Finally, Captain Obvious gave up on me walking away first. He turned and started to walk down Jewel Street again. I followed him, closely enough that I could almost reach out and touch him. I realized I was humming slightly. I forced myself to stop. I was starting to enjoy myself. Playing with Captain Obvious was taking my mind off of Avatar.
As I followed Captain Obvious like a baby duck follows its mother, he glanced back at me from time to time. I grinned at him when he looked at me, making his head snap back around. His shoulders were tightly hunched. He clearly did not know what to do now that the follower had become the followed.
We walked almost a full city block like that before Captain Obvious finally had enough. He spun around and faced me. He ripped off his sunglasses, holding them in his clenched fist. The sockets of his brown eyes were sunk deep in his head, making him look even more like a caveman than before. I wondered if I had stumbled upon the missing link.
“Hey man, you got some kind of problem?” Captain Obvious demanded. His tone and posture were meant to be intimidating, but his still babyish throwback face apologized for it. My earlier assessment that he was in his early twenties was probably correct, but, despite his size, he seemed younger still.
“I’m so glad you asked. As a matter of fact, I do have a problem. You’ve been following me. I want to know why.”
“Man, you crazy. I ain’t been following you. You been following me,” Captain Obvious said. His was the voice of the streets. I thought, not for the first time, about the sorry state of public education.
“You have been following me,” I said in correction. “Not ‘You been following me.’ If you’re going to say something, you should try to say it correctly. To do otherwise makes you look foolish.”
“You makin’ fun of the way I talk?”
“No, I’m just trying to do my duty as a public-minded citizen and right an educational wrong. It takes a village to raise a child, after all.”
Captain Obvious just stared at me. Him still trying to intimidate me mixed with confusion. I confused a lot of people, including myself sometimes. It could have been one of my superpowers. Finally, Captain Obvious pointed a thick finger at me. “How ‘bout you just leave me alone,” he said.
“Sure, as soon as you tell me why you have been following me.”
Captain Obvious did not respond. He just glared at me for a moment. He then turned around and started walking again. I once again followed, like a barge in the wake of a tugboat. He was sorely mistaken if he thought he could get rid of me that easily. Stubbornness could have been one of my superpowers too.
Captain Obvious walked a bit further up the street with me right behind him. Though he did not turn to look at me anymore, I could tell from the tensed and bunched up way he held himself that he knew I was still behind him. It would have been hard to miss me. I was close enough to him that he could no doubt hear the hard heels of my dress shoes against the sidewalk. Plus, by then I was loudly whistling These Boots Were Made For Walkin’. The oldies truly were golden. True, I did not have boots on, but I did not know any dress shoe songs.
Before we got to the next street, Captain Obvious turned left into an alley. Like a dutiful duckling, I followed. Though there were not too many people walking around, he clearly was trying to go to where there would not be any witnesses. Things were coming to a head. He spun around to face me again once we were well in the alley. There was an open dumpster several feet away full of trash, and the alley smelled of rot and decay. This was my natural element, far more so than a strange parallel universe was. To coin a phrase, this was right up my alley.
Captain Obvious shoved his sunglasses into the pocket of his jacket. He balled his fists, raising them in front of him a little. Despite his size, he did not move like someone who was a trained fighter. I had faced a lot of trained fighters in my time. I knew how they carried themselves. There was a certain grace with which trained fighters moved, a physical confidence earned through blood, sweat and tears. They moved with the catlike ease of lions despite how big some of them were. Captain Obvious did not move like a lion; he clopped around like a rhinoceros. A guy the size of Captain Obvious had probably gotten by on being big and intimidating, scaring people half to death without even laying a hand on them. I had just gotten back from a parallel universe where I examined the dead body of the world’s greatest Hero. A street thug like Captain Obvious did not scare me.
“If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to make you leave me alone,” Captain Obvious said.
“You can try, but I don’t think it’s very likely to happen.”
