by R. J. Ross
SUPER VILLAIN GRANDPA
by
R. J. Ross
Super Villain Grandpa
Amazon Edition
Published by Book Candy Publishing
Copyright © 2016 by R. J. Ross
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by 336Love Books
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
~Other works by R.J. Ross~
The Winstead Files Series
Courting the Beast * Snow White, Snow White
Seasons of the Fae Series
Raven's Return * Death of a Dryad * Water Wielder
Cape High Series
Super Villain Dad * America's Grandson * Hello Kitty * Don't Know Jack * Daddy's Girl * Aces Wild * Steampunk Time * Fire Hazard * Ditto Ditto * Sunny Daze * Life Light * Guitar Hero * Super Girls * Shadow Boy * Super Villain Grandpa
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
I’m a disgrace to the Falconess name. Yeah, that’s where this story starts. A pretty pathetic place to start, don’t you think? Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. At least it’s pretty here.
“Welcome to the family island,” Mom says, pushing me towards the towering jungle past the beach we’re standing on. “No Internet, no television, no indoor plumbing. This is where you’ll be training until Mom deems you worthy of going back. I just wish—” Mom lets out a sigh, looking at me with a sad little smile. “I wish things had gone differently,” she finishes, pulling me into a hug. “Be good Keliah, and try not to die. You have your phone if anything too bad happens.”
“Wait, what?” I say, shocked. She steps back and summons her wings, taking to the air. “Mom? MOM!” I yell as she flies away, leaving me just standing there on a beach. “I don’t want to die!”
She’s gone. I know she heard me, she’s just ignoring me. I’ve been abandoned on Grandma’s island, and Grandma is nowhere to be seen. All I see is a little island covered with trees and animals. No internet—
I grab my backpack, digging through it and pulling out my school phone. At least she hadn’t taken that, I think as I turn it on. To my surprise, though, Technico’s face appears on the screen. “You’re not allowed to contact anyone other than me and your mother, kid,” he says. “Sorry about that. This is for emergencies only until you’re no longer on suspension.”
“This IS an emergency!” I say. “She just dropped me off on an island in the middle of the ocean and told me not to die!”
“What island?” he asks, and I see him bring up a hologram to the side. “Is that your family island? I’ve heard rumors that your grandma retired to one.”
“Yes! But she’s nowhere to be found! Shouldn’t she come and GREET her only grandchild?” I demand angrily. “I hardly ever see her, as it is—”
“Keliah,” he says, interrupting my rant. “Go find your grandmother.”
“I didn’t—” I look down. “How’s Jennifer doing?” I ask, looking at the phone guiltily.
“She’s doing well,” he says. “I’ll tell her you asked.”
I nod, awkwardly. I deserve this suspension, we all know it. I lost my temper and hit a new girl at school. I didn’t think it would break her nose! We go to a school for super powered teenagers! But it had, and I still feel really guilty over that fact.
“I thought… you know… suspension is only for a week, or two,” I say.
“Your mom decided to do it this way, instead,” he says. “I’ll be sending your school assignments to you daily. You can do them on your phone—there’ll be a hologram keyboard prompt which will let you type properly. You never bothered to try and make friends in school, anyway, so it shouldn’t be too different doing it like this.”
“I—I tried!” I lie.
“Really?” he asks. “Sure didn’t look like it. But maybe I’m wrong. If you really want to make friends, I’ll let one student—whoever volunteers—call you once a day for a few minutes. If no one volunteers, well, then you get to talk to me, when I have the time. We’ll arrange a general call time when you find your grandmother. How’s that sound?”
“So… I’ll talk to you once a day?” I say, wondering how I feel about that.
“Me, or one of the others.”
I hesitate. “Nobody will volunteer,” I admit.
“Aubrey will,” he says.
“You said I couldn’t contact anyone and that this is for emergencies only.”
“Emergencies are negotiable in our line of work. And you can’t contact them—they’ll be contacting you through me,” he says.
He’s being really lenient for the guy that tossed me out of school. I look at him closely, narrowing my eyes slightly. “Why are you doing this?” I demand.
“I spent fifteen years in almost perfect isolation,” he says. “I know just how much a few minutes conversation can mean. But in exchange, I expect you to do your work and try your hardest at whatever gets tossed at you.”
“You—you can come and get me if I’m about to die, right? Not that I NEED your help,” I lie.
“You’re just being paranoid now,” he says. “Now go find your grandmother and see what she has in mind for you.”
“Okay,” I say as he hangs up. I take a deep breath, feeling less abandoned, now. Strange, huh? I mean, my own mother just dumped me like an unwanted puppy, but a guy I barely know promises to help, and I feel like the world is back on track. Maybe… I dunno, maybe it’s because Technico has to be one of the most powerful guys on the planet, and he as good as said he has my back.
