Greatest Hero my personal enemy. He’s threatened to kill—actually kill—my mother if I don’t turn myself in by midnight tomorrow. I think—hope he’s bluffing because this alien thing inside my head won’t let me turn myself in. Now, that I’ve explained myself, please tell me what’s on your mind.”
Unfortunately, all that I got out was “Rea—” before she looked at me and said, “I’ll have a skinny triple Mocha cappuccino with extra foam.”
And then, my spectacular reply: “Skinny, really?”
She folded her arms.
“I’ll, uh, go get that for you.”
And so she stayed. She stayed the hour until closing and the two and a half hours it took me to close. She read a book, but every now and then I looked in her direction and saw her eyes dart from me back to the pages in front of her.
I turn out the majority of the lights and leave on the ones around her table. I fix myself a cup of bold decaf and sit next to her. The table vibrates slightly, jiggling the left over foam in her cup.
If her leg rocks any faster, she may create an inter-dimensional portal.
Given the nature of our powers, I really don’t know if M is joking. Sometimes, my life scares the crap out of me.
A light pit-pat of sprinkling turns into a hard rain outside. People run up and down Broad Street, covering their heads with newspapers, pocketbooks, coats, or whatever else they have on them. I wonder if this is mother nature type rain or the actual Supervillain, Mother Nature, is responsible.
“I … am dealing with some serious stuff here, Gabe,” Her leg stops rocking only long enough to say what she has to say and then it starts back.
“I know.”
The rocking stops again. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know what I can do. I don’t even know … I can’t even ask anyone what to do. There aren’t any Supers in my family, my friends—they’re like me. The only Supers they know are the ones they see on TV. And then, when I saw you the other day and-and the same kind of thing happened to you, I thought, ‘Finally! Finally, somebody knows not only kinda what I’m going through—but exactly what I’m going through. And—more importantly—knows what to do.’ ”
I stare at my cup. “Yeah, I know.”
“I can’t even CONTROL this thing, Gabe.”
I think about all of the times I’ve had to demand, bargain or beg M to do something. “I know.”
“And then you slam the door in my face.”
“I kn—“
“Stop! Stop saying ‘I know’! You—God, can’t you say something else? Please?”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
Tell her you didn’t EXACTLY slam the door in her face. That should work.
I grip the table and wonder, not for the first time, if M will ever cause me to have a nervous breakdown.
Reagan slings her book on the table. The rain picks up even more outside. “I want you to tell me what’s happening to me, Gabe. I want you to tell me why I-I can feel something or someone just around the corner before I can see it. I want you to tell me why when I checked the mailbox the other day the stupid thing flew into the river. I want you to tell me what THIS is:” Two circles of white light replace her green eyes. Red hair and the ruffles of her white sundress with the brown, blue and green florally patterns change into a perfect, starry silhouette. I can make out the handle of the big dipper in her shoulder which leads down to an outline of … I suddenly resume staring at my coffee as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
Reagan looks at her chest and shifts in her seat. She grabs her shoulders and powers down, replacing the silhouette with her clipped features and sundress. Like Reagan, it’s not like I’m completely nude when I power up, but the detail of our silhouettes doesn’t leave much open to the imagination either. It really isn’t much different than a Super putting his or her modesty aside for tights, but it takes awhile to get use to the exposure.
We share an awkward pause, filled only by the rat-at-at of the rain on the large windowpanes next to us.
“Is it—“ she begins, “Is it even safe to do this around people? I mean, could I give my parents cancer or something?”
“No, that was one of my first questions too. There is a small amount of some kind of radiation—“
Ramma Radiation.
“ ‘Ramma’ Radiation, but it’s not harmful to anyone. Unless you turn it into a Grav Blast or a Grav Beam.”
“A what or a what?”
How can she and the entity not know these things? Has her host somehow been affected by human intelligence?
I rub the bridge of my nose. “SHE is the host, M.”
She slowly shakes her freckled head. “That … makes no sense.”
