Anyway, the Milky Way is a beautiful sight to behold. When I was a kid, we used to go all the way out to the desert in California to star gaze. Every summer we would go to Joshua Tree National Park and I used to stare up at the sky and wonder who was out there traveling between the stars, and when would they come to visit us. Boy, will they be surprised when they get here, I think. Smiling to myself in my helmet, I close my eyes and let my mind drift. No one is trying to kill me right now.
Hearing at least some of the team running over to me, one of them gives a, “Holy crap,” as he passes what I assume to be Wagner’s body. That could only be Anvil. I laugh to myself, as getting a “holy crap” out of him is pretty hard to do.
I feel someone bang into my armor as they run up and drop down next to me, and I give a grunt at the pain it causes me. Dreamweaver reaches down to pull my helmet off, but I stop her, “Wait,” I say, “I’m in a lot of pain right now. I need a minute.” I need to do an inventory before I try to move anything.
She isn’t saying anything for a minute, then she tells me to turn off my neural neutralizer, so I do. “Hey,” She says, softly, “you okay?”
“Not sure yet,” I reply, “Wagner. That’s what his name was, you know? ‘Vaug-ner,’ ” I sound it out slowly, “He put a hurt on me when I put him down. My shields were down, and it’s like he just blew up.”
“I felt it. It was intense.” Carly says. She is doing a first aid sweep of my body, looking for broken parts and bleeding. I can feel her poking me through my armor and I think she is using her telekinesis to feel her way through my body. It feels weird.
“Heh-heh, stop it,” I tell her. Not because it tickles. Because it is funny that she is trying to check me through my armor and it hurts to laugh. Wagner couldn’t get through my armor, why would Carly’s finger get through it. I might have a concussion.
Carly pulls back from me and I can feel her mental projection of concern briefly flip flop to annoyance I am stopping her, and back to concern. Hmm, that’s new. I usually can’t feel her emotions telepathically.
“Hold on for a sec, would you?” I ask her, and begin running diagnostics in my suit. As the diagnostics run, I start doing an inventory of my body. I’m hurting all over, but as I focus on each part of my body, starting at my toes and working my way slowly up my body, giving each location a little wiggle and flex of the muscles in that location. I flex and relax each muscle I can identify to see if it is working, or if the bone it’s attached to complains at its use. Both of my legs hurt like hell, but it seems to be coming from my muscles. Mostly. I don’t think any bones are broken, but I decide I better take it slow trying to get up. My butt and back hurts like someone just beat my ass with a two-by-four. Not surprising, I suppose, since that is what impacted the tree first. Fortunately, I don’t know of any bones that could be broken in my ass. I guess I could have broken a hip, but I don’t think so. Or, maybe my coccyx. I start laughing again, but quickly stop as it hurts too much. It’s the next part of my search I’m more worried about. I have a lot of pain in my lower back. I can’t tell if I have trauma to my spine, or if it’s broken. I know my spinal cord is intact, or I wouldn’t have been able to move my toes. But, if something is broke, I might sever it if I try to get up. Better to just work through the rest of my body check and see how things feel in a few minutes. I go through the rest of my body, and I’m amazed that I don’t think anything is broken. A big smile comes over my face as I realize my armor is what saved me from being broken like kindling fighting Wagner. The smile makes the back of my head hurt like hell and I notice my helmet seems to be getting really tight. I might have a concussion from hitting the tree, I tell myself, again.
“I think I’m okay,” I finally announce. By now the others are standing around me, “You guys all right?” I ask. I see a couple heads nod, but otherwise they just stand there and look at me lying on the ground.
Anvil speaks up first, “Get up, ya candy ass. We gotta get outa here before someone shows up.”
“You just hold onto your Clydesdales, there Kemosabe. I need a minute.” Anvil and I seem to be developing a tentative understanding. I think he thinks I’m invulnerable in my suit as I’m sure he was trying to kill me during training. But, I’m not sure he realizes how close to being killed I was. Unlike Wagner, Anvil never hit me when my repeller field was down.
