Trainee Superhero (Book One)

By C.H. Aalberry

Copyright 2015 C.H. Aalberry

Distributed by Smashwords.

Edited by Eve (
www.eveproofreads.com
)

Cover Art by Malice Bathory (
www.maliceartwork.blogspot.com.au
)

I was five when the saucers first attacked
Earth, tearing up mountains and cities for reasons that we still
don’t understand. There was nothing our military could do to break
the aliens’ shields, and millions of people died. We lived with the
terror of the unpredictable and unstoppable attacks for years and
it seemed that humankind was doomed to an early extinction.

I was seven when the first generation of
superheroes,
Earth Shield
, started fighting back using
technology stolen from our enemy. For months those seven men and
women were all that stood between Earth and Armageddon. Five of
them were dead within two years. Most people forget that.

More teams of superheroes rose up to defend
the Earth, and when I was thirteen over three hundred new
superheroes appeared within a month. I think the new generation of
teams was the last project my mother worked on, but her work is
still classified so I may never know.

Earth still isn’t safe. Each team of
superheroes is responsible for protecting tens of millions of
civilians, but the saucers are relentless. Every kid knows the
names if their local team, and every kid dreams of joining that
team one day. Most people will be disappointed: less than a
thousand people in the world can use the alien technology that runs
the power suits.

Now I am one of them. I may not be the
greatest superhero who ever lived, or the smartest, but I’m going
to end this year in a coffin or a cape. This is my chance to kill
saucers, and nothing is going to stop me.

This is what I learnt as a trainee
superhero.

“…in summary, we remain in ignorance
regarding their origin, nature, and purpose. It has been suggested
that they are looking for something, but there is no evidence of
what that might be. All we know for certain is that they bring
destruction and that the Superhero Corps has been the only viable
means of stopping them.”

-Confidential report to the U.N. on the tenth
anniversary of the alien attacks.

“The saucers are the biggest threat humanity
has ever faced; superheroes are a close second.”

-Extract from
Dark Fire
’s journal read
out at his court-martial.

I’m the kind of guy who gets into trouble a
lot, but it’s not
always
my fault.

Despite what you may have heard, I only broke
the quarterback’s nose because he and his friends were trying to
throw me into the dumpster and I didn’t want to go. I was suspended
from school for that, but not for long enough. I’ve been in far
worse trouble, anyway. When I was twelve, I snuck into my mom’s
workshop and electrocuted myself on some of the alien technology
she had been working on. I was clinically dead for a whole minute
before Mom found me. You would think I would have learnt my lesson
from that, but I was back in that lab within a week. Mom had to
make a whole new security system to keep me out.

So sometimes trouble finds me and sometimes I
find trouble, but in either case I get more than my fair share of
problems.

I’m sitting in class and sketching exploding
saucers as I wait for the last few minutes of the school day to
trickle past. My teacher glares at me, but she knows I can do the
work. I mastered the high school math syllabus years ago when Mom
was still homeschooling me. Those were better days. The only thing
Dad ever taught me is how to cheat at cards. He’s a little bit too
good at it, which is why he’s banned from every casino in the
country.

Today I’m looking for a special type of
trouble: today is my seventeenth birthday, and I have an
appointment at the Superhero Corps recruitment office to find out
if I have what it takes to be a superhero. The odds are against me
but, like my dad, I plan on cheating probability. Let's just say
that I found some alien tech in my mom's workshop that will give me
an unfair edge. I doubt Mom would have approved, but Dad probably
would if he ever found out.

The bell rings and I’m out the door before my
fellow students have left their chairs. I’m halfway to freedom when
someone grabs my neck and slams me hard against the corridor wall,
holding my face against the bricks.

Ouch.

A figure leans against the wall beside me
with an air of affected relaxation. It’s James, the quarterback,
and he’s brought a few friends.

“I never thanked you for this,” James says,
tapping his nose.

It looks better than it had before I broke
it, but his father is rich enough to hire the very best plastic
surgeons. James nods, and the guy behind me punches me in the back.
Both he and James are bigger and heavier than me, and I know I’m in
trouble. James smiles and slaps the side of my face.

“I heard you have an interview today... but I
don’t think we need scum like you protecting the Earth, do we?”

He’s right, I have an interview today and I
can’t afford to show up late or covered in bruises. I can’t miss my
chance, not for this. Not for
anything
.

So I cheat and use one of the little tricks I
found in Mom’s workshop. I blink my left eye three times to
activate it, and alarms burst out along the corridor. That’s part
one of the plan.

“Saucers! Seek cover! Saucers! Seek cover!”
the alarms shout.

The goons behind me releases me and run down
the corridor, but James isn’t as easily fooled. He grabs my shirt
and drags me to the window. Traffic passes slowly by, and a
helicopter flies past. The alarms die and I try to break James’s
grip.

“How did you do that?” he asks, “that’s
illegal!”

He’s right, but then so is beating up
classmates. Part one of the plan may not have worked, but part two
is bearing down on us. I look down the corridor, but James doesn’t
take the bait. He should because my best friend, Tenchi, is
sprinting towards us and he does not look pleased. James takes a
swing to punch me, but Tenchi grabs his arm and floors him. James
hits the ground hard and rolls into a fighting stance, but his
shoulders sag when he sees who has come to my rescue.

“Oh, his nursemaid,” James says.

Tenchi’s mother is Japanese so he moves like
a ninja and his father is Australian so he hits like a freight
train. If that wasn’t enough, he also has black belts in a number
of martial arts including a couple that are only semi-legal. James
is a big guy, but even he won’t mess with Tenchi. He backs off and
I laugh. I want to enjoy this sudden turnaround in my fortunes, but
Tenchi grabs my arm and drags me away.

