Ordinary Champions

by Hayden Thorne

  As I doubled my speed, I heard something from behind—behind and above, I realized. It was the violent rush of air caused by something large flying. Too late! I didn’t even have time to dive to the pavement.

  I was scooped up from the ground and flown off at a speed that made my stomach turn. The thick arms that held me to the point of choking were massive—abnormally so. One arm wrapped around my throat, the other, my waist. I struggled and kicked, my vision swimming as the pressure against my throat increased.

  “Well, hello again, my dear bargaining chip. You’ll come in handy as always,” the Trill said, his voice a distortion of what it normally was. Low, somewhat rumbling, and sounding as though more than one voice spoke at once, it scared the hell out of me. “Well, never mind. Not that it matters, really, whether or not Magnifitwit allows me escape in exchange for your life, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him honor his side of the deal. He’s far, far too virtuous for his own good, you see, and it’s terribly dull.” He laughed softly, maniacally. “I’ll still kill you and throw your miserable little body for them to save.”

  From somewhere behind me I heard shouts—Peter and Wade. I clawed frantically at the arms that felt like steel bands crushing me against the Trill’s chest, coughing and gasping. Balls of fire shot past us. One caught the Trill in the back, and we both lurched in the air, my neck nearly snapping from his body’s violent jerking. He never stopped, though, or slowed down. In fact, he just gathered more speed, laughing under his breath.

  Panic had taken over. I could barely breathe, and my strength was slipping. My desperate clawing had weakened to a helpless grip. God, I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t want to. My fading brain, fueled by my panic, fixed on memories—my parents, Liz, my school, my haiku, the garbage I hated dumping, Althea, Peter—I wanted my old life back. I wanted to be Regular Joe Blow again. I wanted to be grounded, lectured, nagged, praised, hugged, and kissed until I was too old for some of them. And the Trill—the psychotic bastard—wouldn’t let me.

  My stomach churned as scene after fleeting scene flashed before my mind’s eye. I felt something flow up from my gut—something warm trickle out of my nose as I fought to catch a breath. The Trill continued to fly off with me, shouting his taunts at the superheroes while Wade’s fire bombs exploded around us. Peter—I was sure he was being held back. If he were to try to come after the Trill, my neck would be broken before he reached us. It made sense.

  God, everything made too much sense when one was slowly being killed. I fought as hard as my failing strength would allow. The blood that trickled out of my nose continued its hot trail down my chin. The surge in my gut flared up—like dying embers being fanned to life—and wave after wave swept through me as though I were being gutted.

  From somewhere the Trill laughed—a hysterical, raging, psychopathic outburst that sounded worse than before. From somewhere Magnifiman roared.

  “No bargains!” he yelled. “I never bargain with trash!”

  “Oh-ho! I see your vocabulary’s expanded!” the Trill crowed. God, he sounded so crazy. Something struck him in his back—very likely another one of Wade’s fire bombs—and he choked on his laughter as his body again jerked violently. Did he slow down afterward? I couldn’t tell. He was probably in flames after taking a couple of direct hits, but I was too far gone to be aware of anything but what happened next.

  Space pulsed with noise and silence, and I opened my eyes in time to see my world vanish in a blinding burst of light, the heat following it tearing me apart. I thought I heard my own screams coming from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell for sure. From my left, a shadow appeared, growing larger and larger as it swept down toward us.

  Magnifiman, I was sure.

  Everything was intense warmth and light—almost as though my soul were being torn out of my body. Then the voices faded.

  Chapter 19

  There was fog—lots of it. Noise, but I couldn’t figure out what individual sounds were. Wind? Yeah, there was wind. The warm kind. Sometimes light crept in, and it wasn’t welcome. The darkness felt better, much more calming. It was hard fighting off brightness, but it kept coming at me, pressing through black curtains.