Before the words were barely out of my mouth, Captain Obvious took a roundhouse swing at me. I saw it coming from a mile away. I sidestepped the swing like a matador sidestepping a rushing bull. Captain Obvious went sailing past me thanks to the momentum of his wild swing. He checked himself and turned again to face me. His face was red and he was breathing hard. I wanted to cry “Olé!” but I suspected Captain Obvious would not know what the word meant. I hated to waste words on people who would not appreciate them.
Captain Obvious rushed me, trying to tackle me. I again stepped to the side right before he made contact. When Captain Obvious went rocketing past me, I pushed him, helping him to sail into the brick wall of the alley. He hit the wall headfirst. He let out a yelp of surprise and pain. He fell to one knee. His hat fell off his head, exposing the buzz cut on his head. He shook his head groggily. He would probably have a lump on top of his head tomorrow. If he did not tell me why he had been following me, he would have more lumps than just that one soon enough.
“Look kid,” I said, as that was how I was coming to think of him despite the fact he was an adult and outweighed me by a decent amount. He was outclassed and completely unaware of it, like a weekend pickup basketball player who did not know he was playing against someone in the National Basketball Association. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just tell me why you were following me and we can go off and enjoy the rest of the day.” Captain Obvious staggered to his feet. He turned, putting his fists up by his face in a classic boxer’s pose. I sighed. No one ever picked the easy way.
Captain Obvious closed in on me. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, as it often did when I found myself in a fight. His left fist jabbed out at my nose. Rather, his left fist jabbed out at where my nose used to be as Captain Obvious’ movements telegraphed the punch. I moved my head out of the way as readily as if Captain Obvious was moving in slow motion. Captain Obvious followed up with a right cross. I also easily dodged it. My blood sung in my veins. My body felt easy and loose.
“The problem you have is you’re an amateur up against a professional,” I said, continuing to dance around Captain Obvious as he kept swinging at me in vain. I was not even breathing particularly hard. My voice was easy and conversational. I felt like a ballet dancer moving around a sloth. Captain Obvious was getting more and more frustrated at my words and by the fact he literally could not lay a hand on me. His increasing frustration made his punches get even wilder, which made it even easier to dodge them. “There’s no shame in that. I was an amateur once, too. But if you’re going to continue to follow people around for who knows what reasons, you need to learn to recognize what a professional looks like before you find yourself in over your head. Kind of like now.” I moved in close as quickly as a cobra. I slapped Captain Obvious on the sides of his head first with my right hand and then with my left. I moved back out of his range before he could retaliate. I had deliberately hit him hard enough to get his attention, but not hard enough to really hurt him.
“See what I mean?” I said after I slapped him. “I could have knocked you out just then, and you couldn’t have done a damned thing about it. Why don’t we stop this silliness before you get yourself hurt? All I want to know is why you were following me.”
Captain Obvious dropped his hands. He stepped back further from me. His face was beet red. His chest heaved. His eyes looked at me sullenly. Despite the fact he had dropp
ed his guard, Captain Obvious did not look like someone who did not want to fight anymore. He opened his mouth wide. At first I thought he was going to say something. I realized I was wrong when a black mass started to form inside his open mouth, as if miniature storm clouds were gathering inside. I froze for a moment, confused.
What the hell is going on? I thought. Buzzing was my first clue. It was faint at first, like the approach of a distant police siren. But then it got louder and louder. There was an emotive quality to the buzzing, like it was angry. It set my teeth on edge and made my hair stand on end.
Like a piñata bursting, suddenly a black mass burst forth from Captain Obvious’ mouth. It was bees! A thick stream of them flew out. They darted towards me, a dark stream of wings, stings, and venom. It looking like a Biblical plague. And here I had felt so cocky just moments before. As the Bible’s Book of Proverbs warned, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” I wished I had not needed to witness a modern-day Biblical plague to remind me of some of the timeless truths that book contained. I had gotten cocky, and my cockiness made me underestimate Captain Obvious. It was now clear Captain Obvious was a Meta. I had not been expecting that. I had been lecturing him about being an amateur, yet I had made the rookie mistake of underestimating an opponent. Now my mistake was coming back to bite me on the butt. No, sting me on the butt. Probably everywhere else too.
