School for Sidekicks (5 page)

It began with “No one knows who set off the Hero Bomb or why. All we know are the results.”

Up until December 15th, 1988, the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area was mostly known for blizzards and exporting blondes to places where they don't have to shovel snow. The exhibit talks a lot about live theater and sports teams and all sorts of other stuff. But before Metamorphosis Day or, simply, M-Day, Minnesota was all about snow and blondes for the rest of the world.

Then, boom! Some kind of bizarre radiation bomb goes off under a bridge between the cities. Twenty-four hours later, half a million people are dead even though the only physical damage was to the bridge, which fell into the Mississippi.

The audio continued, “The explosion transformed several hundred of the survivors, giving them amazing powers—the first Masks and Hoods. Later on, Masks started popping up in other places around the world, but only in ones and twos, and often with much weaker powers than the Heropolis gang.”

Heropolis
. That's what the world rechristened Minneapolis and St. Paul after the bomb. Someone in the media started it within days, and it stuck tight.

The next exhibit after the one on the bomb is called A City of Heroes, and it profiles all the Masks that have come out of Heropolis, old and new. I fell farther and farther behind the group because I stopped and really looked at every exhibit. Glen waved at me to catch up once or twice when he thought the other basketball guys weren't looking, but I ignored him. I wanted to lose myself in one of my favorite places right then and I didn't really care if I got in trouble for wandering off.

I turned aside to look at the dusty old set of Foxman's mechanized battle armor, which sits under the stairs. It's not in the audio tour and most people miss it there. It's really crude, nothing like the streamlined gear Foxman developed in later years, which is almost ironic. His equipment has gotten so much better, but the hero inside seems to keep shrinking. It's hard to believe the reckless drunk who nearly destroyed the IDS Tower could be the same guy who used to be the Captain's best friend.

I spent a long moment staring at the bright red helmet with its long metal ears and pointed faceplate. Even in this roughly welded version there was something jaunty there, a touch of clever cool that none of the other early Masks had. Too bad the man inside turned out to be a total loser.

The next exhibit was a big poster with the heading: M-Day Mystery—Where Do They Go? One of the reasons Metamorphosis Day has become a thing is that metahuman activity pretty much goes to zero for twenty-four hours every December 15. Oh, sure there's the occasional petty Hood bank robbery or Mask fight, but mostly the Ides of December is a day where nothing meta happens. Most Masks and Hoods seem to disappear completely on M-Day. No one knows where they go, or why.

I looked up from the M-Day poster and realized that
my
school group had gone on to the next area, and the next group hadn't yet arrived, leaving the City of Heroes area almost empty.
Good.
I wouldn't have any competition for the best part, a big 3-D video screen at the exit from the City of Heroes exhibit.

It runs a slideshow of all the known Heropolis Masks, and it's interactive. If you stand in the right place, the machine will scan you into the show. I've spent hours staring into the vid, watching the endless loop of heroes and endlessly hoping that having my face show up there would somehow transform me into one of them.

But something odd caught my eye as I walked up to the screen this time, and I stopped to try to figure out what. It took me three long beats of staring at the casually dressed man standing in the interactive scan point to realize what. I'd seen him before. Here. In the vid. And
not
because he'd been scanned into it by the exhibit. I don't know if anyone less Mask-obsessed than me would have recognized him without his costume, but I did.

Spartanicus!

 

5

Enter the Captain

I desperately flailed for something to do when Spartanicus's eyes met mine.
Anything!

He nodded very faintly. “You have a good eye, boy.”

Here I was, face-to-face with the Captain's worst enemy, a man whose powers were only second to his own, and what did I do? Freeze up completely, like a total dip. That's what.
Utterly humiliating.

Before I could unfreeze enough to yell for help or run away or even take a deep breath, the scar in the center of Spartanicus's forehead ripped open and a green beam shot out. It hit me full in the face.

Boom
 …

For one brief instant, my head felt as if it were coming apart. Then I fell out of the world.

