Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (36 page)

“I can take care of myself, flyboy,” she said. “Go save the world.”

FIREWALL

When we made it outside, following the path of destruction Gunk had left, the sky was the clean blue of a summer morning just before the sun came up. There weren’t many people on the street at all -- a couple of garbagemen, a kid dropping a letter into a mailbox, a newsstand vendor, a stray dog.

I pointed to the mailbox. The girl had to hop up to reach the handle. Her worn, pink sneakers left contact with the ground several times, and her already-torn jeans snagged the metal edge.

“I’m thinking a kid that young shouldn’t be out this early in the morning,” I said.

“Unusual,” Lionheart said, “but not unheard of, particularly not in a city this safe. Besides, she’s too short. Gunk’s skeleton has to remain solid, only his flesh morphs.”

“That also rules out the dog,” I said, “and the guy driving the garbage truck, he’s too short.”

“Do you sense anything?” Lionheart asked.

“Oh yeah.” I reached out -- definitely feeling a Rush from
some
direction... the girl at the mailbox. I pointed. “It’s definitely that way, but you said the girl was too short.”

“No, not the girl,” Lionheart said. “But when she dropped that letter in the mailbox, it coughed.”

We glanced at each other just for a moment and, without a word, formulated and executed our plan. I jumped first.

“Look out, sweetheart!” I shouted, grabbing the girl and, using Lionheart’s power (and how
good
that
felt!) flew her to a safe distance. Lionheart aimed just a tad to my left, hitting the mailbox as though it had a target on it. The sides collapsed in and Lionheart pounded a blue and white humanoid shape that belched out the card the little girl had mailed.

The girl in my hands first shrieked, then cheered as she started to enjoy the ride. “Hey,” she said, “why is that man fighting the mailbox?”

“Because the mailbox was bad,” I said, putting her down at a safe distance from the rumble. “Now go home as fast as you can. I’ve got to help my friend... er... beat up the mailbox.”

I executed a backflip in the air and bore down on the fight. By now Gunk had reverted to his orange slime-form and Lionheart had driven his fist through the orange flesh, clutching the Gunk’s skeleton’s bony neck.

“How many people have you subjugated, Gunk?
Why
? What the bloody hell is the
point
?”

The orange flesh around his mouth pulled back into a grin. “Because of
you.
”

“He’s a lunatic,” he said. “He wants to destroy everything you are because he blames superheroes for making the world messy.”

“And you let me
live?
” Lionheart said. “How stupid
are
you? You can’t possibly have believed it would work.”

“Oh
do
calm down, it’s not as though I killed anyone... not
this
time, anyway--”

“What about First Light and Five-Share?”

“I’m afraid the good Doctor did that entirely of his own accord. I thought it would be an interesting lark to have an accomplice in this particular scheme, so I brought him in. At first he really only wanted the fame that accompanied being the city’s premiere Cape but after a while he really turned out to be quite mad.”

“Well thanks for clearing that up,” I said. “What tipped you off, when he tried to beat his girlfriend or when he nuked Photon Man?”

“Temperance, Copycat,” Lionheart said. “Believe me, I want to see this monster pay as much as you do, but anger will serve only as a distraction. We need our faculties.”

“Yeah, I know... Well, we’ve got him now, let’s bring him in.”

And the Gunk laughed harder.

“You really think I’ll let you incarcerate me?” he said. “I’m going to leave this city, I’m going to establish a new identity somewhere else and I’m going to start all over again with the
next
plan. And even if it takes me fifty years to establish myself and a century to make my move, so what? I’ve got the time.”

“And precisely how do you think you’re going to get away?” Lionheart asked, almost finishing the whole last word before the bottom floor of Simon Tower exploded.

A wall of flame actually seemed to push at the glass doors and windows lining the ground floor before they rushed out, splashing broken glass across the sidewalk. Virtually every potential opening erupted with fire and shards.

“This isn’t good,” I said to Lionheart.

A body came hurtling out of the smoke. Since Lionheart was still holding onto the Gunk, I took off and caught it.

“Joshua...” it moaned through a beak. I hadn’t even recognized him until he spoke -- probably because all his feathers had burnt off. He was Aquila. Underneath he was Animan. “Joshua, look out. He’s coming for you.”

That’s when the swarm hit. Everyone -- Cape and Mask, free man and pawn, came scrambling out of Simon at the same time. Some were being dragged, some pushed. Oriole, at one-quarter size, was carrying an unconscious, fully-shrunk Condor. Ted kept trying to help Sheila, who was insisting quite loudly that she didn’t
need
any help. I landed by Lionheart, gently laying Aquila down.

