Everybody’s Got One: Part 3

The day went, and if I’m honest with myself, the classes weren’t bad. It was the first day of each class that I took, and while I did learn that I’d have some big projects, they weren’t due for months. It wasn’t even worth worrying about. Besides, some of them sounded fun.

So the classes themselves weren’t bad, but what came between the classes could have been better.

It probably was just me, but it felt like everyone was talking about the fight. In my 9am, Modern European History class, a group of students were discussing it before the prof came in. I was sitting near the front, and couldn’t see any of them.

A girl with a high pitched voice was saying, “That big one, Night Wolf, I don’t know where he came from. He wasn’t there and then he had Kid Biohack by the throat. I didn’t see him at all. Oh, and who was the first guy, the one in black?”

A guy said, “I think that was the Rocket.”

The girl said, “No. I know what he looks like. The Rocket has gold armor, and he’s bigger than that. That’s someone else.”

Another voice, again female, but with a more normal pitch. “It’s got to be the Rocket. He wears an all black suit sometimes, but he’s usually got a guitar with him then.”

“A guitar?” The guy said. “What does he do, hit people with it?”

The girl with the high-pitched voice said, “This guy didn’t have a guitar, and he wasn’t very good.”

“Hey,” the guy said. “Prof’s coming in.”

After that, they stopped talking, but that wasn’t all of it by any means. On the way to one of my chemistry classes, I overheard a group of guys (obvious fraternity guys, two of them wore shirts with Greek letters) talking about it. “You think Night Wolf’s supposed to look like Batman?”

“He does not look like Batman.”

“The ears are exactly like Batman. Plus he’s a big guy and his costume’s gray and black.”

“I thought you were talking about the New Jersey Batman. I was thinking, ‘Dude’s got no baseball bat and he’s not in an overcoat,’ but yeah, same ears as the comic book guy.”

It was kind of funny, and I considered getting closer, but then one of them said, “They trashed all the windows in the Kappa’s house. Bunch of fucking amateurs.”

I’d been fairly sure that we hadn’t broken anything more than denting and scraping a couple cars. I didn’t remember breaking windows unless it was a stray sonic blast. That bothered me a little, but I let that go. What was I going to do if I caught up with them?

I had no idea.

The day went on like that, class after class, walk after walk. Opinionated, clueless people discussed the events of the night before with people who knew only barely more than they did.

I listened in at risk of my own good mood.

At 4:30pm, I was in my room at my desk, and alone. Jeremy wasn’t in, and pulled out my phone and joined the call. The phone showed that Travis, Haley, Vaughn, Camille and I were all on the call with Lt. Van Kley. In short, it was everyone who’d been there but Kid Biohack. I wondered whether that was intentional or not.

Of course, none of us showed up under our own names. It was all Night Wolf, Night Cat, Storm King, Gravity Star, and the Rocket.

Lt. Van Kley opened with, “I could start this call by complaining about the damage to the street, the cars, and the houses around what some people at GLU call Fraternity Row, but I’m not. For the record, we all know that the damage wasn’t as much as there could have been. All I’m going to say is that you try to keep it to a minimum.

“Now,” she said. “There are only two items on the agenda as far as I’m concerned. Let’s talk about Kid Biohack first. What do you know about him?”

“This is Night Wolf,” Travis said. “We don’t know much. He operated out of California. He’s mostly appeared in Los Angeles, but I recently learned that he has ties to the San Diego compound. I don’t know exactly what kind of ties. Rocket, do you have anything?”

I’d spent the hour and a half between the end of my last class (a chemistry lab class) and the call on my computer looking at information about the San Diego compound and people who’d been associated with it. Unfortunately, I’d done most of the research on my bed, and fell asleep for half an hour. That meant I hadn’t been able to search any of the government databases that the Heroes’ League had access to.

“I don’t have much,” I said, “but I can tell you that there were a series of heroes called the Ultimate Man and a couple called the Ultimate Woman. Their powers were similar to what Kid Biohack’s been able to do, but no one talked about hacking muscles with chemistry or anything like that. I only just heard about the San Diego connection today, so I haven’t been able to dig very far.”

Lt. Van Kley didn’t say anything for a second, and I thought I heard paper moving, and maybe the sound of a pen. “That’s more than we had. Do any of the rest of you know more?”

No one did.

“On to the second matter,” Van Kley said. “Do you have anything on the people robbing armored cars in town?”

I thought about the cameras I’d set up, and visiting the crime scene. “Not really. We’re working on it.”

No one else had anything to add.

11 thoughts on “Everybody’s Got One: Part 3”

    1. No real life issues beyond normal. Thanks for asking, and see further my next comment.

      Every now and then I hit the ugly face of reality in writing this where I’m essentially writing a first draft of a novel online. Most of the time things move forward in ways that are obvious in the course of one post. Sometimes, as per this post, it’s likely that the 960 word post should in an ideal world have been 1500.

      Unfortunately, changing that would have required me to write all night and not go to bed…

  1. Funny you should say that… It’s actually not short. Technically it’s 960 words while the one before it is 840. Typically posts are 800-1000. Sometimes they hit 1200, and rarely 1500.

    I think it’s more along the lines of this specific episode not having as much of a push toward the next one as normal. I wanted to give a hint of what it felt like to be on campus, hit the police meeting, and go straight into the next Stapledon weekend (and finally, finally find out what happened with Amy, Courtney, Samita, and Rod) except it took 960 words to not quite get there.

  2. I can tell you that were a series of heroes called the Ultimate Man
    Maybe add a word: I can tell you that there were a series of heroes called the Ultimate Man

    Otherwise, a great post!

  3. “…and he wasn’t very good.”

    Ouch. I don’t care how well centered a guy is, that’s gonna leave a mark.

    1. Yeah. If you read through that section, Nick didn’t do much that people would have seen as amazing in that scene. He didn’t do terribly either, but the reason you know that is because you’re in his head during it, and know he did everything he reasonably could.

  4. Peculiar discontinuity: “At 4:30pm, I was in my room at my desk, and alone. Jeremy wasn’t in, and pulled out my phone and joined the call.” What call? There seems to be a missing phrase… I’d be expecting something like “Jeremy wasn’t in, and so when I got a ring on the League line, I pulled out my phone and joined the call”?

    Then later in the part: “I’d spent the hour and a half between the end of my last class (a chemistry lab class) and the call on my computer looking at information about the San Diego compound” … I read that as him taking the call on his computer, rather than his phone. Maybe a comma or something? Also makes me wonder how he got from asleep on his bed to sitting at his desk. Anyway.

    Part of me wonders if some Frat guys aren’t trying to profit off the proximity of the fight. “Hey, remember when Guido threw that chair through the front window yesterday afternoon?” “Yeah.” “If we say it was the League that evening, it’s better for the insurance.” Nice that Van Kley knows they’re trying.

    The ‘Batman’ thing was funny too. I’m reminded of that guy from the previous arc, who was fighting team members in one of those tournaments; don’t know if that was an intentional callback or not. Enjoyed the reference to the guitar too.

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