The first thing I noticed when I started to come around was the industrial carpet and old concrete smell of the Mask Museum. When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on my back on a padded bench only a few feet from where I'd fallen. I could tell because I could see the dented front left corner of the original Commanding Car overhead. It hangs in the entry gallery, and that view told me exactly where I was in the museum. I know, I know, I am a
giant
Mask nerd.

“There's more to you than meets the eye, boy.” I turned my head and found Spartanicus standing on my other side, in full costume now. “If you scream or try anything funny, I'll have to kill you. I'd rather avoid that for the moment.” His deep gravelly voice was surprisingly gentle for a man delivering a death threat.

“What's going on?” I croaked. I'd intended the words to come out bold and defiant, but a croak was the best I could manage. “Why are you here?”

“The future, boy. I'm here for the future.” He turned and called over his shoulder. “HeartBurn, are we ready?”

“Whenever you are.” I couldn't see the other villain, but I recognized her name—a Hood known for her incredibly destructive powers and ruthlessness. “The children are all tucked away snug in their beds.”

“Then it's show time,” said Spartanicus. “We have a Captain to kill.”

“What about the boy?” asked HeartBurn.

“Bag him and bring him along.”

“On it,” said a third voice—female again.

“What!? Wait—”

A gentle,
fwumpf
ing sort of noise smothered my yelp of protest. My world went dark as something rough and faintly musty-smelling covered my face. I tried to move, but it felt like I'd been wrapped in heavy burlap.

“HeartBurn, bring him.” Spartanicus's voice sounded muffled and oddly distant through the filter of cloth—this was no ordinary bag. “Mr. Implausible, Fluffinator, you know what to do.”

I had only a moment to wonder at so many powerful Hoods being in one place before I felt a sharp jerk. The cloth covering my face suddenly tightened as someone grabbed it and yanked—dragging me up and off the bench. With no way to catch myself, my legs hit the floor hard enough to sting. I could feel myself being dragged along behind someone. Within minutes, I found myself bump-bump-bumping up what had to be the main staircase at the open center of the museum.

We took a sharp left at the top, heading toward the museum's megamax theater—a giant dome in the exact center of the building. I bumped over something flat and metallic—doors ripped from their hinges maybe. Then we took a right. Perhaps fifty feet later—the hall leading around into the front of the theater—we stopped. I could hear a loud yammering, like a flock of angry geese. My captor let go of the bag and my head hit the thinly carpeted concrete floor hard enough to send flashes of red and blue across my vision.

For what felt like a year and a day—but couldn't have been more than about ten minutes—they left me alone. I could hear occasional thuds and crashes rising over the continued yammering. I slowly came to realize the latter must be the sounds of many unhappy voices filtered through layers of reinforced fabric. I thrashed around a bit, but simply couldn't make any progress on getting out of the bag. I tried to reach my cell phone, but the bag was too tight. I should have been terrified if not utterly panic-stricken.

Instead, I felt a weird sort of calm, like some part of me knew everything would be fine. Another property of the bag? Mild oxygen deprivation? Too much
reasonable
drilled into me by my parents? I don't know, I was simply glad I could still think straight. I did jerk like a gaffed fish when a long fizzing sound ended in a tremendous, earth-shaking crash.

“What the heck was that?” I yelped, but I could barely hear my own voice over the sudden wild shrieking of the other prisoners.

Spartanicus must somehow have heard me, because my bag was suddenly yanked upright again—this time by a grip on the fabric between my shoulder blades. I heard his gravelly voice as my feet lifted free of the floor, “I've made a window, boy. Would you like to see it?” I felt myself being carried somewhere before he called, “Bagger, head!”

Fwumpf …

Bright light struck my dark-adjusted eyes and I could move my neck, though the rest of my body remained immobilized. I blinked at the brightness, looked down, and …

Vertigo!