As the swarm of bees flew towards me, it flashed through my mind how many bee stings it took to kill a person. A dozen? Hundreds? Thousands? Just one, maybe, if you were allergic. Having never been stung by a bee before, I had no idea if I was allergic or not. Now did not seem like a good time to find out.
When faced with a swarm of buzzing bees, I did what any red-blooded, fearless Hero would do. I turned tail and ran. The swarm of angry bees followed me like something out of a horror movie.
CHAPTER 7
I pounded out of the mouth of the alley back onto the sidewalk that ran along Jewel Street. My legs pumped up and down like the pistons of a steam engine as I ran as fast as I could away from the pursuing swarm of insects. I heard the loud buzz of the swarm behind me, getting closer and closer. Any second now I would be engulfed by them. The few people on the sidewalk screamed. I felt like screaming too. But, I ignored the screams and my own rising panic. I had other fish to fry, fish with wings and stingers that were making a literal beeline towards me.
I was not running away. Well technically I was running away, but my running away was actually more of a temporary tactical retreat. My powers had told me there was no source of water handy in the alley, and so I had run out of the alley to find some water. Well, and to avoid getting stung to death.
There! Up ahead on the near the corner of Jewel Street and McCaan Road was a fire hydrant. I dashed towards it, concentrating as I marshalled my powers. The eyes of a man between me and the hydrant widened as he looked past me. He turned and ran. I did not need to turn around to know the bees were almost on top of me. Their buzzing filled my ears like an approaching buzz saw. The back of my neck tingled in anxious anticipation. I expected the bees to catch up to me and start stinging me any second now.
Thanks to my powers, the hydrant erupted like a geyser. I did not have time for subtlety: I needed water, and I needed it now. Water shot high into the air, roaring like a miniature Niagara Falls. I made a stream of the water shoot towards me at a ninety-degree angle from the geyser. The water surrounded me like a thick bubble, leaving me nice and dry in an air pocket inside of it. I stopped running, literally skidding to a halt, the bubble of water still surrounding me.
Just in time. Bees collided with the water around me like hailstones hitting the surface of a pond. Thanks to my powers, I felt them hit the water. When I turned to face the swarm, I saw them as well. Looking out through the water was like looking out of a particularly thick car windshield. In seconds I was surrounded by so many bees it was as if I was experiencing my own personal solar eclipse. Bees rocketed into my water shield like kamikaze pilots dive-bombing a ship. Bees were great flyers but, fortunately for me, terrible swimmers. The ones who hit my water shield and tried to penetrate it soaked their wings and fell to the ground, unable to fly. The rest of the swarm buzzed around me and my bubble of water. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed like the buzzing of the swarm now had a slightly frustrated cast to it.
My heart pounded in my chest. My chest heaved with exertion and sudden relief. It seemed I was safe enough for now. It also seemed as though the bees were targeting me rather than going after anyone else in the vicinity since the swarm still hovered around me despite it not being able to get to me. Maybe Captain Obvious controlled them telepathically with his powers. Or, maybe the bees were like a smart bomb: you gave them a target, and they honed in only on it. Who knew? I was neither an entomologist nor an expert on Metahuman-conjured bees. In any event, now that I was out of reach of the bees, I could not take the chance they would turn on an innocent bystander.
I gathered my will, carefully visualizing in my mind’s eye what I wanted to accomplish. I exerted my powers again. The water encircling me exploded out forcefully, coating the swarm of bees. Almost simultaneously, I dropped the temperature of the water, turning it into ice.
Like a switch had been flipped, the buzzing suddenly stopped. The now frozen bees all fell to the ground. They sounded like tiny pieces of hail as they hit the sidewalk.
