Trainee Superhero (Book Three)

by C. H. Aalberry

  It looks like the kind of suit that’s designed to mess things up. I look for a name on the chest, but the suit looks polished and new, unpainted and without a label.

  “Like it?” asks Second Best.

  “It’s… brutal,” I say, “but I like it! Whose is it?”

  They share a confused look, and Brat slaps his face in exasperation.

  “Idiot.”

  I’m being dense; this suit was made for me.

  “Really?” I ask, and for the first time since my mom died I break into a genuine smile.

  “Really,” says Second Best, “just for you.”

  I put it on; it fits perfectly. This suit is the first piece of clothing made just for me.

  “Ready?” Brat asks.

  I am; I fly right out the armory hangar and into the sky. The suit feels solid, like I’m a flying rhino made of steel. I feel good.

  No… I feel invulnerable.

  “Fly east,” whispers Second Best in my helmet.

  I check my compass and fly east. The suit turns well, for all its bulk, and flying slowly barely uses any power. I loop and dive, yelling in pleasure.

  “I kept this power source just for you,” says Second Best, “it was your mother’s favorite, some of her best work. It’s got a lot of juice.”

  I fly until I reach a rocky island.

  “We have mounted two multiblasters in the right arm and the color cannon in the left. The shoulders are cutting lasers for short range work. You control them with your eyes, but they will take up a ton of your power, so don’t fire them for long.”

  I use the lasers to cut some rocks into thin slices, and then I blast the slices with my multiblaster until the stones are nothing but dust.

  “Nice,” I say.

  My helmet ticks loudly.

  “I have a weapons lock on me,” I say.

  “Seventy-three missiles heading your way,” agrees Second Best, “I’d prefer if you didn’t shoot them down. Fly into them and we’ll see about your shields.”

  “Fly into them?” I ask. That seems like a pretty stupid thing to do, so naturally I start immediately.

  The first missile hits me right in the chest but green shields shimmer around me and the rest of the missiles either swerve past me or explode harmlessly against my shields.

  “Shield check,” says Second Best.

  “98%,” I say.

  Second Best whistles, impressed.

  “That’s some good work,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Red Five, I was talking to myself. I’ve built a flying tank.”

  I hover in the air, taking in the ocean and earth below me, the sky above. I can see the Cerberus in the distance, and a few other warships on the horizon. Clouds stream out above me, leading out into the distance, and part of me wants to follow them.

  “What’s stopping me from just flying away now?” I ask.

  “Would you?” asks Second Best. She sounds a little anxious.

  “Of course not, but surely people consider it.”

  “We still control your collar,” Second Best reminds me, “and I can shut your suit down from here. Plus Never Lies has been following, just in case.”

  “I thought you said I’m a flying tank!”

  “I can still take you,” says Never Lies over my radio.

  I can’t see her, but I have no doubt that she’s around. My helmet goes tick-tick-tick.

  “You have all your weapons locked on me, don’t you?” I ask.

  “I do.”

  She sounds smug.

  “One of those weapons is a special shield-piercing cannon designed to bring people like me down, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Good thing you won’t need it, then.”

  “Yeah… about that…”

  A beam of light hits me right in the head and I fall out of the sky, tumbling. I catch myself just above the ground.

  “Shields at 80%. And also, ouch.”

  “80%? That’s impressive. Nice recovery, too.”

  “Thanks, but my head is buzzing like there’s a swarm of bees in this suit with me. Please don’t do that again. Can we go get some lunch now?”

  “You wish. We still have work to do, so stop whining and power up that rainbow-cannon.”

  Three hours later I’m lying in the sun in the operators’ area, exhausted. Never Lies kicks me in the leg.

  “Get up, trainee, we have things to talk about.”

  I wonder if she’s going to shoot me again; she really seemed to enjoy it. She leads me to the cafeteria and sits me down at a table. Chef brings over three pieces of cake.

  “We’ve been thinking,” she says, “and we’ve come to the conclusion that you need a partner. It’s pretty common practice for trainee to get paired up; it makes you easier to handle and gives you a better chance on the battlefield. Anyway, his name is Grey Three.”

  The door opens and Tenchi walks in. We stare at each other in dumbstruck surprise.

  “You two have complementary skills,” continues Never Lies, “and we thought you would work well together. You two look like you’ve seen a ghost, is there a problem?”

  She almost cracks a smile, but then turns away.

  Tenchi grabs me in a bear hug and squeezes the life out of me. We high five, we bump fists, we laugh. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

  “Powers?” asks Tenchi.

  “Shields and lasers, mostly. I can pretty much hit everything I want,” I say, “so I really clean up at range. What about you?”

  “Blades, and the bigger the better. They call it tino-kinetics or something, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, that’s cool!” I say.

  That’s way better than being a flying tank.

  “I can’t fly very well,” Tenchi says to make me feel better, “I have to close my eyes. Is this cake for me?

  Chef brings us more coffee and cake; he’s in an excellent mood, and doesn’t mind us intruding on his space.

  “That… is… delicious,” says Tenchi around a mouthful of cake.

  I don’t answer; I’m too busy eating.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks me.

