June wrapped her arms around his neck.
Ernest Wright was one of the most painfully genuine people she’d ever met. There was no ulterior motive to his niceness. He was a shy fat kid with glasses who hadn’t figured out yet that he was a grade-A cut of all-American beefcake. It would’ve been funny if the desperation behind his actions hadn’t pushed them over the top. He wanted to do the right thing so badly, to be the right kind of person, but the Commander’s legacy didn’t give him much breathing room.
Responsibility and retaliation. That’s what public heroics were really about, weren’t they?
Ernest hugged her back. She squeaked as he easily lifted her off the chair, holding onto her tightly. Like most size sixteen and up girls, she didn’t get swept off her feet by the boys very often. There was plenty of June to go around, but her partner was as embarrassingly strong as he was touchy-feely. He could have lifted up an elephant for a hug. It was kind of nice to not feel like she should apologize for her weight. For once, she could enjoy it.
He hugged her for longer than she allowed most people to touch her, but she let him have it. The big guy needed it.
°
Zip woke up to the sound of her bedroom door opening. It’d been so late by the time she’d crawled into bed, time had switched over to being early. She and Mal hadn’t ended up training, but they’d talked until the sky had started turning pink and Mal had started yawning through every other word. She usually made sure to get at least eight hours of sleep every night, but she’d happily sacrificed a few of her forty winks in order to get to know her partner a little bit better. By the time he’d begged off to sleep, she’d worked a few laughs out of him. It’d all been very worth it.
But speedsters didn’t do well without sleep, so she hadn’t woken up until she’d heard someone using the door. Zip sat up, blinking blearily. She rubbed her eyes with both hands, not trusting what she was seeing.
Cindy had woken up before her. She’d taken a shower. She was getting dressed— and not in a clean set of pajamas, either. She was wearing a pair of shorts and a baggy training t-shirt.
“G’mornin’,” Zip slurred through a wide yawn. Her cowlicky red hair was flattened on one side, and she was trying to decide whether she cared enough about her bedhead to take a quick shower before class.
“Morning,” Cindy said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. She’d already made it. Zip didn’t think she’d ever seen her bed made, even once.
“You look like you’re feeling good today,” she said, stretching.
“Yeah, I— ” Cindy glanced at her, then away. “I guess. The nurse’s up my ass for skipping class.”
In her head, Zip sent a hundred thousand thank-yous to Nurse Bliss. Whatever she’d said to Cindy had gotten her out of bed, and that was a big step. Zip was tired, but she was too elated to be cranky. She rolled out of bed, wriggling out of the big shirt that she slept in and getting into her training duds.
“Well,” she said in her best diplomatic voice. “It is a school. I guess they think we should make the most of the learning they’re dishing out, huh?”
Cindy just rolled her eyes.
“So look, I’ve been trying to figure something out since last night,” she said, pulling on her socks. “How does a corn-fed goody-two shoes from the Midwest like you end up with a strike on her record?”
Zip shrugged, picking at the knots in her shoes with her short nails. She tied the laces a half-dozen times in order to keep them on her feet while she ran. They frayed quickly, so she had to replace them every other week or so.
“The same way most people end up with a strike. I did something I wasn’t s’posed to, so they said it’d been an accident and sent me here to shape me up.”
“Yeah?”
She couldn’t tell if that yeah indicated real interest, but she plowed on anyhow.
“My big sister, Lacey had a boyfriend who was, uh.” There were no nice words for Dirk. Not one. “He didn’t like working, but he had plenty of opinions on how much she worked and what she did with the money she earned.”
“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine,” Cindy deadpanned, unzipping a small red bag. It was full of makeup. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“I’ve always had to eat a lot. Lacey’s older than me, so as soon as she could, she got two jobs to help our folks out with money. I dropped by her apartment after school every day, ‘cause Lacey always had a snack for me. She’s a nice person, y’know? Just a real good person. But Dirk, he didn’t like how much she did for our family. They got into it after he’d been day-drinking. He hit her, and I saw.”
