The Kid Sensation Series Box Set

by Kevin Hardman

  The giant holding me was, like everyone else in the garage, moving so slowly that he might as well have been a mannequin. The blow that had first hit me had essentially come out of nowhere, but with such speed that I didn’t even have time to counter it. That meant…

  I looked around wildly. There! Motion over in the direction that I had come from – by my grandfather’s car. With everything else practically frozen in time, it was easy to pick out.

  It was a young guy, maybe in his twenties, with dark wavy hair. He had on the same kind of goggles and earpiece as his brawny companion, but also wore some type of body armor. From my perspective, he appeared to be jogging leisurely in our direction, but in real time he had to be moving at super speed.

  So, this was presumably the guy who had initially hit me. He must have been moving incredibly fast for me not to have seen him coming. Angrily, I mentally marked a tally for him, but since I didn’t know his name, I dubbed him “Swifty.” Likewise for his muscular companion, whom I designated “Brawny.”

  I reached for them both with my teleportation power, ready to put them on the dark side of the moon. (Okay, maybe not the dark side of the moon, but some place remote, like Antarctica - a trip that would evoke the mantra of “know your enemy” the next time they thought about attacking someone without provocation.) I was just about to send them on their way when a few ugly memories reared up.

  I had teleported people in anger before - unintentionally, on a couple of occasions. Thus, there existed the very real possibility that I could indeed transport Swifty and Brawny somewhere completely inhospitable if I let my emotions run away with me. If I couldn’t control myself, even with bad apples like these, I was dangerous to everyone around me - including innocent civilians. I needed to take a second.

  I switched back to normal speed, then phased just before Brawny smacked me into the concrete floor. I went with the momentum of his motion, going straight through the floor to the level immediately below the one on which I had parked. There was a dull but audible smack as Brawny’s hand must have connected with the garage floor above me, causing dust to billow out and scaring a group of pigeons into flight from the rafters. People heading for their cars ducked and ran for cover, fearing the place was collapsing.

  I had stopped myself before coming into contact with the ground on this level; now I rested there, floating in mid-air, taking a moment to make sure I had a firm grip on my temper before I engaged these guys again. When I was certain that I wouldn’t do anything irreversible with my teleportation power, I got ready to zoom back up through the roof to the floor above. Before I did that, however, I noticed someone else coming down - actually phasing through the floor as I had.

  In actuality, there were four of them. There were Swifty and Brawny, but also another man and a woman. The other man wore the same type of body armor as Swifty. Tall and slender, he had brown hair that was starting to go gray at the temples. He had dark beady eyes and a beak-like nose that, all in all, gave him the semblance of a buzzard.

  The woman was a different story entirely. She had short blond hair cut into bangs that framed a face of soft, delicate features. She wore a skin-tight, white bodice that accentuated all of her feminine attributes. Finally, she was literally radiant - she was covered in a soft, fine glow that pulsed around her like an echoing heartbeat.

  Like Swifty and Brawny, these latest arrivals also wore earpieces and the same odd goggles, which I now recognized as having IR lenses. The four dropped down, in insubstantial form, until their feet touched the ground, and then they solidified and fanned out.

  A few mall shoppers stood around, watching the spectacle as events unfolded. Several of the smarter ones, however, recognizing that a battle between supers was brewing and about to bubble over, took off for the interior of the mall, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the prospect of wholesale carnage.

  Although they were facing my direction, the four didn’t seem to be fully focused on me. Quickly, I opened myself up empathically, reaching out to each of them simultaneously to see what I could sense. Oddly enough, although they had varying feelings underneath, I detected almost the same emotional state coming from the surface of their individual psyches: a high level of attentiveness - a sense of being completely alert, as if they were listening to something.

  Still angry but feeling more in control, I reached for them, preparing to make them all next-door-neighbors with Emperor penguins, and found my power closing on…nothing. They had vanished.

  Or rather, three of them had - the men. The woman just stood there, smiling at me with a sly expression that made my hair stand on end - as if she knew something I didn’t. Willing to take what I could get, I focused on her, tried to teleport her. Again nothing happened; this time, however, I understood what had occurred, as well as what the woman’s secret was: she was a teleporter.

  The entire gist of being a teleporter is that you can go or be anywhere you want. By extension, you don’t have to go any place where you don’t want to be. By way of example, if you could somehow transport a teleporter from Point A to Point B, their own teleportation power would immediately bring them back to Point A if that’s where they wanted to be. In short, you can’t teleport a teleporter against their will, and there’s a null effect when one teleporter tries to do so to another.

