by R. J. Ross
“She’s got a thing for Century, too, doesn’t she?” Nico says.
“Don’t remind me,” Superior says. “Your mother has a definite type. So we’re in limbo until you hear back from Knight?”
“Or I follow whatever leads I have here,” he says, holding up a tiny computer for his dad to see. “I didn’t destroy ALL of them.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Superior says. “Does Mastermental know you went to England?”
“I’ve got a teleportation watch,” Nico says. “You, of all people, should know just how handy that is. How’s your summer resort coming, Pop?”
“We’ve almost got the main building finished,” Superior says.
“I’m going to want to borrow it when the wedding is over, if it’s going by your in-game plans.”
“Talk to your mother.”
“I will, thanks,” Nico says before hanging up. He stares at the screen, and then brings up the image of Skye on it, seeing a look of fear in her eyes that he hasn’t seen since he first met her. HE had made her nervous, when she first became family, but Tatiana and Liz hadn’t, and Liz was the one that almost killed her. She had been worried about Superior, too, if he recalls correctly.
Maybe, he thinks, feeling stunned, Skye is afraid of men? No, she goes up against men all the time, Voltdrain, Flameblaster—in fact, she’d followed Flameblaster up to Central, right? So… what sort of person would make an S-class escape artist like Skye scared? Is he about to go up against someone on the same level as him?
But he could have sworn that the tech was norm created. The connection between it and SITEC is obvious, right? So… the real question is what sort of norm can make the one and only Skystep scared?
***
The buzzing of my phone’s alarm clock jerks me awake. For half of a second I stare at an unfamiliar ceiling, my mind recalling where I am. I look over at the pillows that line the side of my bed next to me, grinning a bit. Each one is a picture of a South Branch cape—three of them are the Deadly Darlin’s, two of them are the Nemeses. They make me VERY happy. I get up and look at the room that looks like a rainbow threw up in it. I grin even wider. Skye had definitely gone all out for me!
“Carla?” I hear Whitney ask from my door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure!” I say, getting up and getting dressed as the door slowly opens. By the time she can see in my room, I’ve already gotten my shoes on. “Morning!”
“Good morning,” she says, looking around. “Wow, it’s… bright. Did you really want it to look like this?”
“I LOVE it looking like this,” I tell her, patting my gigantic unicorn before sitting on it. “So what’s up?”
“You’ve got a job today, right?”
“Uh huh! I’m going to an ice cream caper,” I say.
“That sounds like a lot of fun,” she says. “Um…”
“Um?” I say.
“I just… we’re probably going to be fighting each other in the future, right? So, I’m not sure how it works. Do we become friends, now? Or should we try to avoid each other? Or—”
“We become friends!” I say.
“Really?”
“Absolutely, we’ve got a lot of guys that go up against each other that are friends, and it makes it even funnier to watch. Like Max and Trent? Well, they’re not THE closest, but they get along fine! But Trent and Jack are BROTHERS and they’re constantly hanging out together off screen. I think their fights are the best because of it, too! And Emily and Ace get along really well, too! Oh, but they’re not best friends, either, since Emily’s best friends with Adanna and Zoe, and I would love to be good friends with them, too, but—”
“Wow, that’s a lot of names,” she says.
“Oh, whoops, sorry,” I say. “Let’s see, Max is Maximum, Trent is Kid Liberty, Jack is Cold Steel, Emily is Divine Justice, Ace is Dragon—”
“You know Dragon?”
“Sure, he’s the guy that painted my room back home—can I go get cleaned up while we talk? It won’t take me long, I promise!” I say, hopping to my feet.
“Should I try to become friends with the Nemeses, then?” she asks as I enter the bathroom. “Noni hasn’t gone and met them, so I was wondering if I should, you know? I mean, sooner or later I might have to go up against them, but they’re adults and I’m just thirteen… so it’s kind of presumptuous, right?”