“What the hell happened?” I asked anyone who was listening. Annie came running up to me.

“Todd -- Doctor Noble,” she said. “He threw him straight into the fire, then held him there. I think he’s still in the complex.”

“Son of a
bitch
,” I hissed. “You happy, Gunk? You’ve turned him into a full-blown serial killer!”

Drawing on Flambeaux, Annie --
anyone
with powers that could shield me long enough to get down there, I charged into the fire.

I couldn’t see much between the smoke and the dancing flame, but I knew right where I was going, even inside the inferno. The floor in the lobby of Simon Tower had been almost totally ripped apart, a gaping hole extending all the way to the auditorium below. I jumped into the hole, drifting down into the auditorium, which was completely ablaze. This must have been where the blast originated -- in my mind’s eye I could see Flambeaux going five-alarm and Noble chucking Aquila into the blast like a rag doll.

Every Rush I could feel faded out as I began running through the halls. I was too far away from the surface to be picking up energy. This one was going to be up to old Josh, all by his lonesome.

I raced to the dormitory level and smashed open the door to Ted and Animan’s quarters. I vaulted the furniture in the living room to make it to Animan’s pad and burst in to find it had been totally ransacked.

The books and models were scattered, charts were ripped apart, the workbench had been overturned and paints, tools and sawdust covered the carpet. All of Animan’s totems were in a heap on the floor, some smashed, some broken. Few intact.

I didn’t have a chance to even silently curse the Gunk before I felt a now-familiar Rush approaching from above.

“God no, not him, not
now
.”

I fell to my knees and begin sifting through the totems, tossing them aside -- seal, dolphin, owl, llama... it was like a zoological encyclopedia in 3-D.

The Rush got closer as I dug -- orangutan, tiger, sloth, penguin, beetle -- was the thing still here? Was it still in one piece?

Hyena, come on, antelope, caribou, please
God,
marlin, kangaroo--

Starfish
.

“
Thank
you!” I snatched it up, counted five complete legs and no significant scratches, and spun around to get the hell out of there.

But Dr. Noble was in the doorway. Any trace of sanity his eyes may once have held was gone. His gloves were scorched and his cape had bloodstains on it.

“You don’t get out of here in one piece, little boy,” he said.

THE RACE

We stood in the door to Animan’s room, Noble circling me like a cat toying with its prey. “I don’t suppose if I just forfeited we’d be able to walk out of here hand in hand and consider the whole thing over with, huh?” I asked.

“Probably not.” Noble lashed out with a teke burst which I managed to deflect with one of my own. I returned the blow, dropping the totem into my jeans pocket, freeing up both hands to club him over the head. He staggered for a bit, but came back by ramming me in the gut. Soon we were on the floor, scrabbling to our feet and slapping and pounding each other like kids on a playground.

“You took
everything
!” he screamed, slapping at me. “The plan, Sinistah, my
respect
-- I’m a laughing stock because of you! You know what they’re saying about how you beat me? They said I don’t have what it takes anymore. They’ve been calling me ‘Doctor Numbnuts’ behind my back! They’ve been--”

I cracked Animan’s work bench over his head telekinetically, beating him off. “They’ve
always
called you Doctor Numbnuts behind your back,” I said. I sent a kick across his face. “This is Siegel City, Todd, home of heroes; your ‘blame the victim’ crap isn’t going to fly here.”

With him sprawled on the ground it was tough to resist the urge to simply beat him into submission. Animan needed the totem in my pocket, though. I flew over Noble’s bruised, bloody form and raced for the ruins of the auditorium. Before I made it to the doors, though, I heard a scream of blind, stupid rage and was teke-shoved into the wall.

Noble charged up behind me and began pounding my back, trying to create a fulcrum point with his telekinesis to crack my spine. I think he was so crazy with anger he didn’t even realize I was using his own shield to cushion the blows -- I still felt them, but not enough to do any real damage.

I thrust outward with the shield, hurling Noble into the opposite wall. He broke through the fire-damaged plaster into the burning auditorium. The flames regurgitated through the hole into the hallway and the sprinklers kicked in.

I was trying to decide if it would be smarter to follow Noble through the hole or just cut through the doors when he leapt out of the flames, arms extended, racing towards me. He was still instinctively shielding himself and not doing a very good job of it. His cape was on fire.

My plan was this: fall to the ground and telekinetically shove him upwards, therefore avoiding a collision. Unfortunately, he was moving faster than I’d anticipated. The first part of my plan, the falling, started out rather well, but when I was at eye-level with his fists he added a burst of speed and smashed me in the face.

