A Hero By Any Other Name

by Stackpole, Michael A.

  No thank you, SIR!

  So I did what every underachieving American youth does in my situation. I continued to live with my folks while flipping hamburgers at a local joint. Man, I hated that stupid hat they made me wear. Like it wasn't insulting enough to work for the bare minimum allowed by law, I had to dress up as a clown too?

  Probably why I couldn’t get a girlfriend back then.

  But that's when my powers started to manifest. That's when I became a Super. I still have a hard time believing how much my life has changed.

  Chapter Three: Anger

  I don't deserve to be treated like this!

  Where the hell is everyone? Can’t they see I’m hurt? I swear, people today!

  I can imagine their stupid voices now. “Oh look, honey. There’s a nice young man lying in the middle of the street. He looks like he’s in pain.”

  “That’s nice, dear. Do you want to go watch a movie? There is a new one out tonight.”

  Ingrates!

  After all I have done for this city, I can’t believe no one is willing to lift a finger to help me when I need it. I’ll remember this next time some psychotic freak with super abilities and no social conscience rampages through their quiet suburban neighborhood.

  I can't breathe. It feels like an elephant decided to cop a squat on my chest. I would look down, but for some reason I can't. I can, however, taste blood.

  Where the hell is The Raven?

  This is all his fault. I never should've fallen in with that lunatic. I should've left him as soon as I realized what a grade-A nut-job he was. For him it was never about the betterment of mankind, or bringing criminals to justice.

  All he ever cared about was revenge. Revenge against the Rogue Supers for what they did to him.

  Oh, boo hoo. Who in this messed up world has not been affected by a Rogue Super?

  Invulnerable or not, the next time I see that masked bird-freak I'm gonna beat the living crap out of him.

  Chapter Four: Bargaining

  Unless he shows up soon. I can forgive him if he gets me out of this with the quickness.

  Come on, Raven. Don’t leave me hangin’.

  Man, this hurts. Everything. There’s not a part of my body that isn’t screaming.

  If he would just come back, all would be forgiven. He had to see what the Obliviator did to me. Hell, everyone on this side of town should’ve at least heard the blast. When did the bastard get that power?

  The plan was for me to draw his fire. The Raven had been specific. “Dodge like a maniac until I can get the drop on him, Kid.” But how the hell do you dodge the entire front of a building?

  Alright, body, I’ll make a deal with you. You tone down raping the pain sensors in my brain, and when I get out of this I’ll eat better. Exercise more. Do we have a deal?

  Screw it! The Raven will take me to a hospital. He’s strait up. The media’s always hounding him, but he’s not all bad. Yeah, a hospital would be nice. I’ll be all right then. Doctors are what I need. A few cute nurses would be nice. And drugs! Ah, morphine, I can feel your righteous numbing goodness already.

  Huh? The pain does seem less now. Perhaps it’s true what they say about the mind being stronger than the body. I can just will the pain away. Either that, or the elephant sitting on my chest decided to get up and mosey on.

  Perhaps if I just lay here long enough, just a few more minutes, I’ll be able to move on my own. Did my toe just twitch?

  Come on, Raven. Get back here and take me to a doctor so I don’t have to kick your ass for dropping me in this mess.

  Chapter Five: Depression

  HELLO! I would appreciate a little help here!

  Who am I kidding? I couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the Raven. I wouldn't even try to fight him. If I did, it would just be me getting kicked around. That is one tough son-of-a-bitch. Why he even agreed to let me tag along with him, I’ll never know. It’s not like I did anything to deserve his attention. Like I said before, even with my powers I never tried to stand out in the crowd.

  Blame it on my media influenced lackluster youth.

  I’ve always been a failure, and I always will be. I couldn’t even dodge a building!

  Why didn't I move faster? It's not like I didn't see what was coming! Then again, that was the plan. Use me as bait to draw the Obliviator out, let the Raven get in close and do his thing.

