by Lucas Flint
“Women can be very strange creatures sometimes,” said TW in my head all of a sudden. “You might want to think about avoiding that one in the future.”
“Oh, so now you decide to talk?” I said aloud.
A couple of people looked at me oddly, which was when I realized I said that aloud. Turning away from them and lowering my voice, I said, “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to talk to you for over an hour.”
“Sorry, Jack,” said TW. “I just didn’t want to get in the way of your important date with Debra, though given how terribly it went, perhaps my efforts were in vain.”
“That’s not the reason you were quiet and you know it,” I said in my mind. “You were quiet during my entire conversation with that Salt guy and outright ignored me when I asked for your help. Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.”
“Fine, but don’t expect me to treat you like a genius, either,” said TW. “There’s a very good reason I’ve kept my mouth shut since then, but I guess I couldn’t stay silent forever or expect you to simply forget about that other Watch. Let’s find a private place to talk and I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got.”
Finally. I had expected TW to keep quiet until I got home. I decided to use the arcade’s bathroom, because it required a key to get into, which I retrieved from the arcade owner, who warned me not to spend too much time in there to prevent a line from building.
The arcade bathroom was small but clean, with a urinal, toilet, and sink, but I paid little attention to my surroundings. As soon as I locked the door, TW flashed into existence before me, floating above the tiled floor with a frown on his lips.
“All right,” I said, looking at TW hard. “The Watch. Is it real?”
TW sighed for a long time before he finally said, “Yes, I can confirm that the Watch which Mr. Salt tried to sell you is genuine, though I didn’t think it was still around.”
“So there is another Trickshot Watch?” I said in surprise. “Did Grandfather have a second one for backup or something?”
TW shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Technically speaking, I am the second Watch and that one was the original.”
“What?” I said in surprise. “Are you telling me you’re not the original TW?”
“I am the original TW,” said TW quickly. He gestured at the Watch on my wrist. “My AI was transferred from the first Watch to the one you’re currently wearing. Think of it like transferring files from one computer to another.”
“Oh,” I said. “So did the first Watch become outdated and Grandfather upgraded? Kind of like buying a new phone?”
TW folded his arms across his chest. “If only that was the reason he did it. No, Gregory got rid of the first Watch because it would have killed him if it didn’t.”
“Killed him?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? How would it have killed him? It’s just a Watch.”
TW sighed again. “Allow me to start from the beginning. You remember what I told you, don’t you, about how Gregory originally received the Trickshot Watch from a mysterious source, who expected him to use it for the greater good?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I remember when you told me that. It was just a few months ago, after all.”
“Right,” said TW. “And indeed, that is the truth. But there is a little bit more to the story than I originally told you. I didn’t see any point in telling you more at the time, but given how circumstances have changed since then, I think it is time I tell you more.”
“You mean since I saw Mr. Salt’s Watch, right?” I said. “Because that was, like, an hour and a half ago. You talk about it like it was months.”
“I’m not talking about that,” said TW. “At least, not that by itself. I’m referring to everything that’s happened since then. Your defeat of the Injectors, Baron Glory’s assassination, and, of course, Holes’ return and revenge. It is clear to me that if you are going to be the hero you need to be, then you will have to know far more than I told you during our first meeting.”
“I’ll be honest,” I said, “I didn’t think you had omitted any information to me, but now you’re telling me that you did.”
“My apologies,” said TW. “As I said, I didn’t think it was necessary at the time, but given how everything has developed since then, I figure it is time you knew more.”
“Then go on,” I said. “Tell me what I need to know. I’m all ears.”
TW nodded. “Very well. When Gregory first received the Trickshot Watch, he was not the first superhero to do so.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Not by any means,” said TW, shaking his head. “Remember what I originally told you. The Trickshot Watch’s suit absorbs the powers of the last owner, adding each power to its nature which future users can use when they don the suit. It is how you can fly, have super strength, durability, and, of course, perfect aim, because you can borrow them from the suit itself.”
I glanced at the Watch on my wrist again. “Who owned the Trickshot Watch before Grandfather?”
“A handful of people,” said TW. “Unfortunately, I don’t know their names, because I did not exist until Gregory made me. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Gregory was able to take these powers and use them to become a legal superhero, defending Rumsfeld from criminals both great and small until his kidnapping ten years ago.”
“And?” I said. “I know this already. It doesn’t sound like you have any new information for me.”
“I’m getting there, don’t worry,” said TW. “For example, I didn’t tell you about the negative effects of using the suit.”
I frowned. “Negative effects? What do you mean? It seems like a pretty positive thing so far. All ups and no downs.”
TW chuckled. “Ah, but nothing in life is perfect, Jack. Everything pays a price. Everything has its upsides and downsides. And that includes the Trickshot costume housed within the Watch.”
I moved uneasily. “What, exactly, are the downsides of the Trickshot costume?”
“Well, if you use it too much, it can sap you of your life force and kill you,” said TW matter-of-factly, “which nearly happened to Gregory after he used it extensively for a decade.”
