Trainee Superhero (Book Two) (8 page)

I think I had a nightmare like this once.

“Uh oh,” I say.

Small Talk
attacks the red tank head
on, striking it with his borrowed bulk and slowing it down. The
rest of us spread out and start firing. I don’t think I add much to
the mighty arsenals of my fellow supers, but I do what I can as
rockets explode around me. I’m not as agile as the other supers,
and my shield takes a beating.

Lucky for me, soaking up crazy amounts of
damage seems to be my only real superpower. Multicolored discs form
in front of me and shield me from rockets and lasers and worse.
Small Talk
is thrown past me on a blast of plasma, shedding
metal plates as he flies. He digs up a furrow of grass when he
lands, but rises from the dust quickly to return to the fight.
Dark Fire
loops up past an oval battle tower that walks
along on spider legs and douses it in fire. The creature keeps
coming towards us and the dog whistle despite all that we are
doing.

“Protect the whistle!” screams
Small
Talk
, because it’s better that these things are trying to kill
us than running loose through the town.

A wall of ice bursts from the ground and
immobilizes the creature. It struggles to free itself, cracking the
ice and sending shards towards us that melt in the air. I see a
figure flying behind the oblong nightmare, slowing it with ice.

“Get busy!” screams the superhero.

We get busy.
Dark Fire
melts his way
into the creature as
Small Talk
and
Never Lies
bust
up its many legs. Eventually it stops moving and crashes to the
ground with
Dark Fire
still inside. Neither
Small
Talk
nor
Never Lies
seem to be worried about him.

“Hello,” calls out the new superhero to
Never Lies
, “where’s the rest of your team?”

She floats closer, sitting cross-legged in
the air rather than flying like a normal super. I’ve seen her
before, on the day
The General
tried to kill me. She’s
Blizzard Master
, and I’m happy to see her.

“We’re it,” says
Never Lies
.

“Three superheroes, one dead.”

“He’s not dead, and there are four of us,”
says
Never Lies
, waving at me.

I feel pretty good about that.
Blizzard
Master
lands lightly beside me and gives me the once over. Her
eyes linger on my multiblaster as if she has never seen one like
it.

“Barely four. This guy takes a beating, but
doesn’t give one out. He needs a bigger gun. You should give him
one of yours, you seem to be carrying enough for a whole team.”

Blizzard Master
is the best.
Never
Lies
snorts and aims her heavy gun platforms up towards the
sky.

“Hey
Blizzard Master
, I say, you
probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life once.”

“Yeah?” she asks without interest, “when was
that?”

“A little while ago, when
The General
was trying to kill-”

“Oh, saucer. You’re that kid. Standing up to
The General
got me kicked out of my team and assigned to the
team of total losers waiting in town.”

“Ah,” I say, suddenly taken back, “sorry
about that.”

Dark Fire
bursts out of the oblong, a
glowing red crystal in his hands which he hands to
Small
Talk
.

“Hello,
Blizz
,” he says with a
smile.

“
Dark Fire
? They told me you were
dead. Well, that explains pretty much everything.”

“Do you have a bomb for the saucer?” says
Small Talk
impatiently.

“I do, but we need to thin out these ranks of
creatures before we make a move. They are coming right for us.”

She was right; the sky was dark with
creatures.

“I can fortify the area with ice,” she
suggests.

Dark Fire
nods and we prepare a
makeshift castle of ice and dirt around the dog whistle. We each
assume a role, with mine being to watch the skies.

“I can see deathtowers, and more of those
spider towers as well,” says
Dark Fire
. “It’s going to be a
hectic battle.”

“My team are protecting the town, and those
moronic
Bazooka Boys
should be arriving soon for whatever
good they can do,” says
Blizzard Master
.