“Well hurry it up, I’m going to need your help flipping this bus back upright,” he tells me. The big liar.
“What for, you can lift that thing over your head if you want?” Hit Point asks him.
“Because, sweetheart, If I put that much force into a single point the metal’s going to bend and we’ll have a screwed up looking bus.”
Hit Point gives him a dirty look over the “sweetheart” comment, but doesn’t say anything more. I doubt she cares about the appearance of the bus, either.
Granite solves the issue, however, “I’ll flip the bus back upright. It’s not a problem. Just need to shift around a little earth.” He sounds exhausted. He should be. I'll never underestimate the power of an earth elemental again.
I’m a little curious as to how it got on its side in the first place, so I ask, “How did it get flipped over in the first place?”
“That guy you fought, Wagner. He did it.” Replied Dreamweaver, “He was standing in the middle of the road when we saw him in our headlights. I could feel his telekinetic power when he picked the bus up completely in the air and just threw it to the side of the road.” I could hear the awe, and fear, in her voice. “I knew it was him right then. I could taste the flavor of his mind from the time we fought him in the warehouse.”
“What did you do then?” I ask, wanting to know what happened, and buying some more time before I have to get up.
“I turned on my repeller field and neural neutralizer right then,” she pauses as she realizes she gave away one of my suit secrets, then continues, “Even before we hit the ground. I don’t think that saved me in the crash. I mean, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t think any of the kids were hurt bad." She looks over to the busses to where the students are. I doubt any of us has checked on them yet. Some of them are sitting up and the other students are helping them, though.
"I didn’t even turn on the repeller field to protect myself from the crash. The only thing I could think of was that I had to protect myself from his telepathic powers and had to get the neural neutralizer activated before he seized my mind.” Dreamweaver pulls off her helmet while she is speaking and I see her face light up, “It worked, Theo! He couldn’t get into my mind! He couldn’t even use his telekinetic powers on me!”
“Awesome.” I reply, enjoying seeing her excited, but not thrilled she is using my name out loud.
Hit Point takes over the story, “I hit the brakes and stopped behind them. We didn’t realize we were being attacked, but we should have known. What else could have made the bus go airborne like that? Granite and I jumped out of the bus to check on them when those two thugs tried to jump us. I saw them just in time and was able to send a couple things their way and Granite was able to put up a barrier. I’m still not sure what their powers were, but they kept trying to get at us, so whatever it was, it wasn't ranged. Everything I threw at them they were able to dodge, though. Thankfully, Granite was able to hold them back, but they were a lot faster than that Class 5 strongman back at the compound and he wasn’t able to cover them or open a hole underneath them. Whenever he tried, they just jumped out of the hole.”
“Why couldn’t they just jump over Granite’s barrier,” I ask, imagining the fight and trying to figure out how they could have attacked them, “Did they try that?”
“Yeah, they tried,” Hit Point replied with a pretty satisfied tone, “But when they tried to make a big leap they weren’t able to dodge my attacks. Unfortunately, I didn’t start using lethal attacks until after they learned that the hard way. Otherwise, it would have been over for them the first time they tried to make the jump.” I can see she regrets not
resorting to lethal force from the beginning. If she becomes a superhero, she will have to continue doing it that way. I don’t recommend it, though.
“Lesson learned?” I ask.
“In this situation?” she replies, “Yeah. I shouldn’t have held back from the beginning.”
“Right. But, I know you’ll hold back most other times. And, you’ll be right for doing it. Your trick will be knowing, and remembering, where things stand from the beginning.” Hit Point is a good person, and I don’t want her carrying the guilt of someday killing a punk that didn’t need to die to be stopped. She’ll make a great superhero.
“All right. I think I can do this,” I finally declare, and slowly sit up with a groan. “Ahh, damn that hurts.”