“What?” I said. I looked at the Watch again, this time with horror. “You mean I’ve been killing myself this entire time and you didn’t think I needed to know this?”
“Please hear me out,” said TW, holding up a hand. “Let me finish my story before you lose your mind. There is far more to it than what I just said and you need to hear the whole story before you do anything.”
Biting my lower lip, I nodded and said, “Okay, continue, then.”
“All right,” said TW. “As I said, the Trickshot costume can sap its user of their life force. It is how the suit keeps itself alive. It draws upon the life of the host in order to survive. Otherwise, it would starve to death, which is a fate it understandably wants to avoid.”
“So the suit is … alive?” I said. “Like a living creature?”
“Or close to it,” said TW. “It may be more helpful to think of it as a battery that requires charging. When you plug a re-chargable battery into the wall, it naturally charges itself via the electricity it gets from the plug. Your suit does the same thing, except for your life force.”
“Life force,” I repeated. “Does that mean my blood or something?”
“I am not sure,” said TW. “The suit seems to draw upon something in you that isn’t currently quantifiable by modern science. Whatever it is, it plays a vital role in keeping you alive, though the rate at which the suit absorbs your life force is very, very slow, to the point where you usually don’t notice until it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“You said it nearly killed Grandfather,” I said. “Mind elaborating on that?”
TW nodded again. “Sure. You see, ten years after Gregory started his superhero career, he was close to death’s door. He originally thought he was sick, even though every doctor he went to was unabl
e to find anything wrong with his body. He eventually found out, on his own, that the suit was slowly but surely killing him, which meant he had two choices: Either keep using the suit and eventually die from its effects or get rid of the Trickshot Watch and quit his superhero career entirely before it was too late.”
“What did Grandfather decide to do?” I said.
“He got rid of the Trickshot Watch,” said TW. “He didn’t give up his license, at least not yet, but he did take a break from superheroics for a while. He worked hard to figure out a way to counteract the negative effects that the suit was having on him, studying the Trickshot Watch late into the night in an effort to understand how it worked. I think he put more effort into understanding the Trickshot Watch than anyone before or since.”
“What were his results?”
“Me,” said TW. He put a hand on his chest. “Gregory designed the second Trickshot Watch—the one you’re wearing now—with me built into it. You see, my presence in the Watch is what keeps the suit from killing you.”
I looked down at the Trickshot Watch again in surprise. “Wait, what?”
“It’s true,” said TW. He scratched the back of his neck. “You see, Gregory realized that the suit would keep draining him of his life no matter what he did. He knew that the suit needed another source to drain, so he created me for the purpose of distracting the Trickshot suit. Instead of taking Gregory’s life force, it drains my energy, at roughly the same rate as Gregory’s life force. That is the primary reason I exist.”
“Really?” I said. “Is that why Grandfather made this Watch, then? To contain you?”
“Yes,” said TW, nodding. “He couldn’t put me in the original, so he made an entirely new one from scratch, using materials he obtained from the government group which controls the alien spaceship that the tech for the Watch originally came from. He then copied the suit and put it inside the new Watch, along with my AI. Thus, I was born.”
“Oh,” I said. “What did he do with the actual original Watch, then?”
“He tried to destroy it,” said TW. “You see, just because he copied the suit and put it in the new Watch didn’t mean that the old Watch stopped working. It very much still does and it isn’t even weaker than yours, either. He didn’t want the old Watch to fall into evil hands, so he took it out to the ocean and threw it out there where no one would find it.”
“And yet Mr. Salt has it,” I said. “And it isn’t a fake or a duplicate or anything like that.”
“Right,” said TW. “It is indeed the original Watch. I recognized it because it looks just like mine. I can’t tell you how he obtained it or whether he’s even aware of the full extent of its powers, but I can confirm that it does work.”
I folded my arms in front of my chest. “Then we need to get it before someone else does. The Trickshot Watch is too important a weapon to allow to be in the hands of someone like Mr. Salt, because if he keeps hawking it in front of every dude or girl who walks up to his kiosk, eventually he’s going to try to sell it to the wrong guy and all hell will break loose.”
“Agreed, but there’s one last thing I should tell you before you try anything,” said TW. “It’s very important, something you should know before you get too close to the Watch.”
“And what is that?” I said.
TW leaned toward me and said, in a low voice as if he was afraid someone might eavesdrop on us, “The Watch might not want to be saved.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Might not want to be saved? What does that even mean?”
TW leaned back, a troubled look on his face. “The suit, as I said, resembles a living being in the way it acts and behaves. There’s a good chance that if you retrieve the original Watch, the suit within may not appreciate your help, assuming it believes that it has been wronged by Gregory.”
“Come on,” I said. “I think you’re anthropomorphizing it too much, buddy. It’s just a suit, albeit one of alien origin that can turn you into a literal superhero.”
“I know,” said TW with a frown. “But it’s still dangerous and I would advise heavy caution if you choose to steal it.”
“Retrieve it.”
