by Chara, Mina
“No one touches the captain!” I told him.
“Thanks kid,” he shouted back as he kicked one last guy down the stairs and, head-butt complete, I tripped over the hem of my dress and fell right into the arms of Dr. Dangerous.
I pushed away as fast as I could and looked over the balcony to see The Figure standing up, no - Jake! My bones shook. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream!
The captain’s fist collided with the Doctor’s face. What the hell was the Doctor doing? I didn’t know where to look. Jake burst upwards in a stream of fire and landed right in front of me. I stepped back, flinching from the flames the Figure had started. Had he come to help? He was trying to be a hero, so as I fell onto the floor, and looked up into the flames, I held out my hand, hoping he’d power down before the building collapsed.
“You’ve done your job,” I told him, “Thank you. Please stop, you’re gonna burn the place down.” For a moment I thought Jake was reaching out to take my hand, but instead his fingers rumbled with blue flame. I scrambled to my feet as a broad jet of fire exploded from his hand and I crawled out of the way as he unleashed more fire towards me. My hand gripped the gun on the floor and I threw it at his head.
Only after I’d done it, did I realize I could have pulled the trigger. I’d been in a life and death situation, and yet, I threw the gun at him. It hit him straight on the head. His fire flared in anger. I pulled up my dress and once more got to my feet. The captain had grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran in front of me covering everything in white mist but his efforts came too late. Flames had sprung up everywhere, engulfing the building’s floor.
“Jake, stop this!” I yelled, but he didn’t reply. The captain stood in front of me, sighed, and pointed the fire extinguisher straight at Jake, sending him tumbling over the railing. “Jake!”
“Don’t worry, Friday, he’ll be fine,” the captain said, “that was just to give us some time to get away.”
The building looked like it could fall at any minute. I stood between Dr. Dangerous, and the captain looking back and forth between them as I watched them decide if they should slug it out. I decided for them. I pushed against the captain’s chest as I pulled at my skirt.
“The buildings burning down. We have to get out,” I told him. He looked down at me as though he was still thinking. I gripped him by the collar and pulled him away like an angry mother. I wasn’t having any of this, not now, not in a burning building. For a moment he looked taken a back, and just as I thought he was running with me, fire crept up from below, and a red hot hand seized his ankle.
“Adam!” I yelled. His hand reached for me as he was dragged downwards into the sea of fire, and engulfed in flame. “No!” I ran forwards like I could jump into the flames as though they were the ocean, but Dr. Dangerous scooped me up, without a care for the captain. I tore at his clothes, trying to fight him, I don’t even know how he held me in the mess of a dress I wore. I saw him frown behind his mask as he threw me over his shoulder and for the first time that night I screamed and cried. I banged my fists against his back, but still, he ignored me. Something sprung from his belt and embedded itself in the building opposite. He gripped me as tight as he could and I screamed at the top of my lungs as we jumped from the shattered seventh story window. I slipped from my place over his shoulder, and threw my arms around his neck. I hated the familiarity, but in the end it saved my life. A red blur crashed into the window just as we swung away.
Dr. Dangerous dropped me in the midst of a deserted street where no one could see. The only light around us came from an orange street lamp, and its reflection in the rain. My dress was quickly soaked through, and my body was cold. I shivered and all he did was look me up and down several times over.
“A thank you?” he suggested.
“Never. You left him.”
“He’ll be fine. I know the captain,” he said and smiled as though he hadn’t carried me away unconscious, or left a bomb in a building. He smiled like it was every day banter.
“Stay, away from me!” I yelled.
“You look very nice in that dress,” he told me.
“It’s a puffy mess, and I’m soaked from head to toe.” I growled and he laughed like we were old friends. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.”
As I turned to leave, his hand caught my wrist. “Friday…” His gaze changed and a look of something like an iron will flicked across his eyes. He glanced down at the pavement and loosened his grip. “Be careful.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he shook his head at me, and took a few steps back. “Don’t leave, please! Tell me what you mean!”
“I can’t.”
This time, I grabbed him, my grip unshakeable. “Tell me. You work for someone, who is it?”
“I can’t tell you. Just be careful,” he said.
“It’s the gold syringes isn’t it? Something’s going on, tell me! Who’s making you do this?”
“No one’s making me do this,” he said, and yanked his arm away. “He’s not my boss, but he will be yours.”
He loomed over me, reminding me just how small I was. I pulled myself up to my full height and looked him in the eye. “Help me,” I pleaded.
“No,” his hand twitched at his side, the beginnings of a word of the edge of his lips, but his fist clenched, and the word became “like I said, be careful.”
“Why do you care?” I asked him, wanting to hear the answer.
“Because I care about you,” he replied.
“Well I care about someone else,” I said quickly, like it was some sort of witty comeback rather than an awkward confession. He scoffed and turned his head.
“Yeah I know, the blond, your handler, right? The one on fire?”
“No!” I told him, “why would you think that?”
“Then who?” he asked, leaning down, the edge of his voice turning up. “Who is it?” He didn’t believe me.