My head spun and my stomach twisted as I found myself staring into a dust-filled abyss. I managed not to throw up long enough for my brain to adapt to the scene and let me sort things out. Again, the Commanding Car—this time seen through the roiling dust ahead of me—provided me the reference I needed to make sense of my position. I was hanging from Spartanicus's fist, twenty feet above the main lobby of the museum. The dust came from a huge section of concrete wall that used to separate the megamax theater from the open three-story atrium. It lay shattered on the floor below me as I dangled out the opening created by its removal.

I looked down again, this time to find out how I was being restrained. Seamless burlap—the work of Bagger—wrapped me tighter than a mummy. Bagger was a Hood more usually known for her long-running battle with Hotflash than any association with Spartanicus or Captain Commanding. She simply wasn't in the same league. What was going on here?

My view shifted wildly as Spartanicus twisted his grip, turning me back to face him. “What do you think? Have I improved the view, boy?”

“I liked it better the way it was … without your ugly mug taking up so much space, Spartanicus.” I snapped my mouth shut.

I hadn't meant to say that, not a word of it. Heck, I'm not even sure what led me to
think
it—too many bantering Mask movies maybe. Whatever the reason, it was too late to take it back. I had been betrayed by my own mouth and there was nothing I could do about it. Spartanicus's expression clouded. I more than half expected him to shake me until my neck snapped. But he just raised one eyebrow and chuckled.

“Again, boy, there's more to you than meets the eye. What's your name?”

“Evan Quick.” I'd intended to say it quietly, humbly, with an eye to calming down a man who could tear me in half. Instead, I found myself lifting my chin and speaking with pride. “But you can call me Mr. Quick.”

What the heck!?
My mouth was definitely trying to get me killed, and I crazily wondered what I had done to it lately. I'd have slapped it myself if I had a free hand to do so, but that was impulse not action.

“Should I fry his tongue out of his head?” HeartBurn stood behind Spartanicus, waist-length red hair clashing wildly with her skintight crimson costume.

“Not yet,” he replied over his shoulder, “though I'll keep it in mind.” He focused on me again. “I like you, young Master Quick. You've titanic brass, if no apparent brains to back it up. It's a rare man who can look me in the eye without half pissing himself, much less a boy. You'll do nicely.”

He looked past me into the lobby, and my eyes followed his. “Final call,” he said. “Mr. Implausible?”

A pair of lips appeared a few feet away from us. No face, no eyes, nothing but the lips. “Ready when you are.”

He glanced back into the theater. “All fired up, HeartBurn?”

“You know it,” she answered.

“Mempulse, you in place?”

An image from my last track meet flashed into my mind, a group of runners—me among them—all lined up on their starting blocks. The pistol sounded … and the vision faded away.

Spartanicus nodded. “Good. Bagger, you got this?”

The Hood called out from somewhere up near the rafters, “With Mr. Implausible to back my play? Absolutely! Captain Overconfident won't know what hit him.”

“What about the Fluffinator? Dolls and teddy bears all ready to roll?”

“Action figures and plush collectibles, thank you very much. And, yes, my army of toys is ready when you are.”

“Then it's time to raise the curtain.”

Moments later, I found myself dangling from a bent piece of rebar sticking out over the edge of the hole Spartanicus had cut in the theater wall. A disembodied hand holding a video camera hung in space a few yards in front of me.

Above and behind me Spartanicus began a countdown. “Three. Two. One. And go.”

A bright flash drew my attention to the row of monitors above the ticket booth below. Every one had switched to a feed coming off the camera. I could see me hanging in front of Spartanicus's feet, with banks of theater seats rising behind him. Each of those seats held a person in a tight burlap bag. But where my entire head was sticking out the top of mine, their bags only exposed the occupants from the nose up, so that none of them could easily speak.

To move the scene from merely strange to bizarre beyond all reason, each seat in the theater had a large doll or stuffed animal standing on the arm of the chair holding a pair of scissors.

“Scissors?” I said. “Seriously?”

A set of lips appeared next to the camera. “The truck was supposed to be carrying straight razors. I voted for guns, but the Fluffinator says teddy bears are terrible with triggers.”