“You can give it to me, and I’ll give it to him,” the waitress told Zoe.
Talk about good timing. The bell on the door chimed, and a man stepped in, a muscular guy in a leather jacket with an orange beard.
“That’s him right now,” the waitress said. “I guess you can just give it to him yourself. Jimmy, these people want to talk to you.”
“Oh, crap,” Sam said under his breath.
“Yeah?” Jimmy asked. “What about?”
He approached the booth, giving the three of them a funny look.
“Don’t you remember me?” Zoe asked, not at all fazed by the turn of events.
“Should I?”
“Yeah, I owe you some money.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, his eyes starting to turn black.
“Jimmy, not in the restaurant,” said the waitress as she placed her hand on his chest.
“Yeah,” Zoe said. “Not in the restaurant. If you want to talk about this outside, I would be more than glad to.”
Jimmy snorted, an inky blackness radiating from his eyes to his cheeks, up his brow and over his head, painting down the crown of his skull.
“No morphing in the restaurant,” the waitress said again. “Come on, Jimmy, relax.”
“Outside, now,” Jimmy said, turning to the exit.
“Fuck, Zoe,” Sam whispered as they shuffled out of the booth.
“This won’t take very long, trust me.” Zoe turned to the waitress. “And can you pack what’s left of my meat pie up. I’ll just take it to-go.” She set the money on the table, and stuffed her hands in her sweater pockets as she turned to the restaurant’s entrance.
“Don’t worry,” Ozella told Sam as she caught up to him. “I have a plan.”
“I hope someone does, because the last thing we need is a fist fight in the middle of the streets. And I don’t know what that guy’s power is, but it’s some type of morphing, which could be anything.”
“Probably a Type II, maybe III, class B,” Ozella said as Dinah appeared, the translucent woman following behind Sam.
“Hi, Dinah,” he said as they exited the restaurant, where they found Jimmy completely covered in what looked like tendrils of thick black liquid boiling off his body.
“Dinah,” Ozella said.
Dinah nodded and walked over to Jimmy, just as Zoe bared her claws.
“What kind of half breed are you?” Jimmy asked, his voice an octave deeper than it was just moments ago.
“Bye, Jimmy,” Zoe said, seeing Dinah approaching. As soon as Dinah’s lips met Jimmy’s inky neck, he fell to his knees, injury filling his body and making him weak, his form instantly reverting back to normal.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked, his voice straining to leave his lips. “It hurts… it hurts!”
“Jimmy, you murdered someone,” Ozella said as she stepped forward.
“Just one person?” Jimmy asked, trying to laugh but failing as more of his power was taken away. “Fuck! Stop the pain…”
“Yes, you murdered the wife of a man named Roger Fortune, and you probably don’t remember why you murdered her.”
Ozella tore a page out of her notebook. She wrote down some of the details she remembered of their waiter at the diner. As she did, the information appeared before her again, and she was able to sift through it until she found more specific information, which required a little bit more writing.
“Does the name Roger Fortune ring a bell to you?” Ozella asked, motioning for Dinah to ease up for a moment.
“Roger?” A grimace formed on Jimmy’s face. “I knew him in high school. Dated his…”
“His wife, right?”
“Yes,” he finally admitted. “It wasn’t my fault…”
“Is that right?” Sam asked, his nostrils flaring.
“I didn’t mean to…” Jimmy said. “It was my power. It…”
“Power given to you by a drug, right?” Sam asked, narrowing his eyes at the man.
“Power enhancement, yes.”
“Don’t tell me that this power enhancement has anything to do with Dr. Hamza,” Zoe muttered.
“Who?” Jimmy asked, his face twisted up now, exhibiting the pain he was in.
Someone passing took one look at what was going down and turned away, the woman hurrying away, forgetting that she ever saw the three interrogating the kneeling man known as Jimmy.
