by Charlie Wood
“You don’t seem to be too enthused about me dancing around you,” Tobin said, not giving up on his dance.
“Ugh,” Jennifer said. She closed her eyes and threw her head back. “This sucks.”
Tobin stopped dancing. “What?”
“I’m not going to the prom with you guys.”
Tobin was shocked. “You aren’t? Why?”
“Because…” She thought it over. “Because I’m gonna go with some other people. But I’ll still hang out with you guys when I get there and stuff—it’ll be just the same as if we went together, we just won’t be…arriving together.”
Tobin looked at her. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re gonna make me go by myself with Chad and his weirdo foreign exchange student date, who I’m pretty sure is a mail order bride? Who are you going with?”
“Tommy.”
Tobin threw his arms out and let them fall at his sides, shaking his head. “What is going on here?”
“I don’t know. I told you—Tommy and I have been hanging out a lot and he asked me to the prom last week…so I said yes. I was waiting to tell you.”
“But we always said that if we didn’t have dates to the senior prom, we would…”
A silence. Jennifer looked at Tobin, sad.
“Why do you wanna go with Tommy Evans?” Tobin asked. “I mean, sure, he’s ridiculously handsome. And athletic. And smart. And he smells how a man should smell. But other than that...”
Jennifer laughed and hugged Tobin.
“I’m sorry, Tobin. I miss you. We all do. Let’s hang out Thursday night, okay? Are you doing anything?”
“I’m supposed to go out on patrol, but I’m gonna tell Orion I have to skip it. It’s time I hung out with you guys again.”
“Okay, it’s a plan then. See you in school tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Jennifer got into her car and drove away. Tobin watched her go. Then he grabbed a handful of popcorn from his bag and shoved it into his mouth.
“This sucks,” he said, chomping away.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day, Tobin and Chad were playing basketball in the Bridgton High School gymnasium during their Advanced Physical Fitness class (the school had just recently reopened after its extensive reconstruction after being nearly destroyed in Tobin’s battle against Vincent Harris seven months ago.) Advanced Physical Fitness was a right of passage for seniors at Bridgton High, as its loosely monitored syllabus consisted of running a few laps, lifting a few weights, and shooting a few hoops. But, mostly, everyone knew, it consisted of talking with your friends for forty-five minutes each day.
“Why do I feel like I’m missing everything?” Tobin asked, as Chad stood at the free throw line and sunk a basket.
“Because you are.”
“Hey!”
Chad laughed. “You have been incommunicado lately, dude. And by ‘lately,’ I mean the last five-to-six months.”
“I know. I’ve just been out every night, either with Keplar or by myself. It was quiet for a while, but now it’s getting kinda crazy again. Orion says crime gets worse as the weather gets warmer. I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it, bro. Seriously. What you have to do is so much more important than hanging out with us idiots.” Chad weighed the options with his hands. “Saving lives, fighting crime? That’s a little more important than sneaking into the beach at night and partying until the cops show up.”
“Yeah, I know, but...god, that sounds like fun.”
Chad laughed. “I told you a million times, dude, there’s one way we could hang out more often: new sidekick, right here.” He pointed at himself. “And, if I help you, you’ll get done so much quicker.”
“But you don’t have any superpowers.”
“So? Batman doesn’t have any superpowers.”
“No, but Batman is a badass. And he didn’t cry during my seventh birthday party sleepover when we watched ‘Toy Story 2.’”
“Dude, that was like ten years ago. Let it go, please.”
After a quick change out of their gym clothes, Tobin and Chad were walking down the crowded school hallway; Tobin was heading to his next class, while Chad was heading to lunch.
“So apparently Jennifer hangs out with Tommy Evans now?” Tobin asked.
“Welcome to this century,” Chad laughed. “Mr. Hastings practically announces it over the intercom every morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“How and why did this happen?”
“Um, let me see: she’s smoking hot and the nicest person ever, and he’s the most popular guy in school? It’s not that hard to figure out.”
