“Imagine my surprise when I opened my mouth to cry out in confusion as my body shifted and morphed. Instead of crying out, I let out a roar that made the entire house shudder. The roar was followed by a stream of fire that blew a hole right through the wall. Once I realized what was happening to me and that I was a Metahuman, it struck me that the universe was giving me a second shot at Trey. I ripped a hole through the roof of Frank’s house and took flight. I didn’t know where Trey was, but he was easy to find. It turns out that dragons have an acute sense of smell. Tracking him down was as easy as following the stench of a skunk.
“We fought again.” Isaac’s hands clenched and unclenched, as if he was reliving the battle. “Though I couldn’t believe it at the time, Trey beat the crap out of me again despite my dragon form. I later found out he was so adept in the use of his powers because Frank had been paying an unscrupulous Hero to train his worm of a son to prepare him to enter the Academy. Trey has been planning for years to get a high-paying gig with one of the big Hero teams, like the Sentinels or the Pacific Protectors. Frank had happily opened his wallet to help his dirtbag son achieve his ambitions.
“In our fight, Trey knocked me unconscious. When I awoke, I was in human form, and once again in the hospital. I’ve no doubt Trey would have killed me if a death wouldn’t have been a black mark on his record when the time came for him to try to get his Hero’s license.”
“Frank tried to get me prosecuted battery and for unlicensed use of Metahuman abilities. Fortunately, the District Attorney had more compassion for a kid who had just lost his sister than she had a need for Frank’s campaign contributions. She refused to prosecute me, especially since it was my first Metahuman transformation and I didn’t yet have control over my powers.
“Since I had attacked his son not once, but twice, and he couldn’t get me thrown into jail, Frank gave Mom an ultimatum: either she had to throw me out of the house, or he would throw both her and me out.” Isaac snorted derisively. “I guess my mother wasn’t inspired by the example of the District Attorney who had let me off the hook. After listening to all this, you won’t be at all surprised to hear my bags were packed before I even got home from the hospital. I was shipped off to live with my paternal grandparents. I stayed with them until I entered the Academy.”
“So you want to become a Hero for what reason, then?” Neha asked. “To get revenge on Trey? You don’t need to become a Hero to do that.”
Isaac shook his head.
“No. Like I said earlier, I idolized my Dad when I was a kid and wanted to be just like him. I always figured I’d grow up to be a cop. But when I developed my powers, I decided I would try to become a Hero instead. If you think about it, a lot of Heroes are essentially cops with superpowers anyway. And, thanks to our powers, we can help a heck of a lot more people than a cop ever could. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to say Trey trying to become a Hero didn’t play a role in my decision. I figured if that asshole could do it, I could do it too. Plus, I didn’t like the fact that he beat me up twice. I never wanted to be in the position where someone like him could hurt me or someone I loved again. Sure, I’ve daydreamed about taking him on a third time. But that’s not why I’m trying to get my license.”
“Why haven’t you told us all this before now?” I asked. We had asked Isaac before why he decided to try to become a Hero, but he had always sidestepped the subject.
Isaac shrugged.
“The way I was raised, I guess. Dad was an old-school kind of guy. He used to tell me, ‘The only thing a man accomplishes by complaining or talking about the past is to convince others that you’re not in control.’ I don’t like to talk about this kind of stuff. It makes me feel weak. I don’t like that feeling. I’ve felt it too often in my two run-ins with Trey.”
It was true, I thought. Though Isaac was easily the most talkative of the three of us, he rarely spoke of his emotions or how he felt about something. Isaac was about as chatty as the Sphinx when it came to what was in his heart. In a flash of insight, I realized his humor was as much of a mask as the one on his face was.
The room fell silent for a bit as Isaac’s revelations sank in. I thought about the fact we all had some seriously messed up backgrounds.
Neha’s mother had been murdered by an enemy of her supervillain father Doctor Alchemy. That murder had forced him off his rocker, and put him on the path of attempted world domination. Then she had been homeless for a while.