“His name’s Ashley,” I said and a playful smile flashed across his face as he pulled himself up to his full, impressive height. “He’s one of my team mates,” I explained.
“Boyfriend?”
“He hates me,” I said, and the silence stung.
“Be careful, Fitz,” it sounded like a goodbye. I ran off down the street to the crowd of people being tended by the police and paramedics. Veronica rushed over and pulled me in. It wasn’t a hug, it was more like protection. The wail of sirens and whirring city lights was overwhelming.
“Where’s the captain?” Veronica whispered and I shook my head trying to hold back my tears.
“What happened in there?” she asked, “tell me!”
“I can’t, not now,” I said realizing I sounded lame. She tried to cover up her glare as she backed away but then a red figure emerged from the flames accompanied by someone clad in green. Lisa!
Lisa and Barney walked out of the flames, their faces and skin covered by their super skeletons. Captain Fantastic was with them. The skin on his back was red and covered in blisters, but he was alive. Veronica’s arms went weak, and I collapsed to my knees. David found me, and pulled me into a hug.
“Friday! You’re okay!” David exclaimed.
“What about you?” I asked, searching him with my eyes, as though I’d find a burn or cut on him.
“I’m fine, I was worried about you, I should have done something.” I pulled him into a hug of my own. They loaded the captain into an ambulance and Lisa climbed in with him. Barney stepped back reluctantly, Lisa waving him away.
“Barney!” I yelled and he jogged over to pull me into a hug.
“From Lisa,” he said.
“Is the captain okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said, “a gadget he started carrying after the first reports of The Figure saved him until we got there.”
“Thank you Barney!” I said as I burst into tears.
He looked slightly embarrassed. “Thank Lisa,” he said, “she’s the one who decided to come.”
Veronica slapped Barney on the back, and put away the phone she’d been using to call someone about the news. “Do you kids need a ride to the hospital? I’m going to see the captain.”
“Yes!” I answered quickly.
A rare smile crossed her face, “all right let’s go. Barney?”
“I have to get home,” Barney told us, “Lisa’s home that is, I said I’d see to her kids.”
Veronica nodded and waved David over as Barney left. Her car looked shiny and very expensive. David stopped me half way there.
“Friday I have something to tell you.”
Veronica was already shouting from her car. “Come on kids!”
“Friday, please,” said David, “ after everything that happened you should know about Aya and me. You know how everyone thinks we’re a couple? It’s a lie.” He licked his lips, and re-positioned himself, thinking about his next words carefully. “All that stuff I say about her in the papers, about her being my girlfriend, it’s crap. The producers tell me to say it, they say it makes me seem more manly, more relatable.”
“So,” I said slowly, trying to work out what he was saying, “why do you do it if you’re just friends? I don’t understand.”
“Friday, I’m gay.”
“You’re what?”
He slapped his hand over my mouth, and drew me closer the car. “They brought me into a meeting before my debut, and told me they wanted me to start something with Aya, that people would want a new couple. And they just kept talking, and talking, and telling me how to act. I panicked.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked.
“Because after this, I realize you’re one of the few friends I have, you should know who I am,” David said. “I love Aya, she’s great, she’s my best friend.”
“Just not your girl friend?”
“Are you kids coming or not?” yelled Veronica sounding like she was moments from losing it. I saw her piercing gaze from the corner of my eye as she stormed forwards. “Hey, hey you! Yeah, you!” she boomed, nearly shoving David to the pavement as she drove the edge of her phone into my collar bone like a ruler. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
My back went rigid, and my shoulders pushed back.“I’m sorry, what?”
“Don’t give me that crap! You were in there with the captain, and you can’t even be bothered to tell anyone what happened? What do we pay you for? Tell me!”
My fists clenched but Veronica didn’t pull the edge of her phone from the hollow of my throat. “You pay me to be a hero,” I stammered.
“Bullshit!” yelled Veronica. David didn’t have a word to say, not because he didn’t care, but because I could tell he’d heard all this before. “You are a piece of merchandise. You were in a burning building with the most famous superhero that’s ever lived, and you don’t have a story for me? Bullshit! There’s something you’re not telling me.” She waited, still refusing to retract her phone like it was a gun to my head. I wasn’t one to be bullied, so much so that my refusal to be told what to do had turned into many a fist fight.
“You’re right,” I said and she nodded, impatient to hear more. “There is something I’m not telling you, and I’m not ever going to tell you.”
“You little,” she pushed the phone further, I could feel it pushing against my wind pipe. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll kick you off this team, and you go back to zero, nothing.”
I was fine with being zero, being nothing. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sell out the captain for some lunch boxes with my face on them. That wasn’t a hard choice.
“You don’t control me,” I told her.
She pushed away, baring her teeth, and just as she reached her army of P.A.’s, she turned. “You’re off the team Fitz, go back to blue.”
I ran away before anyone could stop me.
