Hero High: Figure In The Flames

by Chara, Mina

  I drifted away from the group before anyone could notice, searching for something to drink or eat to get my mind off everything. The food was carried by serving staff on oval silver trays. I wanted so much to grab some, but somehow I didn’t dare.

  A waitress struggled through the crowds until an old man stopped her, holding her in place. I took a few steps closer and watched as she struggled with the contents of her tray; my stomach flipped again. I thought I was going to be sick for sure. A glass was about to topple, I “blinked” as they put it, only to calm my nerves, and reached out to catch the glass just in time. The waitress gasped.

  “Nice catch.”

  “I guess.” She gave me a smile and offered a thank you as I distracted the old man so she could scurry away. As soon as the distraction was over, I felt sick again. I pushed through the crowds like a speed boat tears the ocean, pushing people out of the way as my heart throbbed and nerves shook my body. Stay under the radar, that was the plan. I ducked down, almost crawling like a thief, to stay out of sight. It didn’t help. Most people looked confused. Just why was a girl crawling about on the floor? I ignored them. Just as my legs began to cramp, I saw a door marked ‘EXIT’ and sprinted straight for it.

  Closing the door behind me I took a deep breath and welcomed the night air, the relative quiet, the wind as it moved through my hair. I was standing in a small garden walled off from the street by simple green hedges. Warm yellow lighting underlined the building and made it stand out against the vulgar pinks and greens of the other skyscrapers; my legs felt like they’d crumple any moment, I had just been in the Super Structure! The Super Structure. My lips turned up despite the churning in my stomach, when the whole superhero thing didn’t work out, at least I could say I’d been there for a party, only to run outside and spend the night on a bench. I glanced to one side and froze. There, in the corner, was Captain Fantastic and a very tall boy. I pushed myself up against a bush, trying to hide.

  “So. Excited?” beamed the Captain.

  “I suppose,” said the boy.

  “You suppose? You’re going to be a superhero!”

  “I know. I’m very happy to have you as my mentor,” said the boy but his voice was void and empty. The captain’s smile faded. He opened his mouth again, and I leaned forwards, trying to catch their conversation, only the bush rustled, and the captain turned round.

  “Ms. Fitz?” I raised my hand like a kid in class. “That was real nice what you did for the waitress.”

  “Thank you,” I stuttered as he smiled and held out his hand, I took it without hesitation, forgetting that my hands were clammy with nerves.

  “You’re cold, that’s not great,” he said, sounding worried. It was reassuring, like a parent should sound.

  “Nope. I’m a big fan, Sir, sorry, I mean, I just,” I took a deep breath, “I saw your rescue during that hotel fire, I saw the time you saved the mayor from assassination, my favorite was when you saved Missy Mittens from jumping off that ledge.”

  “She certainly was a tricky kitty,” said the captain with a smile, “always finding a way to climb skyscrapers.”

  “I watched her show all the time growing up!” I told him.

  “Missy Mittens was always causing trouble,” he told me, “the entire city was on the edge of their seats every time she escaped the studio.”

  “Who needs a cat called Missy Mittens to help them cook anyway?” I added.

  “Exactly,” he replied with a smile.

  “What’s your name again, little lady?” he asked taking the seat next to me.

  He’d called me little lady! “Friday Fitzsimmons,” I replied.

  “What did they name your power?” His tie was a gentle periwinkle blue, slightly too loose, and his jacket a little too large. He’d dressed himself. No stylist for this event.

  “Hyper Synaptic Activity,” I said. “It allows me to think fast. It’s super lame.”

  “Just as long as it’s super.” It seemed like he was waiting for a laugh and I was happy to oblige.

  “Good one, Captain.” Over his shoulder I could see the tall boy roll his eyes. The captain waved his hand at me as though to say I was too much.

  “You use your power with the waitress?” he asked.

  “I don’t think it really helped.”

  “I’m sure it did. Just in ways you don’t understand yet,” he said. I was talking to Captain Fantastic, my nerves had been replaced with disbelief and awe. “It’s good to meet you,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.

