Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (21 page)

She looked over at me with a frightened glare in her eyes, but I just opened mine wider.
Tell him
exactly
what you’re doing
. I thought.

“I’m congratulating my friend,” she said.

“I thought I told you not to hang around this twerp anymore.”

Don’t let him tell you what to do
, I pleaded silently.

“You can
not
tell me who my friends are!” she shouted. It was probably the first time in memory that anyone had yelled at Doctor Noble like that -- particularly not in front of everybody in the lounge. We were beginning to draw a crowd.

“Do you know what you’re saying, little girl?”

Her eyes blazed. “I know
exactly
what I’m doing.” She placed a single index finger on his chest and shoved him out the door. Ted, Animan and I began hurriedly looking at each other, unsure of what to do next.

“She’s breaking up with him, dude!” Animan half-whispered.

“Come on, you don’t know that.”

“What
else
could she be doing out there?” Ted asked.

“
Tons
of things. Apologizing... wimping out...”

“Uh-uh. No. She’s finally had it with that walking mound of cow vomit. The three of us are gonna wait right here until she comes back.”

So we did. We waited three hours. Ted and Animan repeatedly trounced me at foosball, ping-pong and multiple video games. I could feel the bile in my stomach scouting out a location for the ulcer like prospective homeowners counting the bathrooms. Finally, sullen and red-eyed, she returned.

“Thanks.” She turned and walked out. Then Ted and Animan, moving with the kind of precision and single-mindedness that the United States Congress can only
dream
of, turned to me and shouted, “Go after her!”

“What? She just
said
she wants to be alone.”

“Don’t listen to what she
said,
” Animan explained. “Listen to what she
didn’t
say.”

“What she...
didn’t
say?”

“Yeah,” Ted said. “She
said
she wants to be alone...”

“What she
didn’t
say is, ‘I need a shoulder to cry on’.”

“
You
have shoulders!”

“You could
be
that shoulder!”

At that point they began babbling incoherently about my upper anatomy and backing me towards the door. I got shoved out into the hall, where I was alone, except for Annie, leaning against the wall, arms wrapped around herself, crying.

I stepped up and hugged her, and she did, indeed begin crying on my shoulder, as though she’d been waiting for me after all. “You’re better off without him, you know,” I said.

I held her as she said that, even though it felt like a knife between my ribs, through my stomach and arching straight up towards my heart.

“And I know I’m going to be fine,” she continued. “It’s just going to take some time.”

“I know. I know.”

I held her until she didn’t need me anymore, and then she left to return to her quarters. I went back to the lounge, a large wet patch on my shoulder making the dark gray even darker. Ted grinned like a maniac.

“So?” he said. “How would you like to thank us?”

“I know
precisely
how to thank you,” I said, smacking him on the back of his head.

EMBERS

My relationship with Dr. Noble didn’t particularly improve after that. He went from being merely surly and rude to downright belligerent. When I passed him in the hall he’d glare at me, when he walked in the lounge and found me there he’d stare until I acknowledged him and then walk away gritting his teeth.

Annie didn’t stay depressed for very long, but neither did she open up to me anymore. I knew Noble was still harassing her, trying to reconcile with her, but she assured me she was handling the situation. I didn’t believe that for an instant, but at the same time I knew it wasn’t my place to interfere until she wanted it. She was hurt and angry and it was all totally justified.

The only thing she
wasn’t
was...
ready.

Now that I think about it, everything got kind of tense those next few weeks. Copycat made a spectacular debut, battling Hotshot in full view of all the major networks and talking in a creepy, Bela Lugosi type of voice. I “escaped” that first night to continue my quest to find the murderous Carnival. (“Pathos!” Morrie insisted. “This has got pathos out the yin-yang!”)

Back at
Powerlines
I finally relented and turned in a story about Hotshot’s epic struggle against Copycat. It ran in full color and earned me a dirty look from Sheila, who had agreed not to blab the secrets but didn’t quite seem up to looking me in the eye anymore.

