"You think you’re the only one who feels that way? You think you ’re the only one who wants the other person to listen sometimes? When’s the last time you paid attention to how I was feeling ? ”
“Look, I don’t need any of this right now. I’m going out...”
The thing was, Roxy loved her stepmother every bit as much as her Momma loved her. Even when they were fighting and screaming at their worst, that never changed. Way down in the roots of her soul, Roxy knew that.
But did her Momma know?
For probably the millionth time, Roxy wondered whether her juvenile, immature mouthing off had pushed her stepmother away.
The last time Roxy had seen her mother was just before she left for the “special school” that was really a front for I.O.’s Gen13 program. Her stepmother seemed so proud of her for getting recruited to such an exclusive school. Maybe even prouder than Roxy herself. She wrote letters every day, although Roxy, of course, was too cool to spend time writing letters back to her mother.
Was that the final straw? Maybe it was.
Because by the time Roxy got her powers, busted out of the facility with the rest of Gen13, and tried to get in touch with her Momma, her Momma was gone. Roxy’s stepmother had packed up, left the apartment, and moved on. And not just once, either. When Roxy tried to trace her Momma’s forwarding address, she discovered that her Momma had moved a bunch of times—so many that Roxy had begun to wonder whether she even wanted Roxy to find her in the first place. Roxy’s latest lead placed her stepmother right here in New York. So far, though, Roxy still hadn’t worked up the nerve to check.
Her Momma had been the one person in the world who truly loved Roxy. And Roxy had screwed the whole thing up.
If you wanted to get honest about it, that was why she started taking on the whole attitude in the first place. That was why she always pushed people away.
Because she didn’t want to give them the chance to
realize that she wasn’t worth it. Deep down, her greatest fear was that they’d leave her first.
There was a knock at the door.
“Go away,” Roxy said.
The knock came again, gentler this time.
“I said, go away!” *
The door cracked open, and Grunge tentatively stuck his head inside. There was a look of concern on his face. “Babe? Are you okay?” Grunge asked. “The Bobster said you were acting all, like, weird before ..
“I’m fine,” she said, turning her head to hide her puffy eyes.
“Fine.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Oh, what do you care?”
Grunge reacted to that one with genuine surprise. “What do I care?” He stepped the rest of the way into the room and closed the door. “I care ’cause you’re my sweetie. I care ’cause if this was all the other way around and stuff, and I was the one all like that, then you’d care.” Grunge sat down on the bed beside her. “I care,” he said, in a gentler tone than Roxy had ever heard him use before, “because I care about you.”
“Oh, Grunge . . .”
Roxy sat up and threw her arms around him. They sat like that for a while, not saying anything. Just holding each other tightly.
Then, they kissed.
The entire apartment was rocked by a massive explosion.
“Whoa,” said Grunge. “Was it good for you?”
“Come on!” exclaimed Roxy. She had already snapped out of her mood and was literally flying from the bed to the door to see what was wrong.
They hurried into the hall. The smoke and dust was billowing in from the living room.
“This way!” said Grunge. But there was no need. Roxy was already ahead of him.
The pair ran into the living room to find that the broken doorknob on the front door was no longer an issue. Because there was no longer a front door.
Or a wall around it.
The dust from the rubble hadn't settled yet. It filled the air, making it hard to breathe without coughing.
Yet, there, amidst the debris, stood Bobby and Sarah, poised for battle. Roxy hadn’t known what to expect, but even so, her first glimpse of their attackers took her by surprise. (And for a member of a super-team who’d recently fought a bunch of mind-controlled lingerie models, that was saying something.)
Standing opposite Sarah and Bobby were ten grim, unblinking foes. Each of them was clothed in a matching black, skintight uniform. Each of them was no more than twelve years old. And despite their combat-ready stances, each of them wore an impassive, almost bored expression.
Grunge laughed. “What’s this,” he said, “the Jailbait League of America?”
