Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (8 page)

“I know. The kid who duplicates other people’s powers. You’re either going to make a lot of friends that way or tick a lot of people off.”

“Don’t worry, I seem to be well on my way to both. So why did you volunteer to take me around?”

“I don’t know. Just caught a friendly vibe from you, I guess. Come on, let’s get a move on.”

It started out amicably enough. We started at Morrie’s office and began to make our way through the bowels of the complex. The first thing I asked him was about Lionheart -- what
really
happened to him.

“Greater. There’s not a decent person on Earth who could have met Lionheart and not be willing to put himself on the line for the guy. He was the sort of person you would do anything to follow -- the sort that inspires courage and confidence just by walking into the room.

“One time the Sinister Squadron had deactivated the Tin Man’s armor and trapped him in it, disarmed the Defender, caught Condor and Oriole in cages and put Lightning in this null-time sphere so she couldn’t use her speed powers. They had me trapped in a gravity bubble, too, so I couldn’t reach anything to charge up. Nobody had a plan, nobody had an idea. We were all doomed.

“Then, bam! Lionheart shows up. He doesn’t lift a finger to save us because he knows he doesn’t
have
to. He charges after the Squadron and in about ten seconds, Tin Man has escaped from his dead armor and deactivated the traps Lightning and I were in. We freed the rest of the guys and wiped up the Squadron just in time to stop them from launching the Omega Device.”

“The Omega Device?” I asked.

“One of those contraptions old Masks used to use to try and conquer the world. I think this one would devolve the entire eastern seaboard into plankton or something, they sort of blend together after a while.”

“But that doesn’t sound like Lionheart actually
did
anything,” I said. “He
had
to have done
something
.”

“Why?”

“Because... because he was
Lionheart
.” It was the simplest thing in the world to me, why couldn’t his old teammate see it?

“You’re not getting the point, Josh,” he said. “There were plenty of times when Lionheart saved this planet by himself and saved
our
lives in particular. In this particular instance, though, he didn’t have to. Not directly, anyway. When we saw him, it jazzed us up again, enough for the Tin Man to break out and free us. From there, victory was a foregone conclusion.” He let out something of a sigh. “I miss that -- the excitement of a real rumble, not knowing the outcome beforehand. That was a
real
thrill, buddy.”

“Why did it stop?”

“Long story. After Lionheart was gone, Morrie tracked me down and said, ‘Hey, kid, I got me an’ idea,’ and we started to build this little organization. It just sort of snowballed from there.”

I didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. Hotshot, Lionheart’s own teammate, was one of the guys who
started
this mess?

“What would Lionheart say about all this?” I asked.

“Lionheart? He wouldn’t have liked it at all. The guy didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body. The closest thing I ever heard him say to a lie was one Christmas when he tried to convince Lightning he liked this
incredibly
ugly sweater she gave him. You could still see the truth in his eyes, though. Those always gave him away. He was good at a lot of things, but the worst liar I’ve ever met.”

“He was a good guy, then?”

“The best. You didn’t just follow him, you didn’t just respect him... you would do anything,
anything
not to let him down.” He sighed. “Y’know, there’s a reason you don’t see his picture stuck on t-shirts or cereal boxes like the rest of us. Morrie wanted to use him – begged me to, actually. It’d be like having an Elvis shirt or something. But I won’t let him. That was my one condition for going along with this – no Lionheart merchandise.”

By now I was furious. This guy was Lionheart’s
friend
, his
teammate
for God’s sake, and he’d betrayed him by constructing this organization,
knowing
Lionheart wouldn’t have approved. The rage I felt was nearly blinding. How could he?
How could he?

“But hey,” he said, “we’re supposed to be on a tour of the complex, not the cobwebs of my screwed-up head.” We’d ridden an elevator to the second level in the complex. As big as it was, the top level of the underground system only consisted of Morrie’s office and a few storage rooms and bathrooms. That was because everything on the second level extended up to just beneath the surface.

Right off from the elevator, and right beneath the lobby of Simon Tower proper, was an auditorium with lush wood paneling, flags of the United States and Siegel City flanking the podium, and tables set up for when used for arbitration.

“Whenever somebody here breaks the rules, commits a ‘crime against a Cape’, Morrie calls it, we take him here for his hearing. There are enough seats in here for every Cape and Mask in the city.”

“I hope you don’t get to use it much.”

“Only once in the last three years,” he said. “At least, only once for that purpose. We also have meetings here, general assemblies, that sort of thing.”

“Exciting?”

“You can’t imagine. Let’s keep going.”

Next down the hallway was a steel door with a keypad to open it. “The Arena,” Hotshot said. “It’s where we practice our rumbles.”

“Don’t I get to see it?” I asked.

“Particle runs the practice sessions. He likes to show rookies the Arena for the first time. Next door is the gym -- we have plenty of ordinary workout machines -- treadmills, bikes, a pool, weights, and we’ve also got specialized stuff for folks with unique talents. Morrie will probably have you practice using other people’s powers in there before he actually sends you into the Arena.”

“Thoughtful of him.” I was aware that my responses to his tour were becoming rather cold. I didn’t care.

“One last stop on this level,” he said. “Our arboretum.”

He took me into a large, greenhouse-like area full of lush vines, bushes and trees, some like nothing I’d ever seen. There were plants with orange leaves and striped petals -- big, dripping white fruits and beautiful flowers. It was like standing in God’s flower garden.

The ceiling, like in the auditorium and the gym, extended past the top level where Morrie’s office was and all the way to the surface. Here, though, the ceiling was glass, allowing sunlight to filter in from the sky above. We must have been standing beneath the courtyard behind Simon Tower.

