The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) (8 page)

“What about Professor Hernandez?” said Malcolm. “Has he helped you understand where your new powers came from?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t spoken to him much since the funeral. He told me that he was studying the scans of my brain I’d allowed him to have to see if he could detect any differences, but he says it will take him a while to see if he can figure it out. I’m not really holding my breath, though, because even Professor Hernandez doesn’t perfectly understand the superhuman brain.”

“Darn,” said Malcolm. “But hey, it’s cool that you got new powers anyway. I mean, you can shoot red lightning! Your superhero name has never been more fitting.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty nice,” I said. “By the way, how has Tara been? I haven’t spoken to her since the funeral.”

“She’s okay,” said Malcolm. “She was really shaken up after being kidnapped by Robert like that, but she’s back to her usual self now.”

“Has she mentioned what she thinks about me being a superhero at all?” I said, remembering how Tara had learned of my secret identity last month.

“Nope,” said Malcolm. “She’s barely even mentioned you. I’m not sure if she hates you now or if she was just too traumatized by the kidnapping to talk about you. Frankly, I haven’t even brought it up.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, I’m glad to hear she’s back to normal, anyway.”

“Yeah,” said Malcolm. “But hey, man, no need to worry. You know how Tara is. She may not be the biggest fan of superheroes, but she’s loyal to her friends. She probably still likes you. If she hasn’t talked about you, it’s probably because she’s still trying to recover from being kidnapped by Robert, you know?”

“I know,” I said. “But thanks for the reassurance, Mal. I think I’ll call her up sometime and see how she is doing. She might be more willing to talk to me about it than you.”

“Right,” said Malcolm. “But anyway, have you seen your Neo Ranks page? Your ranking has gone up to eight. I think it was your fight with Robert that knocked you up a bit, because you were a seven point one for the longest time there.”

“An eight?” I said. “Huh, that is pretty amazing. That’s almost a ten.”

“Yeah,” said Malcolm. “I bet that you’re going to—”

Malcolm was suddenly interrupted by a loud alarm, the alarm that I recognized as being the alarm that went off whenever Mecha Knight had a mission for us.

So I said to Malcolm, “That alarm is probably for me. We can talk again later, okay?”

“Sure, Kev,” said Malcolm. “But just be safe out there, okay?”

I nodded, said, “Okay,” and then turned off my watch.

Although I didn’t want to, I rose from my bed and ran out of my room, though not before I made sure that Carl and Valerie would contact me if they managed to decrypt Dad’s files before my team and I got back from our mission.

Chapter Six

P
icture this: You and your team are on the streets of New York City fighting a giant lizard man who apparently doesn’t believe in wearing shirts. Not only that, but the lizard man isn’t by himself; he’s got back up in the form of a small man with a brain twice as big as the average brain (coincidentally, his face is twice as ugly as the average face).

That’s what my team and I found ourselves fighting not an hour after Mecha Knight gave us our mission. Though these two guys had fought superheroes like the Black Blur or Mr. Miner before, they were apparently considered weak enough now that Mecha Knight thought that we could handle them on our own.

The lizard man was a guy called Hammond Krill or, as he called himself, Jawtooth. Apparently, he used to be a normal sewage worker before he was mutated by a vat of mutagen he found in the city’s sewers, which made him huge, ugly, and looking kind of like a crocodile walking on two feet with the proportions of a human. He didn’t wear any clothes aside from some ripped pants that had a hole in the back for his long tail, but he didn’t really need any because his skin was tough and he had claws capable of shredding human skin.

As for the big brain guy, he was Stephen Yamato, or Intellect, apparently the son of Japanese immigrants. His powers, as I understood it, were similar to Dad’s; hyper intelligence, an ability to grasp complicated issues or subjects quickly and easily, and a talent for building his own gadgets and technology that was often pretty advanced. His problem was that, unlike Dad, he had no real physical ability to speak of and was confined mostly to either floating around on his own personal hover chair or using a personal mecha whenever he needed to fight on his own. He would have been a formidable foe if he hadn’t been so impatient and arrogant, which usually meant that he couldn’t make the kind of long-term plans that other villains at his intelligence level were capable of designing.