  “Back home… The General arrived-”

  “-just in time to save you, what a champ!” Tenchi interrupts enthusiastically.

  “Turns out he is Stace’s Dad. He was not pleased to see me and his daughter in the middle of a saucer attack, so he tried to kill-”

  “-tried to kill you? What a saucerhat!”

  Tenchi’s admiration of The General disappears even more quickly than mine did. Tenchi doesn’t seem at all surprised that a superhero could be so dangerous to the people he is supposed to protect. I guess he has also seen behind the façade.

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “I was in training for a while. They seemed to be in a rush to get us finished. I was top of my class, so they promoted me early. I had a few missions, and everything was going well enough-”

  “-what? How? I nearly died on my first missions!”

  “I just did what the voices on my radio told me,” he says, giving me a very odd look.

  “I didn’t get voices, I just got shot. I would have killed for voices!” I say.

  “Well… it turned out that no one else was hearing anything on their radios, so people thought I was pretty weird.”

  “Okay…”

  “Anyway, the little voices kept me alive. On my last mission they kept telling me to come towards where I found you. I did what they said, so that was good, but my commanders did not like me doing my own thing.”

  “So they sent you here?”

  “Well... I also punched my boss, which might have something to do with my reassignment.”

  I wince; punching a superhero is never a good idea, not even if you are a superhero. Technically it’s an act of treason and punishable by death.

  “Why did you hit him?”

  “We were at a club�
� he was getting handsy with a girl who wasn’t enjoying it. One thing led to another, and now I’m here. It’s better this way, anyway. Partners, just like we planned!”

  “I’m glad you’re here, man,” I say.

  “Me, too. They told me that you’ve been breaking the record for time spent in the sick bay. What’s up with that?”

  “Go hard or go home… you know how I am. I just want to be good at this.”

  Tenchi nods.

  “And now I’m here, and we are going to be the greatest team who ever lived. Right?”

  Right. The legend of Grey and Red starts today.

  “Look at my tat-a-gotchi!” I say.

  Tenchi is impressed; his own tat-a-gotchi is big red shrew that moves so quickly across his arm that I can’t keep track of it.

  “Cool,” we say in unison.

  Never Lies walks back in.

  “If you are done with the cake, perhaps you would like to join me in saving the world?” she says sarcastically.

  Tenchi rolls his eyes and whispers “WTF” to me, but I shrug.

  “She’s right, as always,” I say, “it’s time to save the world. Again.”

  Lesson Thirteen: These Are Not Fair Fights…

  “Stand against the saucers and the world stands with you.”

  -Superhero Corps official propaganda.

  “It’s just the four of us versus the hostile universe, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  -Cold Comet, journal entry read out at Dark Fire’s trial.

  We land on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

  There are six of us, including Tenchi. He’s armed with the enormous sword that Talented Brat said no one was strong enough to wield. Tenchi needs both hands to keep it off the ground, but he seems to be okay. There isn’t anything suspicious that we can see, so Never Lies calls up Talented Brat.

  “No saucer,” she says.

  “I’m getting some big readings… real big. There’s something in the ocean.”

  He almost sounds nervous.

  “Real big,” adds Second Best calmly, “we’ll be on the lookout.”

  “Copy. We can see nothing so far,” says Never Lies.

  We spread out and start scouting the cliff. Tenchi and I are a team, which makes us both happy. Tenchi doesn’t fly, but runs through the air on discs of light that form below his feet and hang in the air behind him so that his path is illuminated by bright footsteps. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not fast, but it does look cool.

  “Showy,” says Never Lies.

  “I have to close my eyes,” Tenchi admits to me when we are a little further away.

  I smile; it’s good to know that he has an Achilles’ heel.

  “See anything?” I ask.

  “No, but can you hear that whispering on the radio? One single voice, getting closer.” I can’t hear anything, and Tenchi’s talk of little voices is frankly a bit weird.

  “I’m high above the cliffs,” says Never Lies over the radio, “nothing to see.”

  Our radio starts to crackle.

  “There!” says Tenchi, point out at the horizon.

  I can’t see anything except water, clouds and boats.

  “Mmm… this is going to be a difficult one,” murmurs Extremely Dangerous over the radio.

  “Gather on me,” says Never Lies curtly.

  She drops out of the sky and lands beside me.

  I still can’t see anything out there except a small fishing boat.

  “I don’t see anything,” says Born Lucky.

  My proximity alarm starts ringing slowly, with seconds between each ‘bang’.

  “Prox alarm,” I say.

  Then I see it: a line of black fins cutting through the water, trailing long spikes like huge antennae. The fins brush past the fishing boat, rolling it in their wake. They are still many miles off shore, but I estimate the fins are several stories high.

  “I see it now,” says One Trick unnecessarily, “and it looks mighty big.”

  Never Lies pulls a flare out of a pocket, lights it and throws it. Green smoke billows into the air.

  “Yes. Okay. Born Lucky and his squad are on their way,” she says.

  She looks unsure of herself for the first time since I’ve met her, but I don’t blame her.

  “Won’t be long now,” she says.

  I know things are looking bad when Never Lies tries to be comforting.