  Then came the sting in my arm. Well, sonofabitch, not again! Was it a needle? Was I just bitten by something? I flinched against the sensation, and I could feel it even as I continued to wave away the light. It was weird, like there was an army of ants crawling through my veins, spreading all over my body. It felt itchy, yet it didn’t. I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell exactly what.

  The light pressed on, and I had to turn away from it with a groan.

  “Sshh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  I thought I was floating, but once a billion eternities passed, I realized I was on my back, lying on something really hard. Pavement?

  “How long will the antidote take, Ms. Whitaker?”

  “Five, maybe ten minutes, but no more than that.”

  “Excellent, excellent. I’ll go see to young Mr. Jameson now.”

  “Thanks, professor. I’ll stay with Eric. Looks like he’s coming to.”

  Something sailed overhead. I heard a loud whoosh, with voices shouting, all coming from a distance. Was that gunfire? Someone—a girl—yelled something like “I have the formula! I’m injecting the virus into the computer now!”

  Another explosion, smaller and more distant-sounding, followed. Then came something that went Choom! And more voices. Shouts. It was like a war zone, I thought.

  Yeah, that was the first coherent thing that formed in my mind. I groaned again, this time from the soreness and the pain that throbbed up and down my body.

  “Eric…”

  I tried to swallow, but it hurt. My throat hurt. When I forced my eyes open, I saw smoke in the sky and Brenda’s face hovering above me. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust, and I just stared back at her while she observed me—frowning at first before breaking out in a small, relieved smile.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice quiet. It was bizarre, listening to her calm greeting while the world continued to destroy itself around us. “I’m not going to ask how you feel, hon, because it shows. Just lie back and rest, okay?”

  I couldn’t talk. My throat hurt so much that I couldn’t even manage a single squeak. I just nodded, offering her a weak smile in return as she gently combed my hair with her fingers. From somewhere nearby, the professor’s voice barely cut through the noise of battle or whatever else was going on. I didn’t understand a word he said, but I nearly laughed in relief when I heard Freddie talk. My friend was safe.

  “We’re going to get you and Freddie out of here soon,” Brenda continued. “Once you’re patched up, you’ll still need more doses of the antidote to clear up your system.”

  I whispered, “Noxious Nocturne,” and Brenda nodded.

  “Tests need to be run, of course,” she added, “to make sure that we’ve purged your system completely and to see if any lasting damage has been caused by it.”

  I flinched when another explosion ripped the air.

  Brenda looked unfazed. She even grinned, which made me wonder if she had a sadistic streak in her. “Your friends are pretty busy right now,” she said. “Don’t worry. I think they’re just about done, and, yeah, they’re safe.” She paused as her gaze moved all over my face. “The police are here, and the Trill’s men are taken in—all of them, hopefully. Those who survived, anyway. Spirit Wire just destroyed the Trill’s lab. She made his computer self-destruct. Too bad we weren’t able to save the Ficus trees.”

  I whispered, “Devil’s Trill.”

  “He’s—Eric, he’s dead.” She hushed me when I gave a start, pressing a hand against my chest. “Magnifiman went after him, when the Trill took you. You somehow blasted your way out of his hold, though, and Calais caught you when you fell. Magnifiman went all out once you were freed, and the Trill didn’t really do much to defend himself when he saw Magnifiman come.” Brenda shuddered, her expression turning grim and somewhat horr
or-stricken as she recalled what she saw. “I don’t know if you were aware of it the whole time, but the Trill was literally on fire, and he kept going. His behavior was bizarre, like he’d gone completely crazy and he was also high on drugs. He was getting blown apart, and he just…kept going.”

  I stared at her, feeling chills rush through my sore body. The Trill could’ve torn me to pieces completely in his state. Insanity and drugs—were those the effects of the Trill’s evolution coupled with the use of his Noxious Nocturne? He’d grown abnormally large, pumped up to an unnatural size, his powers enhanced like crazy as well. However, I never got to see the full extent of its strength beyond his busting his way through walls and doors when he came after me.