Isaac’s policeman father had been killed in the line of duty. Then his mother had fallen into the clutches of a man who probably thought of the Antebellum South as the good old days. That same man had a son who raped Isaac’s sister, leading to her death.
And my story wasn’t one out of a fairytale, either. Until I developed superpowers, I had been bullied most of my life. My mother had died of brain cancer when I was twelve. Then my father died in a fire set by a supervillain trying to kill me. Someone apparently was still trying to kill me for reasons I still did not understand.
No wonder the three of us had become fast friends at the Academy. Collectively, our pasts were a hot mess. I guess the cliché was right: Misery really did love company.
I said, “The three of us are like something out of a Dickens novel.”
Neha said, “Yeah, and you know how the chapter about you have to fight someone to the death should start out? It was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times.”
“It’ll be the best of times when Theo wins,” Isaac said.
“If he wins,” Neha said.
“The one good thing about you knowing Trey is you can tell me about his powers,” I said to Isaac. “I saw him create a tornado in the fight against the robots. I know from our experience in the mall he can also generate fire.” I had a sudden thought. “First Iceburn and his fire powers, now Trey. If God is trying to make a point about how life is sometimes hellish, I wish He’d lay off. I get it already.”
Isaac said, “His code name Elemental Man is a reference to the elements the ancient Greeks believed made up everything.”
“Air, fire, water, earth, and aether,” Neha supplied.
“Exactly. Aether, of course, doesn’t exist. At least not how the Greeks envisioned it. As for the other so-called elements, Trey can manipulate them. As much as I hate him, he’s a pretty powerful guy.”
“Does he have any weaknesses?” I asked hopefully. If so, maybe I could borrow a cup of Kryptonite from somebody.
Isaac shook his head. “Other than the fact his arrogance makes him overconfident, he doesn’t have any weaknesses I know of.”
Fantastic, I thought. The only thing worse than a death match with a trained Meta is a death match with a powerful, trained, confident Meta.
My dismay must have been evident on my face because Isaac hastened to add, “But I have no doubt you can take him.”
“You said before this is Trey’s third time taking the Trials,” Neha said to Isaac. “What happened the other two times?”
“Beats me. Trey didn’t stand for the Trials the first two times until long after I was kicked out of the house. All I know is that he Apprenticed with some Hero in Texas after he graduated the Academy. It’s not like we get together over coffee to giggle about girls, chat about old times, and talk about why he flunked the Trials.” Isaac’s eyes bore into mine. “That’s another reason why you have to take him on. A guy like that has no business getting a Hero’s license. He ought to be in jail, not flying around with legal authorization to use his powers. If you forfeit the match, what happens with Trey?”
Neha and I both looked blank.
“Exactly,” Isaac said. “You don’t know, and I don’t either. Maybe he gets a pass to the next test if you forfeit. He’d be one step closer to his license. Or, maybe he just gets assigned another opponent. You’re an Omega-level Meta, Theo. Of all of us Hero candidates, you’re the one with the best shot at defeating Trey.”
Neha shook her head. “I’m just as sorry as I can be a
bout what happened to you and your family, Isaac. Theo and I knew Trey was a tool, but we had no idea just how much of a tool. Clearly the Guild needs to revamp its psychological testing if a guy like him can stand for the Trials. But it’s not Theo’s job to keep a bad seed from becoming a Hero.”
“And I say it is,” Isaac said. “One of the jobs of a Hero is to protect the public. Keeping Trey from donning a Hero’s cape is a public service. It’ll be like putting down a rabid dog before he can bite again.”
“You’re operating under the assumption Theo will win. No offense, Theo, but I’m not so confident. Not when your life is on the line. Trey beat you up, Isaac. Twice. What makes you think Theo will be any different?”
“Trey beat me up before I was trained,” Isaac said stubbornly. “If I had to face him again, things would be different now. Just like they will be for Theo.”
“Your understandable hatred of this guy is blinding you to the risk Theo will be running. Theo shouldn’t chance getting himself killed. He also can’t risk killing someone himself. If he did kill, he would be violating everything we’ve been taught about being Heroes.”
“Normally I’d agree,” Isaac said. “But this fight is sanctioned by the Guild. That makes it okay.”
