Despite being on “the other side,” Hunter took my call. His shouted, “What do you want,” made me wonder if he was paying attention when he took the call.
“This is the Rocket,” something he should already know, but if he didn’t…
“Whoops,” he said, “I didn’t mean to shout at you. I’m in the middle of something.” Continue reading Roll The Dice: Part 10
“Self-replicating?” I stared at the cloud of spores obscuring the baseball diamond.
Supers emerged from it, most of them covered with a light dusting of spores. By most, I meant almost everybody but Jaclyn. Jaclyn wasn’t covered because I’d designed her suit to be as close to frictionless as I could.
The other two exceptions were Bullet and Theo. Bullet flew out. He wasn’t covered with spores because he floated upward in a bullet-shaped force field. Theo was spore-free for a more obvious reason—almost anything that touches superheated plasma burns. Continue reading Roll The Dice: Part 9
A few of the bullets shot away from his hand toward Gordon as Gifford shouted, “No!”
The Rocket suit’s sensors showed the air in front of Gordon becoming more dense, maybe not to force field levels, but enough to matter.
The bullets hit the barrier and began to be blown to the left when they discorporated. Continue reading Roll The Dice: Part 7
Still hovering, Gordon stared at Vaughn, breathing without saying anything as if he were having trouble composing himself—or maybe he didn’t know what to say.
When he did talk, he barked out, “Don’t move,” as if we hadn’t gotten that message the first time.
Then he added, “I’ve called in my team,” which was interesting because I hadn’t seen him talking into a mic or typing anything. Continue reading Roll the Dice: Part 4
It might not be fair to either Gifford or Hunter, but I’d never particularly liked either of them. Gifford and Gordon came from a legacy hero family, the kind that lived in private compounds and didn’t interact much with normal people. Hunter’s mother was a legacy superhero, celebrity, and superhero stage mom (from what I’d seen).
She had a reality TV show about her life in Hollywood called, “Diva!” To judge from the online commercials, Hunter and Gifford appeared sometimes.
Also, and here’s where the unfairness came in, Gifford was interested in Haley. It hadn’t caused problems because she wasn’t interested in him, but it didn’t make me like him more. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 4
Bullet stopped wiping his face, “Who was she really? Do you know?”
“No,” Daniel continued to watch him, “we were hoping you might know. We’re guessing she’s one of the Dominators.”
Looking over at Daniel, Bullet stuffed his handkerchief back in his pants pocket, “I’m going to kill her.”
“You don’t know where she is,” Tara said, her voice level and controlled. “You haven’t seen her since and you haven’t been looking because she controlled you so completely that you never tried. What makes you think that you could?” Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 3
A second look gave me a few clues I’d missed when I’d first seen what I’d thought was Adam. “Adam” had the same thin build and overall look, but he seemed taller than normal. It wasn’t by much.
Haley bent down, obviously getting a closer look. “Is she okay?”
Daniel stared at “Adam’s” face briefly. “I think so. There’s no way of knowing how she’ll take this later, but she didn’t kill anybody, or even hurt anyone. She relayed Artaxus’ orders to Hunter and the fae. That’s all. It’s not out of the question that being mind controlled might still traumatize her, but she didn’t do anything particularly terrible under his influence. She was more of a glorified gofer.” Continue reading Faerieland: Part 47
“If you think you can do it, I’m all for it,” I said.
Alex grinned. “Trust me. I’ve seen worse, and it worked out. Now, can you take off your glove?”
I thought about it, checking my HUD for alerts. There weren’t any left. “Assuming the repair systems worked, yes.”
I used my right glove to set the left gauntlet to split and be absorbed into the left forearm. It worked. That didn’t surprise me and it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried it after all, but it was the first time I’d tried it after the suit took massive damage.
“Oh,” Haley said, staring at my hand. Continue reading Faerieland: Part 46
Wait, I thought back at him. The teachers aren’t always in the dining hall anyway. Are you sure it’s not just chance?
Pretty sure, he thought back.
Behind me, Tara had been walking with Camille and Haley. As we stepped into the dining room, Tara stopped chatting with Camille and said, “This isn’t right.”
To me at least, nothing about the dining hall seemed in any way strange. Students talked and laughed at the tables. The upperclass students mostly stuck together while the first year students took up half the room, mixing a bit with my year. Continue reading Faerieland: Part 4
The photographer said, “Not happening. I took those pictures. They’re mine. End of story.”
He pulled his camera with one hand, and held his left a little away from his body as if he intended to block with it. It didn’t look like he’d had any kind of martial arts training. The way he held his arm, it would come up too slowly.
Hunter asked me, “Isn’t there some kind of law against taking pictures of people like us?”
I glanced over at Haley, and she shrugged.