Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  Matt pockets his phone and offers Mrs. McGann and Mr. Dent a wide, cocky grin. Oh, you clever boy.

  “The school department keeps an attorney on retainer, doesn’t it?” Matt says.

  “What? Yes,” Mrs. McGann says.

  “Then you might want to call him, because our lawyer is on his way in to have a few words with you.”

  ***

  Sullivan Crenshaw is on my Christmas card list for life.

  Exactly fifteen minutes after receiving our call, Mr. Crenshaw, the Protectorate’s legal counsel, strides into Mrs. McGann’s office. He introduces himself, asks for a copy of the school handbook, and speed-reads through it while we all wait for the school’s attorney, Mr. Wolcott, to show up.

  After Wolcott arrives, Mr. Crenshaw unleashes a firestorm of legalese that decisively shuts down Mrs. McGann’s plan to show us the door. He cites five court cases involving a public school district’s attempt to remove a student with superhuman abilities — including, to our amusement, the case of Quentin V. Superintendent of Schools of Worcester — and all of them ended with the student in question being allowed to return to class.

  “If you wish to pursue the matter further, I will of course file suit on behalf of my clients,” Mr. Crenshaw says, gesturing at us as if presenting evidence, “and we can take this matter to court. In the meantime, in order to remove them from school, you have to prove their mere presence poses a clear and present danger to the faculty and students.”

  “Four giant robots showed up at this school last year looking for them,” Wolcott says.

  “And five years ago, a boy armed with a knife showed up at this school looking for his ex-girlfriend. I remember this very well because the girl was a good friend’s daughter. Did you attempt to expel her? She attracted a dangerous individual to this school, after all,” Mr. Crenshaw counters. “I’m sure some of your students are the children of police officers. They make enemies all the time. Do you plan to expel them?”

  Wolcott hisses through his clenched teeth. “May I borrow your conference room?” he asks Mrs. McGann. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Crenshaw privately.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. McGann says. She leads the lawyers out of the office, leaving us with Mr. Dent.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Matt says.

  Mr. Dent lets out a breath, long and slow and soft, but says nothing. He’s a statue. His expression is completely unreadable, yet I somehow feel like we’ve let him down. As if to confirm my suspicion, he shakes his head and walks out of the office, leaving us to sit and stew for close to an hour.

  When Mrs. McGann, Mr. Dent, and Wolcott return, they look resigned if not outright defeated. Mr. Crenshaw, however, appears quite pleased with himself.

  Mrs. McGann takes her seat and clears her throat. “After discussing the matter with your attorney,” she says, “we’ve decided that we will not be removing you from school, nor will we ask your parents to do so.”

  That’s my cue for a big sigh of relief. School may not be my favorite place in the world, but I don’t hate it so much that getting kicked out is a desirable alternative.

  “Nor will the school place upon you any special conditions on your continued attendance here,” Mr. Crenshaw adds, looking at Mrs. McGann. “Any attempt to treat you differently than any other student will be treated as a discriminatory act and could result in legal action.”

  “However,” Wolcott says, “you will be expected not to use your, uh, powers while on school grounds.”

  “Let me clarify that point,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “Any weaponry — such as your thunder gun, Matt — will be subject to standing school policy regarding the possession of weapons in the school. However, the school will not institute any special policies specifically dictating or restricting the use of any innate superhuman abilities. The caveat there is, your powers do not grant you any special exemptions either. If the use of your powers causes you violate any standing written school policy, you will be subject to the same disciplinary actions as any student.”

  “Totally fair,” Matt says. “We can live with that.”

  Mr. Crenshaw nods and turns to Mrs. McGann. “If we’re done wasting enough of my clients’ school day?”

  “You’re free to return to class. Mr. Dent, if you’ll see to their passes?” Mrs. McGann says. Mr. Dent leaves without saying a word. “Mr. Crenshaw, you have Mr. Wolcott’s number, in case you have anything further?”

  Mr. Crenshaw smiles pleasantly. “I believe we’re all set. Walk me out,” he says to us.

