Ordinary Champions

by Hayden Thorne

  I didn’t even have to think about it. Instinct kicked in, and I immediately powered up, warm energy bursting out of me from head to toe, catching and cocooning me in a thick swirl of pulsing air. My vision once again heightened, and my hands nearly shook from the intensity of the power that came alive in them.

  Beside me, the twins powered up as well. I could hear Jamie’s electricity crackling, sending off a faint smell of smoke and, I guess, ozone. Jessie’s wind power was quieter, but in no way was she less potent than her sister. She floated, her figure distorted and fading in and out of focus in the middle of a whirlwind that was equally frightening and impressive.

  Before us the rain of broken glass finally stopped, and in flew Magnifiman, Calais, and Miss Pyro.

  I noted—at least I thought I saw—the way Calais and Miss Pyro flew in, one after the other, with Calais holding Miss Pyro’s hand. But was he, really? Once inside the auction room, they weren’t joined in any way. What was going on? Was I imagining things? I didn’t know what I’d seen, let alone what to think. Miss Pyro hovered beside him as they took their positions against me and the Deathtrap Debutantes. I didn’t quite know who stared at whom longer, but it certainly felt like a contest of wills, with Calais locking eyes with me. I couldn’t read his face—not with his mask on, anyway. I couldn’t even sense anything coming from him. Better to harden himself against the inevitable showdown against his ex, I guess, which was good enough for me. What better way to rise above the emotion of the moment, eh?

  I desperately wanted to be distant and unfeeling to get this fight out of the way, but something was once again taking over. I could feel it. What little control I managed to muster up, given all my earlier calculations as to the best way to hold the superheroes off without hurting anyone, was gone in a second.

  I couldn’t understand what was happening. It felt like being sucked into a strong patch of quicksand, and every ounce of strength I spent clawing my way out only served to pull me farther and farther down.

  “The game stops here, you juvenile delinquents (ay, caramba!),” Magnifiman declared, striking his usual one-fist-on-hip pose while jabbing a thick, accusing finger at us, but his voice sounded so distant and muffled. At this point the trembling that was concentrated on my hands had spread out to the rest of my body. I shook; I couldn’t speak, couldn’t react, couldn’t fight against what had taken hold of me.

  The world had vanished—had shrunk to one quick moment—and all I could see were those few fleeting seconds of Calais holding Miss Pyro’s hand. Real or not, that was the only world I had.

  “I’m above that,” I ground out frantically as I sank deeper and deeper, my own voice fading in the vortex of swirling energy, electricity, and wind. “I can’t let that control me. I can’t.”

  The world exploded in a blinding flash of yellow and red, and I heard someone shout something—or scream, I couldn’t tell for sure. It sounded like my voice, but it might not have been. It sounded too desperate, too hopeless, too miserable.

  Chapter 5

  Jamie attacked first. She sent a powerful electric stream that burned through the air with a terrific crackling. It flew fast at Magnifiman, but he proved to be faster and ducked just in time, flying a little ways off to my right.

  “Bad aim!” Miss Pyro laughed, cracking her fire whip and snapping it at Jamie, who tried to dodge but was a little slow. She raised an arm to protect herself, but I blasted her with a protective energy cloak, which killed Miss Pyro’s whip end as it burrowed inside the thick, warm air.

  Jessie yelled something—she sort of sounded like a female Bruce Lee, now that I think about it—and shot a series of wind blades at Magnifiman, who was just launching himself at us. Her wind blades looked like super-fast boomerangs, but they were made of majorly tricked-out bursts of wind with a deadly edge. They zipped through the air but went smack against the air distortion caused by Calais as he leaped between Magnifiman and the blades, and the air literally exploded as everything collided. Below us, the lifeless victims were showered with elemental debris that, while impressive to see, was pretty much harmless, though those who were under Miss Pyro’s line of fire were unlucky enough to end up with slightly scorched clothes and hair.

