Trainee Superhero (Book One) (7 page)

“Pain sticks,” he says, and holds a glowing
blade against his skin. He removes it a second later, and the skin
is already red and blistered.

“Two sticks for you, two sticks for me. We
fight until you submit or you hit me. Now, show me what you can
do!”

The sticks are heavy but well weighted.
Tenchi has shown me a few moves for sword fighting, but I’m not
great at it.
Past Prime
hits out at me and I parry clumsily.
He hits again, a blow aimed at my neck that I step back from.
Suddenly his blows are coming at me with startling speed. I feel a
burn across my neck and a second on my arm.
Past Prime
retreats a little.

“You are too slow, too cautious, too easy to
read.”

I attack with a lunge that he parries with
ease. I feel his pain stick on my back and strike out desperately,
hitting nothing.
Past Prime
closes in on me and my arms
erupt in pain. I drop one of my sticks and do a terrible job of
parrying with the other. I try to protect my face with my arm, but
Past Prime
beats me until I drop backwards onto the ground.
I’ve never hurt this bad in my life, but I still manage to get to
my feet.

“We stop when you submit,” he reminds me.

We spin, and I get a blow under my chin. I
fall backwards but roll to my feet. He hits me in the chest, and I
scream. I try to roll to my feet, but he knocks me over and I fall
again. I get up slowly and grip my swords. I know this isn’t going
well, but I won’t back out now.

We fight for another thirty minutes before
Past Prime
sighs and sheaths his sword. I’m covered in
blisters and sweat, but I haven’t even managed to touch
Past
Prime
, and he looks as relaxed as ever.

“You don’t know when to quit, kid. Sit
down.”

A steward brings over two chairs and sets
them up for us. I sit down.

“I’ve trained every superhero on this planet,
did you know that?”

I nod.

“Not everyone is born for this life.”

He doesn’t think I can cut it.

“I can do this,” I say.

“I can tell a lot about a person’s style by
how they spar with the pain sticks… and the news isn’t good for
you. You aren’t very strategic or fast, but you are too aggressive.
You are also as stubborn as a dead mule and have no idea of when to
retreat. That’s the kind of combination that gets people killed
very, very quickly. You’ve also made some dangerous enemies, son,
and that won’t help.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to show how I
feel.

“This is not the life for you. We can offer
you a way out, a non-combat position with
Team
Mercy
.
The work they do is not glamorous, but it holds the world together.
We haven’t made this offer to anyone else, because they would take
it in a second.”

He stands up and the steward appears to take
our chairs.

“Think about it,” he says.

I do, and it doesn’t make sense.

“Why would you only make that offer to
me?”

“You’re young and slow,” he says, but one of
the things I learnt from my dad is how to spot a liar.

“You’re lying,” I say, “why only me?”

“We know you’re innocent. You don’t belong
here with the misfits.”

“Neither do you. I bet most of the team don’t
really belong here. What’s the real reason,
Bansuri
?”

He doesn’t notice that I called him by his
old name. He sighs and stands up.

“I knew your mother. We owe her.”

“If you knew my mother, you know why I want
to fight.”

Past Prime
shakes his head and stands
up.

“It’s because I knew your mother that I don’t
want you to fight. But you have her stubborn streak. Do you want to
meet one of her most useful inventions?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer but walks to an
empty part of the training hall. The floor here is made of worn
padded mats. A cube robot raises itself out of the ground in front
of us. It has a dozen arms, and each ends in the glowing point of a
pain sword. It folds away all but one arm, which it points directly
at me in a challenge.

Past Prime
hands me two pain
sticks.

“This is one of your mother’s training ‘bots.
Get past the body and hit it in center mass.”

The cube starts spinning its arm slowly. It
takes a swing at me, but I block. I dart past the arm and slam my
sword right into the cube’s center.

“Easy,” I say.

The cube unfolds two more arms.

“Again,” says
Past Prime
,
“faster.”

This time the arms are fast, and one lands a
blow on my shoulder as I lunge at the cube. I hit it dead
center.