“I know. I just didn’t think he was her type.”
“What’s her type?”
“I don’t know. Funny guys. He’s not funny. He may be a lot of things, but he is not funny.”
“I don’t know, dude. He’s in my Photography class. He’s pretty funny.”
“He’s not funny,” Tobin repeated. “If she likes him ‘cuz he’s funny, that’s friggin’ bull.”
“You should just be happy for her, dude. She really likes him, I can tell.”
“What, are they, like, going out or something?”
The bell rang. Chad headed down the hall toward the cafeteria.
“Gotta go to lunch,” he said. “See ya.”
Tobin yelled out after him. “Hey—are they going out? I thought they were only… hanging out or something. Are they really going out? Hey—are they?”
Chad turned around with a wave and a laugh. “Later, Tobin!”
Tobin stood in the hallway as the rest of the students rushed into their classrooms. Soon he was standing all by himself.
“Tommy Evans,” he said with disgust. “I’m funnier than Tommy Evans.”
***
At 8:07 that night, Tobin was lying on his bed in his room and staring at the ceiling. He was hoping to get some homework done since he didn’t have to work at the grocery store that night, but, instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about everything he had learned from Chad that day.
Tobin reached over to his nightstand and grabbed his phone. He quickly typed out a text message to his friend Julie Meyers:
HEY JULIE. AM I FUNNIER THAN TOMMY EVANS?
Tobin waited for a response from Julie, but instead heard a voice from near his bedroom window.
“Who’s Tommy Evans?”
“Ah!” Tobin screamed. Startled, he looked across the room: his robotic friend Scatterbolt was sitting on the edge of his open bedroom window. The three-and-a-half-foot tall, purple-and-silver robot had recently begun a habit of climbing up to Tobin’s room when he needed to ask Tobin a question, even though Tobin and Orion had repeatedly told him it was dangerous, since it had a good chance of making the evening news if someone saw a robot walking around Bridgton, Massachusetts. But, Scatterbolt insisted, he always made sure to only visit Tobin when it was safe and nobody was around, so there wasn’t anything to worry about. Plus, it was worth the risk; Earth was so much more interesting than boring old Capricious, anyway.
“Oops, sorry, Tobin,” Scatterbolt laughed, hopping up onto a chair next to Tobin’s bed. “What are you doing?”
“Just talking to my friend. I’m supposed to be doing homework, but…I’m not.”
Scatterbolt looked at the screen of Tobin’s phone.
“Oh. You talk to your friends on this a lot, don’t you?”
“Only about twenty-two hours a day.”
“But you never use it for its intended purpose, right? You don’t use your voice, you only write with your fingers.”
Tobin thought it over. “Ya know what, I actually kind of forgot that I could make calls with this thing.”
Tobin’s phone BUZZED; he had a reply from Julie. Scatterbolt leaned over and read the message.
“This girl likes you, you know,” the robot said.
“No, she doesn’t,” Tobin replied.
“Yeah, she does. Look. She sent you one of
these guys.”
Scatterbolt mimicked a winking emoticon; he closed one eye and smiled brightly.
Tobin laughed and looked to the screen. Julie had written:
OF COURSE YOU ARE ;)
Tobin was surprised. “Whoa, you’re right. That’s a total sign of flirting. Good call, SB.”
Tobin typed on the phone, then sent a reply. He and Scatterbolt waited for a response, staring at the screen.
“Is she gonna write back soon?” the robot asked. “This is really exciting.” The robot suddenly slapped himself in the forehead. “Oh man, I almost forgot! Orion wanted me to come here so we could head to the police station right away.”
“Why?”
“Officer Randy found something. I don’t know what it is, but Orion sounded pretty worried, so it must be a big deal.”
A BUZZ! came from Tobin’s phone.
“Do you think it can wait a couple minutes?” the boy asked.
“Yeah, definitely,” Scatterbolt replied, leaning in closer to get a better look at the phone. “What’d she say? Write back, write back.”