Waves of enemy break against our ice fort,
and I do my best to keep the skies clear. An octo-ape wraps its
arms around my neck but
Never Lies
takes it down with a
well-placed plasma bolt. Two deathtowers approach and
Dark
Fire
goes straight for one, burning right into it.
Blizzard
Master
swoops towards the second tower, but it knocks her out
of the air. She hits the ground hard and the tower looms over her.
I throw my body over her and feel the blows of heavy fire on my
back. It hurts, and I hope my shields can take it. The fire stops
and the tower falls over. A big piece hits me in the head and I
fall over.

“You okay, kid?” asks
Never Lies
,
helping me to my feet.

“Sure,” I say, although I don’t feel
okay.

“
Dark Fire
and I can take the bomb now
if the rest of your team stays here as a distraction,” says
Blizzard Master.

“Set,” we all say in unison, and
Blizzard
and
Dark Fire
take off.

“Incoming,” warns
Never Lies
.

A set of enormous missiles bombard us,
smashing my shields and ripping
Small Talk
’s new body apart.
One explodes next to
Never Lies
and flings her up into the
sky. My shields are down to 20% and
Small Talk
is almost
back to his natural suit, so I hate to think of how
Never
Lies
is.

“Follow her,”
Small Talk
orders.

I’m too slow to catch her so I fly high to
find her impact crater.
Never Lies
landed hard in the middle
of a suburban garden, burning through the smooth grass and rolling
through the rose garden. I’m not the first to find her: there are
four superheroes in flowing red cloaks standing beside her by the
time I reach her. I recognize them as members of the
Bazooka
Boys
, a male-only team known for its brash displays of
power.

“Look here, boys,” says one, “we were waiting
for the saucer and we find this instead. It’s one of them girl
supers. Help her up. And let’s get those dangerous toys away from
her.”

They pull
Never Lies
to her feet and
pull her gun platforms off of her, piling them to one side. She
tries to push them away, but I can tell she’s still a little groggy
from the huge hit she just took. I move to help her, but one of the
Bazooka Boys
grabs me. I catch
Never Lies
’ eye and
she shakes her head slightly to say that now is not the time to
kick up a stink. Besides, the guy is a lot stronger than me and I
don’t even know if I can escape him.

“Come on, idiots, we don’t have time for
this. The saucer is coming,”
Never Lies
says.

“Nah, no sign of the monsters. It’s going to
pass us by, no problems.”

The dog whistle must have been far too
effective, and no monsters got as far as the
Bazooka Boys
.
They don’t seem smart enough to have figured out what is going on,
either.

One of the
Bazooka Boys
shoves
Never Lies
.

“And don’t call us idiots,” one of the idiots
says.

I struggle against my captor, but his grip is
like steel.
Never Lies
looks angrier than I’ve ever seen
her, but I can’t do anything to help her. She tries to fly way, but
they mob her and force her feet to the ground.

“So keen to leave? But we are having fun!”
yells one of the
Boys
.

“Yeah, it’s not often we meet a girl
superhero,” says another.

Never Lies
punches one in the head,
knocking him back. That only seems to encourage the others.

“What kind of a superhero are you, punching
another super!” one calls.

“Treason!” agrees another.

The world is burning, and the
Bazooka
Boys
just want to find someone to bully. They shove
Never
Lies
and she stumbles. The leader closes in on her, trying to
grab her arm. That’s when she strikes, pulling a knife from her
belt and cutting right through the leader’s shields and into his
power pack, severing the lines that power his suit.

She moves fast, and for a second no-one else
realizes what she had done. She leaps at another
Bazooka
Boy
, slaps his punch aside and takes him out with her knife
before slamming him into the ground. Every move she makes is smooth
and calculated, and the
Boys
don’t have a hope of stopping
her with their clumsy punches. She cut their power, leaving them
helpless on the ground, but she doesn’t hurt them.

I would have, if our positions had been
swapped.

The only one spared her wrath is the guy
holding me, and only because he uses me like as a shield.
Never
Lies
open her visor and glares at him.

“What kind of superhero am I?” she asks, “I’m
the type who fights in the sky instead of hiding on the ground like
you stupid losers. I’m the kind of superhero who took three of you
out with a knife.”