“Why would it be?” I ask, around my toothbrush. I’ve already washed my face and brushed my hair. It’s only that I have to make sure to take the full two minutes brushing my teeth, since my smile is one of my favorite things about my looks. I eye my pigtails a bit thoughtfully, thinking of how much more adult-like Dolly and Ruckus look, in comparison. “Wait, never mind, I know what you mean,” I admit before she can reply. “Do you think I should change my hair?”
“What? Isn’t your hair one of your trademarks?” she asks.
“Well… I guess,” I say, spitting and rinsing. “I mean, everyone knows that I like the pigtails, but… but if I’m going to work with Dolly and Ruckus, shouldn’t I fit in better? If I go in there, now, I’ll just look like a little kid following them around, right?”
“But people like that you look young,” she says, “right? But if you WANT to change your hair, I can help you! I help mom do hers all the time.”
“Okay, yeah,” I say, feeling a little nervous. I’ve kept this same hairstyle for a while. Will I look different? Will Rocco like—no, no thinking about my stupid crush right now. Rocco isn’t even down here. This is all about me, and how I want to look, and how I want the world to see me.
“Well… you’ve got such amazing curls, maybe we should do something… like a ponytail? We could braid it to here, and then pull it up into one?” she asks, stepping into the bathroom and looking at my hair.
“So it wouldn’t be THAT much different?” I say, thinking about it. “I mean, I’d still have my poof, it’d just be a little more mature looking!”
“I like your pigtails,” she says, touching her own rather curly hair. “But yeah, it’d be similar, but different!”
“Okay! Let’s do it!” I say. “Oh, but I’ll have to sit still for it, won’t I?”
“Do you not like sitting still?”
“I have… um… a little bit of trouble,” I admit. “How fast can you braid?”
“Why don’t I get Noni?” she says.
Soon, my room is full of females. I’m sitting on the floor in front of the bed as Noni, I mean Cheval, braids my hair and Jimmi, who came after setting up breakfast, and Whitney discuss hairdos. “Shouldn’t you guys be getting ready for school?” I ask.
“Hold still,” Cheval says. She’s braiding really fast, but it still seems slow to me. Maybe this is why I usually stick to my pigtails. I don’t have the patience for this sort of thing. “Out to impress your boyfriend?” she asks.
I forget all about being impatient. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say. The only reason I don’t shake my head is because she has my hair in hand and I don’t want to mess it up.
“But she likes Rocco,” Jimmi says, teasingly.
“We’re just friends!” I protest.
“Is he Nightstep?” Whitney asks. “He’s REALLY cute.”
“He’s a really nice guy, too,” Jimmi says. “He’d be a lot easier to crush on than Vinny.” She has an irritated look on her face. “Carla, he hasn’t found a girlfriend while I was gone, has he?”
“I think he’s a little in love with Rachel Ray,” I say. She groans, only to laugh a second later.
“I could see that,” she admits.
“Isn’t she that lady on the cooking channel?” Whitney asks.
“YES,” I say in tandem with Jimmi.
“I HAD to pick a cooking fanatic to crush on,” she says, lounging dramatically on my unicorn. “Hey, maybe we should go watch Carla’s fight! What do you think, Cheval? It’s important for our schooling!”
“That might be interesting,” Cheval says. “We’ll ask the other p
rofessors and call Century, but I don’t see why we can’t. Would you mind, sweetie?” she asks me.
“It’d be fun!” I say. It’s not like we haven’t done things like that back at Cape High Central, after all. “Nico likes to take our school shopping, or to parks, or even out to pizza all the time,” I tell them. “And this school is smaller than mine, so you should be doing stuff like that, too, right?”
“We should,” Cheval says. “I know how to get to all of those places, easily, as well.”
My phone rings and I slip it out of my pocket, answering without turning my head towards it. “Hi, how’s it going?”
“Are you coming?” Ruckus asks. “We’re going to meet up down the street in twenty minutes.”
“I’m getting my hair done—”
“And we’re done,” Cheval says. “Why don’t you go on ahead and we’ll meet you there when we get all the permissions we need?”