“Messy, boy, messy. You need to block more,
move better. Again, faster.”

The cube unfolds more arms and we start
again. This time the robot lands a hit right in my ribs and another
in my head as I fall. I hit the ground and roll, but the robot pins
me. It digs its swords into my body and holds me for a second
before letting me go. The robot releases me and I gasp in relief.
I’m seeing a whole new side to my mother that I had never thought
possible.

“Up,” says
Past Prime
.

We start again; this time I get the robot
before it gets me.

“Faster.”

Every time I win the robot gets another arm
or starts moving faster. The arms start hitting me harder and more
often. It hurts, but I always manage to hit the machine with my
pain stick at least half the time. I’m feeling pretty good about
myself, but
Past Prime
isn’t impressed.

“You have grit, but you are too slow.”

“Show me how it’s done them,” I challenge
him.

He puts out a hand and I pass him a sword,
handle first.

“Maximum speed,” he says, “maximum arms.”

The sparring robot complies; its arms move so
fast that they blur.
Past Prime
steps right inside their
reach, knocking them aside with ease. The spinning arms can’t touch
him; one glowing tip gets close, but he deflects it with ease and
lands a blow right on the cube’s body.

“That’s how.”

“Whatever,” I say in annoyance.

I’ll never move that fast or that smoothly,
but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a superhero.
Rhino Rampage
is a huge man famous for his clumsy ways when he’s out of his suit,
but he is still a reasonably powerful superhero as long as he
doesn’t need to dodge or fly too fast. I could be like that; I
would settle for being a second-rate superhero at this point.

“Let’s take this up a level,”
Past
Prime
says.

The cube stands on six short legs and takes a
few steps back from me. It bangs its arms together as if showing me
how dangerous it. It’s only a robot, but I could swear it’s looking
forward to this.

Saucer, this thing is going to kill me.

“Scared?”
Past Prime
asks.

“Bite me, old man. And give me back my
sword.”

I’m eating my lunch in the infirmary when
Never Lies
walks in. The doc has bandaged my arms and legs
until I look like a mummy, and he gave me enough painkillers to
take the worst of the burn away.

“Ready for the next session?” asks
Never
Lies
without preamble.

I nod. Hopefully it doesn’t kill me.

“You took a beating today,” she says.

“Did I?” I ask innocently, although there’s
no point trying to hide the fact that I’m bruised and battered.

“Yes. I’m surprised you can still walk, but
Past Prime
said your injuries were self-inflicted and that I
was to have no sympathy, so get up.”

“How…”

I want to ask her how I’m doing in the
training program, but I’m scared she’ll tell me a depressing truth.
She looks at me and raises an eyebrow. I have to ask her something
now, or she’ll think I’m an irredeemable idiot.

“How… um, how long do I have to keep
training?”

Even I think I sound stupid, and
Never
Lies
just grunts in amusement. Mission failed: she thinks I’m
an idiot.

“The more you sweat in training, the less you
bleed in battle… and you aren’t sweating at all.
Past Prime
was just testing your reactions; I’m here to test your brain.”

I spend the rest of the afternoon with her.
Half my time is spent in a training helmet, and half in a combat
simulator. The simulator is a whole suit of armor that feels just
like the real thing, except with electric shocks instead of death.
It’s unpleasant, but I learn fast. I fight in cities and swamps,
alone and in teams of six or twenty, in the sky and on the ground
and in every place you can think of. I recognize every alien I see
from my time in the training helmet, and I know where to hit
them.

It’s not a test of physical speed or agility,
but rather of how to react and move in combat, incorporating my
knowledge of how to kill some enemies and when to avoid others.

“I’m ramping up the difficulty,” says
Never Lies
, and aliens start appearing faster.

I’m exhausted by the time we finish. A
steward brings us orange juice and muffins, but I don’t even have
time to eat mine before
Never Lies
turns towards a big man
waiting at the other end of the gym. He’s dressed in a black shirt
similar to the ones worn by
Past Prime
and
Never
Lies
. It seems to be a mark of rank around here.