Copycat made a few more appearances in the following weeks, including battles against Justice Giant and Particle, LifeSpeed and a debut match-up against Animan’s new deer totem, Stag. Every time I turned in a Copycat story, Sheila got a little more distant, and I decided it was, indeed, a good thing that I hadn’t jotted down Spectrum’s double identity in that blasted notebook -- she would have never spoken to Scott Elliott again.

Ted was cool with me and Animan was friendlier than ever, but Mental Maid still stared me down every time I saw her and, frankly, she was continuing to give me the flaming heebie-jeebies.

Everybody’s mood seemed to change after the Icebergg incident. The Spectacle Six was only venturing out on solo missions or in pairs -- never more than two at a time -- until Morrie could find a replacement for Deep Six. First Light finally completed her “purification” and was participating in rumbles again, but she made a concerted effort to stay in the air whenever possible, avoiding the civilians.

Flambeaux was the worst. He seemed to retreat from human contact entirely. It was bad enough that he couldn’t stop his brother’s murder, but he didn’t even get to be in on the capture of the killer. He showed up for practices and had a perfectly adequate, if bland and spiritless, rumble against the Arachnid. He didn’t speak to anyone unless absolutely necessary and he never put in an appearance unless officially mandated by the boss. It was like having an extra ghost around Simon Tower.

The afternoon of my “climactic final battle” with Hotshot (“Pathos!”), I was walking past the arboretum, the glass doors wide open. There were flashes coming from inside and I heard a steady hiss of breath accompanied by low grumbles.

I stepped into the large, open area. I had more than once walked through the fronds and foliage, admiring the quality of the topiary beasts and figures, including the particularly impressive hedge-sculpture of Lionheart, but I’d never known who created them.

The flashes I had seen were brief bursts of flame spitting from Flambeaux’s fingertips, cutting into an unformed bush. He got it into a humanoid shape in the same rough, arms akimbo as the Lionheart topiary, but he hadn’t added any details yet and it looked less like an actual person than a formless body.

Flambeaux was wide-eyed and stuttering to himself as he worked. “Icebergg,” he kept saying over and over. There were other syllables in between, but I couldn’t make out what they were.

“Flambeaux? You need something, man?”

“N’Icebergg. S’not. Find ‘im... Icebergg...”

“We
did
find Icebergg, Flambeaux. He’s gone.”

“No!” he shrieked, sending out a burst of flame that wilted the head of his topiary. “
No
. Find
him
. Stop
him
!”

“Stop
who
? What are you talking about?”

“Find
him
.” He pointed at his topiary. “Stop
him
,” he kicked at the burnt leaves at his feet. “Icebergg...”

“We
did
find Icebergg.”

“I DON’ MEAN ICEBERGG!” he shouted. “He... he
wan’
s me to mean Icebergg.” He pulled me very close. His eyes were glowing orange like a Jack-o-Lantern and his breath smelled of burnt meat and roasted marshmallows.

“You... you’re dressed like him...
another
him...
He
would have stopped
him
if
he
wasn’t... weren’t...”

“If Lionheart wasn’t dead he could have saved your brother?” I asked.

“No!” he shouted again, shoving me aside. “I’s not... I’s not
about
Lance... Six... Icebergg...”

“If this isn’t about Icebergg, why do you keep
saying
Icebergg?”

“He
wants
Icebergg... in my head...” he gasped. “But
here
-- my plants -- in the topiary I can
concentrate.
I can
think,
for a li’l while. While I work... while I work... I can
focus.
”

“Focus on what?”

“Get
him.
Stop
him.
Save
him
.” For the first time I realized he was talking about “multiple” hims, but I could tell neither how many nor who they were.

“Flambeaux, what--”

“Hey, Junior!” It was Hotshot, coming into the arboretum. “Ready for the big grudge match?”

“No!” Flambeaux shouted. “No more!” He burst into flame and blasted towards the ceiling, leaving a circle of fire on the grass. I was bathed in fire and I heard Hotshot shout.

“Josh! Are you all right?”