  “Even if I broke a girls arm?”

  “You didn’t break her arm. She’s just,” he waved his hand around, trying to find a word, and then abandoned the sentence. “I wasn’t exactly gentle in my youth. I don’t expect you to be perfect on your first day.”

  When he smiled, his white teeth were like a ray of sunshine. My face twisted in the most awkward way as I tried not to smile back and show my teeth, they were far from perfect. His were super perfect, which is appropriate, since he was literally super. I loved Captain Fantastic! Don’t tell anyone I said that.

  “Can you promise me something?” he asked, his tone suddenly serious.

  “Anything.” I didn’t think, I just said it.

  “Promise me you’ll try to not let your anger get the better of you. Okay?” I opened my mouth and closed it again. Was it that easy? “I had the same problem when I was your age, I still do. But we have to try. Will you try?”

  “Yes sir. I want…” He set his glass down on the paved stone, and leaned on his knees, waiting for me to go on. “I want to be good. I wanna be a superhero.” Those words made my eyes hot, I did the best I could to hold back the tears. I was not going to cry in front of him. I’d wanted this for so long.

  “Then try to be.”

  I nodded, and he sat back up.

  “How exactly did you get your powers Friday?”

  I didn’t want to tell him the truth so I kept it vague.

  ✰✰✰

  “How did you get your powers?” I ask.

  “A car accident…” Her head drops, and then rises again, a smile on her face. “Nothing special, we’ll get to it I’m sure. After all, it’s why we’re here.”

  I nod, and she goes on.

  ✰✰✰

  “I, uh, I don’t know. I felt fuzzy and fizzy, and then my brain did a thing, and I thought for a real long time, and then I did it. And now I’m talking to Captain Fantastic! Not that I’m excited about that. I’m not really into superheroes.” it all came out in one long, fast, mess of words.

  “Really? You’re not into superheroes? Because you’re gonna be one yourself.”

  My cheeks flared red. “Pfft, gijhh, ha. Oh you! … I’m not a fan…”

  He laughed, louder this time, like I was a cat doing something hilariously stupid. He flashed his beautiful white teeth again, and the laugh lines on his face deepened. He was one of the most experienced superheroes and you could see it in every weathered line of his face. He’d been working for the city for so long; watching his wedding on TV was one of my earliest memories. Years of stress and pain, but there was hope in his eyes. “This is my mentee, Ashley. Ashley Friday, Friday Ashley. He’s a first year just like you.”

  I leaned forwards to cast an eyeball over the Captain’s mentee who nodded. We both rushed to say. “Hello.” His voice was deep, strangely so, it almost didn’t match his features. I expected a doppleganger, the next Captain Fantastic, but Ashley looked nothing like him. He was far taller than the Captain, and the Captain had to be six feet at least. He was long limbed, even gangly, and his shoulders sat almost impossibly straight. Expert padding in the jacket of his suit? Probably. The Captain had icy blue eyes that glittered, Ashley had a long face with a nose that looked like it had been set too straight after a break, if that makes any sense. Over all, as Ashley stared down from behind his horn rimmed glasses, he struck me as underwhelming. Captain Fantastic’s personal mentee? He didn’t have the same warmth, the same charm
. He didn’t garner the same reaction. In fact he wasn’t even close. “You uh, you’ve never had a mentee before. All the previous years?”

  “Well, Ashley here is special,” the captain said.

  “I guess he must be.” Ashley said nothing, he only looked me up and down.

  “You should get back in, it’s cold out here.” The Captain got up and held the door open for me. I waddled back in with one of the world’s most famous superheroes behind me. The eyes of the party spun round and it caught me off guard, sending my heart racing for the second time. The throb of its beat pounded in my ears, the room started to twist and turn as my chest heaved. The next thing I knew I’d collided with a much larger body, and was tumbling down to the hard marble floor. Ashley’s hands reached out to catch me like I’d caught the glass from the tray; as though it was no effort at all. He pushed up his glasses with his spare hand, and without so much as a smile, set me back on my feet again. Ashley was huge. Unreasonably so. And lanky.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Do you have the time?” he asked. He checked his watch with a heavy sigh. “My watch is broken and I have a meeting, so, do you have the time?”