  All of this flashed through my brain in an instant. Knowing her secret was out, the woman winked at me, then raised a hand in my direction. Almost immediately, a focal point of light gathered at her fingertips, and then shot in my direction with laser-like intensity.

  I phased, and the laser beam passed harmlessly through me, striking and scorching one of the concrete beams near the ceiling instead. However, the use of her laser triggered something in my brain, and suddenly, I knew who this woman was.

  Her name was Estrella; she was a well-known merc - a super who hired out to the highest bidder. Coming so close on the heels of my conversation with Gray, she had to be working for him, along with the rest of her compatriots. Her power set revolved around light and heat, and included the ability to fly. She was not someone to take lightly - especially when you considered that she could also teleport.

  Bearing that in mind, I shifted into super speed and flew at her, arm cocked back to deliver a punishing blow. Not being a speedster herself, Estrella wouldn’t be able to avoid me; I’d be on her before she could even teleport. At the last second, however, some chivalrous impulse took hold of me, making me abhor the idea of hitting a woman. Thus, I changed tactics and instead tried to tackle her around the middle. My arms, however, closed on nothing.

  The miss threw me off-balance, and I banged against the side of a parked car before reversing my momentum.

  What the…?

  I didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t have missed her, and she hadn’t teleported. In fact, she was turning to face me now, with that evil, I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin on her face.

  Of course! She had phased!

  I’d completely forgotten that they had phased down from the upper floor of the garage just a few moments a–

  A brutal shoulder hit from Swifty cut off my thought processes and sent me crashing into a concrete column nearby, where I smacked my head hard enough to get an immediate headache. Suddenly, I heard a grunt and felt wild emotions surging near me, an almost palpable bloodlust. Disoriented but recognizing the danger, I teleported wildly, popping myself about twenty feet away just as Brawny made a flying tackle at the spot where I’d just been.

  He hit the garage column like a wrecking ball, the force of his impact sending tremors throughout the structure. The column shattered, sending broken chunks of concrete skittering across the garage floor like pieces of eggshell as car alarms started going off like klaxons.

  Somehow, I had foolishly forgotten about Estrella’s companions. She had initially teleported them away from me, but I guess I’d gotten it into my head that she wasn’t going to bring them back - an idiotic assu
mption on my part.

  The column Brawny had destroyed was obviously a load-bearing structure (or maybe he’d done more damage than I initially realized), because an ominous creak sounded, followed by a thunderous crack. Part of the ceiling slab gave way, bending down at an angle that let two cars from above roll down with crushing force onto a sports car and an SUV. Ceiling lights began to flicker all across this level of the garage; a pipe near the broken ceiling slab burst without warning, spewing water out in a wide arc.

  This turn of events had an unsettling effect on the crowd of spectators. From the moment Brawny took out the column, they’d all suddenly realized that they had pressing business elsewhere and scattered towards the exits, screaming.

  It only took a few moments to take all this in, but the headache I’d picked up was making it hard to focus. I teleported outside - up to the roof of the garage - as much to get away from Estrella and her crew as to clear my head. But if that was my wish, it was in vain, because she immediately popped up next to me.

  This time, I swung without hesitation, all thoughts of chivalry banished. Again, I failed to connect because she was phased, and I stumbled, off-balance. She took the opportunity to wallop me with a backhand that lifted me off my feet. I didn’t travel far, though, as Brawny caught me, wrapping his arms around me in a crushing bear hug that made it feel like my ribs were dry twigs on the verge of snapping. Screaming in pain, I teleported back into the garage, not too far from where the broken pipe was still gushing water. As if on cue, Estrella and company teleported back inside as well. I went invisible - something I should have done much earlier - then phased through a classic sixties Mustang convertible and lay down in the back seat, trying to get a moment to think.

  I was getting creamed. They had clearly brought their A-game, and had had me on the ropes from the start. Moreover, I hadn’t been able to lay a finger on any of them. I’d been trained in how to fight multiple adversaries at once, but I’d never encountered anything like this before. They were outmaneuvering me at every turn. It was as if they were psychic…

  As soon as the thought occurred to me, I knew that to be precisely what it was. The way Estrella knew exactly when to teleport her team, their ability to follow me when I teleported, the precise timing of their phasing…they had a precognitive on their side. (It also explained their peculiar emotional state, why it seemed like they were listening to someone. Apparently they were.)