“Yeah, he’s immune to his own powers. Go stop him, I’ll put this out.”

As it turned out, neither of us had to do very much. I started absorbing the flames to kill them while Hotshot flew after Flambeaux, but the arboretum sprinklers suddenly kicked in. The flow from those really shouldn’t have been enough to douse Flambeaux, but it was like the falling water drowned what little spirit he had left. He cut his flames off and allowed himself to fall. Hotshot caught him before he could hit the ground, but when he brought him to me (and later, to the infirmary), he was catatonic. He just laid there, mouth open, eyes blank, still orange, but the fire behind them was gone.

“What’s going on, ‘Shot?” I asked. “What the hell is happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but we don’t have time to worry about it now. We’ve got a rumble to stage.”

He took Flambeaux away for treatment and I was left alone with the ruined topiary, the one I still couldn’t quite place. It was funny, though -- between the wilting and the water from the sprinklers weighing down the leaves I could almost make out some of the details I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t really a shapeless mass, Flambeaux had been sculpting someone in particular, and for a second I knew who it was. And then I dismissed that thought entirely because it didn’t make any sense at all.

“I WILL NOT BE DENIED!”

My rumble with Hotshot was planned for the Siegel City Cape and Mask Museum. Allegedly, Copycat was going there in the hopes of finding a clue that would lead him to the infamous Carnival. Truth be told, Morrie just wanted to ensure there would be plenty of security cameras around. (I was good television, it seemed. That very morning Morrie had shown me the prototype of a Copycat action figure. I wondered if Tom would ever ask me to autograph one of
those.
)

The only “inherent” power Copycat had was the ability to materialize out of smoke, a power I faked with smoke bombs tucked into pouches along my belt. When I got to the museum I snuck in through a hole Morrie had created in the security system, cutting through the air ducts and diving into the Lionheart wing in a veil of smoke.

There were two guards when I arrived, both -- I would guess -- real cops trying to pull in some extra cash. When they saw me they both went for their nightsticks, no firearms for these boys.

“Where is Carnival?” I moaned in my creepy horror-movie voice.

“It’s that ghost guy!” one of them shouted.

“Aw
crap
.”

“Where is Carnival?” I reiterated. I felt kind of lousy about dropping a couple of smoke bombs and taking them out while they couldn’t see, but I’d been taught by Nightshadow exactly how to strike to render them unconscious without doing any real damage.

“
Where is Carnival
?” I asked for clarification. I proceeded to the monument of Lionheart’s last battle, which was a wax sculpture of him fighting the crimson-armored Carnival and a glass display in which Carnival’s helmet -- all they’d retrieved of him, it seemed -- was interred.

“
Wheeereee iiiiiis Caaaarr-niiiii-vaaaaaaal?”
I backhanded the sculpture of Lionheart’s killer, sending the wax head rolling away. It was rather cathartic. Keeping with the plan, I moved over to the glass case with the actual helmet and raised my fist.

“
WHERE... IS... CARNIVAL
?” I bellowed.

“Why don’t you try asking someone who was
there?
”

Hotshot had charged in from the front entrance (the way legitimate patrons would, I thought). He landed only a few yards from me, planted his arms firmly on his hips and scowled. “Welcome back, Copycat.”

“Hotshot!” I shouted in the required overly-dramatic fashion. I turned away from the case. “You and your ilk have delayed my quest for far too long.” I threw a punch, which he easily countered, and he returned. I caught his fist in midair and we twisted, launching into sort of an acrobatic wrestling match that didn’t pay much heed to the laws of gravity.

“My ‘ilk’?” he whispered.

“I’m playing it up for the cameras, deal with it.”

He doubled over on himself and threw me, judo-style, into the case with Carnival’s helmet. Glass shattered, scattering in every direction. A blaring alarm klaxon went off and I felt a sharpness in my back. For a second I was worried I’d been stabbed by one of the shards, but as I felt around I could tell I was just feeling the extreme coldness of a sharp, flat-edged piece. I wasn’t being punctured, I was being refrigerated.