I saw a flash that was compounded a second later when he pounded my head with his elbow. As he hit me, repeatedly, he began shouting obscenities and blaming me for pretty much everything from his mommy not hugging him enough to his upcoming male pattern baldness. If he weren’t trying so hard to give me a concussion, I may have pitied him.

Fighting off the urge to black out, I sheathed my head telekinetically and let him pound the shield while I regained my senses, a superpowered rope-a-dope.

“I’ll kill you,” he whinnied. “I’ll
kill
you!”

I lay there, sprawled out, hoping he’d leave or wear himself out if I didn’t react -- or that I’d at least have time to come up with a better plan as he screamed, “
Say
something! I’ll
kill
you if you don’t
say something
!”

I’d decided to aim one all-out teke burst at his head, hard enough to take him down if he was unshielded, when my
own
head began to ache and split. By the time I realized it wasn’t just the beating I’d taken making my head rumble, it was too late to fight it back. Tom came spilling out of my brain, directly between me and Noble.

Holding a baseball bat.

Which, in turn, was aimed at Noble’s crotch.

He smashed it into Noble’s groin like a kid beating up robbers in a bad movie. Then, when the lunatic Cape bent over in agony, Tom swung upwards, probably breaking the guy’s jaw in the process. He flopped backwards into the water pooling on the carpet. The sprinklers rinsed the blood from his face and the pool turned pink.

“Nice one, Mantle,” I said. “I thought I told you not to come here.”

“And you thought that would
work
?” he said. I couldn’t possibly argue with that.

“I was fine on my own,” I finally settled on.

“Oh,
right.
That’s why you were just lying there?”

“I
had
a
plan
!” I said. “Look, we don’t have--”

“--time, I know. You say that a
lot.
Let’s just get the totem to Animan.”

I tapped into Tom’s powers and looked outwards, at the battle going on outside the tower. I finally settled myself behind Annie’s eyes. She was holding on to the badly hurt Aquila while watching the chaos around her. Fire trucks, cops and camera crews were swarming outside the tower as the Gunk’s last few holdouts fought the LightCorps. I saw Oriole take down Whipstar, Tin Man dousing Flambeaux with flame-retardant foam from his armor, the Defender slashing at the men who used to be Deep Six and Nightshadow, trying hopelessly to reason with them the way I’d reasoned with the Goop.

“Annie? Can you hear me?”

“
Josh?”
She started looking around.

“No, no, I’ve got Tom with me down here. I’ve got something for Animan. Hold on, I’m coming through.”

I fell forwards, spinning around through the ether, finally materializing in front of Annie. She jumped back as I appeared, Tom by my side.

“Josh?
Tom
? What’s going on? Why are you wet? Why does Tom have a baseball bat? What -- oh God, Josh, what happened to your face?”

I suppressed a gleeful smile as she tried to clean the blood from my face. “Not that your concern isn’t appreciated,” I said, pulling the starfish totem from my pocket, “but let’s worry about
him
for a while.”

I knelt by Animan and found the eagle totem dangling from his neck, wrapping his hand around it. “Come on, buddy, I need you to transform, just twice, okay? Can you do that?”

“Joshua...”

“Change! Change, dammit! Just
change
!”

He closed his eyes and there was a spark. Aquila was gone, the burnt, broken wings were gone, and he was replaced by a just-as-damaged, impossibly burnt Animan. He shrieked with renewed pain and began convulsing. I pulled the eagle totem from his hand and shoved the starfish in as he flopped and howled.

“One more!” I screamed. “Just
one
more, can you do it?
Please
, man!”

His hand began to quake and he screamed, thrashing about. Light spilled from his hand and washed over his body, and once it passed he’d stopped thrashing. He was wearing the starfish uniform I’d regenerated in and, although still badly burnt, I could see his skin beginning to heal.

“How did you know to use that?” Annie asked.

“After Noble made me half a man back there, the starfish grew back my legs. I just hoped it could regenerate him, too.”

“Can starfish really regenerate from
burns
like that?” she asked.

“I have no idea. Let’s pretend they can, though, it seems to be working.”

“Josh!” Hotshot came in for a landing behind me. “Where’s Lionheart? I thought you went after him! And -- why are you wearing jeans?”

“Everybody’s so concerned about the blasted jeans,” I said. Then, after a glance, I added, “where
is
Lionheart?”

“Gunk slipped away from him,” Annie said. “They were going in the direction of Lee Park.”

I nodded. “Tom, watch Animan. We’re going after Lionheart.”

“Not without me you’re not.” Annie said.