I slip the phone into my pocket, grab my backpack, and look up at the jungle with a mix of worry and awe. It’s beautiful. I start forward, walking slowly and looking around curiously. The trees tower over my head, bright green leaves blocking the sunny day. It’s almost Christmas. Here I am, walking off of a beach into a summer daydream. “Grandma?” I call hesitantly. The word sends a flock of brightly colored birds flying.
No one replies. Maybe she’s not here? I mean, she CAN fly, right, so there’s a chance she’s gone shopping on a more civilized island. I just need to find her house, I guess. I head further in, wandering around for a good hour before I see a large, bungalow built into a gigantic tree. I speed up, excited to finally find it, and then stop as I realize something. There’s no way up into the house—no ramp, no rope, nothing. It’s just up some hundred feet up with no trees close enough to jump from.
I walk underneath it, looking for some entrance that I hadn’t seen earlier. Maybe I could climb up the tree it’s attached to? I look up, but the hole around the tree is too small for me to squeeze through. Um…
Look, I don’t have my wings yet, okay? I’m going to have to jump. I take a few steps back and jump.
My fingers are a few… nope, that’s another forty feet up, huh? I land on the ground a
gain, growling under my breath. I can do this. I absolutely can do this. Okay, so I’m still just coming into my powers—that’s not a sin, you know! Oh, wait—I have an idea! I step back again, summoning my glowing bow and arrow. With a bit of concentrating, a rope appears connected to the arrow. I aim it at the house, pulling back as hard as I can before letting go.
The arrow goes up, and up, and then plummets to the ground pathetically. I groan.
“Try jumping again,” someone says from overhead. I look up, seeing my grandmother lounging casually on the house’s railing as if she’s been there the entire time. “You should be able to!” she cheers me on.
I give her the dirtiest look I can manage. “I already tried that—can’t you just drop a rope or something? You KNEW I was coming!”
Do you know how irritating it is to have a grandma that looks like a model? She looks young enough to be Mom’s sister. And she’s just sitting there in a cover pose, drinking a cup of coffee and silently laughing at me! “Oh, sugar, of course I knew you were coming,” she says. “This was my idea.”
“What?” I ask.
“Cape High, or wherever it is that you’re going to, it’s not the proper way to train up a Falconess. A Falconess needs to be tough as steel, not some generically raised photocopy of every other hero out there,” she says, waving a hand. “There’s no way a red white and blue hero can raise a proper Falconess, they’re too by-the-book.”
I stare at her. “You don’t watch much TV, do you?” I ask finally.
“Of course not, the reception out here is terrible.”
“So Mom didn’t tell you that Nico’s my principal?”
“I’m sure he’s just like the rest of them,” she says, blowing it off. “Now either you jump up here, or you’re sleeping down there. I suggest you get hopping!”
I take a step back and run a few steps, jumping up again. I feel like cheering when I get closer, but that desire disappears as I hit the ground again. “Good, good, bend your knees a bit more when you jump, though,” she says. “And don’t focus on the bottom of the house, aim for the roof.”
I step back and jump again, and again, and again, until I just simply fall on my back and stare broodingly up at the tree house. “I’m sleeping down here,” I declare irritably. “Can you throw down some food?”
“Sorry, chicklet, if you don’t make it up, you don’t get fed,” she says. “But don’t worry, there's plenty of fruit on the island. I hope you like coconuts and bananas! I love them, so I cultivated several plants,” she says. “There’s also a nice little patch of pineapples growing to the south of the island—they aren’t ripe at the moment, though.”
“So you’re going to make me forage?” I say.
“If you want to eat, you will,” she says. “I’m afraid your favorite fast food joint hasn’t made it out this far.”
I get to my feet and head out, feeling even more abandoned than when my mom dropped me off. My own grandma is going to let me starve. So what if I can’t jump high enough? I’m only now coming into my powers! I mean, Mom said I was a prodigy because my bow was so well done at such a young age! That counts for something, right?
Nope. It obviously doesn’t, I answer myself darkly. It looks like I’m a disgrace to the family name because of my power levels, too. I look at the trees I pass, having no clue what I’m looking for. I think I’ve seen bananas growing on television before… it’s a tall thing that looks like a tree, right? And coconuts grow in palm trees, but not all palm trees apparently grow coconuts, I think, staring up at one. There are no coconuts in this tree. Maybe this tree decided it didn't want to grow coconuts, maybe it wanted to grow bananas instead and then felt ripped off when it realized that bananas don't grow in trees.
Trees don’t have minds. Don’t bother pointing it out to me, I already caught that one.
Or do they? No, seriously, I’ve seen that Sunny kid talking to flowers before—OR maybe it isn’t that trees have brains so much as he doesn’t! Okay, that was a mean conclusion. I don’t even know the guy, other than the fact he’s a little weird around trees and dates a girl that’s a cat half of the time. I don’t really know anyone, actually. That thought makes me feel even lonelier, so I shove it aside quickly.