  “He’d overdosed,” I whispered, my eyes widening, and Brenda mouthed, “Bingo.”

  “There are limits to the powers these genetically-manipulated babies have,” she said. “They develop up to a certain point, from what we’ve observed, and that’s the extent of their enhancement. Anything beyond that? Well, let’s just say it’s sort of like blowing air in a balloon until it explodes. They might be genetically-enhanced, Eric, but they’re still human, and human properties that are untouched by genetic manipulation can only take so much superficial improvement, so to speak.”

  I shook my head, still stunned. “He wanted too much—to be a hundred times better than he was,” I whispered.

  “Supervillains never know when to stop. In the Trill’s case, it helped us more than it benefited him. His hideout’s gone, his lab’s destroyed, his experiments up in flames, his men flushed out of their holes or dead. I don’t know how far the heroes have gone in their cleanup, but I’ll find out when I talk to them.”

  I turned and looked at the smoke-covered sky when the sounds of a helicopter broke through the confusion.

  I realized then that the explosions had stopped, and the voices had fallen silent. The crackling of fire, the blowing of a warm wind, and the distant wailing of police sirens were the only things left of the Devil’s Trill and his ambitions.

  Brenda stroked my hair again. A heaviness came over me, but it was more of the soothing kind. I guess there was a sedative in the antidote she and the professor had injected in me. It was wonderful. I definitely needed sleep—hopefully one that lasted a week.

  I smiled weakly at her, and she gently lifted me up by my shoulders and rested my head on her lap. I winced at the momentary shot of pain that came from being handled, but I didn’t care. I was on my way back home.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “You’re a lucky boy, Eric,” she returned, and I almost laughed. She continued her stroking of my hair, lulling me, and before long I was finally asleep. The last thing that crossed my mind as I drifted off was the thought that smoke from a burning building never smelled so good.

  * * * *

  I didn’t recognize the train platform—not that I’d been on anything other than Vintage City’s subway and the aerial train. It was one of those old-fashioned open train platforms, with the long, one-story ticket office and train station on one side and the tracks on the other. People idly walked up and down the platform. Some of them lugged their bags around with them, and some had nothing more than purses or newspapers.

  From what I understood, the train itself was a fun ride. It traveled to places I knew nothing about, and when I prodded my grandmother about them, she just laughed and spouted off information that I couldn’t understand.

  “It’s a little hard to describe these places,” she said in the end, looking down at me and giving my hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ve never been to any of them before.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” I asked. “Are we going to one of those places, Grandma?”

  She glanced up and craned her neck, staring hard into the distance without answering my question. Not that I cared for it. I just wanted to be on this trip with her. I followed her gaze and saw nothing but an endless line of train tracks, flanked by trees and shrubbery, the sky cloudless above.

  As if on cue, a dark spot appeared on the horizon, and I felt my grandmother’s grip tighten around my hand. I looked back at her and marveled at the smile she had. It was almost child-like in its joy, and she seemed to glow in excitement. Her complexion, always pale and sensitive to the sun, appeared to sport a faint blush. She almost looked like a teenager again, and I thought for a second it was really my mom who stood on the platform with me.

  The train’s whistle blew, and before long, I could hear the rumbling of its wheels on the tracks.

  “I can’t wait to see those places, Grandma,” I said as the train drew close. Around me, people gathered their things and then waited.

  Grandma didn’t say anything. In fact, it seemed as though she’d completely forgotten about me. The look of intense expectation, a curious mixture of pleasure and anxiety, lit up her face, and her eyes remained fixed, unblinking, on the oncoming train.

  The train slowed as it reached the platform, the smoke blowing from its chimney trailing behind it in a very postcard-like way. It eventually stopped, the whistle blew once again, and doors up and down the train’s length flew open without anyone stepping out. In fact, no one was in the train, and I wondered. An old guy in a really outdated conductor’s uniform walked up and down the platform, helping passengers as they boarded.