As for why these two worked together, I’m not sure. Typically, they’ve been known to work separately, but I guess they must have decided to work together today. Maybe it was because they complemented each other pretty well; Jawtooth had sheer strength and toughness, while Intellect had the intelligence and knowledge necessary to put that strength to use.

In any case, it didn’t really matter why they were working together. What mattered was stopping their diabolical plan, which was apparently your generic bank robbing scheme. It seemed like a pretty simple plan, especially given Intellect’s level of intelligence, but I guess they must need the money or something. New York’s an expensive place to live.

Anyway, my team and I arrived on the streets of New York just as Jawtooth and Intellect left the bank in an attempt to get away. The police hadn’t even arrived yet, although I could hear their sirens in the distance as they attempted to get here in time. But we really didn’t need the help of the police; I figured that by the time the police got here, they’d be just in time to take these two off to jail.

So I split the team into two to try to separate Jawtooth and Intellect. Stinger, Shell, and Talon went after Intellect, while Blizzard, Treehugger, and I went after Jawtooth.

Jawtooth was massive, much taller and bigger than all three of us combined. He carried two huge sacks full of money over his shoulders, but when he saw us, he growled and turned to fight us.

“Jawtooth, what are you doing?” Intellect shouted, stopping in place in midair in his hover chair. “We’ve got the money, now we need to—”

But Intellect was interrupted when Stinger flew at him and slammed into him, sending Intellect and his hover chair spinning away out of control. While Stinger, Shell, and Talon ran after Intellect to keep him away from Jawtooth, Blizzard, Treehugger, and I surrounded Jawtooth, giving him no way to escape.

“Okay, Jawtooth,” I said, holding out my hands. “If you drop the money now and come with us quietly, I promise that we won’t hurt you.”

“If you want the money so bad, why don’t you come and take it?” Jawtooth snapped.

He hurled the sacks of money at me. The move was so unexpected that I could not move in time to dodge them. The sacks knocked me over, temporarily stunning me before I shoved them off and stood up.

At the same time, Blizzard’s hands glowed and a strong gust of icy wind blew through, causing Jawtooth to shiver. But he didn’t stand still long enough for her to freeze him; he charged at her, moving much faster than I expected, and was going to get her if she didn’t move out of the way.

So I zoomed over and grabbed Blizzard, pulling her out of the way just as Jawtooth jumped into the air and landed on the street where she had been standing mere moments before. Stopping a few hundred yards away from him, I let go of Blizzard and said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, but Jawtooth is still active,” said Blizzard, pointing at the supervillain, who was rising back to his feet and looking more pissed off than ever.

“Not for long!” Treehugger suddenly shouted.

She hurled a dozen small pods at Jawtooth, which Jawtooth didn’t dodge. The pods exploded against Jawtooth’s skin, but instead of blowing up in his face, they unleashed a ton of thick vines that immediately wrapped around Jawtooth’s body like snakes. Then they constricted, causing Jawtooth to cry out in surprise as he stumbled about trying to maintain his balance.

“Good job, Treehugger!” I said, giving her the thumbs up. “What was that, anyway?”

“My new seed bombs,” said Treehugger, showing me a few she had not thrown. “When they explode, they unleash a bunch of vines that can capture any target. They’re pretty useful.”

I was about to agree, but then I heard a bunch of snapping sounds and looked to see that Jawtooth had already freed himself from the vines that had ensnared him. He ran toward us, but I flew toward him and punched him in the face.

Or tried to. When my fist came at him, he caught it with his fist and then slammed me onto the street, actually cracking it upon impact. The impact jarred my senses, which allowed Jawtooth to stomp on me before I could even react.

But I recovered quickly and shoved him off my body, sending him staggering backwards. Jumping to my feet, I slammed my fist square against Jawtooth’s stomach, the blow hitting him hard enough to knock him flat off his feet.

“Blizzard!” I shouted. “Freeze him, quick!”

Blizzard, thankfully, didn’t even wait. She just waved her hands and Jawtooth was instantly encased in a thick block of ice that froze him securely against the street, with his head the only part of his body that was free. He struggled to break out of it, but even with his massive strength, he couldn’t even crack the ice, much less break it.