Just thinking about it got Zip’s blood simmering. She’d been little, just over eight years old, but she remembered every last detail of the fight. Her fury had crystallized it. She’d never been that angry— not before, and not since. Lacey was as close to sainthood as a person could get without a halo, so she hadn’t fought back. Not the way she should have. She’d told him she was sorry, that maybe he was right, and Zip had come undone.
“I hit him back,” Zip said, evenly. She didn’t bother to sound remorseful. She wasn’t in the habit of lying like that. “The ER nurse said it was somewhere between two and three hundred times.”
She didn’t like hurting people. She wasn’t all that aggressive when it came right down to it. Nine times out of ten, she chose flight over fight.
But when someone raised a hand against her loved ones, Zip raised a fist in return. Looking back on it, she didn’t regret what she’d done. It might have gotten her sent away, but it’d gotten Dirk away from Lacey, too. She was married to a nice man, now. He worked at a bank. They had two little girls. Zip hadn’t met them yet, but she’d seen pictures, and they were every bit as beautiful as her big sister. She couldn’t regret laying into Dirk. It’d been the right thing, no matter what the BPHA had ruled.
“Sounds like the bastard deserved it,” Cindy agreed, which warmed Zip to her toes. Producing a tube of pink gloss, she applied a shimmery coat. She pursed and rolled her lips to spread it, glancing at Zip sideways. “So. Aren’t you going to ask me how I got my strike?”
“Do you wanna tell me?”
“No,” Cindy said, picking up her comb and wrestling it through her wet hair in jerky strokes.
“Then I guess there’s not much point in me asking, huh?” Zip laughed, because it seemed like a silly question. If Cindy wasn’t feeling up to sharing, she wasn’t going to waste her time. Like Mal, she clenched up more if she thought someone was trying to get something out of her. Zip was a runner, not a wrestler. “I’m gonna swing by mess and pick up something to eat before class. Can I get you anything?”
She’d said it just for the sake of saying it, an automatic part of the script between them the few times she’d been awake before she left for the day, but this time, something amazing happened.
Cindy didn’t ignore her. She bunched her wet hair between her hands, squeezing out a few last drips of moisture before securing it with an elastic band.
“An orange. If they have any.”
“And if they don’t?” Because that’d be her luck. It’d just be her luck that the one time Cindy entrusted her with getting her something that she’d eat, they wouldn’t have what she wanted.
“I dunno,” Cindy said, shrugging her angular shoulders. “Grapefruit, maybe.”
“Oranges and-or grapefruit. I’m on it!”
It was a shame that Zip didn’t think to time herself, because it felt like she smoked a personal best on her way to the mess hall. Luckily, the screen door was open for her— otherwise, she probably would have plowed right on through it. For once, her feet weren’t guided by her stomach. She was on a mission, and that was more important than even the sharpest of hunger pangs.
“I need citrus-type stuff,” Zip announced, slapping her palms down on the counter. “No time for questions. Just citrus.”
Sideshow was on KP duty by the fruit and baked goods. As the last station in the
buffet line, it was the easiest KP job by far, but also the most boring. His only responsibility was making sure nobody absconded with all of the choice pastries, so when she ran up, Maks was amusing himself by juggling apples. He dropped one of the six apples when she startled him, but kept going with the rest.
“That didn’t happen,” Maks said, hooking the bruised apple with the toe of his flip-flop and dragging it discreetly under the table. “What can I do you for this fine morning, Zippy-de-doo-dah?”
“Orange-o-or-grapefruit-or— ” Zip sucked in a breath. She’d pushed herself without meaning to, leaving her slightly winded. She was having a tiny bit of trouble finding air for words. “Idon’tmeantoberudesorry— ”
“As Master of the Fruitbasket, I bequeath unto thee all the citrusy goodness that you can handle.” Picking up three oranges and a grapefruit, Maks tossed her them one at a time. “Orange you glad I’m such a helpful guy?”
“Yes! Yes-yes-yes! Thank you!”
