I shrugged. “Instinct, I guess. I just know. I guess it’s like a balloon that gets blown up, then has all the air let out of it; it just goes back to its original shape.”
“Can you turn into someone right now? Like me?”
“I usually don’t do people I know. I might base it on someone real, but I usually change something.”
“Let’s see!”
I tried to refuse, but after much cajoling, I shifted into Smokescreen. It only lasted about three seconds, but then everyone started clamoring for me to do someone else. I don’t know why, but for some reason I decided to mimic Paramount.
“I’m Paramount,” I said after changing shape. I struck a bodybuilding pose. “I’m the most gorgeous hunk of super teen you’ll ever see. I’m strong, and pretty, and fast, and pretty, and…did I say pretty?”
Everyone was rolling with laughter as I continued my impersonation. Without warning, however, a deafening silence settled over the room. I was in the middle of mimicking Paramount when I turned to see what had happened - and there was the real Paramount standing in the doorway.
I casually changed back to myself and flopped down on a nearby stool. Paramount entered the room, making a beeline for me. The path between us cleared as students quickly stepped aside for him, like townspeople in a spaghetti Western getting out of the way of a gunfight. He strolled right over to where I sat and just stopped. He stood there for about thirty seconds just looking me over, up and down, as if I were a fish he had hooked and was deciding whether to keep.
“So, it’s true,” he said finally. “They found you.”
“I was never lost,” I replied.
“Well then, you decided to come out of hiding,” he sneered.
I really wasn’t in the mood and I contemplated just getting out of there, but I didn’t want to even imply that I was intimidated by him.
“Call it whatever makes you feel better,” I said. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. Whatever you say.”
“That’s right,” he said, tapping himself in the chest with a thumb. “Whatever I say. And as long as we have that understanding, welcome to the team.”
He extended a hand, which I looked at for a second in surprise before taking. As expected, he squeezed unnecessarily hard.
“Just so you know,” he whispered, leaning in close, “in a one-on-one fight, I’d take you in a second.”
He let go, almost throwing my hand away, and turned towards the door. He’d gone about three steps when he stopped and looked back as if he’d forgotten something.
“One other thing,” he snarled venomously. “Don’t ever do me again.”
Of course, after Paramount left the room, I immediately shifted into him, much to the amusement of the other kids.
*****
Needless to say, Paramount’s appearance put a damper on things in the break room. I still hadn’t really seen the facilities, so a group of the other teens offered to show me around. I thought about the last purported tour I was invited on and almost declined. I’m glad I didn’t.
They first took me to the weight room. It was singularly impressive. I’d never seen multi-ton weights before (outside of pictures). Likewise, there were treadmills that could go at hundreds of miles per hour. (I even tried one out.) There was also a massive training room that simulated attacks from supervillains via holograms.
All in all, it was great. The only downside was that, on one little trip from one place to another, we passed Electra in the hallway. She stopped when she saw me, and made a gesture for me to approach.
“Look, I’m sorry about last night,” she said.
“What’s to be sorry about?” I said blandly. “You guys had been looking for Kid Sensation; you found him. You just had to play with my emotions to do it.”
“Jim, I wasn’t trying to–”
“I don’t know what you were trying to do and right now I don’t care. I liked you, and you used that to trick me and lead me on.”
“I wasn’t leading you on. I liked you, too. But I also have a duty to the League! You’ll learn that after you’ve been here for a while.”
I walked away without saying anything. She did have a point, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. She could stand to stew in her own juices for a little while.
Chapter 15
It was late afternoon when someone brought back word that the team had returned. (Apparently the secret mission had only remained “secret” for a limited amount of time.) We’d finished the tour quite a while earlier, and I was actually in the League cafeteria eating a sandwich.
All of the kids kind of scattered, running off to try to get news of how the mission had gone. According to the rumor mill, it was a success, but I was hoping to get more detail. I tried to be patient and give them time to debrief, but after about thirty minutes I couldn’t take it anymore. I started asking random people where I could find Mouse. Eventually, someone told me that he was probably in his lab. I didn’t have the clearance to physically get through all the checkpoints, so I just teleported there instead.
I appeared right in front of Mouse, who was busy typing something in on a computer tablet. I’ve teleported in front of people before and most of them find it startling; Mouse barely looked up.
“It’s been less than a day,” he said, “and I can already tell that we’re going to have to put a bell on you.”
“I need to know what happened,” I said anxiously. “Remember, my family is in danger.”
“It’s something of a mixed report,” he said, finally looking up.
“What do you mean?”
Mouse gave me a quick overview of what had happened. The bug he’d had me plant was also a homing beacon that had given them a location that turned out to be deep underground. Despite Mouse’s earlier statement about going in “guns blazing,” the team had actually tried to be as stealthy as possible. But, as usually happens, they were eventually revealed and that’s when the real fight started.