  Why is it that even with my Super powers I’m still the underachiever? I failed as bait. How pathetic is that?

  Life’s so unfair!

  Chapter Six: Acceptance

  What the hell? The world’s spinning.

  Someone is moving my head. It's the Raven! Oh, thank God. Where the hell have you been?

  “Oh, Kid. I'm so sorry.”

  It's all right, man. I don't feel as bad as I did a few minutes ago. In fact, now that I think on it, I ain’t got no pain at all. Huh? I feel good, actually.

  “I never should’ve let you talk me into this. You just weren’t ready for the big leagues.”

  Damn. You look rough, Raven. What’s that white powder covering your suit? That’s not your normal brooding, melancholy face. Are you sad? You seem genuinely upset. If I thought it was possible for such a heartless bastard to cry, I’d think that’s what you were about to do.

  “There was just nothing I could do. You gotta believe me, Kid.”

  Dude, you didn't do nothing wrong. It was my dumb ass that just stood there and took it.

  “I couldn't even catch the bastard. I swear, Kid, I will. Someday that maniac is gonna pay for all he’s done.”

  We all do the best we can, I guess. It’s all good, man. Just get me to a hospital. When I’m fixed up, I’ll help you hunt that punk down.

  Ah crap! Are those sirens? Man, they are boring into my brain!

  Someone else is coming.

  It's a paramedic. Young, too. ’Bout time they showed up. I guess that’s the definition of irony. I lay here in agony for I don’t know how long, and once the pain is gone, help finally arrives. Still, it'll be nice to get to a hospital. I don't feel right.

  I feel... cold.

  “Umm… Raven?”

  Ha, the paramedic’s voice makes him seem younger than he looks. What is this guy, fifteen?

  “Is that... The Kid?”

  Why is the Raven shaking his head? Of course I'm The Kid. Now, get over here and do your job. Slap some fixing on me so I can get out of here.

  “It was. He... he didn't make it.”

  Wait! What are you doing, Raven. Why are you leaving me lying in the street?

  Oh...

  That’s why I feel so cold.

  Damn.

  About The Author

  Maxwell Alexander Drake is an award-winning Science Fiction/Fantasy author, Graphic Novelist and Playwright. He is best known for his fantasy series, The Genesis of Oblivion Saga. Drake teaches creative writing at writers’ conferences and fan conventions around the country. Find out more about him at his website, www.maxwellalexanderdrake.com, more about The Genesis of Oblivion Saga at www.genesisofoblivion.com, and more about his latest graphic novel at www.downfallthecomic.com.

  About the Story

  The Kid–A Supreme Species Superhero Story is one of several stories set to roll out over the next year. In each, readers will be introduced to a new hero, but at the end of their particular story. Each story is written in a way that, while you will be experiencing the “how,” you will not be able to tell “where” or “when.” Once all of them are released, readers will be able to travel back in time to see how the story plays out, and see if they can figure out when each of these short stories fall into the overall timeline of the books. You can read another of these in this year’s Origins Heroes anthology in a story called, The Raven.

  Changing the Game

  Bryan Young

  “That’s it!” Johnny Brighton blurted loudly.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Brighton, but do you have something to share with the rest of the class?”


  “Oh. Uh... No, Mr. Summers. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me; apologize to the rest of the class. It’s their time you’re wasting.”

  “Yes, Mr. Summers.”

  “We’re waiting.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, everybody.”

  “See that it doesn’t happen again, Mr. Brighton.”

  Johnny Brighton always hated acting the fool, especially in front of his classmates. But it came with the job, and he knew what he was getting into when he volunteered for the gig. No matter how humiliating it was, it was the only way to avert suspicion. The dopier Johnny Brighton was in public, the less likely anyone was to guess that he was really the younger half of the Kid Sleuth and The Inspector team.