“I don’t know where the stuff came from,” Jimmy admitted. “But we were having an affair, and I tried some, and…”
“You were having an affair?” the waitress stood behind them now, a to-go bag in her hands.
Ozella wrote down some information as the waitress started to scream at Jimmy. He wasn’t able to protest; he could hardly get his hands up with what Dinah was doing. Eventually, Ozella handed him a piece of paper which had his full confession on it.
“Sign it,” she told him. “In ink,” she said, pointing at the waitress’ pen.
The waitress gave the pen to Ozella, her hands trembling.
Jimmy placed the paper on the ground and reluctantly signed it. Once he did, Ozella nodded at Dinah who went at it again, Jimmy passing out almost instantly, a few inky tendrils slipping out of his leather jacket and writhing.
“Tuck the piece of paper in his back pocket, and we’ll take him to the police station,” Ozella said. “Unless anyone has a better idea?”
“Works for me.”
“You’re just going to take him away?” the waitress asked.
A portal opened up, filling the area with golden sparkles. Lance and Helena stepped out, Helena with a thin smile on her face.
“Thank you, Lance, I’ll take it from here.”
“Ewww, count me out of whatever is going on here,” Lance said. He vanished in a poof of golden sparkles as Helena approached the group.
“We need to get this guy to the police station before he wakes up again,” Zoe said. “Helena, be a doll, and take care of our waitress girlfriend here. Sam, help me pick this guy up.”
“Got it,” Sam said, going to Jimmy’s feet.
“Hi,” Helena told the scared waitress as she turned to her, “this won’t take very long.” Helena’s right eye morphed into a rotating bullseye. “You’re not going to remember any of this…”
Chapter Seven: Backwards
(A chapter written in reverse. Here we go!)
Zoe rolled her eyes. She couldn’t wait for this lecture to be over.
“Thanks for sticking around,” Bill told Helena, Sam, and Zoe. They had just approached the podium, coming forward exactly like Bill had asked them to. “I want to be very clear about our little visit to your home the other day. We were not kidding around. There will be no more hero antics from the three of you. I don’t want to be the one that turns you in to the police, especially with all you have done, but so help me I will be that person if you do not follow the rules. You four are putting yourselves in danger, as well as risking the lives of the general public and other exemplar teams you may encounter. This is not a game. This is real life.”
Sam fell in line behind Helena as they approached the podium. The sexy tomboy wore a shirt that bared a small portion of her midriff, her exemplar uniform slightly visible underneath.
The Heroes Anonymous meeting was over, and Bill had just called them to the front, asking them to stick around after the woman named Barbara finished speaking.
“And that’s my confession,” Barbara said. “I know I am not an exemplar, but I just wanted to impress my niece. Little did I know that it would end in her…” The woman started to sob. “At least she’s not dead, but her hair will never be the same. She looks like a… toy poodle now. An ugly one at that.”
“Quiet, you two,” Helena told them both.
“This is definitely getting weirder and weirder,” Sam told to Zoe, who simply nodded, a snarky grin on her face.
“Kill me now,” Zoe said under her breath.
As if they were the bad kids in the class, Helena,
Sam and Zoe were at the back of the room, Zoe sitting in a way that people couldn’t see her face, although that didn’t stop a few from turning and looking at her, her half-tiger features on full display, her tail sort of tucked into the back of her sweater.
She’d hissed at the last guy that had looked at her, which had pretty much stopped the gawking.
Sam hated the fact that Bill kept giving the three dirty looks. Shit, he tried to give Bill a dirty look back, but it wasn’t really a trait Sam had mastered. He had an uncle who was good at maddogging people; Sam’s uncle would sit on the stoop at night and stare down anyone that walked past, exemplar and non-exemplar alike.
As a man spoke about impersonating an exemplar at a brewery in the West, Sam’s thoughts drifted off to what they planned to do after the H-Anon meeting. They were already wearing their exemplar uniforms under their clothing, and while it made more sense for them to simply go to some ghetto southern neighborhood that Zoe knew about, Ozella had insisted on cooking for him.