I paused for a moment, almost afraid to move. The former swarm now laid on the ground around me, like pellets from a shotgun around a bull’s-eye. Had I gotten them all? I certainly did not see any more bees. I did not hear buzzing anymore either, though over the roaring water erupting from the burst hydrant, it was hard to be absolutely sure.
With the immediate threat taken care of, my mind turned back to Captain Obvious. I still did not know why he had followed me from Sentinels’ mansion. I had not seen him come out of the alley I had left him in. I had been preoccupied with not turning into a human pin cushion though, so perhaps he had slipped out of the alley without me noticing. On the other hand, less than a minute had probably passed since I had run out of the alley, though it certainly seemed like far longer than that. Time flew when you were having fun, but it slowed to a crawl when you were running for your life.
I pulled more water from the still-erupting hydrant. I formed a beach ball-sized globe with it. I made it float over my right shoulder like a liquid guardian angel. I would not face Captain Obvious without a water source handy again. Once almost stung to death, twice shy.
I turned my attention to the burst hydrant again. All those gallons of rushing water were making a royal mess. The water would flood the nearby businesses before the city could shut it off and repair the hydrant. The Astor City Department of Public Works would not be happy with me. Then again, it never was. This was not the first time I had burst open a city hydrant in an emergency. The last time I had done it, the city had later presented me with a hefty bill for the resulting damage. Oh well. That was what I had insurance for. But, it was better to minimize the damage the water caused both from a public relations standpoint—as the protesters outside Sentinels’ mansion indicated, not everyone was thrilled with Heroes—and from the standpoint of trying to keep my insurance company from increasing my premiums. Again. Plus, cars driving through the gushing water could easily cause an accident. I did not want someone to get hurt or killed because of me.
I lowered the temperature of the water gushing upwards from the busted hydrant. With loud cracking sounds, the water froze. The once-gushing geyser of water now looked like a tall ice sculpture. I really should have turned my talents towards creating ice sculptures for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings rather than using them to fight supervillains. I would have been safer that way. I would have bet good money that in the history of the world, not a single ice sculptor had almost gotten stung to death by a swarm of Meta-generated bees.
I walked back towards the alley I had left Captain Obvious
in. The handful of people left on the street after the fright caused by the swarm of bees pointed and stared at me. It could have been nice if they had been admiring my favorite suit, but I knew they were not. They were staring at the large sphere of water floating over my shoulder like it was a helium balloon tied to me. I stretched out my water awareness. The distinct water signature of a large man was there. Captain Obvious was still apparently there. Maybe he would spit a swarm of bees at me again. Oh goody! I could hardly wait.
I drew my pistol. I made sure the safety was off. Holding the gun at my side, I stepped around the corner of the building I was next to and into the mouth of the alley.
Captain Obvious was there, pretty much where he had been when I had left him. He stood hunched over, his legs wide, his hands resting on partially bent knees. His head was between his hunched shoulders, staring down at the ground. He panted as if he had just gotten finished running a marathon.
“Hey, kid,” I said loudly, still holding my gun at my side. His head shot up. His face was still red. There was a bit of spittle running down his chin. His eyes widened in surprise. He no doubt expected me to be on the run from his bee swarm. “You still haven’t told me why you were following me. Don’t make me ask again. You’re starting to annoy me.”
With what appeared to be an effort, Captain Obvious straightened up. His mouth opened again. Bits of darkness flickered inside his mouth. I had seen this horror movie before. This time, I was bound and determined to make sure it had a different ending. I sent a tentacle of water from the ball over my shoulder rocketing towards Captain Obvious. It splashed into his mouth, filling it completely. Simultaneously, I wrapped a thick band of water around his head. As I had with the water that had gushed out of the fire hydrant, I dropped the temperature of the water rapidly, causing it to crystallize into ice.
Superhero Detective Series (Book 4): Hunted Page 8