Trainee Superhero (Book One) (9 page)

“Targets ready,” says
Talented
Brat
.

“Set,” I say.

A couple of red balls shoot out of the cube
and I hit them both. Using the powerglove barely takes up any of my
energy. Neither
Small Talk
nor
Talented Brat
make any
comment, but
Small Talk
motions me to take the glove off and
passes me a laser rifle. It doesn’t seem to have a trigger, but
neither did the gloves. The targets pop up again, but I can’t make
the laser rifle shoot. I try a second time and then look towards
Small Talk
.

“Is there like a button or something I need
to push?” I ask.

“Next,” says
Brat
impatiently.

Small Talk
takes the rifle away and
hands me a plasma pistol like the ones
Bad Day
uses. I shake
it a few times, but nothing happens. Great.

“You have to arc the power down your arm and
into the barrel. Can you do that?” says
Brat
.

I don’t even know what that means, so I hand
the pistol back to
Small Talk
. There is a plasma rifle there
as well, but
Small Talk
doesn’t bother with it. He hands me
a pulse spear. It’s a clumsy weapon and the only thing I manage to
hit is the side of
Small Talk
’s helmet. He glares at me and
snatches it back.

We move to pulse casters, beamgats and
coldstorm cannons but I’m terrible at all of them. They either
don’t work properly or they drain too much energy with every
shot.

“Come on, kid,” implores
Brat
.

The next weapon is a short, thick cannon that
sits on my shoulder. It’s heavy. The targets pop up and I lob a
blast of green energy towards them, hitting one and destroying it
instantly. A set of targets pop up, but I can’t get a second shot
out of the cannon.

“Next next next,” sings out
Brat
.

I don’t think I’m doing very well at all. We
move through light lances, which don’t work for me, and blade
catapults that I keep missing with. My frustration grows with every
failure, and
Brat
gets increasingly edgy.
Small Talk
doesn’t seem moved by my inability to use the weapons, but keeps
handing them to me.

“This one looks like a crossbow that fires
rockets,” I say.

“Yep… but can you hit anything with it?” says
Brat
.

I hit a target dead on, but the bow only has
one shot in it.

“No,” says
Small Talk
and takes the
bow away from me.

We are running out of weapons, and I am
losing hope. I can’t be a super without a weapon, unless I want to
join team
Mercy
.
Small Talk
hands me a glove as long
as my arm. Two delicate spikes run down the side and project out
past my fingers.

“Multiblaster,” says
Small Talk
.

“Don’t bother,” says
Brat
, “that thing
doesn’t work for any-”

The multiblaster lights up. A pair of targets
shoots into the air, and I hit them both dead center with thin rays
of light.

“Lucky shot,” says
Brat
.

More targets fly into the air and I hit them
all. The mutliblaster shoots exactly where I want it to and soon
targets are falling out of the sky by the dozens. It uses a lot of
my energy, but I don’t care.

“Fine,” says
Small Talk

I have never felt so great from such little
encouragement

“Whoop-dee-doo, it’s about time,” drawls
Brat
, “now let’s see if you are any good with an egg
launcher.”

“A what?”

“The egg cannon,” lectures
Brat
, “is a
weapon I developed for hopeless trainees like you. The trigger is
in the mouthpiece; just point and bite down twice to shoot.”

Small Talk
flicks my helmet open and
shoves a piece of rubber into my mouth. I bite down on it twice and
the cannon thunks loudly right next to my ear, lobbing an egg
shaped grenade forward. It bursts into a bright storm of
lights.

“That will disable most things for a few
seconds, but the ammo is pretty volatile and since it’s stored on
your back-”

“-I can’t turn my back on the enemy?”

“Exactly,” says
Brat
, sounding mildly
impressed that I’d worked that out so quickly.

The egg launcher holds eight charges and has
a decent range. It’s easy to use, but not exactly exciting.
Small Talk
shows me how to fly and fire, then we set down
next to a second row of black boxes that contain close combat
weapons of all sorts and sizes.