“The glass is polarized,” Hotshot said, answering my unspoken question. “It lets all the light in, but nobody can look through the glass and see us down here. It’s safe.”

“What’s this place for?” I asked.

“We’ve got some people here with unusual dietary needs,” Hotshot said. “Aliens, mystical creatures, that sort of thing. When Morrie built this place, he wanted to include a greenhouse so we could grow the foods they needed. As time went by, though, the whole thing got bigger and bigger until... well, until we got what you see here.”

I was standing underneath a tree that almost looked like a willow, but had strange, puffy flowers budding all over it. The buds resembled chrysanthemums, but the petals were in concentric rings of red, black and gold. There was also a blue cactus in here, I noticed. And a crystal palm. And over there...

“Wow.”

The centerpiece of the arboretum was a beautiful topiary garden, full of careful, hand-crafted sculptures made from cut leaves. Some were animals, but others were carefully-detailed recreations of Capes and Masks. There was a nice sculpture of Lionheart.

I was already accustomed to the third level. It was the living area, where the lounge and cafeteria were located. We breezed through there and I saw Miss Sinistah, who gave me a smile and a wink before Dr. Noble showed up with a scowl and a snarl, dragging her away.

“Level four,” Hotshot said as we stepped off the elevator, “the dormitory.”

He led me down to an unoccupied apartment -- it consisted of a living room/kitchenette combo, a bathroom, and two single bedrooms. The furniture was plain and the decor Spartan.

“Morrie lets you decorate as you please,” he said. “Everybody is entitled to quarters, but some people prefer to live outside of the tower.”

“This is where we keep all of our supplies and merchandise. Y’know, the stuff we haven’t gotten out to the stores yet. You should see how packed it gets in October, just before the Christmas rush. This is also where we keep prisoners waiting for arbitration upstairs. And, when the situation demands it, the morgue is right down the hall.”

“I don’t suppose you mean ‘morgue’ in any sort of newspaper sense, do you?”

“The most writing you’ll find in there are on tags.”

“Beautiful. I
really
hope you don’t have to use
that
often.”

Yeah. How long did you wait after Lionheart was dead before you drove the knife in his back?

He was friendly, courteous and a real nice guy to be around. But one little thing overshadowed everything else. As he left, my eyes followed. If anybody nearby had heat vision, I would have wound up frying the guy.

It was the kind of stupid, irrational anger that has no explanation and, once it has passed, you simply cannot understand. But while you feel it, none of that matters.

For what he’d done to Lionheart’s legacy, I
hated
Hotshot. I couldn’t help it. Although, to my credit, I
was
sorry for it later.

THE ARENA

Part of me, the stupid part, wanted to be matched against Hotshot for my first professional rumble. I r
eally
wanted to hand him his head. Then I thought for a while about Hotshot’s main power -- the ability to take any solid object and break down the atomic bonds within, turning it into a particle stream whose strength was proportionate to the mass of the original object. In short, he could turn
any
thing into a zap-ray. So a much larger portion of me was relieved to draw a match against half of the Spectacle Six. First Light, Fourtifier and Five-Share were supposed to meet me outside the room called The Arena.

I spent a week practicing the powers I would use in that first rumble. I copied both Flux’s gravity powers and the inertia-controlling abilities of LifeSpeed. Between the two I could pretty much contradict everything Isaac Newton ever said. Fortunately, rather than dressing me up like a giant apple or something, Morrie gave me the semi-respectable stock name “Shift.”

First Light, a thin, albino woman in gossamer robes, was the first to meet me outside the training room. She was practically glowing, and there was a Tolkienesque look about her somehow, with her pointed ears, high nose and narrow eyes. “You, then, are the new Shift?” she said in a high, hollow voice that made me think of elves.

“For the moment, anyway,” I said. “Josh Corwood, nice to meet you.” I stuck out my hand to shake, but she blanched away, eyes bulging in terror.

“No! I must not sully myself with human contact. It would shatter the purity of the Light.”

I dropped my hand, bashful. “Sorry. I guess that makes swing dancing difficult, right?” She raised an eyebrow in confusion and I surrendered the lame jokes.

There was an intense grinding noise sidling up to us and a gruff voice said, “
I’m
the dancer on this team, boyo.” The rock-creature called Fourtifier smiled a dusty grin at us, sounding all the time like someone dragging a chunk of granite across a cement patio. I couldn’t help thinking any attempt this guy made to move faster than a 12-year-old boy at a junior high dance would drown out any music.

“Aren’t we one short?” I asked. “Or rather, five short?”

Just then, though, turning the corner down the hall was Five-Share. He was a skilled martial arts master with the ability to divide into five independent bodies at a time. I was surprised to see him approach me as a mob -- I would have thought he’d have stayed consolidated until he entered a combat situation. Instead it was like watching a group of kids on their way to a stickball game.

“Josh Corwood,” I said to all of Five-Share. “Nice to meet you.”

They answered as a mob, talking over each other, making it almost impossible to tell who was saying what. “Hi.--Hiya.--Yo.--Wassup?--How’s it going?--Hey man.”

I froze.

“
You’re
Five-Share?”

“Yep.--Uh-huh.--You betcha.--Bingo.--Heard
that.
--Bright, ain’t he?”

Something was still bothering me. I turned it over in my head half a dozen times before I realized what it was.

“There are
six o
f you,” I said.

“Smart guy.--Swift...--Quick study--”

“Now
cut that out
!” I bellowed. “What’s the deal here?”

The one in front reached up and pulled off his full, blue and red face mask, revealing an athletic-looking man with brown hair and eyes and a nicely-cleft chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why can somebody called
Five
-Share split into
six
people?” I asked