by Baron Sord
I shook it. “That’s funny, because my—” I stopped short. I had almost said my name was Doug too. That would’ve been a disaster.
“What’s funny?” Doug asked thoughtfully.
“Oh, uh… my, uh… my uncle is named Doug.” I didn’t have any uncles named Doug.
“Good name,” Doug grinned. “And good to meet you, Chance. Now ask my daughter out.”
I did.
She said yes.
We made plans for dinner on Saturday. I would pick her up at her dad’s house at 8 o’clock.
After, I fluttered out of the house with a giddy grin on my face, hearts and stars swirling in my eyes.
Finally, a beautiful single woman who actually wanted to go out with me. Arnold was right. I needed to stop waiting around for Lady Liberty, who clearly wasn’t interested. I knew from experience that carrying a torch for women who weren’t interested was a recipe for disappointment. But Justine was interested and she was a gorgeous attorney with a cool dad. So what if he was a cop?
What was not to like?
While heading home on the sidewalk in Normal Heights, I jumped in the air a normal height and kicked my heels together gleefully.
“Yes!”
After a stressful last few days, things were finally starting to look up — so sayeth the blissfully ignorant bullfrog sitting in the slowly heating hot water.
—: Chapter 20 :—
That night, Arnold and I ate dinner at his house in front of the TV in the living room.
“In local news,” said Tanner Landry, the afternoon anchor on KOSD-6 and resident toothy wind bag, “we have received some new video footage you are not going to believe. Earlier today, a masked jumper was filmed on El Cajon Boulevard leaping over the classic sign leading into Normal Heights.”
A video played on Arnold’s huge plasma flatscreen. It showed me flying over “The Boulevard” sign. You would think the cinematographer who filmed the Spider-Man movies had shot it, it was that good. Smart phones these days.
“No freaking way!” Arnold laughed out loud. “Is that you?”
I could only grin guiltily.
“That is you!” Arnold laughed.
The TV cut to a guy on the sidewalk. Behind him, the sign for The Laundry Room, a local laundromat, was clearly visible. The guy said, “Yeah, I was standing outside while my clothes were drying, you know? And I just happened to look up and this guy comes running down the middle of the street like, I don’t know… crazy fast. I remember thinking, that guy must be on drugs. He was going so fast, you know? And then he just jumped over the sign!” He was giggling. “Like Superman or something! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The news cut back to a replay of the same video clip.
Tanner Landry’s voice was audible over the replay, “No witnesses were able to identify the masked jumper because of his black ski mask. Some speculated this was some sort of internet stunt, but so far nobody knows who the masked jumper might be, or how he could possibly jump so high without wires.”
The screen cut back to Tanner Landry in the KOSD-6 studio. Next to him sat his cohost, the bubbly blonde Colette Spears.
Arnold grunted to himself, “I’d like to spear her.”
I snorted a laugh.
Colette grinned, “Looks like San Diego has a mysterious Masked Jumper in its midst.”
“The Masked Jumper?” Tanner said. “I like the sound of that.”
“Right?” Colette prompted.
I kind of liked it too. I was grinning from ear to ear. I had to admit, it was pretty damn amazing when I saw myself doing it from the outside.
“That is pathetic,” Arnold scowled, completely disgusted.
“What?” I was disappointed he wasn’t excited for me.
“The Masked Jumper?” Arnold snorted, “That is the dumbest superhero name ever. Ever! Ev-ER!” He threw his hands up. “Couldn’t they come up with anything better than that?”
Chuckling, I said, “It may suck, but it is apt.”
“Apt? Listen to you, Dr. Dictionary. Is that one of your Scrabble words?”
“Yes.” I was quite good at Scrabble.
“As apt as it may be, it’s stupid! She could’ve at least called you the The Hurdler. Now that sounds cool. Or maybe The Vaulter. Or anything other than the Masked Jumper.” He sneered and shook his head. “It makes it sound like you’re wearing baby pajamas! The Masked Jumper, wearing the newest summer cotton baby jumper by OshKosh B’Gosh! It’s terrible!”