Small Talk
hands me a short sword. The
blade is bright in his hand, but falls dark as soon as I touch it.
Small Talk
takes the blade away and passes me an axe, but to
no success.

“Lame,” says
Brat
.

The larger maces are too heavy for me, and I
nearly take my own arm off with a morningstar. We work our way
through dozens of weapons with no luck. There are over a hundred
weapons sitting in the metal crates and but only one or two work
for me.

I suck as a superhero.

“Saucer, kid, you are terrible at pretty much
everything,” says
Brat
.

“Quiet,” says
Small Talk
, and hands me
a small knife on a long chain.

I swing it a few times and hit myself in my
foot.
Small Talk
takes it off me pretty quickly after
that.

“Let’s do the artificer testing before I die
of boredom,” says
Brat
.

I think I hate
Brat
, but I’m so tired
of failing at weapons testing that I hand the nunchucks I’m trying
to
Small Talk
and start to walk away. He grabs my arm and
stops me.

“We are done when I say so.”

He starts handing me more exotic weapons,
strange glowing things that rest on my hands but don’t seem to do
much more than pulse and use energy. There are green whips with
minds of their own and white-hot daggers on long flexible rods. The
weapons mostly do what I want them to. I’m particularly fond of a
set of giant metal crab claws that bind to my arms and snap open
and shut with quicksilver speed.

“So you are good enough with the weird ones.
At least that makes you interesting,” says
Brat
. He sounds
even
less
interested in me before, if that was possible.

“Fine,” says
Small Talk
and points me
to another crate.

There are a couple of big discs in the crate.
Small Talk
waves at them and they start to float. They look
a little like the ones
Past Prime
is famous for.

“Artificer test,” drones
Brat
, “this
one won’t take long.”

“Can you control the discs?” asks
Small
Talk
.

I think about the discs, trying to control
them with my mind. One of them falls out the air and the other
bounces into the air and flies off into the distance.
Brat
laughs unkindly.

“Very few people can artifice,”
Small
Talk
says.

I already knew that, but it doesn’t make me
feel less disappointed. Being able to control my own army of
golem-warriors would be fun.

“Shield test!” shouts
Brat
eagerly.

“Go stand there,” orders
Small Talk
,
pointing to a wide metal plate sitting in the sand.

I walk over and stand on the plate, stamping
on it a few times. It sounds solid. The plate starts glowing and
suddenly I can’t move my feet.

“Uh…”

“Set,” shouts
Brat
eagerly.

Small Talk
walks up to me and gives me
the once over, checking my shields and power source. He pats me on
the shoulder in a comforting way and closes my visor.

“Are you paying attention to me?” he
asks.

“Um… sure… but why can’t I move?”

He walks over to a box, picks up a large
handgun and shoots me right between the eyes. My shields stop the
bullet, but I still flinch.

“Ouch,” I say reproachfully, although it
didn’t really hurt.

“And?”
Small Talk
asks.

“Fine. Continue,” says
Talented
Brat
.

Small Talk
empties the rest of the
clip right between my eyes. The bullets ping off my shield without
even lowering my shields. I still can’t move, so all I can do is
watch as he walks over to a grenade launcher, shoulders it and
brings it over.

“Bomb test,” says
Brat
gleefully.

“Wait… what?” I ask.

The grenade hits me right on the chin. It
doesn’t hurt, but the lights are bright enough to blind me. My
shields don’t even drop below 99%, so it seems I’ve got nothing to
worry about from old fashioned projectile weapons. Unfortunately
for me,
Small Talk
has access to a whole arsenal of more
dangerous guns. He picks up a laser cannon and aims it at me from
only a few feet away. He shoots, and the burst of light curves into
my chest and disappears when it hits my shield.
Small Talk
re-aims the cannon and fires again. This one curves into my leg. I
can feel the warmth on my skin, but my shields are still 97%.
Small Talk
walks right up to me, places the cannon against
my chest and pulls the trigger. The blast ripples across my shields
but doesn’t even knock me over.