  I turned and blasted Calais with a massive energy bubble as he hurtled toward me. His speed nearly died when he penetrated the warm mass, his form looking like a distorted shadow, kicking and punching away at his temporary prison. I immediately flew off just as he was swallowed up, taking myself out of harm’s way, while giving Jessie a hand and shooting an energy wave at Magnifiman.

  “Hey, cool move there!” Jamie cried as she launched herself in the air, her mind now bent on destroying Miss Pyro, who seemed to read her mind and flew up to meet Jamie as well.

  Electricity and fire slammed into each other in a roar of girlish fury and more fireworks and lightning-like plasma stuff that showered everyone with a whacked out fountain of light and color.

  “Eric, don’t do this,” Peter’s voice urged me, distant and muffled as he continued to grapple with my rapidly fading energy bubble.

  Miss Pyro hauled and punched Jamie with a flame fist, sending half of the Deathtrap Debutantes sailing across the room and crashing against the far wall in an explosion of electricity and a howling rage. Jamie tumbled to the floor in a flailing mass of supermodel arms and legs, but I could hear her cussing like a sailor as she fought to right herself. She miraculously landed on her feet, turning a bruised face in Miss Pyro’s direction as she re-energized.

  Jessie dodged Magnifiman’s fist with super-light and airy speed, turning herself over like a cat in mid-air and, with another battle cry, shot more wind blades at her enemy. Magnifiman hissed as he ducked too late, and two blades sliced past his shoulder, cutting a couple of lines into his massive and ultra-manly triceps. The lines turned a deep red, but he showed no signs of pain. With a powerful heave of his muscular legs, he launched himself toward Jessie by kicking against the wall.

  He caught her before she could move away, his large figure wrapping around her slender body. His momentum sent them both crashing against the wall, and bursts of knife-like air currents went Poof! as Jessie cried out.

  I turned and aimed at the two, powering up again to help Jessie with stronger energy blasts against Magnifiman.

  Before I could shoot anything out, I was caught, held, and flown out of the fight scene through one of the windows and way, way into the night. The arms holding me tight didn’t slacken. I gritted my teeth and sent pulse after pulse of energy blasts out of my body to weaken Calais’ grip, so I could shoot him away in another bubble. No dice. He learned the hard way the first time around, and he wasn’t about to let go so easily now, it looked like.

  Still pulsing with energy, I dimly felt myself hurled in a tangle of arms and legs through space to only God knew where.

  My stomach went through endless somersaults from the crazy speed, but before long I felt myself crashing against something hard. Splintering wood and clanging metal filled my ears, and pain seared through me. The world—already reduced to melting streaks of color and light—turned around and around as we tumbled through piles of crates and barrels.

  It seemed to take forever, but the world eventually stopped. I was lying on something hard and rough, wincing from the pain of getting smashed and the debris that dug into my back as Calais’ weight pinned me down.

  My powers had weakened a little, and I had to struggle to re-energize. The results were pathetic, to say the least.

  Energy pulsed from the deepest point in my belly, but it only coughed up anemic bursts. My breathing was hard and ragged. Little by little, I realized Calais and I were so tightly tangled with each other I didn’t know where I ended and where he began.

  My arms were growing numb. He was holding me down with a grip of steel, and my circulation being cut off forced my powers to sputter and weaken around my hands. I felt my fingers grow cold and lifeless.

  “Get off me, Peter,” I hissed.
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br />   His face was pressed against the side of my head, and he said nothing at first, grunting a little whenever I struggled to fight him off. The more I bucked and kicked and re-energized, though, the more tightly he held me down, and I could hear him panting tiredly against my ear.

  “Get the hell off me!”

  “No,” he finally hissed back. “I’m taking you back with me, Eric, even if it means knocking you out.”

  “You can’t,” I returned, gritting my teeth against the icy pain that was now shooting through my arms. I could feel small energy surges running through my limbs—pushing, pushing past the constricted area where Peter gripped me.

  My blood vessels felt like they were exploding, as though they were rapidly filling with too much blood and too many energy waves. I turned and stared through the fog in my eyes and saw an exposed part of my arm glowing white, with veins and stuff gradually coming out and pressing against my skin, a throbbing network of red and blue.