She kicks a downed
Bazooka Boy
in the
leg and he tries to crawl away from her. Her gun platforms float
into the air and fix themselves to her shoulders where they
belong.

“I’m the kind of superhero you don’t want to
mess with, idiots.”

The guy behind me takes the hint and lets me
go.

“Now,”
Never Lies
says, “why don’t you
amateurs walk home and leave the saucer to me?”

We take off and I fly next to her in the air,
close enough so we can talk.

“Those guys are a joke,” she says angrily.
“Why do male superheroes think that women can’t fight? They were so
slow and clumsy that I could have taken a dozen of them out if I
wanted. Idiots. And were you planning on helping at any stage?”

“Why? They don’t deserve my help,” I say.

That almost earns me a smile.

“Let’s go kill some aliens,” she says.

“Yes ma’am.”

The saucer explodes in the distance, crashing
down into a forest and starting a raging fire. That’s the kind of
problem that the fire department can deal with, so we ignore
it.

We find
Small Talk
lying on the ground
within ten meters of the dog whistle. Our fort of ice and dirt lies
in ruins around him, and a metal serpent is wrapped around his
body. He managed to rip the thing’s head off before it reached the
dog whistle. He’s surrounded by piles and piles of every kind of
alien as if he was trying to form a wall of dead metal to protect
the whistle.

“Is he dead?” I ask.

Small Talk
groans in pain, and we fly
down to unwrap him from his enemy.

“He’ll survive. Just.”
Never Lies
says.

We look up to see a flash of light from the
other side of town as the downed saucer explodes.
Dark Fire
and
Blizzard Master
did their job well. I relax a
little.

I should have learnt my lesson: a dozen
aliens teleport into existence right above and the fight starts
again.
Never Lies
gets three of them, but one pins her and
another smacks me right in the helmet.

It’s a five-legged freak made of spinning
blades and wicked spines. It slashes at my head, screaming in a
high pitch squeal. My green shields take most of the damage but I
struggle to fight it off. The pressure releases for a moment as
someone pulls the alien off me and slams it against the ground. My
rescuer is wearing dull blue, and isn’t someone I recognize. The
alien turns on him, sticking a blade right through his leg. He
staggers, yet still manages to punch the creature as it closes in
on him. I blast it apart with my multiblaster, cutting its legs and
arms off with focused blasts until it is no longer a threat.
Never Lies
has taken the rest of the aliens out in the same
amount of time it has taken me to kill one.
Blizzard Master
was right; I do need a bigger gun.

My rescuer lies gasping on the ground. He has
a huge ‘TRAINEE’ printed on his chest, and the only weapon he
carries is a short sword. His suit looks even less impressive than
mine. I kneel beside him and put some pressure on his leg until his
suit stops the bleeding. I wonder what kind of a person sees a huge
alien made entirely of blades and heads straight for it. I mean, I
would, but I realize I’m not normal.

He reaches up, opens his visor and gives me a
familiar smile.

“I knew I’d find you here,” he gasps.

It’s Tenchi.

Only four people have successfully stolen a
superhero suit, and two of those were idiots.

The first didn’t last a month before he was
hunted down by a Superhero Corps team of obedient superhero
bloodhounds. His trial only lasted for four hours before he was
convicted of treason in the highest degree. After that the Corps
started putting tracers in the suits, so the second thief lasted
less than a day. The Corps tried to take her alive, but the
resulting battle set fire to a hundred acres of forest and ended
with one roasted renegade.

As I said, they were idiots.

I lasted two years.

I had it all planned out: I did my homework
and found out how to deactivate my suit’s tracking device, then I
faked my own death while on a mission, robbed a few banks during a
saucer attack, and found a cave to lay low in. I hired a few
lackeys and settled myself down for the good life. I traded weapons
and other illicit treasures to keep myself entertained and built up
a modest villainous empire. Nothing extravagant: enough to keep
myself from getting bored, but not enough to get noticed.