A cute girl with close-cut hair and an upturned nose stood at the front of the pack. She looked at Grunge as though he was something she might possibly deign to scrape off her shoe. “If you absolutely must call us something,” she said, “it would be preferable for you to use our established code name:
“Gen14!”
CHAPTER 8
It had been a long day. By the time Kat got up to her second to last job interview, she felt like she’d gone six rounds with a giant robot. And as someone who’d gone six rounds with giant robots on more than one occasion, she knew what she was talking about.
Kat was tired. She was frustrated. Her super-strong feet hurt.
How did regular people do this all the time?
Kat stood in front of the building where her next interview was scheduled. Many of the office and apartment buildings down here in Soho had been converted from warehouses long ago. This one still looked like it, a long brick building that wasn’t particularly tall by New York standards—only about four or five stories—but that took up most of the block. Her appointment was on the top floor.
Kat blew the hair out of her eyes, and took another look at the schedule in her hand:
“3:00 PM—Girlsworld.com”
“Girlsworld," huh? Kat thought. Well, doing something with girls would be fun. Maybe this one’ll be different.
But with the way my luck’s been running today, she continued, they probably manufacture 3-D cybersex.
The members of Gen13 looked at each other, puzzled.
“ ‘Gen-/o«rteen?’ ” Roxy wondered. “Wouldn’t that make them our kids!”
Grange recoiled and thrust out his palms protectively. “Whoa!” he said. “Don’t look at me!”
“Anybody put out a call for a junior fan club?” Bobby said.
“Now, wait a minute. This is ridiculous,” said Sarah. She turned to the blonde girl who’d spoken. “Look, I don’t know how you guys did that to the wall, but we’re not going to fight a bunch of kids. Why don’t you all just go home, and we’ll forget this ever happened?”
“Reverb,” said the blonde girl.
Without warning, one of the boys raised his hands in Sarah’s direction. The air was split by a loud THRUMMMMM. Despite the considerable distance between them—and the fact that there was nothing visible bridging the gap—Sarah was knocked clear across the room.
The effect on both groups was electrifying. The room erupted into a flurry of motion.
As far as the heroes were concerned, the age difference between them no longer mattered. These kids were both powerful and dangerous. They had to be stopped—a little more gently than usual, perhaps—but quickly, before it was too late.
“Slash, Override, go,” the blonde girl said without emotion. “Riptide, Growing Boy, go. Rave, Sidestep, go. Knockout, Reverb, on back-up and watch for Fairchild. Bogeyman, with me. Go.”
Bobby soared up toward the ceiling, his body a mass of flame. Even without his costume, you couldn’t really call him Bobby Lane anymore. He was Burnout now.
They’re organized, Burnout thought. So taking out their leader should make a difference. He prepared to hurl a firebolt, but as the mass of superheated plasma swelled to fill his palm, he hesitated. Burnout didn’t have it in him to set fire to a twelve-year-old girl. So he chose to go w
ith a different option. It would take more control to ignite the rag around her and pen her in, but at least that way, he wouldn’t cause any serious injury. Burnout took careful aim and let fly.
The blast never hit the mark. Burnout was shocked to see one boy’s arm dissolve into a powerful jet of water. The water spout shot forth to intercept the fiery projectile in a sizzling cloud of steam.
“Riptide/” Burnout thought. Before he could react, Riptide’s entire upper body transformed into a gushing river of water that surged up to hit him with the force of a riot hose. The rush of water slammed Burnout against the ceiling, extinguishing his flame and knocking him silly, before subsiding to become Riptide’s human form once again. Dazed and soaking wet, it took all of Burnout’s concentration to summon up enough of a meager, sputtering flame to maintain the thermal updraft that held him aloft.
Which is part of the reason why he was surprised to feel a tap on his shoulder.
He turned. One of the other boys was standing behind him. Not flying, Burnout realized. The kid was standing. Growing Boy was now so massive that he had to crouch in order to stand beneath the living room’s fifteen-foot ceiling. And more than that, Burnout saw something else:
A giant fist coming straight at him.
The fist connected in a shattering blow that sent Burnout crashing to the floor below.