“I’ll be right there, then, after I grab something to eat,” I say, hopping to my feet and racing into the bathroom to look in my mirror. I feel so strange, not seeing my pigtails. But… “I like it!” I say, preening. “Now I’m leaving!” I say, racing past all of them, through the cafeteria to grab some muffins, and out the door. I wave at a few people as I pass them, but I don’t take the time to see if they wave back. This is my very first job as a team! Wait, what if it goes wrong? What if I do something that doesn’t work with what they’re doing? What if—
“Carla,” Nico says over my earbud. “Your heart rate is a little high. Are you feeling okay?”
“You know my heart rate?” I ask, stunned.
“I’ve got you fully monitored,” he says. “You’re wearing your comm-bracelet, remember?”
“Oh, okay. Hey, Nico?”
“Yeah?”
“Ariel and Doris think there’s something wrong with Skye. Is there something I should do?”
“Just be yourself,” he says. “I’ve got the problem in hand.”
“Okay!” I see a flash of something, and I stop, looking over to my right. There’s a kid. He looks a bit younger than I am. The light must have flashed off of his glasses, I guess. “Hi,” I say, waving to him.
He stares at me in shock, the phone in his hand lowering before he turns and runs away. Weird… maybe he didn’t recognize me? I shrug it off and start running again, my comm-bracelet telling me whenever I need to change direction.
***
“She saw me,” Davis says into the phone. His hand is shaking slightly. “You said she wouldn’t even notice me.”
“Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to be a super brainiac?” the voice on the phone says. “And yet you were stupid enough to believe me. Your mother is a bad influence on you, boy.”
“That’s NOT what I want to hear, Uncle Richard. What if she recognized me? I was there when she visited that stupid school,” Davis says. In contrast with his sarcastic tone, his heart is pounding and there’s a strange rushing sound in his ears. Logically he knows he’s panicking. He shouldn’t, he tells himself. He’s a genius, he can figure out a way to deal with this problem, all he has to do is calm down.
“Did you at least get a picture of her?” the caller demands.
“I—it’s just a blur,” Davis admits. “She moves too quickly to get a good picture. Why did you want a picture of her, anyway? I thought you were obsessed with Skystep.”
“She’s here to fight against Skystep,” the caller says. “Now hang up, there’s always the chance that your phone has been tapped.”
“I made this phone, it’s untappable—”
“Don’t underestimate them, boy, and get moving already. If you’re late, you’ll break our rule,” the caller snaps before hanging up on him. Davis pulls the phone away from his ear, glaring at it. The rule, he thinks with disgust, “Never fail to take advantage.” Yeah, it’s definitely Richard’s rule. He NEVER fails to take advantage of Davis.
“Don’t underestimate ME, old man,” he snarls, his hand clenching angrily as he fights the urge to throw the phone to the ground. He’s SMARTER than that jerk, so why does he have to be the one acting like the lackey? Just because he’s younger doesn’t mean he’s lesser! He takes a deep breath and forces his hand to loosen its hold. This was just the first part of the job. He’s out to get close to Skystep when she does her next big heist, which should happen any moment. He starts to run, wishing he was old enough to drive. He hates running. He hates his uncle even more. At first, sure, it had seemed so good. His uncle hadn’t spoken down to him like the tutors had. His uncle hadn’t treated him like a freak, either. He’d started to challenge Davis from the very beginning.
Some of his best memories are from Richard placing a large variety of household objects on a table and challenging him to make something special out of them. Back when he’d started, Davis had created an entirely personalized game system out of an old computer, a few broken motherboards, and some wire. Once he grew accustomed to that game, Richard began adding a story to the challenge. “What would you do if a super went out of control?” had started out as Davis’s favorite. He would study the super in question for weeks, researching old gigs, abilities, even searching out hints to their secret identities, and then he would build something that could possibly stop them. But after the first two trials, Richard had started acting more demanding than ever. Soon, every challenge had been centered on one super, only, Skystep.
Skystep was Richard Penski’s obsession, and it was starting to get under Davis’s skin. He would give anything to get away from that obsession. He would give anything to get away from his mom, too, now that he thinks about it.