  “Thanks for the bailout, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say.

  “You’ve very welcome. And thank you for having the presence of mind to call me in the first place. It saved us all a lot of hassle.” He pauses outside the main office. “I hope for your sakes this has been the worst of it. Having public identities, I mean.”

  “It’s a nice sentiment.”

  “I’m sorry. You kids deserve better.”

  “Thanks,” Matt says.

  “All right. Back to class you go.”

  “Bye, Mr. Crenshaw,” Missy says.

  “Missy.”

  “Is it me,” Matt says on our way back to our respective classrooms, “or have our normal lives become crazier than our super-hero lives?”

  “It’s not you, dude,” Stuart says, “but if it makes you feel any better, we’ll have plenty of super-hero crazy coming up soon enough.”

  That’s right. We have a raid to execute this week.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Concorde was prepared to keep me on the sidelines, but I argued him down to letting me join the op in a supporting role. Mindforce and I are part of the perimeter teams tasked with rounding up anyone who tries to make a run for it, and with providing a backup line of communication if the comm systems fail for any reason. That last job is easier said than done considering the entire building is shielded against telepaths.

  That’s one of the many interesting facts we learned during the reconnaissance phase of the op. Over the past two days, various recon teams checked out the building top to bottom to gather as much intel as possible. Mindforce, part of the first sweep, discovered the psionic baffling when he attempted a wide telepathic surface scan. The original plan was to get a rough count of how many bodies a strike team might encounter, but he couldn’t get a read on anyone, not even the guy manning the fake pawnshop up front. On day two Concorde obtained a search warrant, which allowed Mindforce to conduct a deep telepathic probe of anyone inside the building, but that proved a wasted effort. Mindforce and Nina went inside posing as a couple in search of a cheap engagement ring, but they didn’t learn anything terribly useful. The lookout knew to let anyone asking for “Hephaestus” into the back, but that was it. He didn’t know what was back there, who Hephaestus was, who any of the clients were...whoever signed his checks made sure to keep him in the dark as much as possible.

  With the psionic approach a bust, the team tried a more traditional angle. Surveillance teams working the ground and the sky hit the building with every scanner and sensor they had in their collective arsenal and again got nothing; the building absorbed or reflected everything they threw at it. TranzSister ran an aerial thermal scan of the neighborhood, comprised mostly of small businesses with apartments on the upper floors. Those showed up as blobby rainbows indicating human and animal presences while our target was a literal black hole sitting in the middle of an acid trip vision of South Boston.

  “Basically, we’re going in half-blind,” Concorde tells us during the pre-op briefing at HQ. “Thanks to our informant we have a general sense of the interior layout, and we know the occupants will have easy access to a variety of weapons, though we don’t know exactly what sort of weaponry we might come up against...”

  “Any idea how many people might be inside?” Matt asks.

  “The target location has been under surveillance by the Boston PD since five this morning. According to their latest report, seven people have entered the building, one through the fron
t entrance — the lookout at the counter — and the rest through a back door. That’s a manageable number. I want Superbeast on point for the front insertion team and Rockjaw will take his team in the rear.”

  Stuart fails to stifle a giggle.

  “Knock it off,” Matt says.

  “Thank you. Trencher, Megawatt, you’re going in with Superbeast.” Concorde says. Meg, decked out in her cool new uniform, slips me a smile and a wink. “Nina, Entity, you’re with Rockjaw. TranzSister and I will cover the sky as part of the perimeter detail. Doc Quantum, Mindforce, and Enigma will watch the front. Psyche, Kunoichi, and Kilowatt will cover the back. Not that we needed any further challenges on this mission, but in light of the building’s considerable shielding, we have to assume that once our strike teams get inside we’ll lose comm contact with them. That means everyone sticks to the plan. Got it?”

  And the plan is this: Superbeast crashes the front door while Rockjaw makes like a human avalanche through the garage door in the back. Once inside, Trenchcoat, Megawatt, Nina, and the Entity will disperse and take down anyone they find. Incapacitate first, ask questions later.