  There was no way Johnny Brighton could be brilliant enough to be Kid Sleuth, especially if he was inappropriately blurting out his Eureka! moments in front of a classroom full of tenth graders.

  That part wasn’t an act.

  He really had come to a major breakthrough in the Grandmaster’s latest plot, but now that Johnny had solved the puzzle, he grew antsy. He spent his remaining time in class tapping his pencil to his notebook, bouncing his leg up and down, and even staring at the clock, waiting for the class to end.

  He hated that he had to keep up the ruse of going to school. Thanks to the deft tutelage of his mentor and partner, The Inspector, he could teach Mr. Summers’s class without a lesson plan and probably the advanced placement version of the class, too. Going to school was merely a formality to keep his unsuspecting parents in the dark about his secret identity.

  How was a kid of fifteen supposed to focus on school when he was busy unraveling plots to destroy their massive city in the Pacific Northwest, or worse, the world?

  The bell rang, and he was out of the class so fast it had practically made Mr. Summers’s head spin. But he had to get out of there. If he’d really solved The Grandmaster’s puzzle, he was going to be hard pressed for time. The Grandmaster was fond of leaving elaborate clues, riddles, and puzzles before he committed a crime, leaving The Inspector and his sidekick to decipher them. The Grandmaster was all the words one would stereotypically use to describe one of the villains a hero and his ward would fight:

  Megalomaniacal

  Insane

  Evil

  Psychotic

  Sociopathic

  Cold

  Calculating

  There were hundreds more applicable words, but those would do. The Grandmaster had a sick obsession with trying to prove how much better and smarter he was than the crime solving duo, and that had always been his downfall.

  With all the urgency of a world at stake, Johnny Brighton—nay, Kid Sleuth—unchained his bicycle from the corral behind the school and set out for the abandoned warehouse at 333 West Harbor. The clue he followed to discern the address mentioned half the beast, against the east, along the waterfront. The abandoned warehouse was once part of the massive shipping conglomerate owned by Phillip Prince, Jr., the man the Inspector believed to be the father of The Grandmaster.

  The team of crime fighters had never been quite sure of his identity, and his use of that particular warehouse could have been a coincidence, but it raised alarms in young Brighton’s head. Johnny wasn’t sure if it could also have been a red herring. If The Grandmaster knew they suspected his identity to be that of Phillip Prince III, and he really wasn’t, he would leave all sorts of false clues to enhance that absurd assumption.

  Johnny received his message from The Grandmaster on his encrypted Inspect-a-phone right before Mr. Summers’s class, and immediately forwarded it over to The Inspector. Kid Sleuth assumed that his senior partner would have most likely have deciphered the code almost instantly and was surely already at the warehouse dealing with whatever Rube Goldberg-like plot that had been set into motion.

  On his way to the harbor, Johnny stopped only once, and that was to change into his Kid Sleuth costume at one of his secret stash locations in an alleyway over on Baker. He wore most of his burgundy costume under his clothes, but his accessories had been expertly hidden in secret pouches inside his school backpack by The Inspector himself. He carefully removed from each pouch a different piece of his ensemble: his deerstalker hat to match The Inspector’s, a domino mask to obscure his identity, his bullet-proof half cloak, and a utility belt. He stashed his backpack and bicycle in the secret cubby and hoofed it the rest of the way on foot.

  The warehouse was a tattered and shabby edifice with the old Prince Shipping logo in faded paint on the crumbling brick. Kid Sleuth felt a tension in his chest that he’d learn to rely on. It’s what he affectionately referred to as his “hunch.” And if his hunch was correct, he was definitely in the right place.

  From a building across the street, the young sidekick cased the offending building, looking for any sign of The Grandmaster, as well as for a logical point of ingress. The front door would be too obvious, and the windows were barred; that left the skylight in the roof. The boy wondered at the wisdom of that, though. They always arrived by skylight, and his foe was fastidious, the skylight was sure to be booby trapped. If The Inspector was there already, and the skylight was still intact, that meant there was a better way in.