  “You can’t,” I whispered again, biting back a groan of pain and fury. “I’m stronger than you think. I’m stronger than you want to admit.” I sputtered and threw my head back with a stifled cry, and something warm bubbled and burst from my right nostril. It trickled down the side of my face. Another surge of energy swept through me—stronger this time, but with more pain edging it. It was blood. I knew it.

  “Eric, we can help you. Althea’s been working with her mother and my parents to come up with an antidote for you,” he said. He lay rigid atop me, probably not even realizing he was killing me with his weight—literally. “Please. Work with us. You’re curable. We’re not. You still have hope. We don’t.”

  For a moment, I felt myself—like, my real self—coming up to the surface, just as I’d been submerged in quicksand before this. When I spoke, I didn’t recognize my voice. It sounded so young and scared and so far away.

  “Peter—I can’t fight it—something’s taking over—I can’t help myself—”

  He finally raised his head and looked down on me. I couldn’t see his eyes, as even with the dull sheen of his mask, the rest of his face was all in shadows.

  “You’re bleeding…”

  “It’s…coming back,” I whispered. “It’s coming back. I…feel so torn up. I don’t know who I am…anymore. I’m trying to do something…good with this…Peter…but I don’t know…if I can control it.” I winced. “It’s coming…back. It’s taking over…again.”

  “You can fight it. Trust me, Eric, you’re far stronger than that. Remember? You just told me a second ago. Please stay with me.” Cautiously releasing one arm, he started to fumble around his side for something. Seriously, did he have secret pockets somewhere in that tight-ass spandex uniform of his?

  I shook my head, my voice failing me again as I felt myself sink back into a thick, sandy void. The only thing I could feel then was the blood that continued to trickle out of my nose. I must have lost something at that moment because I couldn’t sense anything. Just cold. Numbness.

  “Help me…help me…”

  And a distant, dull pain that faded with every passing second.

  “Eric? Eric, you can fight it, whatever that is. Ssshh, I’m here. I’m here. I’m going to take you back, but I need you to stay still,” Peter said, his voice fading in and out. His hand appeared, holding something—a small blinky gadget that looked like a narrow, souped up cell phone. I heard a few really faint clicks and then a tiny buzz. Then he moved it closer to my arm, aiming it like a gun.

  “Peter!”

  Energy bubbled in my stomach again, and it rippled out—a violent, explosive spasm that seemed to burn every organ, every tissue in me. I blinked, my vision vanishing quickly. I let out a loud cry as whiteness filled my world. Heat bore down on me, enveloping and surging and suffocating. I tried to hold on to Peter—reach out to him, begging him to help me—but he wasn’t there anymore.

  * * * *

  “He’s a bit of a mess, but that comes with the territory, I’m afraid.”

  “Want me to tweak the formula some more, boss?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. Let’s hold off on that for now and see how the boy manages his powers next time around.”

  “Should I turn on the music?”

  “Yes, yes. His coding’s scrambled—more so than before.”

  “Better to patch it up with Band-Aids, right?”

  A sigh. “I’m afraid so. It’s too dangerous to start over.”

  “Or overwrite the current coding in his system. Do you think he used his power for something it ain’t meant for, boss?”

  Another sigh. “Maybe. It took him longer than I’d planned to get me out of the asylum. Heaven only knows what he’d been doing with his powers all that time.”

  “Stupid kid. We shoulda went for someone over eighteen.”

  “Does adulthood guarantee maturity, Mr. Bowles?”

  Silence. “Okay, I gotcha.”

  “The music, if you please. The boy needs it before the coding gets scrambled even more.”

  “Yessir.”

  I couldn’t move. I was stuck in some black tunnel, immobilized. Little by little, the voices grew clearer, and with it the lifting of some epic weight off me. I grew aware that I was still lying down, but on something nicer and softer now. My eyelids felt heavy, and my mouth was dry. A dull headache throbbed, and it was almost in time with the equally dull pain that wracked my body all over.

  I tried to move. My limbs felt like granite.