“You stay there,” I told Jawtooth. “Trust me, you’re safer frozen to the street than fighting us.”

“Piss off, kid,” Jawtooth snapped. “Once I get out of here, I’ll—”

Jawtooth stopped speaking when thick ice appeared over his mouth. His nose was left unfrozen, but now he couldn’t talk. He just made some very angry muffled noises, but it made him look more silly than threatening.

I looked over at Blizzard, who was holding her glowing white hand up. “Thanks. I was getting tired of listening to his dumb threats.”

“No problem,” said Blizzard. “Why don’t we go see if the others need help defeating Intellect?”

“Good idea,” I said.

I looked over in the direction I’d seen Intellect go and saw that the other three had already taken him down. His hover chair lay in shredded parts on the street, no doubt thanks to Talon’s claws, while Intellect himself lay on the street looking paralyzed, which was probably due to Stinger’s paralyzing, well, stinger. And Shell was putting some metallic handcuffs around Intellect’s hands, while Stinger and Talon stood around looking like they were ready to beat Intellect’s oversized head in if he tried anything suspicious.

“Well, it looks like they don’t need our help,” Treehugger observed.

“No shocker there,” I said. I gestured at Jawtooth. “Without Jawtooth’s strength, Intellect isn’t very good at hand-to-hand fights. Or at least that’s what I’ve always heard, anyway.”

“I’m just glad we took them down so fast,” said Blizzard. She glanced at her watch. “It has to be a new record for the team, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “We’re getting better and better every mission. Now we just need to wait for the police to arrive so we can tell them what happened and—”

I heard—no, felt—something zip by me without me even seeing it. In fact, the only indications that something had run by me was a short gust of wind that followed, which sent Blizzard’s hood and cape fluttering and Treehugger’s hair flying around her head for a moment.

“What was that?” said Treehugger, grabbed her hair and looking around in confusion. “Did you all feel something?”

“I did,” I said. I looked to the left and to the right, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Was it just a sudden gust of—”

Without warning, a nearby parked car suddenly flew toward us, like someone had thrown it. Treehugger and Blizzard just stared at it in shock, but I immediately flew through the air and caught the car before it could crash into us.

But as soon as I caught it, I smelled a burning stench, which I realized too late was the stench of burning gasoline. And before I could toss the car away, it exploded in my hands. The explosion sent me flying backwards uncontrollably through the air.

I crashed into the side of a building, sending chunks of concrete flying everywhere. My head hurt and there was a ringing in my ears that made it impossible to hear anything. My suit, thankfully, had saved my body from the worst of the explosion, but it was blackened and smoking and part of my hair felt burned away, though I couldn’t see what my head looked like at the moment.

Shaking my head, I looked down and saw that the others had scattered, most likely to avoid the debris of the explosion. Blizzard had somehow managed to summon a thick ice barrier around herself and Treehugger, which was filled with shrapnel from the exploding car, while Stinger, Shell, and Talon had taken refuge behind another parked car. As for Jawtooth and Intellect, they were still where they had been moments before, although now the ice keeping Jawtooth down was covered in sharp, burning pieces of metal and there was a bad cut across his face where a piece of shrapnel had hit him.

I saw Blizzard shouting at me, as were the others, but the ringing in my ears continued to persist. I tried to shout back at them that I was okay, but I couldn’t even hear myself over the ringing.

Then I saw him. It was just a glimpse—a tall, shadowy figure wearing some kind of helmet and goggles—but it was just enough for me to realize that the fight wasn’t over yet.

But he vanished instantly, although I thought I saw him moving in the general direction of Blizzard and Treehugger.

Before I could shout at them to watch out, Blizzard’s ice barrier suddenly shattered. Blizzard and Treehugger turned around, but they were knocked down by some powerful force before they could even react. Blizzard and Treehugger lay on the ground, unconscious, while a gust of wind that sent their hair fluttering indicated that the mysterious assailant was still active.

Realizing what was about to happen next, I looked toward the other three and shouted at them to defend themselves, but they seemed too stunned at seeing Blizzard and Treehugger defeated so easily that they didn’t even move from their position. Only Talon, surprisingly enough, reacted, jumping on top of the car that she and the others were hiding behind and flashing her claws.