***
Forty miles away, Orion was waiting near the rooftop entrance of the Boston Police Department headquarters. The grey-haired superhero was wearing his usual long, red coat, his black boots, and his quiver of arrows on his back. As he adjusted his glasses, he looked down and checked his watch.
“Teenagers,” he said with a grumble.
Finally, the door opened, and Tobin and Scatterbolt walked into the police station from the rooftop outside. Tobin was dressed as Strike.
“About time you got here,” Orion said. “What took you so long?”
“I was, uh, helping him with his homework,” Scatterbolt replied.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tobin agreed. “Homework.”
“Sure,” Orion said, rolling his eyes. “Uh-huh. Yeah.” The old man led the boy and the robot toward a stairway. “C’mon, Randy has something to show us.”
After opening the door to the police station morgue, Orion, Strike, and Scatterbolt walked into the dark, metallic-walled room. Keplar was waiting for them there, along with Officer Randy Norris of the Boston police department. Seven months ago, when Strike had first begun fighting crime in Boston and its surrounding cities, most of the police officers in the area had looked at the hero as a threat. Some, however, had seen that the mysterious, masked vigilante could be a great help to them, and, if they worked together, the city of Boston could be safer than it had ever been. Luckily, Officer Randy Norris was one of the cops who saw Strike as an ally: for months now, he had been helping Strike and his friends from Capricious, and in return they had helped him solve many cases of his own. For the forty-two-year-old veteran policeman, it was a little strange to be dealing with a masked teenager, a talking dog, a miniature robot, and a superhero that appeared to be older than his father, but Officer Norris was almost starting to get used to it. Almost.
“The chief would kill me if he knew I called you guys about this,” Officer Norris said, as he led the group through the morgue, “but hell, we don’t know what to do with it. I thought it’d be more of the type of thing you guys would be used to.”
Officer Norris opened one of the morgue draws; there was a dead body lying on it, covered with a sheet.
“We were getting reports of all kinds of weird stuff from people down at the fishing ports,” Officer Norris said. “People’s stuff getting stolen, fisherman saying something was eating whatever they caught, sightings of weird stuff under the docks. So last night we went down there and got into a fight with this guy.”
Officer Norris whipped the sheet off the gurney, revealing the dead body underneath. It was a man of average height, about thirty-five years old, with dark hair. His skin and lips were blue, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“So the guy could use some sun,” Keplar said. “So what?”
“Look closer,” Officer Norris said, pointing to the man’s neck.
Orion leaned in and carefully moved the dead man’s head to one side.
“This man has gills,” Orion explained.
“What the hell…?” Strike wondered, looking closer. He could see them, too: there were four slits on either side of the man’s neck, a few inches under his ears.
“Why would he have gills?” Scatterbolt asked.
“That’s not all,” Officer Norris said. “Watch this.”
Officer Norris reached to a nearby table, grabbed a pitcher of water, and dumped it onto the dead man’s body. The man’s skin suddenly turned green, he grew slimy scales, his eyes bulged out and moved to the sides of his head, and his nose disappeared. His hair also fell off, shortly before being replaced by a dorsal fin that ran down his neck.
“Whoa,” Scatterbolt said, his eyes wide.
“I thought I smelt something when I came in here,” Keplar said. “I just thought it was Randy.”
“Ha ha, very funny,” Officer Norris replied. “So you guys know what it might be?”
“Umm…Tuna-Man?” Strike offered.
“The Amazing Goldfish?” Keplar tried.
“Oh, I got it,” Strike said, holding up a finger. “The Piranha.”
“There’s gotta be a Piranha already,” Keplar replied.
“Ya think?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“I know what it is,” Orion said, ignoring Strike and Keplar. “It’s a mer-man from Capricious.”
“What’s a mer-man from Capricious doing here?” Keplar asked.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be anything good. The only thing that’s confusing me is that mer-men can’t change into humans like this thing did.”
Officer Norris walked to a computer and pulled up a report on the screen.
