Corpies (Super Powereds Spinoff Book 1) (33 page)

“Check it out.” Zone pointed to one of the multitude of televisions suspended around the restaurant, this one playing scenes from the rescue effort they had just been part of. Amidst the wreckage and turmoil, there were clear shots of people being hauled to safety, sometimes even by one of their team. Titan got the most screen time, which surprised no one, but Bubble Bubble, Galvanize, and Zone were also featured relatively frequently. Hexcellent made the fewest appearances, which seemed unusual to Titan until he remembered that she’d been paired with a large demon that had blades for arms. Family-friendly imagery, it was not.

By the time they finally looked away from the television, their drinks had arrived and Muriel had made herself scarce once more. Everyone reached for their respective glasses and started to drink, but Titan held up a hand to stop them.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a toast. I realize this probably isn’t the best place for it, but hell if I know whether another chance for us to all have drinks in our hands is going to come around.” Titan cleared his throat softly then raised the frosted mug holding his beer.

“You all did great work today, just like you do every time we step out there. I don’t think it’s a secret to anyone that I was reluctant to sign on with a group of PEERS when I first came back, and that was due to nothing more than my own stupidity. You four are as brave, determined, and good-hearted as any Hero I’ve stood beside, and I am damned proud to be a part of this team. Cheers.”

Everyone took a small sip of their drink, nodding appreciatively at both the sentiment and the wonderful flavor touching their tongues. Silence descended on the table, no one quite sure what to say to follow Titan’s kind words, until Bubble Bubble finally spoke.

“For what it’s worth, you’ve certainly turned out to be far less a burden than we were expecting.”

“Glad to hear it,” Titan replied. He was slowly beginning to get a feel for the most stoic member of their group, and he had a hunch that she was fonder of him, and the others, than she might like to let on.

“We could have done worse,” Zone agreed. From him it was as good of an olive branch as Titan was likely to receive, and he nodded his head in appreciation.

Hexcellent sighed and rolled her eyes. “I guess if we’re all going to have this emotion-fest then I’ll say that yes, it’s not terrible having you on the team. You damned sure have a knack for making things more interesting, I’ll give you that. I can’t say I remember a single time Mirror Fog whipped the shit out of Elemental Fury on pay-per-view.”

“Oh right, that happened before you joined the team,” Galvanize said, taking a small sip of his dark beer.

Everyone at the table, save for Titan who had never met the former Hero Liaison, stared at Galvanize in wide-eyed confusion. It wasn’t at the suggestion that Mirror Fog had pulled the same stunt as Titan; that was patently ridiculous. No, their shock stemmed from one simple fact about what they had just heard: Galvanize had made a joke while in costume.

“What?” Galvanize said as their stares began to make him fidget in his seat. “You guys are the only ones who can kid around?”

“Not the only ones who can, just usually the only ones that do,” Zone pointed out.

“Though I loathe to admit it, it seemed Hexcellent was righter than she knew,” Bubble Bubble said. “Titan’s presence truly does keep things more interesting.”

62.

As much as Owen would have liked to lie down in his bed once the team got back to the penthouse, such luxuries would have to wait. Instead of passing out and finishing his sleep that had been so suddenly interrupted, he stripped off the costume that was coated in chalky concrete dust and grime, laid out a fresh one, and hit the showers. It took a long while and a lot of strong-handed scrubbing to get all the dirt off of him, but when eventually he emerged he at last felt clean.

Silly as it seemed, Owen had learned over the years that whenever he had to go into a place as an authority figure, he felt it put him in the mood to make himself presentable. Owen had never much been one for leadership roles during his Hero days. There were always smarter people than him on the team, ones who could look at a situation and immediately see where best to deploy every asset they had. Those were the people that took up a leadership role, and Owen was more than happy to give it to them. He might be one of the most lauded strongmen in the world, but he was still just a strongman at the end of the day. Melee was his bread and butter, where he shined and where he felt most at home. Given a choice between having his boots on the ground, staring down a hundred enemies or having to make the calls that would determine who lived or died during a fray, Owen would have taken the hundred enemies any time.