“Same difference,” said TW with a shrug. “You yourself said that you don’t have three thousand dollars lying around with which to purchase it, so—”
“Whatever,” I said. “You and I agree that the old Watch needs to be retrieved before it lands into the hands of anyone who might want to use its powers for evil. Therefore, I need to find some way to swipe it from Mr. Salt without him knowing.”
TW nodded. “That’s true, but it is easier said than done, given how we don’t know where Mr. Salt even lives.”
I cracked a smile. “That’s where you come in, TW. Use your fantastic detective skills to scout the Internet for Mr. Salt’s information, which you can then give me so I can use it to find out where he lives and where he keeps his stuff.”
TW hesitated. “Does that not count as ‘doxing’? That is, the act of releasing someone’s private information on the Internet?”
“I’m not going to post his social security number and other private information on Twitter like some loser,” I said, waving off TW’s concern. “I’m just going to use it for private purposes. Besides, you don’t get to lecture me on the legality of searching his private information when I’m already operating outside the law anyway. If I get busted, what would finding out someone’s private information add to my prison sentence? Maybe a few years?”
TW shrugged again. “You make a good point. I’ll begin my search, starting with any social media accounts Mr. Salt may have and moving from there. I doubt it will take me long to do, given how Mr. Salt doesn’t strike me as a particularly tech-savvy individual, but it will take time nonetheless. In the meantime, what are you going to do?”
“Go home,” I replied. “And try to forget about how disastrously my date with Debra went. Duh.”
-
Because I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get home, I took the public bus for a few stops until we got to the one nearest my home, at which point I stepped off the bus and made the rest of the journey home by foot. I was glad for that, because I’d ended up next to this weird homeless dude who ranted about how the Earth was really flat and our entire government was controlled by a secret cabal of lizard alien people from another dimension who ate babies for breakfast. Admittedly, it was interesting to listen to his ramblings, if only because they were more well thought out than most science fiction and fantasy books I’d read, though I was more than glad to get off the bus as soon as we got to my stop.
But I didn’t listen too much to his ramblings, because I was distracted by how terrible my date with Debra went. Now that I didn’t need to worry about that mysterious other Watch, I could see just how terribly that first date went. No wonder Debra was so eager to go home. I had been a pretty awful date and even Ronny’s Pizza Place hadn’t tasted as good as it normally did. And considering how Debra didn’t say she would call me back, I had a feeling this was the last date I would ever go on with her.
Opening the front door of my house, I stepped inside and shouted, “Mom, I’m home! What’s for dinner?”
There was no response and I didn’t hear anything coming from the kitchen. That worried me at first, because I knew that Icon knew my secret identity and I worried that they might have come after Mom while I was away.
But then I noticed a sticky note attached to the land line next to the shoe rack, which I picked up and raised to read better:
JACK,
GOING OUT WITH MY FRIENDS. WILL BE BACK AFTER DINNER. THERE’S CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES IN THE FRIDGE IF YOU WANT A SNACK!
MOM
P.S. HOPE YOUR DATE WITH DEBRA WENT FANTASTIC. YOU SHOULD TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT WHEN YOU GET BACK.
I cringed slightly at the idea of reliving my awful date with Debra again, but I wasn’t surprised. Mom really wanted me to start dating girls for some reason and was
always interested whenever I expressed interest in a girl. She’d probably grill me for hours on what we did together and how it went. I figured Mom could make an excellent police interrogator if she ever decided to do that. She may have seemed like a nice housewife, but she always got what she wanted.
But the idea of getting chocolate chip cookies pushed all other thoughts out of my head. I walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a plate of chocolate chip cookies covered with plastic wrap. I partially removed the plastic wrap covering and started snacking down on the cookies. As usual, they tasted wonderful, so good that I briefly forgot all about my terrible date with Deb and focused on how good the cookies were.
Unfortunately, my attention was broken when my phone started ringing. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that my best friend, Kyle Denniger, was calling me. That was odd, because Kyle had just gone on a week long vacation to Florida with his family a couple of days ago. I hadn’t expected him to call while he was away—figured he would be too distracted by the fun beach and the pretty girls in bikinis to call me—but I was getting bored without him around, so I answered the call and put my phone against my ear.
“Hey, Kyle, what’s up?” I said, leaning against the kitchen counter as I chowed down on another chocolate chip cookie.
“Hiding from my parents,” said Kyle.
I tilted my head to the side. “Why? They’re not trying to make you swim without a shirt on, are they?”
“It’s not that,” said Kyle in a somewhat embarrassed tone, “it’s just that Dad is trying to get me to talk to the girls and I don’t want to.”
“What’s so wrong with that?” I said. “If the girls are hot, then what’s the problem?”
“Because I’m not trying to get a girlfriend right now,” said Kyle in annoyance. “I’m trying to focus on my studies and get good grades so I can go to Harvard like my parents want me to. Dating girls is just a distraction from that right now. And besides, these girls are in Florida, not Texas, and I don’t like the idea of long distance relationships.”