✰✰✰
The captain sat up in his hospital bed, mostly unscathed save for a few scratches and blisters here and there. His wife Katherine and Black Magic had already been to see him as had Veronica and a couple of his friends. After a few hours it was finally my turn.
He looked up at me and smiled before patting the seat of the chair pulled next to the bed. “More questions that need to be answered?” he asked.
“I got kicked off the team.” I told him, blurting it out like a meal that wouldn’t stay down.
“I’m sorry, Friday, why?” he asked, moving forwards until he was stopped by the pain.
“Veronica wanted to know what happened in there,” I said, studying my shoes.
“And you didn’t tell her? Friday, don’t lose your place on the team for me-”
“Much as I appreciate the sentiment,” I told him, “I did it because she threatened me. I don’t work with bullies.” The captain sat back with a small smile, as though he understood my thinking perfectly. I crossed my legs, and sucked in a breath. “So, you lost your powers?”
“I didn’t lose my powers, Friday, I grew out of them. Some people lose their powers like I did and I suppose I should have retired, but-”
“You mean, you… just, don’t have them anymore?” I asked.
“People get older. Things change. It happens. Normally heroes don’t work for long enough for people to see their powers decline, but some do. I thought maybe it was coming, but I wanted a successor in place before it happened.”
“That’s why you started the mentor program, right?” at least that made sense.
“That’s right. Can you pass my reading glasses?” I passed over his small silver glasses, being sure not to touch the lenses. “Ah, that’s better,” he said readjusting them on his nose. “I should have retired a while ago, but I didn’t. I can’t, not until I find someone to take my place.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed, Captain,” I told him.
“Then I better find someone soon,” he chuckled.
“So am I gonna lose my powers someday?”
“Not necessarily, some find it happens in their forties, some don’t,” the captain explained. “Some powers don’t decline, they simply change with time.”
I shook my head, and slammed my hands down on my lap. “What about Jake? The Figure? I know I don’t have any proof, but I swear I found a syringe, and I think people are using them for something!”
“A gold syringe?” the captain asked and when I nodded he pointed to his jacket where it hung on the coat rack. “There should be a piece of paper in my pocket.”
Unfolding the paper, I found a sketch of the same gold syringe I’d found a few months earlier. “This is it. This is what I found,” I told him.
“Good. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I think it’s something people are using to induce super powers.” His voice was heavy with dread as he spoke.
“What? How?”
“Ten years ago now, I felt the faintest flicker of my powers dying out, so with my friends and fellow heroes, we started to work on a serum, a vaccine if you will, something to stop our powers from declining.”
“What happened?”
“It didn’t work. We couldn’t find a way to save our powers, all it did was-” he broke off as thought unsure of what to say. “Even today, I’m not sure what it did. Friday, you need to understand. Our powers aren’t an add on, they’re not even a part of us, they are us, there’s part of our soul in them. The artificial powers from the drug we developed, they’re something different; violent, wild, alien and uncontrollable.”
“And you think that’s what’s in the syringe I found?”
“I think some superheroes have been using enhancing drugs,” said the captain. “Someone’s used the research and created a different drug, one that creates powers where there were none.”
“But that’s a good thing isn’t it?” I asked, unsure.
“If they had figured out how to make someone’s powers more long lived, maybe,” he explained, “but I think they discovered a way to create violent artificial powers. Like those of your friend, Jake.”
“There are people running around with fake super powers more powerful than the real kind?”
“It’s not that the power’s are ‘fake’, Friday,” he told me as he handed the picture back, “it’s that powers don’t make a hero.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?” I asked. Had it been anyone else, I’d have shouted, but the Captain took my shoulder in an effort to be reassuring.
“I couldn’t tell you because you weren’t my apprentice.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Weren’t, as in past tense?”
“Friday, you can learn a lot from Lisa, taking you away from her would be the dumbest thing I could do, but there’s no rule that says you can’t have two mentors.”
I stared at him for a moment, not sure that I understood. “But my power’s the worst!”
“It’s not your power that matters,” he said with slight smile.
“You’re just saying that.”
“I don’t have any powers anymore. Doesn’t stop me from being a superhero.”
“Isn’t that what the super stands for?” I was on shaky ground, but still, I wanted answers.
“The super stands for something beyond average, it’s not about powers and costumes, it’s about inspiring others. Everyone can be a hero and that’s what the world needs! That’s why you, Friday, don’t need powers.”
“You’re my hero, you always have been,” was all I could think of to say. His smile was so bright, my inner child screamed.
The Captain’s eyes squinted at the TV hooked in the corner of the ceiling and he fumbled for the remote like a man looking blindly for his glasses. I reached for it myself, and un-muted the news just in time.
Coach Flat and several other superheroes stood on a stage with cameras flashing as usual. A press conference, only the room was silent.
“Only a few hours ago our Captain was in a terrible accident. I’m told he will make a full recovery, but not for some considerable time. Some of you may be wondering, why a superhero needs a hospital; the truth is our Captain has given us his best years. He is simply too old to continue. Following the latest events in Icon City, he has made the decision to retire.”