Neha shook her head stubbornly.
“You’d never be saying that if it were someone other than Trey. What the Guild is asking Theo to do is murder, plain and simple. He can’t do it.”
I sat on the bed next to Neha. Her and Isaac’s argument continued to swirl around me as I thought. They were just repeating the same old arguments, anyway. Though I appreciated their input, it was my butt on the line, not theirs. I would have to be the one to make the decision as to what to do.
If I fought Trey and won, I would have murdered someone. Isaac could call it self-defense and whatever in the heck else he wanted until he was blue in the face, but that’s what it would be: murder. If I wasn’t willing to murder Iceburn, the man who had killed my father, how could I murder Trey? Yes, he was a rapist. As far as I was concerned, a rapist and child molester deserved death, not a Hero’s cape. But that didn’t mean I should be the one to do the killing. Who made me judge, jury and executioner?
On the other hand, if I fought Trey and lost, I would be dead. If I had a voice in the matter, I’d try to come back and haunt Trey. I didn’t think it likely I’d have a voice in the matter.
Kill, or be killed.
Neither was appealing.
That left door number three: Quitting. Neha was right. I didn’t have to do this. I could quit the Trials before facing Trey. Yes, that would mean I’d never get my Hero’s license, the goal I had been working towards with single-minded devotion the past few years. On the other hand, quitting guaranteed my survival. Maybe it was better to be a live jackal than a dead lion.
Trey was a big, strong, imposing-looking guy. I had the sudden mental image of him pinning me down and twisting my head off my neck like it was a bottle cap.
I shuddered at the thought. Door number three was looking better and better.
Trey reminded me so much of the people who had beaten me up, bullied, and tried to bully me in the past. The Three Horsemen at the University of South Carolina at Aiken. Hank Thune, who called me white trash and beat me up in the third grade because my family didn’t have money like his did. Chet Buck, who had thrown me to the ground and pummeled me when I was in high school, not because I had done anything to him, but because I was small and weak.
I’d say there were countless other bullies, but they weren’t countless. I knew exactly how many of them there were. I knew exactly what each of them looked like, and I could recite their names on command. Their names and faces were seared into my brain like a brand of shame and embarrassment. Trey was cut from the same cloth as those other guys. He was but the latest in a long line of dirtbags.
As Isaac and Neha continued to argue, I had a sudden thought—quitting the Trials wasn’t appealing simply because it was arguably the moral thing to do.
It was appealing because I feared Trey.
I feared him just as I had feared the Three Horseman, Chet Buck, Hank Thune, and of all the guys who had bullied me in the past. Despite my powers, all my studying, all my training, how much I had changed since entering Hero Academy, a scrawny little boy still lived inside of me who was terrified of having to stand up to a bully.
Maybe the Old Man was right. Maybe I simply wasn’t tough enough to become a Hero.
After all I’ve been through? All the work? All the sacrifices? was my next thought.
Oh, hell no!
I stood abruptly.
“That’s enough,” I said to my squabbling friends. “I’ve made my decision.”
Neha and Isaac turned to focus on me.
“What are you going to do?” Neha asked.
“I’m going to go into the test and kick Trey’s ass,” I said.
Despite my outward bravado, the scrawny, scared boy who still lived inside of me was dubious.
Maybe he was right.
But, like the Old Man, that scared little boy could go fuck himself. Despite my fear, I’d do what I had to do.
CHAPTER 20
“I’ve got to hand it to you Kinetic—I didn’t think you’d have to stones to actually face me. I’m impressed. It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do to advance to the next test, though.”
I could have said something back to Hitler’s Youth, but I chose not to. I was concerned I’d reveal my fear if I responded. Instead I stared Hitler’s Youth down, doing my best fearless Hero impersonation. As they said, fake it until you make it.
If I tried to speak, having my teeth chatter would expose my Heroic facade as a fraud.
