After a little hesitation, they left me alone with him. I stood there, waiting as they shut the door, smelling concrete and disinfectant.
“Funny to see girls in the League. Never saw women as vigilantes back in my day except for Ghostwoman. She was goddamn scary — phased her pistol through my armor and nearly into my head. Stopped me a couple times.”
“Did you really think she’d kill you?”
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 7
“You’re going to have to talk to a judge if you want to get out.” Jaclyn stood opposite Chris’ grandfather. “We don’t have any power over that.”
Cannon didn’t seemed fazed by her response. “The old League was in bed with the FBI. You’re telling me you aren’t? Besides, I’m not expecting you to do it directly. I’ll tell you what you want to know about the ball, and after that you’ll call the FBI and I’ll tell them something they want to know.”
“Like what?”
“Not while the Mystic’s in the room. Get him out and we’ll talk.”
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 6
By the time we left Lee’s, everybody wanted in on it. Not everybody went. Nine people would have been overkill. Not to mention that we might not all fit in the room.
Prison cells weren’t known for their spaciousness.
In the end, only five of us got in the jet — Jaclyn, Cassie, Daniel, Haley, and I.
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 5
It was the first time I could think of that Jaclyn got involved in a case. She’d always had a kind of “take it or leave it” approach to the Heroes League since we’d reformed. For this, she took the same approach she took toward homework — focus.
Within half an hour, we knew who the Maniacs were, and what they’d been doing for the last fifteen years. With a of couple exceptions, they’d been in jail. Jack Maniac and Christine Maniac apparently still robbed banks together. Jason and Chucky Maniac were in jail. Freddy had died.
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 4
I ran the ball up and down the room a couple times before I felt comfortable with the controls. We’d had to charge the batteries. Even though they charged relatively quickly, they only made it halfway before we gave up on waiting.
Chris clicked a button, opening a tunnel that led to the surface. Just like the Heroes League’s tunnels, it had concrete walls. Chris ran out first, the machines that powered his legs giving him a massive stride. The clipped sound of his footfalls echoed in the tunnel.
I followed, listening to the hum of the ball’s engine, rolling straight up the tunnel after him.
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 3
We worked better together than separately.
We’d noticed this before. During my sophomore and junior year, we’d collaborated on projects for Science Olympiad. Design came most naturally to me. The details of working came most naturally to him. We could both do both, but if we got stuck on how to fit a bunch of wires through a small space he came up with the solution more quickly than I did. By contrast, I typically came up with simpler, more elegant designs.
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 2
Hitting the Chinese buffet at eleven at night went better than any other part of the evening. I think we both felt a little weird going there in the same clothes we wore to the prom, but we didn’t have anything to change into but our costumes.
So yeah, we were overdressed.
On the whole though, it went better than any other part of the night — no burnt food, no bloodthirsty maniacs, just the two of us.
Continue reading Rivalry: Part 1
I’d gotten used to the aftermath of a fight. This one had the same components as the others — curious bystanders, police, firemen, ambulances and the arrival of a “box,” one of the vehicles specially created to contain supers.
They took Logan away in it. He wasn’t doing much, but better safe than sorry, I supposed. Melanie wanted to follow, but the police took her home.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 13
The water didn’t help at all.
Both Grandpa’s design and my redesign assumed that the flying bots would be operating outside and made them water resistant, but they were still small. Getting hit knocked them to one side or another, making the swarm move more slowly because of the constant course adjustments.
That meant that they didn’t instantly leave the steel beams near the ceiling of the gym where I’d sent them earlier. It also meant that that Logan, Dayton, and Jody fought longer than they might have after I summoned the roachbots.
That gave Jody time to try some different attacks — a lot of them, actually, thanks to his speed.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 12
The chaperone backed away from the table as Logan, now considerably furrier, looked at him as if he were the snack.
A brush cut, blond guy I’d seen talking to Logan said, “Logan? Hey! Are you in there? Leave the guy alone.”
Joshua. That was the guy’s name.
He pushed his way around the table, standing between Logan and the chaperone. If Joshua hoped to intimidate Logan, I couldn’t see how it would work. The guy stood only a few inches taller than Haley, and she was only five feet tall.
He pulled a flask out of an inside pocket in his tuxedo jacket and chugged a few swallows.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 11