I laughed. I now saw his point.
“You need a better name. Something more apt,” he smirked at me.
“Like what?”
“How about Blaze? Because you do all that cool stuff with fire. Or Sergeant Blaze. Or maybe Captain Inferno?”
I tried not to grimace. “Those names sound cheesy. They’re way too WWF circa 1984.”
“Would you stop being so picky? Geez!”
“Sorry, but if I’m going to pick a permanent name, it has to be good.”
“How about Bronado? Now that’s good,” he smiled proudly.
“Bro-nado?”
“Yeah, like a bro tornado. A tornado of bros.”
I looked at him sideways and snorted, “Are you listening to yourself? That’s horrible. How about nothing with the word bro in it.”
“Fine. Gore-nado.” He was getting frustrated again.
I frowned, “What is a Gorenado? Like gory? A tornado of gore?”
“No. That has potential, but I was thinking like a bull. A bull gores you with its horns.” He stuck his fingers beside his ears like horns and snorted like a bull. “An entire tornado of goring bulls. Sounds deadly to me.” He changed his voice to raptastic (aka fantastic rapper) and said, “Sharknado be like, look out e’rybody! Here come a Gorenado, yo! Bulls be flying e’ry which way, bitches!” He wheezed a laugh, “Gorenado is freaking sweeeet!”
“No nados!” I groaned while chuckling.
“Oh, I know! How about Inferno?!”
“Eh.”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh! How about Wildfire?”
“Not Captain Wildfire? Or Sergeant Wildfire? Or Major Wildfire?”
“No, just Wildfire.”
“That sounds pretty good, actually.”
“I know, right? But what do we name me? I’m partial to the Punisher, because I’m all about the guns.”
“Mmmm,” I smirked, “I think it might be taken already.”
“Okay, okay,” Arnold chuckled. “But it should be something good. Something cool. Something like…”
“How about just Arnold?”
He frowned, “How about we just call ourselves Doug and Arnold? That would be totally badass,” he said sarcastically. “Oh, even better, you be Charlie Brown and I’ll be Linus, and we’ll both carry our favorite baby blankets around wherever we go.”
“Okay,” I grinned. “How about we call you… The Ferret?”
“No,” Arnold scowled.
“The Weasel?” I was giving him a hard time.
“No.”
“The Rat?”
“No!”
“The Mouse?”
“I’m sensing a rodent theme here, Doug.”
“Okay,” I chuckled, “how about… “The Gunman?”
“Nah. It makes me sound like a terrorist.”
“Okay, okay.” I paused to think. “Oh, I got it. The Silencer. Because you make sure nobody knows who we are. You know, wiping down guns for fingerprints and DNA. The Silencer. Pretty cool, right?”
“No,” Arnold frowned., “The Silencer makes me sound like a fart suppressor.”
“How?” I chuckled.
“The Silencer and Wildfire? The quiet wildfire? That sounds like a silent fart to me.”
I grinned. “I hadn’t made that connection at all.”
“We need something better. Something like…”
“How about The Flame?”
“Wildfire and The Flame? It sounds like a 70s R&B band.” Arnold broke into a falsetto singing voice and mi
micked the chorus of the hit disco song Celebration by Kool & The Gang, “Hi ho! It’s a con-fla-gration!” Getting into it and moving his shoulders, he clapped in time with the beat. “Sing it with me! Cooooon-flaaaa-grate good times, come on! Let’s conflagrate! Come on now!”
I chuckled, “Maybe you’re right.”
“How about something cool, like Vengeance?”
“Wildfire and Vengeance?” I said thoughtfully. “That sounds… more like we’re villains. What about the Machinist? You know, because you’re the gear and tech guy. We can make engineers cool for once.”
“I love that!” Arnold grinned. “That’s perfect. Wildfire and The Machinist. Except…”
“Except what?”
“It makes me sound like a sidekick.”
“Isn’t that what you are?”
“No,” he snorted. “I’m not your teenage ward. Shit, Doug. You’re my ward. You live in my mansion.”
“Your parents’ mansion,” I corrected.
“In which you live dirt cheap,” he added.