“Sorry, I was talking to … it.”
She sighs. “I don’t even know what you’re—”
“Y’know—it. As in what’s inside us, giving us our powers?”
“I never really thought of it as an “it”—you mean there’s some sort of thing inside us?”
“Well, not just a thing—more like … a life form.”
Her face whitens.
“Wait, you—you don’t know. How could you not know unless …”
It’s never spoken to her.
And then it hits me. No wonder Reagan is on the verge of freaking out: She has every right to be. My life is messed up as it is and I, for better or worse, at least have M to explain things. The thought of just having this stuff without knowing what it is, how to use it, or anybody to confide in …
This makes no sense. Why has the entity not spoken to her? Their very survival depends upon a mutual acceptance of their symbiosis.
“You really do have no idea where your powers come from?”
“No, I don’t. Once again, that’s why I came to your house last night.”
It’s baffling that she hasn’t cracked the planet open accidentally.
Again … too afraid to ask. “What happened? When did you first have your powers?”
“I … just woke up one morning two months ago and there they were. I don’t really know what all I can do. I mean I know they control gravity—“
Manipulate actually.
“—but I just know that because of a feeling, not really any kind of knowing knowing. I don’t even know why or for how long I can do this stuff. Or if I should register … should I try to see a doctor … I mean I’m twenty years old … don’t know if I want to live here forever ...”
“Just because you have powers doesn’t mean you have to stay in Prose.”
“No, but it doesn’t make moving exactly easy. You’ve seen the specials on 20/20. Whether companies outside of this town admit it or not—they’re not hiring registered Supers. Most of them are too afraid we’re going to … spontaneously explode or something.”
“Well, you can always be a practicing Super.”
Oh, sure, come on in. The water’s fine.
“You mean like HEROES? I don’t want to be like a celebrity—at all.”
“Reagan …” I reach for her hand and she pulls away. I scrape a dried piece of something on the table with my fingernail instead. “I’m sorry—really, really sorry about last night.” I give her a second for my words to sink in. Then I explain e
verything that transpired from the moment of leaving the library until meeting her on my porch. She interrupts occasionally, asking questions about my relationship with M or what it was like to be in HEROES Tower. She’s just as surprised as I am when I tell her about Liberty offering me up to Deathbot and him treating peoples’ lives like nothing. Thankfully, M keeps quiet for the most part, only offering up a helpful detail here and there when absolutely needed. It’s weird to see him so invested in a conversation with another human being.
Thirty minutes later, I finish by telling her Liberty’s given me until tomorrow at midnight to register.
“So, are you going to?”
“No, M doesn’t want me to. He says there are too many unknowns. And after what I saw Friday night, gotta say I agree with him.”
Hallelujah.
But he does want me to give up the Superhero thing. He doesn’t think it’s worth it.”
It’s not simply a matter of what I ‘think’, Gabe. It’s the gosh-darn Truth.
“Why is it worth it?” she says. “You don’t get paid. It takes up gobs of your time. You never know if people are gonna thank you or lynch you—and you’ve got the strongest guy in the world pissed at you.”
“Do you like shopping for clothes?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I like looking nice.”
“There ya go.”
She leans back in her chair. “You do this because you like the way it makes you look?”
“That’s why I started doing it. But something changed me.”
“What?”
“I saw someone in trouble. And I helped them. I helped them because nobody else could … and I keep helping people because very few people can do what I do.”
Oh, there’s more to it than that …
M’s right of course, but there’s no reason to go into all of that. I’m not even sure if I’m prepared to face it.
I’m going to have to train her, Gabe.
“What? Why?”
The only reason HEROES hasn’t been able to track us in the past is because I can disguise the Ramma Radiation as solar radiation. If Reagan doesn’t have contact with the entity, there’s no way of knowing if Silver Sentinel will be able to track any accidental flare ups on her part. Worse case scenario, HEROES could track her energy signature, thinking that she is us.