  In the meantime, Grandma picked up her bag—just one small suitcase, which made me wonder where my own stuff was—and fished out her ticket. The conductor walked up to her, they exchanged greetings, and he took her ticket and helped her into one of the cars.

  I took a few steps forward but was blocked by the same conductor. He said nothing to me—just stepped in front just as I was about to enter the car—and then gave me a hard push, sending me sprawling on the platform and crying out in surprise.

  The train’s whistle blew, and the doors closed. The conductor had disappeared, and Grandma opened the window of her car to wave at me. She smiled just as the train began to pull away from the platform, and I started wailing for her.

  “It’s not your time yet, kiddo!” she called out, still waving and smiling. “Be good!”

  I was alone on the platform, watching the train chug away. Somehow I couldn’t speak, like my voice failed completely, and it was all I could do to sob hysterically for my grandmother. When the train vanished in the distance, I looked down and saw nothing but a pair of short, skinny legs poking out of too-long shorts, my favorite teddy bear hanging from one of my hands. Grandma gave me that doll for my fourth birthday, and I kept it for two years before I left it behind at the park.

  * * * *

  I couldn’t move. Once partial consciousness swept over me, I grew vaguely aware of being restrained but not in the sense that I was a prisoner. I could move my arms and legs, but they were seriously stiff, as though completely wrapped up with bandages.

  I waited for my eyes to clear a little more, which proved to be a pain in the ass, seeing as how my vision not only had returned to its messed up level of clarity, but it was also hampered by tears. I really hated crying in my sleep.

  It was something I did a lot of when I was a kid, but not after I turned eleven. The dream, though—it shook me up pretty badly.

  Blinking the tears away, I tried to glance down and saw that I was stretched out on a hospital bed, my arms bare but sporting a number of ugly bruises and cuts that were healing. Tubes attached me like a puppet to a couple of machines and one of those upside-down bag things filled with fluids whose names only doctors could pronounce. Mine was about halfway finished.

  The room was pretty quiet save for the soft, soft hum of the air conditioning. Something moved just off to my side, and I turned to find a couple of chairs and a small couch set against the wall. I squinted. Liz and Althea sat, totally drooping, on the chairs—fast asleep. Hands limp on their laps, their heads resting against the wall, they were actually passed out. How both girls managed to do that, given how horribly uncomfortable those chairs looked, I couldn’t
say. On the small couch sat Mom, her attention completely fixed on a magazine she was reading.

  Beside her sat a big box of tissues, and next to that sat a pile of used ones that she hadn’t thrown out yet.

  I tried to smile, but judging from the feeling of my face being half-swollen, I must’ve looked as though I was grimacing instead.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice coming out more like a croak.

  Chapter 20

  Glomp. I’d seen that word so many times all over the ‘net. It seemed to be pretty popular in different fan communities back in the early years of the new millennium, and I never understood what it meant other than a major pouncing of one human being by another. It was usually followed by a squeal of delight from the glomper. I could only guess glomping also involved a lot of squeezing or tight hugging, most likely with some jiggling thrown in for effect, or maybe as an effect of intense excitement that brought about the glomping in the first place.

  Whatever.

  At any rate, I was glomped in my hospital bed.

  By the time Mom, Liz, and Althea had satisfied themselves with squeezing the life out of me—and nearly ripping some of the tubes off my body—I was lying in a drenched hospital gown.

  “It’s great to see you guys, too,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. My throat felt dry and scratchy still, so I tried to save it as much as I could.

  Mom tried to say something but only managed to burst into more tears and press kisses on my forehead. She held my free hand—the hand that didn’t have stuff attached to it, that is—and squeezed it gently over and over again.

  Beside her stood Liz, her eyes red-rimmed as she smiled at me. At the foot of my bed stood Althea. She looked a little tired and somewhat haggard, but she flashed me her biggest smile and just kept quiet, allowing Mom and Liz to take over the conversation between us.

  How was I feeling? Was I hungry? Was I hurting anywhere? Did I remember everything that happened to me?