Piling the fruit into her arms, she took off toward the dorms again. She didn’t make it to the door before she remembered the talk she’d had with Mal. Zip dug in her heels, her sneakers screeching at the sudden stop.
The memory wall was sort of a who’s-who of Maillardet’s alumni. Graduates were encouraged to leave a photo on the big bulletin board before they left Foundation. Some of them were of five-man capstone teams, plastered with toothy smiles and staged for publicity shoots, but most of the pictures were candid polaroids taken of friends by friends.
Mal had been right. If he hadn’t told her that the man standing between the Queen and the Commander in the twenty-year-old photograph pinned to the board was the Rook, she never would have guessed it. He was a slender kind of guy, not very big and not very tall. The top of his head came up to Mr. Wright’s shoulder. Even the Queen had a good four or five inches on him.
There wasn’t anything overly remarkable about Mr. Underwood. He didn’t stick out in a crowd, with his black hair and brown eyes and glasses. He had on a pair of jeans and the sort of canvas jacket mechanics wore. The white ovular patch on the breast had D. Ennar embroidered on it in bright red thread.
He could have been anybody, but he was probably nobody. That was why his picture could hang on the wall of the most heavily-trafficked place in the Academy for twenty years without anyone asking who in the world D. Ennar was.
So that was what the Rook had really looked like, Zip thought, awed. When he was in costume, he was as big as a nightmare and twice as terrifying. His body matched the reputation he’d built over the years, that was all. He put on a different body to fight crime, just like other heroes put on masks. No wonder nobody ever saw him coming.
Mal looked like his mother, but he smiled like his dad. She never would have guessed that, either.
ISSUE #5
Ernest hated it when his dad left on cape-and-cowl-related business for more than a couple of days at a time, and he was very aware that hate was a strong word. Dotted liberally throughout his childhood, his father’s long absences had meant that the Foundation needed the Commander for one of the more complicated missions. Complicated, he’d learned early on, meant the same thing as dangerous.
Whenever his dad was away, he couldn’t help but worry that this time would be the time. He’d worry that it’d be the time he opened the door to find Aunt Roxy standing there in uniform, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. He’d worry that it’d be the time that would change his origin story, one way or another. He’d have to move in with his aunts and rewrite his essay and it’d just be terrible. He loved his aunts, but they weren’t his dad.
If anything happened to his dad, Ernest would live with the Galán-Grants. Hopefully. Maybe. The BPHA got funny about orphaned Alphas, sometimes. Ernest hadn’t been very old when he’d figured that out. He didn’t have grandparents, and his father had been an only child, like him. His dad was all he had.
Ernest was a worrier by nature. He tried not to be, but that didn’t do him any good. He’d start worrying that he worried too much. It was a loop that he couldn’t get back out of once he got caught in it, so they were thoughts better left un-thought-of.
“Ow! Ow-ow-ow! Ow, June! Ow!”
Ernest lifted his head. Even if he hadn’t had sharper-than-average ears, he would have heard Maks’ piteous howling. There was a healthy chance that they could hear him all the way out at the main part of campus.
“Are you totally sold on this whole becoming a public hero thing? Because if you can’t handle being poked by a couple of pins, dodging bullets might not be the life for you.”
Maks and June were upstairs in his bedroom, but between his ears and their volume, Ernest had no trouble hearing their squabbling. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop on their conversation. He just liked hearing them talk. It kept him from thinking, and that kept him from worrying.
“I’m beginning to suspect that that you are not, in fact, legally certified to perform acupuncture in the state of Oregon. I know you still don’t have a moniker, but— oh, no. It’s not— gasp!”
And Maks actually said the word gasp, too. Ernest grinned at his yet-unfinished math homework. It was hard to keep his head focused on figuring out drag coefficients for ziplining between buildings when they were getting steadily louder upstairs.
“It’s you, isn’t it? Say it ain’t so! Tell me you aren’t...”
There was a moment of complete silence. He could hear the clock on the fireplace mantle tick its way through five full seconds.
“Are you seriously pausing for dramatic effec— ”
“THE VICIOUS VIGILANTE ACUPUNCTURIST!”