  Around me the voices continued, but they eventually died down, along with footsteps that faded before being cut off by the sound of a door shutting.

  Then music came on—light, airy, soothing. Classical music with a violin solo. The melody was gentle and sweet, almost like a lullaby. As the music progressed, the pain faded and finally vanished, and I blinked my eyes open.

  I looked around in a bit of a daze and saw that I was back in my room in the Trill’s hideout. Nothing looked out of place, but there was a tray of cookies and tea sitting on the table I usually used when I did my homework.

  I raised my hands and looked at them. There seemed to be nothing wrong. I saw no bruises or scratches or any signs of the creepy changes that they were going through when Peter held me down. I let my arms drop and waited, taking several deep breaths and feeling the calming effects of the music wash over me. Was it meant to screw around with my head some more? Yeah, very likely, but I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass. I was so tired. So bone-numbingly tired. I was more than happy to let music of any kind carry me off and wash away the crap that had taken a hold of me in thick, crusty layers. I drifted in and out of sleep for the next hour or so. Eventually, I woke up and stayed awake.

  I had to get up to eat. I didn’t know what time it was, since we were hiding underground, and my watch—both my old one and the tricked-out one that the Trill gave me—were gone. The candles were nicely lit, and I saw new ones had replaced the distorted stumps that I’d been using.

  My head and body felt much better, and I wasn’t overcome by anything funky when I stood up, swaying a little on my feet. Screw the night. Screw the world. My stomach gurgled, and I tottered over to the table and plopped my sorry ass down on the chair, my world filled with nothing but Earl Grey tea and stacks of the most delicious cookies I’d ever had. The tea was hot, so I imagined someone had had to replace it when he saw I was still asleep. I tried to avoid looking at the computer the whole time. In fact, I tried to avoid thinking of anything else but the tray of food before me.

  I couldn’t remember how many cookies I ate, but there was one that contained a surprise for me. I’d refilled my teacup for the billionth time, I was sure, and pulled out another cookie from the stack.

  I bit into it and nearly yelped in surprise and pain when something hard cracked against my teeth.

  “What the—” I gasped, covering my mouth as I stared at the broken cookie that I’d just dropped back onto the tray.

  Sure enough, just peeking out from the bitten par
t was something small and round. I stared at it for a moment, surprised, and then tore it out of the cookie and held it up.

  It was a small ring with a blue stone in it: a tiny blue stone embedded in the gold band. Attached to the ring by a thread that was caked with cookie bits was a small strip of paper, which was the size of one of those prediction things tucked inside Chinese fortune cookies.

  Wear me, it said. That was it.

  Chapter 6

  “Oh, great,” I muttered, staring at the ring. “Whose side are you on?”

  The ring said nothing back, though.

  “Snob.” I snorted and set it down next to my tray. I continued to munch away and chase down cookie bits with very genteel sips of tea, my gaze fixed on the ring as my poor, overworked brain stumbled around on wobbly legs—or the closest thing that brains had to legs when it came to thinking stuff out. Anyway, my wobbly brain tried to do a hopeless chase after questions that now piled on top of each other without even a quick breather in between.

  Who? What? When? How? Why? WTF?

  Was this the angst that came with being a superhuman? I kind of understood what it was when I was with Peter. I mean, he always groused about the insane burden, the unfair expectations, the ongoing fear of screwing up so badly and seeing other people get hurt as a result of, well, imperfection.

  Little by little, itty bitty bits of our most recent conversation came to the fore—conversation that we’d had while he’d pinned me down on the dirty-ass roof of some building somewhere in Vintage City. I forced myself to place everything in perspective, but it was like shoving a hand down my own throat, grabbing hold of my innards, and literally turning myself inside out from there. A pretty disgusting mental image, but way cool at the same time. I wished I’d thought of it ages ago and used it on Liz, but I’d have to wait till I was back home to gross her out with it.

  You’re curable. We’re not.

  Another conversation made itself heard in my mind. A conversation not between me and Peter, but between me and a new friend—a trusted ally, who was very much like me. An Olympia.