“Well, when it was human, we ran its prints. It’s a schlub named Mike Rossi, some two-bit hood from Southie. Used to sell drugs, cocaine, run a little gambling operation. He was in and out of here all the time.”
“And now he’s a mer-man?” Strike asked.
Officer Norris shrugged. “You tell me. He had this on him.”
The cop handed Orion a piece of paper. Orion read it aloud.
“Sullivan’s Wharf. May 18th. 10 P.M.”
“Sounds like a meeting spot to me,” Officer Norris suggested.
“Thanks, Randy,” Orion said, putting the paper into his pocket. “We’re going to look into this right away.”
“I also wanted to show you this.” Officer Norris handed Orion a stack of photographs. “People on the T have been calling us like crazy, saying there’s some kind of giant bird-thing down in the subway. One of our guys got these pictures but that’s all we got.”
Orion looked at the photos: they were grainy and blurry, but they seemed to show some kind of gigantic, six-foot tall crow in the shadows of a subway tunnel.
“These two things ain’t the only weird stuff, either,” Officer Norris continued. “Werewolves, lizard-people, vampires...all the sudden, out of nowhere, people are reporting all kinds of screwed up stuff.”
Orion looked over the photographs. “Thanks again, Randy. You did the right thing showing this to us. We’ll be in touch soon.”
***
An hour later, after an inter-planetary jump to Capricious through a swirling, mirrored portal of electric energy, Tobin, Orion, Keplar, and Scatterbolt were in the Museum of the Heroes—specifically, in the museum’s science lab. Here in their hidden headquarters at the top of a mountain high above the trees, the heroes could look over the photos and data from Officer Norris and try to figure out what they were dealing with on Earth.
“So,” Tobin asked, “you ever hear of a giant crow-man before?”
“Not in a long time,” Orion replied. He was scanning the blurry picture of the subway crow-creature into a computer. “There used to be a team of crow-like men on Capricious who called themselves ‘The Plague’ about forty years ago, but they’re all either in jail or retired. One of them is in a nursing home in Quantum City.
”
“So it’s not them, then,” Keplar said. “Unless we get a call about this thing stealing prunes and religiously watching ‘Wheel of Fortune.’”
“No, it’s not them,” Orion said. “It’s something a lot worse.”
Orion clicked on the blurry photograph, and the image became clear. The creature in the subway wasn’t a giant crow after all: it was actually a flying Gore. Tobin leaned in and looked at the picture closely, and goose bumps ran down his arms. He remembered the terrifying demons called Gores all too well from his battle to save Earth seven months ago: they were about five feet tall and dressed in hooded, black cloaks, with nothing visible in their dark hoods except for red, glowing eyes, and sharp, white teeth. The boy hadn’t seen one of the creatures since the battle, but here was one in the picture now, staring back at him. And, to make it even more frightening, this Gore had something none of the others had ever had: gigantic, ratty, black-feathered wings extending from its back.
“Crap,” Keplar said, looking at the photo.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Tobin groaned, rubbing his eyes.
“A Gore?” Scatterbolt asked. “How is that possible?”
“It’s not,” Orion replied. “Or at least it shouldn’t be. Gores can only be controlled by Vincent. And he’s gone.”
“For good, right?” Scatterbolt asked. “Please say ‘yes.’”
“It’s not Vincent,” Orion said with a chuckle. “But that means it has to be someone very close to Vincent, who now somehow has control over the Gores.”
“Someone who is now on Earth?” Tobin asked.
“Apparently,” Orion replied. “But it also could be a stray Gore that was simply left over from Vincent’s invasion. There were hundreds of these things, after all, so it wouldn’t be too surprising to find out that some of them survived. Either way, our first step to figuring this all out...”
Orion put the piece of paper that Officer Norris gave him on a table.
“We need to check out Sullivan’s Wharf on May 18th. Which just so happens to be this Friday. Who’s up for a stakeout?”
“I’ll be there,” Keplar said.