  It never occurred to Kid Sleuth to wonder where The Inspector could be if not inside.

  Circling the building once more, careful to note for any hidden cameras or secret means of getting inside, he opted for the most obvious course, positing that since it was the most obvious it would be the least expected. Finding it locked, he withdrew a pick set from his belt and went to work on the heavy deadbolt on the rickety old doors in the front of the warehouse.

  “Elementary,” he exclaimed as the door popped open, revealing nothing but the musty smell of a rotting building.

  Looking and listening for any sign of life or activity, Kid Sleuth took his first clueless step into the warehouse. First he saw musty blackness, then stars, then nothing.

  As he awoke from his forced unconsciousness, Kid Sleuth made a mental list of things with which he could deduce his situation. He’d been hot on the heels of The Grandmaster after deciphering a series of clues that had led him to a warehouse. He’d chosen a point of ingress and remembered nothing from that point to this. He couldn’t see anything, but there was no stinging, which implied that he’d been blindfolded, rather than blinded. After an attempt to move his arms he found that they were immobile and losing circulation. The lack of extreme tingling in his extremities told him that he’d been tied up, but not for very long.

  “Ah, it seems as though the young Sleuth is awake,” a voice said. It had the cold menace that Kid Sleuth recognized as the one and only Grandmaster.

  “What’s it to you, Grandmaster?” the boy replied with a defiant growl.

  “I was growing tired of waiting.”

  The young man could feel hot breath near his face as The Grandmaster spoke, he was very close. The breath had the sour odor of old alcohol, a bourbon or a scotch. His youth had prevented him from having the encyclopedic knowledge of spirits that The Inspector had. If only that knowledge could help him escape.

  “What do you want from me?” the boy asked, already knowing the answer. What did any super villain want with the young sidekick of a crime fighter as renowned as The Inspector? To lure their enemy into the open.

  “I know what it is you’re thinking,” The Grandmaster said in his smooth, deep voice with that haunting British accent. He untied the blindfold from the boy. “I assure you, luring The Inspector here plays no part in my goal. Not until after we’ve had our fun together, my boy.”

  Kid Sleuth beat his eyelashes, hoping to focus in on something that would give him a clue about where he was. The only thing he could see was the bright light of an interrogation lamp and The Grandmaster standing there a few feet below him, holding the black velvet blindfold. The boy had been tied to a post, raised up so his feet couldn’t touch the ground.

  The Grandmaster was an older gentleman who alwa
ys wore a gray shirt with buttons along the top and down one side that always reminded the boy of an old-fashioned dentist. He wore charcoal black slacks and tightly fitting gloves to match.

  His face was obscured by a mirrored plate that covered the top half of his face. The bottom half was bare, revealing little more than his thin lips, a thinner mustache, and a boxy chin with a remarkable cleft bisecting it. The young hero was confident he’d be able to pick this man out of a lineup if ever he were given the chance, but no matter how many times he and The Inspector compared their memory of The Grandmaster to potential suspects, the chin never matched up.

  The Inspector posited that the severe cleft chin on The Grandmaster must have been a fake, but staring at it up close, it looked real enough to Kid Sleuth.

  “If not that, what do you want me for then?”

  The Grandmaster took a step back, behind the white light beaming onto the barely pubescent boy’s face. “This is about something much larger than defeating The Inspector in some small and decidedly finite skirmish. I’m not going to win just the day, but every battle of wits and wills for the rest of our time together. My plan today is to leave an indelible, redefining mark on The Inspector. He might foil my plots, but he will never again underestimate me.”

  “You’re off your rocker, Grandmaster. You’re not even making sense.”

  “Of course not, my boy. I admire your zeal and your intellect. I really do respect you, young man. Given the opportunity to flourish into mature adulthood, I easily see you capable of finally defeating me beyond the stalemates I constantly force your mentor to.”