Which was what she was doing right now.
Sam watched a man approach the podium, noticing a limp in his step. He wondered if the guy was injured, but didn’t dare use his nostrils to sniff it out. He was at the point now where he solely breathed out of his mouth, saving his nose for whenever he needed to do some snooping.
“I just wish this would hurry up,” Zoe whispered out of the corner of her mouth as a different woman spoke, this one an older lady with frizzy hair, who by the sound of it should have died when trying to jump off a building to prove she could fly. She was lucky there had been an actual exemplar around to catch her.
“Shhh…” said Helena. “It’ll be over soon.”
“I’ve heard the story so many times before,” Sam told Zoe.
“We really shouldn’t be here,” Zoe added.
Sam zoned out for about thirty minutes, maybe a bit longer than that. At least two or three people gave their spiels in the time Sam was in straight up la la land. He really wished he was napping, especially if they were going to be out heroing that night.
Bill started up, reminding everyone who had come to the meeting how they were normal people, not at all unique, and how they could use their powers as a “normal, not unique person” to do things like community service. That real heroes didn’t wear capes; real heroes worked for the government, or for volunteer fire departments, or cosplay cafes. Sam almost laughed at this point, especially since Bill was Mister Fist.
Damn if Sam didn’t hate saying the Heroes Anonymous mantra. What a load of bullshit.
“I am not a super powered individual. I am not an exemplar. I have never had a superpower. I am not a hero, nor will I ever be a hero. I am not a superhero, I am half-powered. I will always be half-powered, I am a non-exemplar. There is nothing about me that is extraordinary. I am not a hero, I am not a superhero. I am half-powered. I will always be half-powered. I am a non-exemplar.”
Chapter Eight: And Now We Feast!
(Food, food, food!)
Unfortunately, Bill aka Mister Fist, went on and on, as if he were trying to hypnotize Helena, Sam and Zoe with his words, hoping that not-so-positive reinforcement would help him get his point across.
Once he finally reached a stopping point, Helena Knight, as prim and proper as ever, stepped forward with her chin held high. She reached her hand out to Bill, and shook it, assuring him that they wouldn’t get into any shenanigans.
“I’m so fucking glad that’s over,” Zoe said as they left the Heroes Anonymous meeting, the chill wind hitting all three of them almost immediately.
No, Zoe wasn’t in her tiger boy shorts, she had changed to a pair of black tights, which she wore over her exemplar uniform. Her tail was on full display now, and Sam couldn’t help but take a quick peek at her ass as she moved in front of him, her tail bobbing in the air.
“Is Ozella finished with dinner yet?” Helena asked Sam.
Sam didn’t know why he was at the back of the group, but he didn’t mind the view, so he just stayed there as they walked on the sidewalk, the sun setting in the East and adding a blood orange hue to the streets.
One mental message later and Sam got the confirmation he needed.
“She’s ready,” he called up to Zoe and Helena, who were discussing something privately.
He thought in that moment of activating his enhanced sense of hearing, but decided against eavesdropping. While Sam could be impulsive, and at times he was an idiot, he was generally a pretty trustworthy guy, one who didn’t normally snoop on others.
Zoe and Helena nodded at each other, both turning back to Sam so he could catch up.
“What did I miss?” he asked.
“Not a lot,” Zoe told him, which was a clear enough indication to Sam to leave it at that.
Golden sparkles, golden sparkles, golden sparkles.
Lance stood there in a pair of sunglasses, a sleeveless shirt, a shiny leather vest, his junk barely held in a bundle by a pair of cutoff jean shorts not unlike the ones Zoe had been wearing earlier.
“Someone looks like a slut,” Zoe said.
“Please,” Lance told her. “This is far from slutty. I’m just meeting some friends for cocktails.”
“Remember, you’re still on call,” Helena told him.