“Yeah, but I still pay rent!” I laughed in protest.
“Not real rent. We both know I could rent that guest house for 3x what you pay for it. That makes you my ward. Heck, you don’t even have your own kitchen, Ward,” he said sarcastically.
“My name’s not Ward.”
Arnold stood up and threw his arms around me in a big bear hug and stroked the top of my head, “Oh, Ward. It’s okay. Daddy’s here now. Let it out.” He patted my back and cooed in a cutesy baby voice, “That’s it, Baby Ward, let it all out. Can you burp for me, Baby Ward? Come on, li’l guy! Burp for me! Give daddy a big bad burp! You can do it! Come on, li’l guy! Burp, baby! Burp!” He was laughing hysterically. “Burp for me, baby!”
“Get off,” I chuckled and shoved him away.
Snickering, he sat back down on the couch and sighed before saying, “You know what we need?”
“What?” I asked.
“A cool team name. So people know we’re equals. Like the Avengers or X-Men.”
“That might be good. Any ideas?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Good because I’m getting another distress call. I have to go.”
“I’m coming with. Wildfire can’t go anywhere without The Machinist, right?”
“Right,” I grinned.
“Speaking of the Machinist, check this out.”
“I need to go, Arnold. Distress calls.”
“Wait! I’m coming too.” He stood up from the couch. “I got my bulletproof vest today.”
“The SAFEMAX vest?”
“Yeah. Hold on. I’ll get it.” He ran upstairs and came back down wearing a loose fitting black T-shirt.
“Are you wearing the vest?”
“Yeah.” He lifted the T-shirt, revealing the bulky black Kevlar vest over a second black T-shirt underneath.
“Aren’t you going to be hot in all those shirts?”
“A little, but it’s breathable. I can deal. It doesn’t make me look fat, does it?” Everything made Arnold look fat because he was.
I smirked, “Are you actually asking me that?”
He laughed. “Who cares, right? I’m fat. So what?”
“So what,” I said agreeably.
“Oh, and here’s your new ninja mask. The lycra ones came today.” He tossed one to me and I caught it.
“Thanks. Now grab your Glock. The distress calls won’t wait.”
We rushed out to the car and drove to a city called Peacock, which I learned was just north of Vista. There, we stopped a sleepy guy at a machine shop from slicing his fingers off in a band saw. He was working overtime when he shouldn’t have been. We got there just in time and told him to go home and get some rest. He did.
After, Arnold insisted it was a sign that The Machinist was the perfect name for him because we had just saved a guy working at a machine shop.
I agreed.
But it remained to be seen if Wildfire was the best name for me or not. I had barely used my fire powers since getting them.
Truth be told, I was itching to use them.
The next morning, I did.
—: Chapter 21 :—
“I called the fire department already! Hose down your roof or it’ll catch fire!” The frantic homeowner shouted from where he stood at the end of a cul-de-sac, spraying down the red-tiled roof of his multi-million dollar home while barking orders at his neighbor, who was stumbling across his own manicured lawn, dragging his uncoiling garden house behind him.
I could see a growing brush fire on the desert hillside behind their homes here in Rancho Jamacha, which was nestled near the base of the desert foothills of the Jamul Mountains, not too far north from the border with Mexico.
It was Friday morning.
Despite the wide fire break that had been cut into a portion of the hillside by bulldozers in past years, the perimeter around the housing development wasn’t entirely clear of desert brush. At least half of the slope that touched the back yards of the sprawling homes was still peppered with dry scrub that was now ablaze and blowing greasy brown smoke.
Talk about coincidence.
Wildfire shows up just in time to stop a raging wildfire?
It didn’t get any better than that.
As Arnold might say, freaking Wildfire, man!
Having heard the distress calls of these two homeowners during my drive here, I had parked Arnold’s Prius several blocks away and left my wallet in the glove box and put the keys on top of the back tire under the fender. In the likely event my clothes were burned away by the flames (as they had been outside the convention center downtown), I didn’t want Arnold’s keys falling out and getting lost in the desert or melted by the—
Wildfire!