  I check my weapons and shields; the black fins get closer. Whatever’s underneath them is moving fast. I start to see a massive oval shape beneath the water as smaller fins burst the out of the waves.

  “Turn your proximity alarms off;” says Never Lies evenly, “we don’t want to get deafened. Day and Trick to flank left, Red Five and Grey Three flank right. Dangerous and I will draw its fire here. Set?”

  “Call me Simon Smith,” whispers Extremely Dangerous.

  “Set,” say the rest of us. I start charging up my color cannon.

  An enormous head emerges from the water, a nightmare shape of protruding turrets and eyes set amongst multiple beaks and maws. Behind that rise massive shoulders and a back wider than an aircraft carrier’s deck. This thing looks like someone took Godzilla and the army sent to stop Godzilla and rolled them into one creature, then added the turrets from a world war two battleship for good measure.

  “Whoah,” I say, “that’s a monster and a half.”

  “Cut the chatter, Red Five,” snaps Never Lies.

  The monster beaches itself with powerful strokes of its tail and then stands on twelve massive legs than end in bulbous feet. Each foot could crush a tank. Turrets pop up along its back, huge arrays of long barrels and odd round discs that might be microwave beams. Water gushes from its body, raining down on the sand. The creature opens its many eyes and looks from side to side as if not yet ready to move to land. It sways under the weight of its own body.

  “Surely that thing’s too big to walk,” says Bad Day.

  It should be, yet it takes a step forward with a thud that we can feel on the cliff. The lines of enormous scales on the thing’s back flip open to reveal rows and rows of missiles.

  “Change of plan, we need to get under it, low and fast,” yells Never Lies.

  I don’t want to get under this thing, but I’ve learnt better than to question Never Lies. I start moving. Tenchi keeps pace, but he isn’t happy.

  “Why are we trying to get under this thing?” he demands.

  The creature yawns with massive teeth, then banks of missiles open along its shoulders.

  “Faster!” I say, and grab Tenchi, dragging him forward.

  Streams of lasers cut up the sand around us, and we dodge as best we can. The creature yawns again, and missiles rise in their thousands like clouds of death. There are so many that they blot out the sun and leave us in darkness.

  “At least we’re fighting in the shade!” I joke, but I don’t think anyone hears me.

  The missiles start to fall, but we are under the beast before its weapons find us. They hit the ground around the cliff where we had been standing, leveling the rock and soil into nothing. We would have died if we had stayed out there; Never Lies had been right, as usual.

  “We’re not safe yet,” she says, pointing upwards.

  Huge panels have opened in the creature’s belly and hundreds of creatures drop. I see the familiar shapes of enemies I’ve faced before, but also new creatures like a multi-legged crab-thing that lands next to Tenchi. He cuts it in half with a single blow of his enormous sword.

  My cannon starts vibrating: the end is a ball of bright green light. I launch it towards the beast’s nearest leg, but it hits without making much of a mark.

  “That’s not good!” I say.

  Tenchi rips through a pair of triclops and I cut down a squadron of strange glowing insects that form a triangle in the air. It's chaos down here: Bad Day blurs past leaving burning shells of aliens behind him. One Trick has a huge axe in one hand and a silver blaster in the
other. She spins and shoots, dodges and dives as she goes head to head with the nightmare child of a dinosaur and a fighter jet. The creature almost gets her, but she spins past it, knocking it back with her axe. Creatures close around her, but Bad Day appears from nowhere and teleports her out of danger with only a second to spare.

  A pyramid flies towards us, spinning wildly. I’ve heard of these: they get close and then explode.

  “Get behind me,” I say.

  Tenchi moves beside me with his sword in front of him, but I push him back as the pyramid explodes into orbs of plasma. I spread my arms and close my eyes as the orbs burst against my green shields. There’s a second when I think I’m done for, but then the plasma fades away and I’m still alive. My shields say 67%. A pair of winged snakes whips through the air towards us, but I melt them with ease.

  We launch ourselves into a frantic dogfight, chasing and being chased through the mess of tentacles and spires on the creature's belly. We are both slow in the air, but anything that gets close is cut clean in two by Tenchi’s giant sword or blasted by my color cannon.

  “This is madness!” he yells at me as I take a pair of screamers out with my multiblasters.

  A third screamer lands on my helmet and tries to pull my head right off. I hit it with my color cannon, but something strong grabs my leg. I feel heat, and then whatever it was is gone.

  One Trick flies past and waves to me. Her head is on fire, and blasts of red shoot out, melting everything they touch. She must have had her powers upgraded. She joins up with Never Lies who is punishing everything that gets too close to her. One Trick keeps the sky around Never Lies clear and Never Lies smashes the larger enemies with accurate blasts from her cannons. The two of them are doing a lot better than Tenchi and I, so we fly over to join them.

  Only Extremely Dangerous fights alone. He’s floating in the air with his arms outstretched. Long thin lines of grey lead from his fingers to each of the aliens around him, and he makes them dance like puppets. He gathers the biggest aliens to him, and when he tires of playing with them they simply fall over and are replaced by new creatures. He’s keeping the most dangerous aliens off our back, so I suppose I should be grateful, but at the same time it seems he could be doing so much more.