“How’d you do it?” Anvil finally asks me. “How’d you take that guy out?”
I know what he means. Even though I didn’t know right then he had tried to fight Wagner at the beginning and Wagner had just lifted him off the ground telekinetically and started slamming him into the ground. It had taken Dreamweaver intervening to get him off Anvil. That’s when Anvil was given a new dance partner with the guy he was doing the double embrace with. Dreamweaver, because she has the neural neutralizer built into her repeller field, was able to fight Wagner to an impasse, but she couldn’t hurt him. From what I saw, Wagner may have been holding back. I think I got there just in time as the guy had a lot of options as a telekinetic if he wanted to start throwing objects at Dreamweaver rather than try to use his powers on her directly. Maybe he just never had the problem of not being able to use his powers directly.
“It’s all in the suit, my man. It’s all in the suit,” is the only explanation I give him.
Chapter 67
Dreamweaver walks with me back to the busses as we watch Granite manipulate the earth under the bus to tip it back upright. He places it as gently as a feather. Most of the kids are still on the bus, and you can see them scrambling a bit as the bus tips back upright. Granite takes it slow, though, and no one else gets hurt. We check out the kids, both on the bus and the ones who were lying in the dirt when I arrived, and no one is seriously hurt other than bruises, scrapes, and a couple broken bones, which Hit Point and Dreamweaver place in splints from a med kit found on the bus. Most of them have at least some physical enhancements and are either a Class 1 or Class 2 physically, along with some Class 3s. Neither Anvil nor Granite is much use with the first aid. Anvil has never had a use for it in his family as they are all Class 3 or higher physically, and Granite has never even skinned his knee. I've read that earth elementals just don't fall down. Me? I have first aid training, a good bit of it, in fact. Instead of helping, I nurse my own injuries. My head is at least starting to clear.
I forget to ask Dreamweaver how they finally took out the last two guys attacking Granite and Hit Point. Later I find out that, once I had taken down Wagner, Dreamweaver turned off her neural neutralizer and put the two down with her telekinetically directed throwing knives. It’s a lot harder to dodge when the throwing knife follows you wherever you go and is flying a few hundred miles per hour.
We get everyone back in their seats and check out the busses. The bus that flipped grumbles and misfires a couple times, but then starts up and runs without a problem. I swap places with Anvil and have him drive the van ahead of the busses in case we have any more surprises, while I drive the bus that flipped, with Dreamweaver. It isn’t until we get back on the road that Dreamweaver starts first aid on the more minor injuries. It takes a while to settle everyone down and get them patched up, but she does it efficiently and doesn't take any longer than it needs. The kids are like putty and just sit there until you tell them to do something. Once all the injuries are patched up, Dreamweaver starts, one at a time, taking the caps off the kids and going to work on fixing their minds.
It's exhausting work for Dreamweaver as she takes almost an hour with each kid. Wagner did a number on them, but had not bothered to erase any of their memories or personality. Instead he had just laid over a compulsion to be subservient and an extreme paranoia of failing to do whatever they were told. And, he made them believe he was their lord high master, whatever that was. Dreamweaver has to undo all of it, which takes her a while for the first few as she figures out exactly what he did, and how. Once she has the compulsion and paranoia removed, she goes in and edits the memories they have made while under them. Some of them are terrifying as they had been made from the viewpoint of a person who was filled with terror and paranoia. The last thing she removes is their belief Wagner was their high lord master as she was using that as her authority in getting them to accept what she was doing. I have no idea how it works, she just said it makes a difference if they willingly accept what she is doing. Their reactions, once she has removed all the mental manipulations, are about what I expect from the arrogant jerks that make up the student body of the science department. Some of them understand what she's done for them and are grateful. Some of them try to help with the others. All of the students, however, are arrogant idiots who demand an explanation for how what happened to them was allowed to happen and are threatening retaliation and lawsuits against us as much as they are against Wagner. I have to stop the bus a couple times and put a couple them in their place.