“One of those villains tried to use the TNIP,” Mouse said. “I assume they were going to try to trap the team in a pocket dimension. So I blew up the machine.”
“You blew it up?” I was incredulous. “How?”
“With the bug you planted. It was actually a Triple-B device: bug, beacon…and bomb.”
“Wait,” I said. “You had me teleport a bomb somewhere? And you didn’t tell me???!!!”
“Look, Kid,” he said in an explanatory tone. “I didn’t know how much time we had or what exactly they were planning to do. I just knew we had to stop them, and that meant preventing them from using that device – by any means necessary. So yes, I had you teleport a bomb, and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t have time to deal with it if you were some kind of conscientious objector who got squeamish at the thought of people getting hurt.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I was overflowing with an emotion that I couldn’t put a name to: fury and disbelief bundled with remorse and finality. I understood what Mouse was saying, but I’d never used my powers in a way that might kill someone. It’s not that I couldn’t accept it – Gramps had instilled in me the fact that death was sometimes unavoidable in order to achieve the greater good – but it was something you usually had an opportunity to make your peace with beforehand, if only for a few seconds.
I let out a long breath that I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“How many?” I asked.
“How many what?”
“How many died? From the bomb I planted?”
“Oh, none from what we can tell.”
My relief was almost palpable and certainly visible, because Mouse started grinning.
“Is that why you were suddenly so uptight? You thought you’d killed somebody?”
“I didn’t know…”
“Maybe I should finish this story, then. The bomb went off, but it was a shaped charge, only meant to destroy the machine. Unfortunately, it wasn’t strong enough; the device was only damaged initially.”
&nbs
p; “So it’s still functional?”
“No. The bomb didn’t immediately destroy it, but it became seriously destabilized. The technology underlying it became corrupt, and it began creating random proximal pocket dimensions.”
“What does that mean?”
“As best as I can tell, all six of our supervillains are trapped in a pocket dimension of their own creation.”
*****
It was a little more complicated than the way Mouse explained it. He’d had to reverse-engineer the sequence of events following the detonation of his bug-bomb to find out what happened. The villains in charge had indeed been seemingly trapped in one of the pocket dimensions. However, the machine had created thousands of such pockets before it permanently ceased functioning. Moreover, there was no way to identify or track the specific pocket the villains were in. In short, they were trapped to a certain extent, but at the same time not in custody.
On the flip side, the raid had resulted in the actual capture of a number of henchmen, both normal and super. Those that were normal had been handed off to the authorities. Those with superhuman abilities were being held in the League’s nullifier cells until proper transportation could be arranged. I offered to teleport them, but Mouse declined.
“It’s not really a transport problem,” he said. “It’s a space-available problem. See, we have special prisons built to hold super criminals, but we can’t send them to prison without a trial. It’s still a free country, after all. However, we can hold them until they’re actually tried - assuming they don’t make bail. Right now, all the jail cells are at their legal limit, so we’ll keep some of them here until a slot opens up, bail is set, or what have you.”
That seemed reasonable, and I probably wouldn’t have given the situation much more thought under other circumstances. However, he ran through a list of names of those who had been captured, one of which made my ears perk up: Incendia.
I immediately teleported to the room with the nullifier cells. The room already had a good number of occupants, both teen supers and League members. My appearance startled a couple of kids, but they recovered quickly enough to answer my questions. Apparently Incendia was being held in the third cell. I walked down, eager to get a closer look at the person who had burned my house to the ground.
I was a little shocked when I finally saw her. She was just a teenager, probably the same age as me. And, when not encased in living flame, it seemed that she had pale skin, cold blue eyes, and curly blond hair. She gave me an icy glare that would have frozen an ocean. It was as if she knew me, and to be frank, there was something about her that was oddly familiar. Yet, I had never seen her before earlier that day, when she had treated my home like a place to make s’mores. (Had it only been that morning? It seemed like a lot longer – weeks at least.)
My reverie was interrupted by a flash going off next to me. It was Smokescreen, taking pictures as usual.
“Is that allowed down here?” I asked, nodding towards his camera.
“Oh, sure,” he replied. “The League likes to have all this stuff documented. There are actually hidden video cameras in the room, but I talked them into letting me take some still shots. Officially, all the pictures I develop belong to the League, but it’s just a hobby for me – no commercial gain involved – so I don’t care.”
“You said ‘develop’?” I noted curiously.
“Yeah, I’m old school,” he said with a grin. “My dad was a photographer and he taught me.”
“Tainted you is more like it,” said a new voice, Aqua, who I hadn’t noticed. “You really should try digital.”
“Nah,” Smokescreen said. “I like getting my hands dirty – I’ve got a darkroom and everything in my quarters. It makes me feel like I’m close to my old man.”