  “Your watch is broken? Let me look at it.” He refused to look me in the eye, like the suggestion was pointless to acknowledge. “Please.”

  He un-buckled the blue leather strap and dangled it in front of me as though it was something of mine he’d taken. “How do you intend to help?” he asked as I set it to my ear.

  “My father’s an inventor, there was a time he built all-weather watches for military use, so I learnt a bit about some different types of watches.”

  “Your dad builds things for a living?”

  “He used to, now-a-days I do it. How old is your watch?”

  “A little under a hundred years, maybe eighty. Why?”

  “I think it’s your hairspring.” I shook the watch vigorously, something a lot of people do without understanding why. “I can’t fix it completely now, but…” I paused and shook it harder, checked, and the hands started to move again.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked taking it from me.

  “Like I said, it’s your hairspring. I’m afraid it’ll keep getting jammed, shaking is only a quick fix.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You could let me look at it another time. I have some tools, all I have to do is set the hairspring back in place.”

  ✰✰✰

  “So,” I ask, “you fixed things for a living?”

  “Fixed and built things,” she replies, “whatever the customer needed.”

  “You were a kid while you were doing this?”

  “I pretended my father was sick, or away, while I ran his company. I signed his name and spoke for him.”

  “Why?”

  “He gave up,” she says, looking at me, stone cold, “I didn’t.”

  ✰✰✰

  The captain called for his mentee.

  “Thanks,” said Ashley, as he secured his old blue watch on his wrist and stepped away towards the center of the crowd. The captain wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Ashley was already busy, laughing and smiling, just as someone should over champagne and caviar, but my time was done.

  Veronica stormed in, and several of the stewards ushered us outside. “Okay kids, time for a quick tour, and then you can settle in. Follow me!”

  I checked over my shoulder, wondering why some of the other kids weren’t coming with us, but it seemed that students like Ashley, mentees of the big name heroes, Black Magic, Mistress Widow and The Lightning Kid, they all got to stay at the party. Some kids at Hero High had been groomed for the school for years; something told me those kids didn’t need a tour. None of us were given any time to get our bearings. Viewers at home just wanted to see the new students, and figure out which one they were rooting for. In a large cluster we all left the Real Heroes tower, crossing the courtyard to Hero High. Despite being part of the same building the only way to cross from one to to the other without leaving was through the sphere on the top.

  In the city square the stage cleared. Jean-Claude Nakata was scheduled to sing for the rest of the evening once the live cameras left us. The huge gold archway doors of Hero High were famous, fake, and etched with images of Stronghold, the city’s founder. One by one, we moved through the revolving doorway in their center. The art in Icon City was so angular and elegant; I’m not sure what I expected when I walked in, maybe clear white surfaces? Lots of clear, uncluttered glass? No. Hero High was nothing like that, it looked most of all like a hotel mall. The air was humid and sticky, it rained in icon City almost as often as it did in Hawaii. It’d get colder soon, just enough for it to snow by Christmas, but the rain was all year round.

  Pillars stretched up from the second level, palm trees lined the sides, amber marble walls stood is stark contrast to the glass of the shop fronts. Lights shaped like fans emitted a warm yellow glow, while the real lights were concealed in the ceiling. The place had been cleared, but you could tell it was made to hold thousands of people. The ceiling was maybe six or seven stories high and the walls were lined with Hero Channel themed shops. It smelled of fresh counters and cinnamon buns, as opposed to the hard scent of diesel and faint flavored afterglow of cigarettes outside. Most people don’t like the smell of gasoline and cigarettes; they’ve always reminded me of exciting trips to big cities.