He would… his lips pull up at the corners in a move that actually feels foreign to him. “Thank you, Uncle Richard, I think I WILL take advantage of this situation.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Okay,” Ruckus says as I reach them. “Dolly, you’ll be doing the whole shrinking thing that you do, Carla, you and I will be working together. Is there anyone in particular that you want to take on?”
“I get to choose?” I ask, surprised.
“Well, usually I face off against Doris, since we’re both heavy hitters, but since this is your first time, yeah, I’ll let you choose. I can’t say that SKYE will, though.”
“I want to go up against Skye!” I say, bouncing excitedly. “I don’t think I can beat her, but it would be a lot of fun to try!”
“You know that she’s an S-class, though, right?” Dolly asks, looking worried.
“I know!” I say. “I’ve seen her fight and everything. We’ve fought together, even! I might have a tiny bit better chance against her because of that… except you’ve been fighting her for a few months, now, right?”
“Well…” Ruckus says, looking over at Dolly. “Dolly tends to keep her occupied.”
“It isn’t easy,” Dolly says.
“Sure it is, all you have to do is throw something colorful at her,” Ruckus says.
“Don’t fight, please?” I say, seeing an argument brewing. “If Ruckus is right, then I’m the perfect thing to throw at her!”
Dolly smiles. “I like your hair,” she says. I reach up, patting the braids a bit proudly.
“Cheval did it for me! Does it look more mature?”
“It looks great,” she says. “Do you want to borrow some lip gloss? I have something that should go perfectly with your coloring!”
“This isn’t the time for lip gloss, people. We’re about to go into a fight. Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to get her to wear high heels to work,” Ruckus says, her jaw twitching slightly.
“That wouldn’t work,” I say, “I can’t run as fast in heels, I’ve tried.”
Ruckus heaves a heavy sigh, running a hand over her face. “We’re here to prove that females can be competent super heroes in their own right, right? So should we even be discussing things like lip gloss and high heels in the first place?”
“Yes,” Dolly says, “we should. Looking good helps with
you feel more confident, and confidence helps you succeed.”
I look from one to the other, feeling the urge to hide somewhere creeping up on me. “Um…” I say, making them both look over at me, “I think that… dressing pretty is fine, though…”
“Not if it interferes with how well you work,” Ruckus says. “She can barely run in those things, much less catch up with the Deadly Darlin’s.”
“But the Deadly Darlin’s can fly,” I say. “I don’t think any of us can do that.”
“I can at least jump,” Ruckus says.
“Just stop, already!” Dolly says. “All you ever do is attack me, lately, Ruckus. How can we work together when you’re always attacking me? And the last thing I want you to do is start attacking this sweet little girl, as well!” She moves, standing between me and Ruckus.
“I’m NOT attacking!” Ruckus says. “I’m just trying to point out the fault in your logic! You have to know that it’s ridiculous to go into a fight with an S-class cape wearing high heels!”
“Stop, please,” I say, quietly. “I think we all need to take a second to breathe.”
“You can’t even start to understand how frustrating this is—” Ruckus starts out, only to stop as I hold up a hand. I feel like crying. “I—”
“Do you have any idea how precious this is?” I ask her, looking at the ground. “We get to be out here, showing off what we’re capable of, and people ENJOY it. Even for a few moments, they can stop feeling alone, or caged, or whatever it is that they’re going through. It—THIS… it isn’t about you, Ruckus, and it isn’t about you, either, Dolly, and it’s not even about me. It’s… it’s about helping others, even if it seems silly, or ridiculous. I spent almost a year locked up, unable to run, and I know that there are people just like that out there, wanting just a moment of freedom from it. They’re just waiting for a reason to smile.”
“Carla,” Dolly says softly.
“So if you… if you think that what we’re doing isn’t right, or it’s not professional, or whatever it is you think it should be… well, I’ll take your place,” I say, finally looking Ruckus in the eye, “because I think shows like these are helping SOMEONE somewhere, even if they are ridiculous.”