“We have places to be, dude! Can’t be
late!”

James scowls but lets us go. Tenchi pushes me
through the school car park and into his ancient grey car. The car
is so old that it still has a cassette player instead of a real
sound system, but we get around that by wiring his phone directly
to the speakers. We always have the music up loud, because the rust
bucket rattles alarmingly at any speed over a walking pace. It’s
only one breakdown away from the junk pile, but we can’t really
complain, because new cars are rare these days. Besides, Tenchi
regards the faulty brakes and dirty windows as a challenge rather
than a problem, and his faded wheels are still the fastest in
town.

“I had that under control,” I say, ignoring
the fact that I had called him to help.

Tenchi slams on the accelerator and we speed
off in a cloud of blue smoke. Tenchi doesn’t say anything about
having to rescue me, but he gives me the same knowing smile that he
uses whenever he gets me out of trouble.

“Today is important, dude, can’t have you
flunking your interview if we are going to be partners!”

Partners. Tenchi has already been accepted
into the Superhero Corps next intake, and I have no doubt he will
be the best candidate they have ever seen. The only thing holding
him back is an epic fear of heights that is going to make flying a
bit tricky. Maybe he can just shut his eyes.

“Thanks man!” I say, just like I always
do.

We swerve past a cyclist and fly through a
traffic light just as it turns red. Tenchi isn’t worried about
getting a speeding ticket; the local cops know he’s going to super
school so they won’t trouble him. It takes us less than a minute to
get from our drab high school to the Superhero Corps Office, a new
record. The office is in the most beautiful and expensive part of
town overlooking the lake. Usually we couldn’t even afford to park
around here, but the Superhero Corps Office has car parks reserved
for interviewees, and Tenchi pulls into one at speed.

“Hey, can you see something up there?” he
asks, pointing at the sky.

I can’t see anything at first, but I stare
until I think I can see a dark speck of color amongst the
clouds.

“A plane,” I guess, although big planes are
rare these days.

I lose the speck in the sky and turn my eyes
back downwards. I take a nervous breath and let it out slowly; this
is a big moment for me.

“Wait,” says Tenchi, and he hands me a box
wrapped in red paper and delicate silver ribbons. I raise an
eyebrow at the fine work.

“Happy birthday, dude! Mom did the ribbons,”
he says.

Tenchi’s mom is an origami master, so I tease
the ribbons open carefully and put them aside for later. Inside the
box is a purple egg that snaps open to reveal a thin polymer
leaflet as wide as my hand.

“Whoa!”

It’s a tat-a-gotchi, an animated tattoo that
grows and evolves over time. Tat-a-gotchis are expensive,
ornamental and totally cool. Lots of supers have them. I slap it on
my arm and it embeds into my skin. It stings a little. The tattoo
flickers and displays a small purple egg surrounded by a set of
controls. The eggs will hatch soon and turn into a unique animated
creature that responds to my voice and mood.

“Thanks man, you shouldn’t have!”

For Tenchi’s last birthday I took him out for
pizza and a terrible B-grade movie, ‘Mighty Max vs. The Saucers
from Hell!’ It was even worse than it sounds, but we enjoyed it. I
wanted to get him something better, but it took me months of saving
just for the pizza.

“No worries! I have one, too.”

He shows me a glowing turquoise egg on his
upper arm. It hasn’t hatched yet, either. We still have a few
minutes before my interview, but there’s no point us waiting in the
car, so we walk out and stop by the big glass doors that lead into
the Superhero Corps Office.

“You’ve got this, right?” asks Tenchi. He
looks a little nervous.

“I’ve got this,” I say and smile with more
confidence than I feel.

We step forwards. The glass doors slide
smoothly aside for us. I’m breathing too fast, and my hands are
sticky with sweat, but I try to relax. The surroundings help: the
Superhero Corps Office is large, calm and beautiful. The place
looks more like a private club than a recruiting office, with
comfortable leather chairs set beneath a chandelier. The walls are
lined with huge screens in elegant wood frames, each showing
collections of pixel-perfect images of superheroes and grainy
images of saucers. I’m obsessed with saucers, but I’ve never even
seen a good photo of one because their presence disrupts
electronics. Plus the aliens tend to kill anyone who gets too
close, naturally.

I recognize all of the active and retired
superheroes on show. I have the whole collection of superhero
posters on the walls of my room from the first team,
Earth
Shield
, to newest team of third-generation superheroes, the
Hollywood Nine
. I find my favorite poster, the one I have
opposite my bed so that it’s the first thing I see every morning.
It shows the portraits of a team called
The Legends
: a team
of four superheroes that formed when I was eleven and disbanded
when I was thirteen. In those short years they took out more
saucers than any team before or since. Their leader,
Master
Bansuri
, was a bald Japanese superhero who had been in the
original
Earth Shield
line-up. He looks old, but his eyes
were still bright. On his right is
The General
, the
superhero who now commands the Superhero Corps and the only member
of
The Legends
still active. I’ve always thought he was the
coolest of
The Legends
, and that’s saying something.

The other two members of
The Legends
were
Cold Comet
, a beautiful and talented superhero who died
in battle, and
Dark Fire
, who was officially declared dead
three years ago but who has unofficially been seen more times than
Elvis.
Cold Comet
is smiling in poster, but
Dark Fire
looks grim and a little angry.
Cold Comet
and
Dark
Fire
don’t look like superheroes, but they were two of the
best, and if they could do it so could I.