Fighting to stay conscious, Burnout looked up to see his towering foe disappear. “Where ... ?” Burnout started to say.
As soon as Burnout opened his mouth, he felt something jump inside. Something that moved on his tongue. Something alive.
Gagging with disgust, Burnout tried to spit out the foreign object. But before he had the chance, he screamed. An excruciating pressure was forcing itself simultaneously against his jaw and the roof of his mouth.
Growing Boy was inside Burnout’s mouth.
And he was starting to grow.
For her part, Roxy—or, more precisely in the heat of battle, Freefall—didn’t hesitate when she saw the blonde girl who led Gen14 leaping toward her. Freefall gestured, canceling out the gravity beneath the girl, so that the leap sent her flying over Freefall’s head and into the wall behind her.
What Freefall didn’t expect was what happened next. The girl spun around in mid-leap and bent her knees to absorb the shock of impact with her legs. Without so much as a split-second pause, the girl sprang back off the wall, using the momentum to propel her upward as she somersaulted again to hit the ceiling with her feet. She thrust her feet out forcefully against the ceiling. The move doubled her momentum, sending her hurtling downward at breathtaking speed—straight at Freefall.
The entire maneuver had taken no more than a second or two. It was almost too fast for Freefall to follow, let alone ready a defense. All Freefall could do was try to dodge.
Freefall managed to get partially out of the way, so that the girl struck her only a glancing blow, before using her hands to turn the fall into a rolling series of flips that cushioned the landing. But with Freefall off-balance due to her evasive move, even a glancing blow was enough to knock her off her feet.
Even as she hit the floor, Freefall knew what she had to do. Instead of negating gravity, she had to quadruple it and pin her agile opponent to the floor. The girl was moving so fast, though, that it was hard to get a bead on her. Time after time, freefall shot out a rapid-fire series of heavy-gravity fields, but time after time, she missed.
The effort wasn’t wasted, though. Each time, Freefall got a little closer. She was starting to home in...
“Highwire, clear!” shouted the girl’s partner, a towheaded boy.
The girl did a quick backflip away from Freefall.
And suddenly, all of the Gen14 kids were gone.
Freefall looked around, confused. Her teammates looked equally surprised. But they were the only ones there.
“Huh?” she said. “Where’d they go?”
Wincing, Sarah picked herself up off the floor. “I don’t know. I guess we drove them off,” she said. “No thanks to you.”
Roxy did a double-take. “Wh-what?”
“Yeah,” Bobby agreed. Painfully, he rose to his knees, then his feet. “I mean, a little girl who bounces around a lot? And you can’t even stop her?” He shaped his fingers into an L and pressed them to his forehead. “What a loser.”
“Now-now, wait a minute!” Roxy said. “Don’t blame me! She was really fast!”
“Oh, forgive me,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “I see. She was fast. I somehow neglected to notice how fast she was. seeing as how I was getting blasted across the room at the time.”
“Hey! What’s up with you guys? Come on, cut me a little slack here!”
“Don’t sweat it, Rox,” Grunge said, as he picked bits of rubble out of his long hair. “The guys just lose it a little sometimes, what with you being the weak link and all.” '
Roxy was stunned. “W-weak link ... ?”
“Yeah, you know. It’s not like it’s a surprise or anything, right?”
“B-but...”
“I mean, lookit,” he continued. “There’s Bobby shoo-tin’ out fire all over the place. And Sarah—well, she’s got this whole weather thing going on. Whoof. And Kat’s all, like, super-amazon chick, punching out tanks with the bullets bouncin’ off her. And there I am, turning into bricks and solid steel and junk.
“And you? You make things light and heavy. It’s cute, but when we’re really throwin’ down with somebody, well, it’s just not in the same class, y’know?”
Roxy felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath her. Grunge wasn’t saying anything that she hadn’t always suspected herself. None of them were. But to hear it from their own mouths ...
“Is—is that what you really think?” Roxy asked Grunge. “Is that what you all think?”