“His name is
Small Talk
. Do what he
says, and don’t whine about it,” she advises me.

Small Talk
is standing by a rock
climbing wall. Heavy mattresses are set below the wall, and they
look well used.
Small Talk
doesn’t say anything, so I start
looking around for a safety harness.

“Wait,”
Small Talk
says.

He pushes a button on his data pad and the
whole rock wall starts to move slowly downwards as if it were some
enormous vertical conveyor belt. I’ve seen this before- it’s an
infinity climbing wall. The idea is to climb two meters off the
ground, and then the wall starts moving downwards and you do your
best not to be brought back to Earth. The little outcrops and marks
are constantly changed so that a person can climb the same few
meters of wall all day and never see the same pattern of rocks. A
line emerges across the wall, with ‘Level One’ written above
it.

This wall is far higher than any I’ve seen
before.

“Climb,”
Small Talk
says.

“Shouldn’t I-”

“CLIMB!” he shouts.

I climb.

It’s easy enough, with lots of wide and
well-spaced outcrops. I climb to three-quarters up the wall and
look down over my shoulder; I’m high enough now that a fall will
really hurt. The wall starts moving, and I keep climbing.

Small Talk
is looking up at me, but he
isn’t impressed.

“Higher. Faster.”

I climb higher; I climb faster. The wall
starts moving faster, and I struggle to keep up. The words ‘Level
Two’ form at the top of the wall and start descending towards me. I
climb over them and keep going. I’m beginning to sweat, and my
hands are slippery, but I can do this, I can climb. I climb over
levels three and four before my arms really start to tire. The
handles are getting smaller and harder to reach, and my arms are
burning. The wall is moving downwards faster than I can climb it,
and it carries me down to halfway. I feel a burning in my neck and
the handles disappear, leaving me with no holds. I land heavily on
my back with a thud that knocks all the air out of my body.

Small Talk
is already standing over
me. He stares down at me with his grey, soulless eyes as if I were
a cockroach he found in his kitchen sink.

“Up,” he says again, “you need to hit the
bell at the top of the wall.”

The bell is high above me, but I can make it.
I start climbing again, but I only make it past level two when my
hand betrays me and I fall, hitting my head hard enough to knock my
thoughts out.

I feel a burning in my neck again, and I tear
so hard at the collar that I rip a fingernail off. Every part of my
body is in agony, my neck and finger doubly so.

“Up!”

I climb and fall, climb and fall, climb and
fall for what feels like hours. I make some progress, but that
saucerhat of a bell is always out of my reach. Eventually I get so
tired that I don’t even make level two before I fall. I hit one of
the mattresses hard.
Small Talk
shakes his head in
annoyance.

“Your will is letting you down, not your
body. You need to hit that bell.”

Saucers take that bell! I’m exhausted.

Small Talk
walks off, and I’m left
wondering if I have what it takes to be a superhero. I’m not fast
enough, and I doubt I’m smart enough.

I might just be stubborn enough, though.

I get up and start climbing that stupid wall
all over again, because I want to prove that I have what it takes,
that I can do this, that I should be allowed to hunt saucers.

I’ll get that bell if it kills me.

“The use of weapons and powers is an integral
part of superhero success. Trainees will gradually be exposed to
different weapons and fighting techniques. Not all weapons are
suitable for all trainees, and finding the ideal weapon load for
each superhero may take months of careful practice.”

-Superhero Trainee Guide (Third Edition),
Chapter Fifteen.

“We don’t have time to go gently. To find out
what trainees can do, put them under pressure. The more pressure
the better.”

-Extract of
Dark Fire
’s training
manual read at his trial.

Every day I climb ropes, run treadmills, spar
the training robot and use the learning helmets until I think my
brain might explode. It’s exhausting, but I keep at it. I even hit
the gym, focusing on building muscles and stamina. Personal
trainers in pink shirts help me with my workouts, and stewards in
white bring me water and food while I rest.