Still, as his star had risen all those years prior, it had brought with it a certain amount of prestige. Titan had become a role model, an icon, one that many people, including other Heroes, looked up to. With that had come public speaking gigs, being chosen to chair meetings, and even getting called upon by other Hero teams to work with their own strongmen. Owen didn’t relish such roles, but he accepted them at the time as the price of fame.

Over a decade later, Owen Daniels was no longer certain if such a price was worth it. Time off had given him the perspective that perhaps fame itself was the price of fame. If he’d been asked by nearly anyone in the world to make an appearance as Titan for anything other than helping his team, saving people, or punching bad guys, then Owen would have likely told them to go fuck themselves. Topsy was different, though. He was an old friend, one who’d been with Owen back when they were doing all they could to survive in the insane world where Heroes fresh off their internships roamed. Even beyond that, Topsy had been one of the people who stuck with him during the Titan Scandal. Owen had spent two weeks on the man’s couch as the media hunted him and he tried to think of what he could possibly tell his wife and sons to mend the relationships. More than one person he’d counted as a friend turned their back on Owen Daniels during those weeks, but never Topsy. Which meant if he was the one who needed help, then Owen was damned sure going to deliver.

Before leaving the peace of the penthouse and heading out on the town, Owen paused to put in a quick call to order more costumes. He’d thought that doing a job with less direct battle would mean he wouldn’t go through so many of the things, but it seemed the strongman’s clothing curse was still at work. His supply was dwindling dangerously. At least his supplier cut him a break on bulk orders, a formality they extended to most of the Heroes that got down in the rough and tumble with real frequency.

That done, Titan took the elevator down and stepped out into the last rays of the setting sun. He could have taken the town car or just used his own vehicle since it was stored in the garage, but tonight he felt like walking. A lot of Heroes didn’t care to do street patrol; they felt like it lowered the sense of terror a criminal felt at the sight of them. But Owen had always thought it added a sense of danger to the punks' daily lives. Seeing a Hero exploding out of the sky or bursting from a portal was one thing, but to just be walking along and suddenly find one’s self in the presence of such power was jarring, and served to remind them that Heroes could appear at any time. Owen liked the idea that he was making sure everyone out there was always on their best behavior.

His jog was a long one, but nearly-endless stamina and powerful leg muscles meant he could close the distance with haste if it was called for. Since he’d left early enough, Titan took his time running through Brewster, nodding and waving at civilians as he passed them. The Wild Bucks’ base was in what had once been an industrial area, before the primary company’s illegal environmental practices were brought to light and they were fined out of existence. Despite the area being certified by the city as safe, not many people wanted to live on land associated with terms like “contaminated” and “biological hazard.” Bad as it was for property values, it was perfect for Hero teams that needed an isolated area to set up shop that was still in decent proximity to the city they watched over. Legacy teams like Elemental Fury might have had fancy mid-lake accommodations, but most Heroes were just trying to find a spot that could be rebuilt cheaply after it was attacked.

As Titan jogged past thick iron gates that were half-rusted and half knocked down, he spotted a familiar figure standing in the middle of what had once been a private road. Topsy smiled at the sight of his old friend, and the two men shared a brief hug after Titan closed the distance between them.

“Really appreciate you coming out,” Topsy said as the hug ended. He looked tired, even more so than the last time Titan had seen him. No doubt the DVA was putting his people through the wringer, and him along with them. Titan didn’t exactly disagree with the need for that, though he wished they’d taken more care to leave his friend out of it.

“Don’t worry about it. I owe you a lot more than this.” Titan did a quick scan of the area, noting that there was a large building with better upkeep than most of the others to his right: either their actual base or the entrance to it, by his estimates. “How bad are things?”