  “If we’re lucky, one of the people inside will be the Foreman,” Concorde says. “Otherwise, once we clear the place I’ll want Doc Quantum, TranzSister, and Trencher in with me so we can strip it down and take every computer and server we find on the premises. One way or the other, we’re going to nail the Foreman.”

  Concorde holds for final questions. There are none.

  “Let’s move.”

  ***

  The ground teams convoy up to the city while Concorde and TranzSister fly ahead to conduct advance reconnaissance and start coordinating with the police. Matt drives his team up in the Protectorate’s all-purpose van, disguised today as a cable TV service vehicle, while Nina drives my team up in a box truck bearing a logo for a fake restaurant supply business. Poor Rockjaw has to ride in the back, but what can you do? We only had so many options for transporting the big guy unobtrusively.

  “All I can say is we better come out of this with something useful,” Nina says. “I’m missing class for this.”

  “Me too,” I say. In my case it’s not a complaint. By Wednesday the entire school knew our secret, and there was a distinct air of unease in every one of my classes — almost always exclusively from the teachers. My peers remain largely indifferent, which is fine by me.

  Honestly, I could do with a little more indifference. A few kids who’ve never said two words to me throughout our time in the Kingsport school system were suddenly very keen on being my friend. Some were looking for a little reflected glory — the cool factor of being able to claim a super-hero as an acquaintance — while others wanted favors. I was asked to pry into many a brain to find out if so-and-so liked so-and-so, if this person was cheating on that person, and one guy offered me fifty bucks to steal test answers from his American history teacher’s head.

  And then there were the kids who made their distrust of me very clear. They were the ones who gave me a wide berth in the hallways and stared daggers at me in class. One idiot, Jude Beaty, accused me in front of our entire math class of using my powers to cheat on a test. I pointed out that if I was going to do that, I’d get a much higher score than an eighty-five. I also pointed out that I’d never read his mind because he was a moron.

  “I am not,” he protested.

  “You completely failed your last test,” I countered.

  “See? How would you know that if you didn’t read my mind?” he said.

  “Because when you got your test back, you shouted ‘An F? Why did I get an F? I studied!’,” Ashlyn said. “Idiot.”

  I love my friends.

  Speaking of which, the LGBTQ group has been totally supportive. I had Bo, Ty, and Ashlyn already on my side, and they led by example, showing the other members that my superhuman abilities weren’t a big deal; I was still me. As long as I have people who accept me for who I am, I can deal with the Jude Beatys of the world, no sweat.

  “Hey, Nina? I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I say. “How come you didn’t go public like everyone else?”

  “Point of fact, not everyone went public,” she says.

  “I didn’t,” the Entity says. Jeez, why does Mr. Creepy have to sit up front with us?

  “But to answer your question, I thought about it. I thought about it a lot, but Derek and I just got over a rough patch and the last thing I wanted to do was rock the boat again.”

  “No, I get that,” I say. I add cheerfully, “When you do tell him, I’m sure he’ll be cool with it.”

  “Me too,” Nina says, but she doesn’t sound all that certain.

  “Don’t do it,” the Entity says. “You’ll regret it.”

  “Entity, are you actually offering me friendly advice?” Nina says.

  “I’m offering advice. Going public is the stupidest thing you could possibly do. It would backfire on you. It’ll backfire on everyone.”

  “That’s why we keep you around, Entity; you’re such a ray of sunshine,” I say. “Would a little optimism kill you?”

  “Pessimists are never disappointed.”

  Well, he’s got me there.

  We reach our target a little before eleven. We’ve heard nothing new from our police surveillance detail, so we have to assume we’re facing at least seven potential hostiles — seven people with an arsenal at their fingertips against six superhumans. I wish I could say with confidence the odds were in our favor...

  Nina pulls the truck onto the curb opposite the back entrance. It’s a side road — or as much of a side road that exists in South Boston — so there isn’t a lot going on in terms of motor or pedestrian traffic. The front insertion team isn’t as fortunate; their road is fairly busy. Concorde made the hard call to refrain from closing off the area in advance, a move that would enhance public safety but could tip off our targets.