“Try the plasma cannon,” suggests
Brat
.

Don’t try the plasma cannon! Don’t try
the-

Small Talk
picks up a plasma cannon
and levels it at me. The first blast arches and hits my head; the
second engulfs my leg and burns the sand at my feet into a single
glowing crystal.
Small Talk
hits me with the third blast. It
stings a little. Shields at 95%.

“Stop trying to kill me!” I shout.

Small Talk
picks up a large axe with a
glowing blade and bangs it against my head. It bounces with a
thud-thud-thud that doesn’t hurt. He tries again with a two-handed
sword that takes 1% off my shields every time it hits me. He
smashes a heavy mace against my knee, but I barely feel it. He
pulls out a pair of plasma gloves and slams them against my head.
That hurts, but not badly. My shields start rising as soon as he
leaves me alone.

“Decent shields,” says
Talented Brat
thoughtfully, “time for some bigger guns.”

A mechanical nightmare walks out from behind
the rocks. It looks a little like a triclops, but it has seven arms
and a small cockpit in the head. Each of the seven arms ends in a
very large and unique weapon. They don’t look battle-ready, but
have open panels and are connected by loose power cords.

“There’s some kind of monster out here,” I
shout.

“Yep… and who do you think is driving it?”
says
Brat
, “Now shush. This is going to hurt you a lot more
than it’s going to hurt me.”

He shoots me with each of the weapons
individually, and then in pairs. The attacks lower my shields to
about 80%, but no more.
Brat
tries the arms in sets of
three, but my shields hold up.

“Give it everything,” orders
Small
Talk
.

Brat
giggles, levels all the cannons
at me and lets loose. It’s a dazzling display of light and my
shields are sizzling and popping. They hold, but is it getting
warmer in my suit? The guns blast me down to 60% shields, and then
stop.

“Time to get the
really
big guns,”
says
Talented Brat
.

A second walker emerges from behind the
rocks. It’s a simple thing, just a cannon on legs. It ambles
clumsily over to me and aims its barrel at my chest. Then it and
Brat
open fire together. My shields light up; the dial on my
arm drops to 56%...48%...30%...uh oh.

“30%!” I scream, but all I can hear is a
crackle of white noise.

Something hard hits me, and I fall to one
knee.

Thousands of little blue discs burst from my
helmet and form a round shield in front of me. The shield absorbs
the worst of the attack, the discs popping and reforming as the
round shield slowly shrinks away beneath the array of weapons
focused on me. More blue discs appear and form a dome around me.
Nothing is getting through, and my regular shields start to
recharge.

“Ha!” I say, “I have superpowers.
Finally!”

My little blue guardians all burst together
and a laser blast lifts me off my feet and throws me through the
air. I hit the ground and slide through rocks. A shrill beep-beep
rings in my ears.

“You should be at 10%,” explains
Brat
.

He sounds mildly impressed. I check my arm;
he’s right, I still have 10% of my shields left. The ground around
me is burnt and battered. Some of the rocks are glowing red, and
others have melted into pools of lava. A shadow of undamaged ground
stretches out behind me. I fall forwards but roll over so that I’m
face up. I may be dying again, but at least I’m looking at the
blue, blue sky.
Small Talk
leans over me, eclipsing my
view.

“Good,” he says, “this one is tough.”

Maybe I’ll be a superhero after all.

I was the first superhero.

The saucers had been attacking the Earth for
well over a year by then, and it seemed like there was nothing we
could do to stop them ripping the world apart.

People started making desperate decisions.
The captain of a US destroyer caught in the path of a small saucer
emptied his arsenal of missiles and brought it down. We don’t know
why he succeeded where so many others had failed, but that was the
beginning. The technology found in the downed saucer was used to
build two very different experimental weapons.

The first was a suit built of stolen
technology and a mishmash of fighter jet equipment. The U.N. could
only find eight people who had the ability to interface with the
saucer’s technology. The suit gave each of us incredible and unique
powers, so we called it the superhero suit and hoped it would keep
us alive.