Grunge shrugged. “Sorry, babe. We didn’t want to say anything before. We were keepin’ it on the down low, because, y’know, we felt sorry for you.”
.. S-sorry ... ?”
“Yeah. Kinda like why I was dating you and all.” Roxy tried to speak. But she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“But nothin’ lasts forever, right? I mean, geez, you wouldn’t even put out.”
Roxy could feel her lower lip quivering, as Kat leaned in close. (Had Kat been there a minute ago?) Kat spoke quietly, her face scrunched up at the awkwardness of the situation. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this, Roxy. But now that you know.. .. Well, maybe it would be better for everyone in the long run if you just left now.” “K-Kat...?... B-but you’re my sister!”
Kat winced. “Oh, right. That’s another thing. In the future, would you mind . . .
.. you know ...
.. not mentioning that to anyone?”
The tears were starting to flow down Roxy’s cheeks now.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything But you know how it is, right?” Kat said, with a little shrug and a knowing nod. “Thanks.”
Kat gave her a little pat on the shoulder and joined the others. With a final look of pity, they turned and started to walk away.
It was getting dark.
“W-wait!” Roxy yelled after them, sobbing. “H-how can you treat me like this?! How can you be so cruel?!”
A mirthless chuckle came from behind her. “Now, there’s a joke.”
Roxy turned to look at the speaker through her tears. It was a thin woman, a little more than twice Roxy’s age. Her eyes were a striking shade of green; her hair a sandy brown that had once been natural but now was helped along by regularly scheduled dye jobs to hide the gray. Her sunken cheeks and the lines that criss-crossed her forehead hinted at a life that hadn’t been easy. She took a long drag on a cigarette as Roxy let the shock of recognition sink in.
“M-Momma . . . ?” Roxy said.
Sure enough, her stepmother was sitting on the sofa with arms crossed and a disapproving air about her. “You’re a fine one to complain. After the way you treated me?”
&nb
sp; Roxy fell to her knees and threw herself at her stepmother’s feet. “Oh, Momma! I didn’t mean it! Any of it! I’m so, so sorry!”
“Too late for that, kid. Much too late.”
Roxy’s stepmother brushed her away and stood over her. The color drained from Roxy’s tear-streaked face as she looked pleadingly up at her. “To tell you the truth,” her stepmother continued, “I should probably thank you. Sure, it was hard at first. When you left, and then when you never returned my letters, it hurt.
“But after a while, I realized something—something that changed my life.
“With you gone, I was free! I was completely, totally free! I could go wherever I wanted. I could do whatever I wanted. For the first time in years, there was nothing to drag me down like a lead weight around my neck.” Instinctively, Roxy started to pull in her arms and legs, and curl into a ball. “... B-but, M-Momma ...,” she murmured quietly, “... I... I love you ...”
“Yeah, well, I used to think I did, too. It passes.”
.. Momma ... please ..
Her stepmother gave a huff. She bent down to look
Roxy straight in the eye—or she would, if Roxy’s eyes weren’t already shut tight. “Listen, Roxanne, this may be tough for you to hear, but it’s for your own good. So pay attention for once.
“You were a mistake. Your parents didn’t want you. Nobody wanted you. The only one who was even willing to tolerate you was me, and I was wrong.
“I’m glad you left! To tell you the truth, I wish you’d never shown up in the first place! You ruined my life!” She leaned in close to hiss the clincher:
“I’m sorry you were ever bom!”
From the depths of her soul, Roxy screamed.
“Nnnnoooooooooooo!”
Roxy’s howl cut through the raucous din of battle like a knife.
“Rox!” yelled Grunge. He looked away from his own foe to see Roxy curled up in a fetal position at the feet of the towheaded kid, the one they called Bogeyman.
He turned back to face Slash, whose arms had transformed into a pair of menacing blades that shone like razor-sharp scimitars. “Wicked mistake, dudes!” Grunge snarled. “I was gonna take it easy on you, seein’ as how you’re kids and all. But messin’ with my sweetie crosses the line!”
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