  That decision speaks volumes about how desperate Concorde is to nail the Foreman. I’ve never known him to put a takedown above safeguarding civilians. Granted, Mindforce and I will be broadcasting a low-level telepathic command — everyone within a block of us will feel a sudden urge to leave the area — and a team of Boston cops in unmarked cars is stationed at every corner of the block, ready to move in and start clearing people as soon as we go, but Murphy’s Law is going to be lurking over our shoulders the whole time.

  That’s where the real danger is. Super-heroes have always had the goodwill of the public on their side, and we constantly earn that goodwill by saving lives and protecting innocents. There have been some bad screw-ups here and there, which are inevitable, but we’ve done much more good than harm. All it would take to lose public support is for one operation to go catastrophically sideways and result in mass civilian casualties. Concorde knows that.

  Yet here we are, risking that outcome in the hope of nailing one man. As Carrie likes to say, no pressure.

  At eleven on the dot, everyone checks in. There are no last-minute wrinkles to report. It’s go time.

  The first five minutes belong to Mindforce and me. I start drawing long, slow breaths to clear my mind and calm my nerves. I need to put my emotions away and focus. The telepathic message I’m sending out needs to be clear and dispassionate:

  Walk away. You want to be anywhere but here.

  There’s almost no one in my area, so I can’t tell if it’s doing any good, but I keep it up. For five minutes, I keep it up.

  “Strike team one ready,” Matt says.

  “Strike team two ready,” Nina says.

  Concorde gives the order.

  “Go.”

  ***

  Stuart jumps out of the van and crosses the street in a few leaping strides. By the time Matt and Megawatt reach the entrance, Stuart has already wrenched the front door off its hinges, reduced a heavy glass display case to debris, and vanished through the curtain leading to the workshop proper. The lookout presses against the back wall, eyes wide in shock, as Matt and Megawatt da
rt by.

  The thick steel door at the end of the hall is the next obstacle to fall. Stuart rips it free of its reinforced frame, in the process taking out the first of their potential enemies, a hulking man with a gun strapped under his arm.

  Chaos erupts.

  As though rehearsed to perfection, Rockjaw Quantum smashes through the garage door the same moment Stuart storms in. The intruders’ sudden appearance throws the workshop’s occupants into a momentary state of startled inaction — a precious opportunity to end things quickly. Matt capitalizes, firing his thunder gun at an Asian man with a disturbingly hunched posture. He drops, arms flailing. Another man, clad in a leather apron, stiffens as lightning leaps from Megawatt’s outstretched hand. The smell of ozone accompanies the sharp crack of discharging electricity. A scream grinds between her target’s clenched teeth.

  A low-pitched whine fills the warehouse, followed by a low thump. The air pressure changes, thickens. Matt’s bones vibrate, his skin tingles, and his stomach clenches, threatening to expel his breakfast. The whine begins its slow build to critical. Matt follows the sound to its source, a man cradling a metal cylinder ending in a cone. He’s seen a similar weapon in the Bose Industries weapons lab: a subsonic cannon — potentially lethal on a direct hit, incapacitating to those outside its line of fire. The weapon discharges again, staggering Rockjaw. Matt bites down on his tongue to fight off a second, more powerful wave of nausea. The cannon powers up for a third shot. A plume of white-hot flame sweeps the area. The cannon’s wielder screams in panic and in pain, and drops the weapon to slap at the flames eating away at his jumpsuit. He never sees Nina Nitro’s fist coming.

  Matt runs the numbers. The doorman. Asian guy. Apron guy. Sonic cannon guy. Two left, somewhere.

  A roar of gunfire echoes off the cinder block walls. Rockjaw raises an arm in front of his face, an instinctive defensive gesture. Sparks fly off his skin. The source of the assault reveals itself in the form of a lumbering mech — larger than Rockjaw and somewhat crude, little more than a skeleton awaiting its outer shell, but the punch it throws is more than enough to rock the patriarch of the Quantum Quintet.