That tree I just passed had something growing on it, didn’t it? I step back and look up. Coconuts. I sigh and start climbing. I don’t even LIKE coconut, I think as I reach the top. I drop a few of them to the ground and jump down, putting them in a pile next to the tree and heading on to find bananas, next. There’s no point in carrying them all with me, right?
Why isn’t there anyone else on this island? The question bugs me as I tromp along, looking for something to eat. It’s decent sized—at least it had been from above when Mom carried me here. It’s got fresh water and fertile ground. You’d have thought that there’d be natives, right? But according to Mom, there’s only Grandma. I catch sight of bananas growing overhead and head for the plant, climbing up it to grab a bunch. I drop down and head for my pile of coconuts—or where they were supposed to be.
I look around, wondering if I went to the wrong tree. There’s no sign of them. I could have sworn the tree was here—but I guess all of these trees look a lot alike, huh? I start eating the bananas. They’re good. I’m still worried I’m going to die from malnutrition, though—I mean, if I never make it into Grandma’s house I’ll be living off of bananas for who knows how long, right? That can’t be a balanced diet!
I sigh and look up at the sky, wondering why I even care about disgracing the Falconess name. I don’t plan on being one, right?
What did she mean by them being “too by-the-book”?
***
“Oh she’ll be fine,” Angela says, lounging on a beautiful window seat as she talks to her daughter. “She’ll figure out how to get up here sooner or later, and until then there’s plenty of food if she looks hard enough. It isn’t as if she’ll starve to death.”
“Mom,” Melissa says, again.
“I KNOW you think I’m being too tough on her, but you survived it! If you can survive it, so can she—”
“MOM!” Melissa snaps. “Would you listen for just a minute?”
“Why so worried, sweetie?” Angela asks. “I’m explaining why this is a perfectly—”
“Dad is OUT,” Melissa says. “I’ve been trying to tell you for the past ten minutes!”
The phone almost cracks in Angela’s hand. She sways slightly, looking pale. When she doesn’t say anything, Melissa goes on, “The Cape Cells went down. I didn’t find out until I got back from dropping Keliah off. A handful of the—the inmates got free, after taking down all of the guards. Dad—”
“Is out, yes,” Angela says, her tone a lot calmer than her eyes. “I see. How… um, how did the Cape Cells go down?” she asks after taking a deep breath.
“There was a fight with another technopath, who apparently made Nico lose his powers for a bit. When his powers were down the other technopath cut the power on the Cape Cells,” Melissa says.
“And why is this Nico so important?” Angela asks, remembering the conversation with Keliah.
“You—” Melissa takes a deep breath, slowly letting it out again. “Mom, do you remember Superior?” she asks as if talking to a child.
“I used to work with him, and I don’t appreciate your condescending tone—”
“Nico is the son of Superior and Tatiana, Mom,” Melissa says irritably.
“Nicolas?” Angela asks, shocked. “Nicolas is Keliah’s teacher?” she repeats, since it doesn’t seem to sink in. “Wait, they let him out of the Cape Cells?" She had never heard of someone getting out of the Cape Cells before, well, other than the ones that just escaped.
“He goes by Nico now,” Melissa says, her tone calmer. “But yeah, they let him out. He’s the principal of Cape High, now. I wasn’t worried about her training; he would have done just fine. It’s her relationships that are the problem. She’s got such a huge chip on her shoulder and I’m not eve
n sure why,” she admits. “She lost her temper and broke the nose of a weaker cape—”
“Yes, yes, you told me that part. You just didn’t tell me that she was being trained by a Superior!” Angela says. “I actually told her that he wouldn’t be able to, that he was too by-the-book,” she says, laughing even though it isn’t the time for amusement.
“He trained Firefly when he was barely older than Keliah, Mom,” Melissa says. “Do you really think I’d let some regular super train her? But I’m going to come pick her up. This little game of yours will have to wait until Dad is… until Dad is captured again,” she says.
“She’s perfectly safe here—”
“Mom! You are sitting on top of his secret base!” Melissa says. “He BUILT that island and we both know it. That’s the first place he’ll go—if he isn’t there already.”
A strained silence fills the room. “I’ll bring her up,” Angela says finally. “She can stay the night, at least, and you can come get her in the morning.”
“Both of you,” Melissa says.
“No,” Angela says. “I’ll stay here. I can deal with your father.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Melissa says instead of replying.
***
This place is really confusing. I stare blankly at the giant rock wall in front of me, wondering where in the heck it came from. I look to the left, seeing another rock much like it there, and then to the right—another one. It’s almost like a room, you know, except there isn’t a roof and there isn’t a door behind me. I turn, planning on walking out, only to stop.
There’s a man standing behind me. I let out a yelp, jumping back and bringing up my fists. “Who are you? How did you get there?” I demand, my heart pounding hard against my chest. He’s huge, with broad shoulders, a square jaw, and wearing a strange black, skin-tight uniform. His hair is long, and dirty blonde, his eyes, though, his eyes gleam red. He’s a super.