  Precogs and clairvoyants often make for extremely difficult opponents. There are few greater advantages than knowing exactly what your adversary will do. Still, my grandfather had taught me a few tricks for getting the better of them. However, it helped to know something about the precise nature of their powers.

  Precognitive abilities could vary wildly. Some could see a specific future; others could only see probabilities. One might have control of their power to see what will happen; another might not and simply live with visions coming to them at random times. Regardless, precogs typically came in one of two flavors: their ability to see the future was usually either long-and-narrow, or short-and-broad.

  With respect to the former, precogs in that category could see far into the future, but only with respect to limited subjects - e.g., they could see what the future held regarding a particular person, event, and so on, but not for anyone or anything else. For example, a precog might be able to tell you if your favorite sports team will make it to the championship game that’s scheduled six months from now, but they can’t tell you how any other sports franchise will fare. Basically, they had tunnel vision to a certain extent

  In the short-and-broad category, precogs could see what would occur with respect to just about any person, event, location, etc., but only within a very limited time frame. They might be able to see ten minutes into the future, or maybe just ten seconds.

  Outside the Mustang, Estrella and her team stalked through the garage in silence. Having switched my vision over to infrared, I saw them as crimson and scarlet forms, methodically hunting for prey they knew to be hiding somewhere nearby. They were obviously looking for me, but it seemed that their precog was having trouble pinning me down at the moment. Score one for invisibility!

  Having bought myself a little time, the obvious question now was, what were the particular facets of this precog’s ability? I needed to find out, and that meant finding the precog in question. They could be anywhere, but odds were they were close; proximity to the action seemed to increase a precog’s odds of accurately predicting what would occur. I reached out with my empathic ability, casting a wide net, uncertain of what I was looking for.

  I ignored the adrenaline-laced sensations from Estrella and her cohorts. Likewise with the mall patrons, many of whom were feeling fright and panic - and in some cases hysteria. I went further, still looking for…I’m not sure what, just something out of the ordinary.

  I’d never tried to read this far out before, and I was getting ready to withdraw when I felt it. It was an odd sensation - something akin to fervent excitement, but more like the emotional equivalent of a hyperactive child trying to get a parent’s attention: “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

  It originated from the other side of the mall - a surface parking lot near the back that saw limited use since the parking garage had been built. Telepathically, I peeked inside the mind of the person who was sending the emotional broadcast.

  said a mental voice that I pegged as belonging to a child - a girl.

  I was a little confused. I had tried to tiptoe into her mind, but had obviously been heard.

 

 

  she stated indignantly.

 

  At that moment, I got an image of her as well - a young girl with an olive complexion, green eyes, and curly brown hair.

  This was interesting; I hadn’t expected the precog to be on my side.

 

  I felt a kind of mental nudging and peeked out of the Mustang’s window. A group of about a half-dozen mall cops had shown up and had their weapons drawn on Estrella’s team. The security guards were clearly outmatched, but kudos to them for trying to do their job. It also occurred to me that, with my pursuers preoccupied, this would be a good time to put some distance between me and them, and I shared that with Rudi.

  she said.

 

 

  I certainly had to acknowledge that teleporting hadn’t been a big help to me thus far. That being the case, I hesitated only a moment before acquiescing.

  I noted, indicating the security guards.

 

  I cut her off.

  I heard her laugh, mentally, at the nickname I’d given him. At the same time, I heard a hollow sound - like a weird echo - in the background of her thoughts.

 

  She giggled.

  I frowned, not liking what I’d learned at all. Collectively, Estrella’s team mimicked a bunch of my own powers, meanin
g they were probably assembled specifically to deal with me. Moreover, they had a precog on their side, Rudi, who – based on her last response – had obviously foreseen my conversation with Gray. That brought up the subject of her abilities.

  I said.

 

 

 

  Not far away, an obviously nervous mall cop – probably the head of security – was engaged in a heated war of words with Estrella. I continued my conversation with Rudi while keeping an eye on them.

  She was silent for a few seconds.

 

  There was the weird echo in her head again, and then she resumed talking.

  Interesting. While I thought about it, the odd echo in her mind sounded again. This time, I listened closely - and almost jumped out my skin.

  I shouted.

  There was a matter-of-fact tone to her voice, as if she’d be doing anything else.

 

  Mentally she rolled her eyes.