Yeah, I was getting the hang of this gig.
Too bad Arnold was stuck at SPAWAR and couldn’t enjoy the — say it with me — Wildfire!
Several acres of hillside had already burned. The relentless blaze had left behind a hot gray wasteland of ashy soil and charred and skeletal black stumps. The advancing wall of flames was easily a quarter mile long, it was blazing 15 or 20 feet in the air, and it was heading toward the mansions.
I could feel the heat from a hundred yards away.
With my new lycra ninja mask pulled down, I walked toward a small dirt trail that led between the two houses where the neighbors were hosing down their roofs.
“Don’t go up there! It’s dangerous!” The guy yelling at me was the commander-in-chief with the red tile roof. He wore a yellow polo shirt and plaid golf pants.
I ignored him and jogged up the trail.
The other neighbor, who wore a blue swimsuit and nothing else, had a thatch of silver velcro for chest hair and the bronze skin of a man who tanned for a living. He yelled at Golf Pants, “Isn’t that the guy you said started the fire?”
Oh, what? Please tell me they didn’t think I was to blame.
“No!” Golf Pants yelled. “That guy is short!”
“Are you sure?!” Blue Swimsuit yelled. “I thought you said he was wearing jeans! This guy is wearing jeans! And a mask!”
As always, I wore my ninja mask.
“Who wears a black mask in the middle of summer?!” Blue Swimsuit added. “I’ll tell you who! Crooks! That’s who!”
“Maybe you’re right!” Golf Pants shouted. “We’ll tell the fuzz when they get here!”
“The fuzz? What the hell is the fuzz? Are you making jokes about my chest hair again, Caldwell?
“The cops, Odermeyer! The goddamn cops!”
Were rich retirees always idiots?
I chuckled to myself as I ran up the red dirt hillside.
Once I got within 10 yards of the roaring fire, the heat hit me like a flaming fist. It was already 90 degrees outside. The added heat of the blaze was turning this place into an oven.
Not a problem. I was a walking kiln of a man. That’s right —
Wildfire!
I checked
over my shoulder to see if anyone had followed me. All clear — for now. I could hear the faint sound of sirens in the distance.
Time to tackle this blaze.
Keeping my ninja mask on, I tore my clothes off, shoes included, dropped everything in a pile, and jogged up the hillside. Thank goodness for my resilient feet. The desert ground was covered with sharp rocks, spiky bristles, and random thorns. I hardly noticed.
I approached the middle of the blazing wall and went to work extracting heat from the first burning bush I found. Put one foot on the ground touching the trunk with my toes, and grabbed branches with both hands. Closed my eyes and saw the colorful mental temperature image of the bush’s heat rushing from it into my body. More rushed up from the hot ground. A second later and… Poof! The burning bush went right out. Stepped to the next bush and cooled it too. Poof! Another fire doused. Within minutes, I had reached one end of the burning wall.
The other half still burned.
But I had to get rid of this heat. My entire body shook with intense heat energy. Exponentially more than I’d ever contained. I could barely stand still, it was so bad.
Time to get rid of it.
Arms up, I blasted away. If I had thought my first fire column at the Con had been big, I was mistaken. Now I created a towering inferno of fire geysering skyward for several seconds. The spray of flames was as loud as afterburners on an F-18.
I had to laugh.
Power!
POWER!!
Who didn’t like more fricking POWER!!!
Bwah ha ha ha!
Was I having fun?
Hell yeah I was having fun!
Too bad I couldn’t set something gratuitous on fire. Maybe a bunch of hay bales with bullseyes attached and set up at various distances like targets at a shooting range? That would be fun.
Next time.
Once my heat tank was empty, I noticed a twinkle of light far up on a distant hillside. Was someone up there watching with binoculars or a camera? Seemed unlikely. Probably just a piece of metal or broken glass catching the sun.
I turned to assess the rest of the wildfire.
The other half of the fire wall still raged and was advancing toward the homes faster than anticipated. No problem. I jogged over and waded into the remaining half. In short order, I reduced the wall of fire to a wall of smoke.