“You don’t think I can teleport away, grab my little group of vigilantes, teleport them wherever they need to go, and make it back to my friends in a matter of moments? How long have I been working for you again?”
“That’s up to you,” Helena said firmly.
“Right, anyway,” Lance cleared his throat. “Ms. Knight, Tiger Girl, Dude-Who-I-Still-Don’t-Know, gather around.”
Lance offered them an exaggerated bow, golden energy sprinkling from his fingertips and surrounding the three. They appeared in Helena’s living room, Sam instantly having to pinch his nostrils. Whatever Ozella was cooking was pungent, his olfactory epithelium going off like a fireworks show.
“You know where to find me,” Lance said as he teleported away.
“I’m so glad you three are back,” Ozella said, who wore an apron over her schoolgirl uniform. Dinah was also there, stirring up a bowl of potato salad.
“What if you need her later?” Zoe asked. “Never mind, I still haven’t figured out the usefulness of turning her alive.”
“We’ve already been over this before,” Ozella said as she brought a tray of food to the table. “She’s a great distraction, so we can use her for that. Also, no matter what you hit her with, she can’t die. Want yet another demonstration?”
“Not really,” Zoe said as Ozella set a hot pan down, returned to the kitchen, and approached Dinah with a knife.
“I’m going to stab you now,” she told Dinah.
“Well, this should be interesting,” Zoe said as she settled in.
The nude woman simply nodded, her breasts bouncing.
“Do I really have to say, ‘Please don’t stab Dinah?’” Helena asked.
“Always good to test her, and we should do plenty more tests tomorrow.”
Ozella stabbed Dinah in the chest, the blade going through Dinah’s flesh and coming out the other side. No blood, no pain (apparently), and Dinah hardly seemed to notice it. Once she was tired of a blade jutting from her chest, she pulled it back out, the wound healing instantly.
“Well, that was fucked.” Zoe threw her hood back and sat down at the table. “Ozella, I like you, but stabbing your ghost is taking it a bit too far.”
Ozella’s cheeks grew red. “Sorry, we were just testing things out earlier…”
“How long has she been active?” Sam asked. “You only have an hour, remember?”
He sat across from Zoe, while Helena sat at the head of the table.
“She has been active for about ten minutes,” Ozella told him with a smile. “I just powered her up a moment ago, to help me bring all the food to the table. That’s your bandanna, by the way,” she said, referring to a black swatch of fabric sitting on Sam’s plate.
“I will feed him,” said Ozella. “But before we go with the bandana, we should try your sense of touch. You really haven’t played around with it, so let’s give that one a shot. Let me bring all the food first. Dinah, help me get the rest.”
Ozella had gone a little overboard. She had cooked casseroles, meat pies that looked like she had made them from scratch, baked potatoes, creamy side dishes, a bit of everything.
“I don’t know how much longer I can last,” he said as Dinah finished setting the last plate on the table, which was filled with meats and cheeses.
“Power-up, off,” Ozella said as she sat next to Sam, Dinah fading away. “The rest of you can eat, but Sam and I will test some things. First, I want you to activate your sense of touch.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.” Sam took a deep breath in. “Power-up, touch.”
He felt a sensation in his nose, almost as if he was snorting up some liquid that had somehow pressed past the membrane of his epithelium, the sensation moving down his shoulders and his arms, into his fingers.
Sam held his hands in front of him, afraid to touch anything.
“Try the knife,” Ozella said. “One utensil at a time.”
Sam reached for the knife, his fingers grazing against the tablecloth.
It was uncanny.
The simple act of his fingers touching the tablecloth told him a number of things, from the last time it was washed, to what it was made out of, to where it had been stored before being placed on the table.
“Phew…” Sam exhaled audibly.
It wasn’t so bad.
Even as he picked up the knife, he felt relief. Sure, he knew what kind of metal the knife was made out of, the last time it had been used, all these concepts and historical facts taking shape almost as if they were memory he was recalling.
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