“I swear on Russian baby Jesus’ sweet little whitewashed behind—”
“All this time, it’s been you. Yooooou!” Maks projected theatrically, like a Shakespearean actor lamenting about skulls. “Ah, me! Oh, woe! How could I have been so blind? If only I could have looked through the— ”
“No! Don’t you dare make a pu— ”
“— the eye of the needle, I would have seen the signs of this dastardly double life that you’ve been— ow!”
“Maksim Mikhailovich Petrov,” June said, and he was sure that she’d dropped her hands to her hips to really yell effectively. “If you don’t keep both feet on the ground, I’m going to start poking you on purpose!”
“You mean you haven’t been doing that already?”
Maks gave a sudden little yip.
“Do you really want to play this game with me?” June growled at him, lowering her voice. He was starting to worry that June might have picked up on how sharp his hearing was. “Because I really don’t think that you do. It’s not a game that you will win.”
“But if I don’t contort away from the needles, I won’t survive ten more minutes of this torture. Goodbye, world! I leave you a dimmer, less awesome place!”
“I am not above gagging you. Consider that your first and last warning.”
Maks keened. He sounded a little bit like a cross between a pterodactyl and a distressed whale.
“I know, world! I’ll miss me, too!”
Ernest grinned to himself. If there was one thing that June and Maks had in common, it was that they were both twice as loud as they had any right to be.
He appreciated the noise, honestly. Loneliness and bad thoughts hung over his head like a heavy fog when it got too quiet in the house. He’d invited them to stay over while his dad was out of town, so one or both of them had been with him for most of the week. In years past, Rosario had stayed with him, but she couldn’t be away from her new partner. It was nice to have other options.
“If I bleed to death from being stabbed a billion and twenty-two times with pins, you’ll be sorry,” Maks informed her in a sing-song voice.
“Will I? I’m not so sure you want to bet on that horse.”
Ernest continued to smile at his unfinished homework. He was glad that they were getting to know each other. She ragged on Maks, but that was just her uniquely abrasive way of expressing fondness
. If June liked someone, she bullied them. If she disliked them, she stonily ignored their existence in her universe.
So it was a good thing that she mildly tortured Maks. That meant she liked him, and Ernest liked it when the people he liked got along.
“Are you trying to kill me?!”
So long as it was only mild torture, of course.
Marking his spot, Ernest closed his math textbook.
“You two doing okay up there?” He hollered, making sure to raise his voice in order to be heard.
“We’re fine!” She said, too bright and cheerful to be genuinely June.
Faintly, he heard Maks whimper again.
“Nobody likes a tattletale,” June hissed. Anything else she might have said was lost in Maks’ strangled bellow-shriek of:
“BEES! FLAMING BEEEEEEEEES!”
Ernest chewed on the end of his pencil, trying to decide if flaming bees counted as mild. It wasn’t as bad as flaming tigers, sure, but flaming bees were still flaming bees. June’s constructs seemed to respond and shape themselves to her emotions. So when she was feeling like her usual self, she trotted out the animals that were as ferocious and proud as she was— like lions and tigers and bears, mostly. So right then, June must have been feeling like bees.
Busy, he figured. Busy and annoyed and buzzing with frustration.
There was a crash from the second floor, and some creative swear words from June that he’d never even heard put together like that before. Ernest had a sneaky suspicion that things weren’t going as well upstairs as she’d been trying to lead him to believe.
“I’m too flexible and charming to die like this!”
There was a loud screech-thump as Maks failed to slow down enough as he rounded the corner to the stairs. His bare feet slid against the hardwood floor, punctuated by what sounded a lot like a hundred and twenty pounds of acrobat skidding and hitting the wall.
“Come back here! I’m not done with you yet!”
June had been fitting Maks into what looked like long underwear made out of muslin. He’d shed some pins doing whatever clever acrobatics had freed him from June’s clutches, so some of the uniform pieces had come loose, flapping behind him in streamers. It looked like it might end up being a leotard, if June had the chance to successfully piece it together.
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 21