I gave him a pat on the shoulder in understanding fashion. I gave a fleeting thought as to whether I’d ever be close to my own father, then dismissed the notion. When I was a kid, I used to dream about my father showing up one day and proclaiming me as his own to the world, like the Wizard of Oz stepping out from behind the curtain. I had put that dream far out of my mind years ago, and it was best to keep it that way.
I watched as Smokescreen snapped a picture of Aqua in front of Incendia’s cell, then began to make my way out.
Chapter 16
Following my departure from the nullifier cells, I teleported to the safe house where Braintrust was keeping my family. I was pleased to see that Mom and Gramps were fine, and well-protected by a large number of BT clones. (After learning about Mouse’s suspicions of a mole, I passed on his offer of League security.)
I brought them up to speed on what had happened. There was relief that Incendia had been captured, but it was decided that they should continue to lie low for a couple of days. After spending a few hours with them – including having dinner – I said my goodbyes and popped back to the League.
In an ideal world, had my original Teen Super Trial not become a PR disaster, I would have been given living quarters at Alpha League HQ like the other super teens being sponsored. Of course, teen quarters generally saw limited use. During the school year, teen supers were in residence at the Academy; during the summer, most spent some time at home with family.
There were, however, a few times during the summer when it was mandatory that super teens stay at their team HQ. This was one of those times. (The general understanding was that staying with a superhero team the last few weeks of the summer got a super teen back into the right frame of mind – as well as physical shape – before heading back to the Academy.) Thus, the League’s teen population was impressive in size at present.
That being the case, I was pleasantly surprised that they were still able to provide me with a room. It turns out, though, that I needn’t have worried. There were far more rooms than the League would probably ever utilize. I was placed on one of the floors for males, next door to Smokescreen – presumably a friendly face in case I had any questions.
My room was fairly spacious, about the equivalent of a one-bedroom apartment. There was a quaint living area, a kitchenette, and a nice-sized bedroom with an ample closet. Someone had even gone to the trouble of placing clothes in the closet that were my size.
It was dark when I got back, though not necessarily late. Still, it had been a long day, so I took a leisurely shower, thinking about everything that had happened. The shower was an edgeless, clear-glass model with a handle that doubled as a towel rack on the outside. The hot water felt good against my skin, almost like a soothing massage, kneading out tension that I didn’t know I had.
When I was finished, I turned off the shower and then phased, becoming insubstantial. Water that had clung snugly to my body a second before cascaded down to the floor of the shower. Having dispensed with the need for a towel, I pulled on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt.
The bathroom sink was a single vanity set in the center of a countertop about five feet long, with a mirror of equal length set in the wall. The mirror was fogged from my use of the shower, so apparently I would need the towel after all. I turned and pulled it from the handle of the shower door, and when I looked back to the mirror I almost jumped out of my skin.
Aqua was sitting over the sink, feet dangling off the edge of the counter. She was wearing a robe that had hung on the back of the bathroom door a second ago. She laughed at the look of surprise on my face.
“Serves you right,” she said between giggles. “Now you know what it feels like when you pop up on people out of nowhere.”
“How…how’d you get in here?” I asked, trying to recover.
She tapped the sink. “Any place that water can go is accessible to me.” Then she turned to water – clear, animated liquid in brash female form – then she reverted back.
“How long have you been in here?” I asked.
She smiled, putting her arms around my neck and leaning in close. “Let’s just say that I’m a little harder to shake off than that water in the shower.”
Blu
shing, I leaned away from her, pulling her hands from around my neck at the same time.
“Not to be rude,” I said, “but what are you doing here?”
“Just checking to see how you’re settling in,” she said, pouting a little. “So, how’s everything so far?”
“Fine. I’ve got no complaints. The room’s comfortable, and almost everybody’s been pretty nice.”
“So, what’s it like having all that power?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re probably one of the most powerful supers on the planet. You took down the whole Alpha League by yourself a few years ago.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t really take anyone down. We just kind of butted heads, and everybody went away licking their wounds. The problem was that it was all caught on film and ended up being an embarrassment for everyone – me included.”
“What did you have to be embarrassed about? With power like yours, you could make almost any super on the planet bow down to you – and make normal people worship you like a god.”
I frowned. “That wouldn’t be right.”
“Sometimes might makes right,” she said, smiling.
I was so focused on what she was saying that I didn’t realize that she was leaning towards me again until her lips brushed mine. There was a jolt, an emotional charge that shot through me, along with a thousand conflicting emotions. On some level, I knew instinctively that Aqua was leading me down a dark path, that she was manipulating me. I should have drawn away, but instead, when she pressed for a deeper kiss, I kissed her back.
Her arms were around my neck and I pulled her close. In my brain, I felt a small spark igniting, a tiny plume of flame quickly fanning into a wildfire crackling across my mind.
This is wrong! Wrong! WRONG!
Finally, I pulled back, held her at arm’s length.
The Kid Sensation Series Box Set Page 12