I gave a half-smile, “Sorry. There’s too much going on right now. In some ways, it’s mostly in my head because none of it’s hit the point where people are trying to kill me. I’m just worried it might hit that point sooner rather than later.”
He frowned, looking down and drawing a breath, “I never wanted this life for you, and if it weren’t your best chance to survive, I doubt Joe would have wanted it for you either. If you think about how our society’s decided to handle superheroes, it’s not the best thing we could have done. I understand why we’ve done it, but I don’t think it’s good either for the people doing it or for society as a whole. Continue reading Memories: Part 2→
If you asked a random person on planet Earth what a superhero did all day, the answer you’d get is something like “beating up criminals.” If you asked me or anyone else in the business, it would be some combination of training, your day job or your cover, beating up criminals, and checking out leads on whatever case you were working on. Of all of those, beating up criminals was the least likely to actually take place.
In my particular case, the list would also include working on new technology since I could now, for the first time in my life, do that for hours at a time if I wanted to. Continue reading Memories: Part 1→
Already suspecting the answer, I asked, “Did he use a word more precise than ‘it’?”
Daniel’s laugh had a hint of weariness, “No, but if I had to guess, he said something about a device that needed to be destroyed last time, and when we asked him if he meant the power impregnator he didn’t respond.”
I thought back to the afternoon. Even besides the tablet, we had two storage rooms worth of Abominator devices. I could think of half a dozen devices that might be good candidates for destruction and I’d only opened one of the two rooms. Plus, and I wasn’t going to mention this outside of HQ, we had a whole lower level below the main level of HQ that Grandpa set up to be a fallout shelter and base for rebuilding civilization in case of nuclear war. Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 14→
Mom frowned, leaning to look into the living room which was behind Haley and in the front of the house. Following her gaze, I noticed that unlike the windows in the dining room, the windows in the living room were shut. A breeze seemed unlikely.
“I felt it too,” she said, not looking at either Haley or me.
Dad nodded, “I think a thunderstorm is in the forecast. We could use it. The heat these last few days has been miserable. Well, enough about the weather. Did you see last night’s Tigers game, Haley?” Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 13→
As I felt it, my mom opened her mouth to reply to my dad, hesitating, but then finally speaking, “We were kidnapped.”
Her words came quietly and slowly at first but then seeing that my dad was still listening, she talked more quickly, “We were leaving my office when three huge men in suits grabbed us and pushed us into a car. You tried to fight them, but you couldn’t hurt them and they were so strong that they had to be supers. They brought us to an old warehouse and kept us there for two days. On the second day, another man came to see. He was older and talked with a strange accent, but like the others, he was also a big man.” Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 12→
Haley and I stepped into the dining room. The table was already set—white dishes, blue placemats, and even though no food was out, blue hot pads were already waiting to protect the table from hot dishes. I also noticed that the water had already been poured.
“Why don’t you sit down?” My mom opened the door of the oven. “Everything’s ready. I’ve been keeping it warm.”
We rolled into the driveway as I said, “The Grey Giant was in Armory’s place dressed as a security guard. I’d barely destroyed much of anything in his weapons lab and suddenly I had a whole new fight to deal with. The bright side was that I was supposed to be distracting people from everyone else, and it worked.”
To be clear, it was the good kind of “not alone.” In the clearing with us was everybody that hadn’t been in HQ when we teleported out.
And when I say everybody, I’m not exaggerating by much. This was what Cassie called a “friends and allies” practice. Not only did it include all current members of the Heroes’ League (except for Rachel who was in space), but it included all the former members of Justice Fist who hadn’t joined up with Sean’s new Justice Fist. So basically, we didn’t have Sean, Jody, or Dayton, but we did have Julie (voice powers), Shannon (darkness), Camille (gravity), and Sydney. Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 9→
I turned around to find Vaughn in my latest version of the Storm King armor. Black with a storm cloud on his chest, it included flaps to catch the wind he generated. Yoselin wore her own armor, the red triangle, white star, and blue and white stripes might almost pass for a patriotic US costume if you didn’t think too hard about it. The backpack and streamlined half-cylinders running up and down her arms and legs hinted at a refined version of her father’s armor’s air manipulation tech.
Chris grinned, “Can’t argue with that. We’ve still got time to figure it all out and with any luck, we won’t get corrupted by ancient alien artifacts first.”
“Sadly, that means that we’ve got to leave this one alone for the time being,” I looked down at the tablet where it lay on the table. “I’ve got a feeling I’ll want to lock this one away.”