  Various banners and posters the size of small houses were hung over the railing of the second and third floors. Captain Fantastic’s was the largest, of course, and below that was a shop filled with superhero endorsed perfumes and colognes. Other posters hung for Hero High, Real Heroes, Super Variety Hour, Power League, and Hero Colosseum.

  Pop music filled the mall, some recorded by heroes. Large glass cases held together by gold lines acted as elevators, and lined the walls like pillars while escalators moved up the levels like the laces on a shoe. Further down the long hallway were a few twists and turns, but eventually Veronica pointed to a café. It sat at the end of a hallway, as large as your average chain restaurant.

  “This kids, is where you’ll work if you want to earn extra cash while training.” She waved her hand for all of us to go in. The majority of the place was childishly pink, there was so much pink it looked like a Barbie pop up café. The walls facing the entrance were all made of glass, and the back was lined with merchandise, key rings, mugs, backpacks, and back to school kits. Each rail was graded by year. The year one rack was blank, cleared out, for our stuff the moment it came in. “You’ll serve coffee, tea, deserts. We have an in-house chef, so no cooking, just waiting on fans. There’s no photography in here, and you’re only permitted to sign photographs when officially paid for by the customer.”

  A couple of the kids looked at each other with raised eye brows but Veronica moved on, further down the mall, where more and more shops were dedicated to Hero High. Each year had a shop, so year one’s was currently empty. There were costume shops, full restaurants, and an emporium filled with figurines, plushies, and detailed action figures. There were normal stores too, a few chain restaurants, and a couple of clothing stores I’d heard of. Veronica stopped at a set of gold covered elevators that reached so far up they seemed to move into the ceiling, and beyond.

  “These are your elevators,” she told us. “All gold elevators are yours to use and are not open to the public. Once upstairs you’ll receive your Hero High issue phones, you’ll use them to slide against the lock, and it’ll let you up.” She pulled out her own phone, and demonstrated. “You can skip the shopping center altogether by taking one of the elevators on the outside. Everyone in, one by one. We’re going to the lobby.”

  We filed in in groups of ten. The elevator interior was pretty damn big, even with benches. One of the girls in front of me started inspecting the buttons. I reached around her, and pressed L.

  “Hey! I wasn’t done looking.”

  In normal circumstances I would have said something back, but I was to
o tired. The doors pinged open with a clean crisp, electronic greeting, and everyone stepped out into the lobby.

  The colors were the same, but the atmosphere was immediately different. The lobby was lit like a hotel bar, the walls were etched with gold bars arranged in hard, abstract, angular lines. A reception desk, with keys on hooks almost grew from the gold tracing on the walls, but right in the center stood a huge cylindrical fish tank that cast over the room a whisper of blue, projecting ripples onto surfaces like a theater showing the ocean on loop. It made the place look like an aquarium themed bar I was not old enough to drink in.

  “This is where our tour ends for now. You’ve probably seen the rest on the show, and if not, well, then ask someone else. Get your room keys from my assistant, and get some sleep.” Veronica turned on her heel, and left in another elevator with three of her personal assistants. The fourth waved us all over and referred to his clip board before shouting a team color. The members raised their hands, he gave them their room key and each team wandered back into the elevators. I split off from the crowd for a moment to investigate the vending machines hidden in the back. A few of the employees gave me funny looks, but I ignored them and bought myself some candy. I was just about to consume all that chocolatey goodness when Veronica’s assistant called for the blue team, and only I raised my hand.

  “Looks like you’re on your own Ms…Fitz? Blue team, number six.”

  I looked at the keys and then back at Veronica’s assistant as the rest of the students stared. “So wait, am I all of team blue? Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” he said, looking down at his clipboard. “I think it was requested by someone.”

  I shrugged, way too tired to argue, and collected the gold key that said six. A few of the kids sniggered as I passed by, and someone whispered something I couldn’t make out. I drowned out the unwanted comments with the crunch of each bite, pressed the buttons in the elevator for one of the dorm floors; forty six. The floors for housing went from forty six, to fifty. As the doors closed, I sighed with relief. At least I was alone.