Hitler’s Youth stood yards away from me in a large, flat clearing. Despite the fact I now knew his real name, it was easier to think of him as Hitler’s Youth. Maybe it would make it easier to do what I needed to do. In wars throughout history, men dehumanized their opponents. Thinking of your enemy as not being like you, as being the “other,” made it easier to kill him. In World War Two, for example, American soldiers often didn’t call the Germans Germans or the Japanese Japanese. Instead they were the Krauts and the Japs.
If a psychological tactic was good enough for World War Two’s G.I. Joe, it was good enough for me. I’d continue to think of Hitler’s Youth as just that despite the fact I knew his name. Nuclear blasts set off by the American Metahuman John Tilly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought World War Two to an end. I would’ve liked to further emulate G.I. Joe by dropping nuclear warheads on Hitler’s Youth’s perfectly groomed blonde hair. Alas, I was fresh out of warheads. If Batman were real, he’d probably have a couple of nuclear bombs in his utility belt for an occasion just like this one. Unfortunately, us both being orphans was the only thing Batman and I had in common.
Normally, I would have given up both of my pinkie fingers in exchange for Batman’s Batmobile and Bruce Wayne’s bevy of busty bikini babes. Now that I was staring at Hitler’s Youth, I’d turn my nose up at all that fun stuff in favor of a big BatBomb instead.
It’s weird the stuff that goes through your mind when you’re staring potential death in the face. You think of Batman and World War Two history and scantily-clad gold diggers. Your life definitely doesn’t flash before your eyes. That was a myth. The fact I knew that for certain demonstrated I had lived a pretty crazy life since I had left the farm.
Hitler’s Youth and I certainly weren’t in South Carolina now. The group of trees over to my right sported leaves that were every color of the rainbow. Whatever made them those colors, it sure as heck wasn’t chlorophyll. Wherever the Guild’s portal had delivered me and Hitler’s Youth only moments before, it definitely wasn’t Earth.
It was Earth’s close cousin, though. The sky was blue, though a bit more vividly blue than Earth’s sky. Even the sun was yellow. A large stream was to the left of us, and another tree line was off in the distance past that. Unlike the leaves on the tr
ees, the grass underneath my feet was green. However, the grass wasn’t greener, metaphorically speaking, than it was in the Guild complex on the other side of the Portal. I wondered if I would see the complex or my friends again.
It was a bright, cloudless, hot day. Despite a slight breeze, I felt sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I didn’t know if I was sweating due to the heat, or due to fear. It was probably six of one, half a dozen of the other.
The sun was almost directly overhead, beating down on my uncovered head. The appropriateness of it being high noon was not lost on me. I had watched a lot of old westerns while living with Amazing Man. If he were here now to refer to me as Gary Cooper, I would know what he meant.
Other than my cape, which I had left off because I figured it might get in the way, I wore my full costume. Hitler’s Youth had on his full costume sans cape as well. The metallic gray in his costume glinted a little in the sun, accenting the swell of his well-developed muscles. His blonde hair looked almost white in the day’s brightness. Not a hair was out of place. Hitler’s Youth certainly looked the part of the all-American Hero. As much as I hated to admit it, he looked more like a Hero than I probably ever would even if I started mainlining steroids and carried a Captain America shield. Unlike me, Hitler’s Youth probably wasn’t sweating like a pig eyeing the slaughterhouse. He probably didn’t sweat, ever. He probably glistened. Or, maybe he just sparkled like those vampires that were all the rage.
An Overlord node was to the side and overhead, recording everything that took place. A countdown glowed green underneath it, ticking down the seconds until the test officially began.
What was Overlord’s obsession with countdowns? Maybe Overlord had been a stopwatch in a past life.
Add timepieces to the list of strange things my bizarro brain fixated on when my life was on the line.
Overlord’s countdown turned red once it hit the ten second mark. Oddly, as the seconds ticked towards zero, I calmed down considerably. I had drilled endlessly for fights against other Metahumans both in the Academy and under the Old Man’s tutelage. Yeah my conscious mind might be terrified, but my muscle memory and instincts weren’t. Fighting off another Metahuman was now as automatic and unthinking as breathing. I was ready for this. I could do this.
The Omega Superhero (Book 2): Trials Page 17