Dreamweaver can put them in their place with a thought, but she’s so exhausted from freeing the minds of the students in the first place, she just looks at them and shakes her head when they start acting like asses. I’ve had enough when one of them tries to assault her and she has to telekinetically throw him down the aisle. He slams into the front wall of the bus next to where I'm sitting in the driver’s seat. Thankfully, she still has her suit and helmet on and his attempt at a sucker punch does not do any damage other than to knock her on her butt. After that she keeps her repeller field on low power in case one of the idiots is a Class 3. These arrogant ungrateful jerks are the reason why I don’t live in the Oppenheimer Quad.
We drive the whole way back to Nova Academy, only stopping for gas. And at the half way point at a Grocer’s Warehouse to buy five cases of water, ten pounds of lunch meat, and twenty loaves of bread and snacks for a couple hundred kids. Fortunately, they are nearly all still under mind control and don’t complain about what is given to them. The few kids we have put back right are given the job of slopping some meat between two pieces of bread and handing them out to the others.
We finally make it back to campus early the next morning. All of us have been up for the last thirty hours straight, and chugging energy drinks for the last twelve to stay awake. We have a total of sixteen kids who have their minds restored, and that is as much as Carly can handle, and as much as I can tolerate. I am sick of hearing them try to blame us for everything that happened to them. Dreamweaver is mentally exhausted to the point she can’t work on freeing any more of the kids’ minds for fear she will screw up more than she fixes. Instead, she calls her roommate, Imelda, for telepathic reinforcements to meet us at the Erickson Quad Commons when we get there. We figure our best chance of getting the telepaths to help put these kids back right is to dump them in their laps in their own recreation area of their commons. If we try to get them to come to us, I doubt they will show.
I have the team stay in their super suits and keep their neural neutralizer caps on when we pull onto campus so we can have at least some chance of remaining anonymous. The telepaths don't need to know who we are any more than anyone else. I don’t doubt all of them know who I am, and I can’t see how they don’t all know who Carly is, but we can at least try to protect the rest of the team.
It’s still the middle of night out, but the common area is well lit and we can see Imelda and a dozen other telepath students standing outside of the Erickson Commons. Dreamweaver steps off the bus first, “Imelda, thank you for coming,” then looking at the others, “Thank all of you.”
“What have you done, Carly?” Imelda asks, arms crossed.
“The name is Dreamweaver. Please respect it,” then adding wit
h a little ice in her voice, “And you know why.” Imelda still does not like that Carly is a superhero.
Nothing else is said and this is where things get awkward. When you’re not telepathic and you’re around a group of telepaths, it’s awkward. They all just stand there looking at each other, having a conversation you can’t hear. Occasionally they change who they’re looking at, but otherwise they just stand there, sometimes with a vacant look on their face. They are having a conversation and I'm not invited. That’s fine with me, though. So long as they take these kids off our hands and get them put back right in the head.
Eventually Imelda, and the rest of the telepaths who meet us, nod their reluctant agreement. Dreamweaver turns back to me, “They’ll take them from here.”
“Are they going to help them?” I ask, not really liking their reluctance now, and their outright refusal before, to be of any sort of help. I ignore the icy glare from Imelda. If she says anything I’m going to pop her one.
“Yeah. They know exactly what happened to them and what needs to be done to fix them. Don’t worry, once they start helping the kids, the whole quad will step up. They’ll have all the kids heads back on straight by dinner.”
“Okay,” I reply, looking over the telepaths, who are all ignoring me now as they start taking the kids off the busses. I step over and pull the neural neutralizers off the kids’ heads as they step off the bus then work my way up into the bus and grab them off all of the kids. Once I have them all I go out the back emergency door, and repeat the process on the other bus. The telepaths won’t let the kids keep them anyway, so I may as well grab them. They might come in handy someday and it will be better if I don’t have to build them myself when the time comes.
Nova Academy: A Superhero & Supervillain Novel Page 30