by Brent Meske
His dad was home. The elder Michael Washington, aka Stone to the rest of the world, stood in the center of the street as a concrete golem. Every bit of his enormous body was asphalt black, including (Michael knew this from watching on TV) his hair and eyes. A yellow stripe ran up the center of his body. His hands seemed even bigger than they normally did, big enough to palm a compact car at least.
That wasn’t even the most amazing part. Sure, seeing Stone in action and knowing it was his dad was super awesome, but the rest of the Alphas were there as well. Around Stone, some up in the air, some standing around the car, were Ginger, McKorsky, Kravens, Rajasthan, and, Michael assumed, somewhere out there was Shadwell, invisible.
Right about now, on TV at least, Stone would say something like ‘time to take out the trash’ or ‘about time we cleaned house’, and they would absolutely smash the drug cartels in Mexico or the opium lords or the arms dealers wherever they were that month.
Then, generally, McKorsky would roll in some fog or a hurricane or some tornadoes or something, and the coverage would get really confusing. You’d see flashes of fire in the carnage from Ginger. Kravens would be everywhere at once, disarming everybody, dismantling guns as he went. The cameras would have to slow down to super slow-mo just to catch a glimpse of his hands moving, calmly taking the various pieces off at some hundreds of miles per hour. And Rajasthan would be there, just commentating while he disrupted the enemy radios or shut down their satellite feeds. He’d always get into the details of it even though you had no idea what he was talking about. Rajasthan always made the smartest people in the world look like grade-school dropouts.
It was always so well done, so beautiful like they’d done up their makeup for hours and rehearsed all the difficult parts a few times. They said things that sounded rehearsed in those powerful, we-are-the-absolute-law-of-the-earth sorts of voices. It was like watching a comic book happen in real life, except it was usually over in a few minutes.
But television and real life are very different things. Michael wasn’t prepared for what happened in real life.
Mr. L shot out of the car like a bullet, while somewhere in the distance Ginger dropped to the earth like a stone. Kravens started running, but Michael realized after a few seconds that he was just running. Not invisible from the super speed. He coasted to a stop and looked about confusedly, but Michael wasn't paying attention. He was staring at Mr. L.
This fat, middle-aged man was doing the unthinkable: fighting the alphas single-handedly. Mr. L was taking all their powers in turn.
Not far away, Shadwell appeared. That was strange enough, in and of itself. Usually you’d just see someone trip and fall down, or their gun suddenly floating in the air but really in Shadwell’s hands. On TV, the only time you saw Shadwell was when the fighting was all over and they were doing a press conference.
What was even more surprising was when Shadwell started running toward Stone, only he disappeared. A second later he’d tripped over a car at hyperspeed. Whatever hundreds of miles he was going, nobody would just trip. Instead, he flew through the air, tumbling end over end before he landed on his face. Then he slid about forty feet. Face first.
Then Stone turned into his dad. The concrete vanished and he shrank down to his normal size. He let out a howl of frustration and rage.
“Come out and fight like a man, Omega!” he shouted. “Command, something's wrong. All our abilities keep malfunctioning. They keep switching...” He stopped and listened for a second. From this distance Michael couldn't see the radio going up to his ear, but he knew it was there. He'd seen Stone enough to know.
“I won’t do this to you, kid,” Mr. L said from a few feet away. “I ain’t gonna kill your dad in front of you. I do have to say though, I've been looking forward to this the whole time. I haven’t been able to really switch up and give my power a flex. It’s faster than I thought it would be.”
Michael whirled, but Lansing wasn’t there. Or, he was, and he was in the middle of stealing Shadwell’s invisibility.
Half a block away, in the middle of the intersection Stone burst into flame. He and his son both jumped back and screamed.
“Relax, relax, he’s not dying,” Mr. L chuckled. “You should see them all, trying to figure out how to use each others’ powers. McKorsky is trying not to turn into a tree, and Ginger’s just turned this snowstorm into a blizzard... but pretty soon it’ll be a flood if she doesn’t get a handle on it quick.”
“Don’t do this,” Michael croaked. This was worse than looking at the smoking ruins in Tallahassee. The Alphas weren’t supposed to be undone by one guy with a beer gut.
“All you have to do is get your power and stop me,” Mr. L whispered. “Or... you know, maybe I will kill you after all.”
He appeared a few feet from Michael, sitting on a big SUV's hood. Kravens saw him, but it was too late. Flame roared around the super normal Kravens. His dad shouted too, but he was too far away to get here in time.
“Aww, not so fast!” Mr. L shouted in delight. “You get to watch your son’s friend get roasted alive.”
He turned back to Michael, and raised a fiery fist.
And a wolf jumped on him.
Clearly Michael had hit his head and this was all some sort of bizarre dream. His subconscious had to be taking a vacation, and left him with some other person’s subconscious. A gray wolf with electric blue eyes was tugging on Mr. L’s forearm, snarling and growling.
And then the flames were off. Mr. L staggered back and produced a very large pistol from somewhere. His left arm might be bleeding, and the white shirt hanging off in rags, but the rest of him looked very much alive.
“Let me up Jackson!” Mr. L screamed. “You know you can’t keep me down. I’ve trained too long for this. I’ve had that ability for too long... I’ve got my own psychic defenses. Now gimme!”
“Michael, get down!” Mr. Jackson? How had he gotten into Michael’s funky Technicolor nightmare? “I can’t keep him for very long. Charlotte—”
The wolf gave another snarl and leapt. Mr. L’s arm, trembling before, jerked up and shot the wolf. He threw back his head and laughed, and then turned the gun on Michael.
“Should’ve taken the job,” he muttered.
Something ripped Michael off his feet and pulled him onto his back. He turned his head to cry out, because the wolf wasn’t lying on the pavement a few feet away, Charlotte was, and she was bleeding. She'd been shot, and the realization hit him: Mr. L shot her.
Wait, had he been shot? Michael was already very cold, but now he was shaking.
Mr. L turned back toward Terrence Jackson, face straining and shining with sweat. “Now... give me... back... that... beautiful... power... Terrence.”
And that was the end of that dream.