“They’re pretty shitty,” Topsy admitted. “The DVA finally made its call last week, and I lost two of them. One has been busted back down to intern and had heavy restrictions put on how he can use his power, while the other is all the way out.”

Titan nodded, but otherwise kept his face stoic. Being a Hero was a privilege that came with a lot of responsibility. If one couldn’t live up to that responsibility, they didn’t have any place being a Hero and damned sure wouldn’t be once the DVA got a hold of them. For the amount of destruction he’d seen, only one person being tossed out on their ass was actually pretty restrained on the DVA’s part.

“That means you’re down to a three-person team then?”

“For the moment,” Topsy replied. “I honestly think if the whole team wasn’t pariahs right now they’d have split off and joined up with other Heroes. Problem is, after all that mess they caused, no one would want them and they know it. Rock and a hard place.”

“Well, I can’t change their situation, but hopefully I can help them find the best way to handle it,” Titan said. It was the sort of thing he was supposed to tell his friend, even if they both knew it was largely bullshit. “Take me in so I can meet the tykes.”

63.

               Owen was surprised at how nostalgic he felt as he tooled around the nearly-abandoned building. The beaten exterior concealed a fair amount of furniture and creature comforts within, but it was still an overall sparse space. In fact, most of the interior had been left bare, save for a few weights in the corner. From the dents and broken pieces of concrete in one section of the building, Owen immediately recognized the sparring area. All in all, the Wild Bucks’ base felt a lot like the one he and Topsy had shared once upon a time: the base of a new Hero team just starting up, trying to do their best on a barebones budget.

Several mismatched chairs had been pulled together in this central space, only a few feet away from where a large throw rug marked the entrance to what appeared to be the living room where three costumed Heroes were waiting for him. They hopped to their feet as soon as Owen stepped into view. Two were men, one wearing the familiar black fabric of someone whose shape would be drastically changing, while the other sported a simple black and blue costume with some interesting swirled patterns. The last member was female, and her costume was red and silver with curiously empty spots on her shoulder and outer thighs. They all stared at Owen, at Titan, with silent admiration as he and Topsy walked through the empty space to their chairs.

Enjoyable as Owen found nostalgia, it didn’t blind him from the fact that Topsy had clearly left something out when he talked about training these kids. His old friend had said he was hired on to coach them, but Owen doubted this team could afford take-out more than once a week, let alone the training of a Hero from someone as experienced as Topsy. More than likely, that meant a family relation of some kind. It at least explained why Topsy was sticking around even after the colossal fuck-up. Most Heroes who’d lived that many years understood a lost cause on sight.

“Let’s start with introductions,” Titan said at last. “You’ll forgive the presumptiveness, but given the events of the last month or so, I’m going to assume you all have a pretty good idea of who I am. Since everyone in the room is familiar with Topsy, we’ll go ahead and skip him too. Tell me your names and what you can do.” It was a faux pas to ask any Hero how their power worked, since the exact mechanics could often betray a weakness in it, but asking what they could do was usually general enough to get a sense of one’s capabilities.

“I’ll start,” said the young man in the blue and black costume. “My name is Deadlift, and I am, or was, the leader of this team.” His voice was crisp and strong, but there was enough doubt hidden in his blue eyes to betray the uncertainty that had to be weighing on him after all that had happened. “My power is that I can lift and wield pretty much anything.”

“Super strength?” Titan asked.

“If I may, sir, it’s easier to show than tell,” Deadlift said.

Titan nodded, and Deadlift closed the gap between them. The young Hero reached over and grabbed Titan’s meaty triceps with a firm grip. To Titan’s surprise, he felt himself rise from the ground as Deadlift raised his arm, effortlessly lifting the man who weighed hundreds of muscle-heavy pounds in the air as if he had the mass of a cloud. There was no strain on Deadlift’s face, no visible effort in his muscles. In that moment, Titan understood: it wasn’t that Deadlift had super strength, it was that his power affected the weight of whatever he held.