The Super Power Saga (Book 1): Super Powers of Mass Destruction

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  “Hey,” he mumbled, his voice low and smooth and amazing.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice squeaky and weird and dumb.

  “You're new.” He said it like a statement, like he was pointing out something to her that she didn't already know.

  “Yeah. I'm Rainfall. I mean, you're Rainfall. I'm Lucy. I mean, my code name is Retina. I'm Retina. You're Rainfall.” He was staring at her with his amazing blue eyes that looked like crystals and she couldn't keep her words straight. “I know that you're Rainfall because Flex told me. We saw you in the hallway. I wasn't like... spying or anything. I just noticed you.”

  “You live a few doors down from me.”

  Lucy couldn't believe he noticed her too. She giggled and let out a tiny snort. She immediately tried to cover her nose, as if that would change the fact that he had already heard it. She glanced up at him and he was just standing there, holding his tray.

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  “Do you want me to sit down?”

  “Yeah,” she giggled again, but didn't snort. “Sure. I don't really know anyone here yet.”

  He set his tray down and sort of slumped into his seat. “Lucky you.”

  “Lucky me?”

  “You're lucky, not knowing anybody.”

  She cocked her head to the side and asked, “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and stabbed a pile of lettuce.

  Lucy sipped on her straw. “Everyone has been nice, so far. I mean, they're superheroes. Of course they're nice. They like... save people for a living.”

  Rainfall peered between his dreadlocks and said, “Is that why you're here? You want to save people?”

  Lucy laughed. “Of course, silly. Why else would I be here?”

  Rainfall chomped on a mouthful of salad as he considered the question. “Money. Fame. Mental disorder. Undiagnosed aggression issues. Sexual fetish.”

  Lucy choked on her buffalo chicken wrap. “Excuse me?”

  Rainfall nodded his head toward the table of people eating together. “That's just the list of reasons for them. Want me to keep going?”

  Lucy held up both hands, laughing. “No, thanks. I think I've already learned too much about my coworkers.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug, and Lucy could have sworn she saw him smirk, just a bit. “I wish I knew all that before I started.”

  “So why are you here?” She paused and then added, “If it's some weird fetish, please get up and walk away.”

  He grabbed his tray and stood up. Lucy's eyes grew big and her jaw dropped, right before he smiled and sat back down. He chuckled to himself.

  “Jerk,” she said, slapping his arm.

  He stopped chuckling and looked down where she had touched him. He stared at it for a strange amount of time, so Lucy broke the silence.

  “Seriously. Why are you here? Why did you want to be a superhero?”

  Rainfall returned his attention to his salad and said, “I didn't.”

  “You didn't?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, like... why are you here?”

  “We don't have much of a choice, do we? As soon as they see you use your powers, you're in the gang.”

  “Come on. You really didn't want to be a superhero? Nothing about this is interesting to you? I teleported here through a magic doorway, a flying robot greeted me, a girl whose body is like... rubber or something led me through the halls, and they gave me my own code name and superhero symbol. Plus they're going to pay me on top of all that.”

  Rainfall shrugged his shoulders. “This isn't what I wanted to do with my powers. Fight bad guys? Stop SPMDs? And between that I have to workout and train my powers so that I'll be ready when the next one attacks? It's pointless. I could be doing so much more good in the world if they'd...”

  He let his dreadlocks drop down over his face like he was receding into them to hide. Lucy felt a strange need to reach out and comfort him, but she held back. She had embarrassed herself enough for one day.

  “What can you do?” she asked. “Like... what's your power?”

  “I control storms. Rain, lightning, whatever.”

  “Wow. That's awesome! Can you do like... snow and tornadoes and stuff?”

  “Snow depends on whether it's cold out. Never tried to make a tornado.”

  “Wow. Why not? That'd be so cool.”

  Rainfall stabbed another piece of lettuce. “Seems kind of destructive to me.”

  Lucy felt dumb. “Oh, right. I mean, yeah. Of course. I mean, I don't have a power that cool. I'm not even sure why I'm here.”

  He pulled his dreadlocks back and gazed at her with those amazing eyes. “You're here because you want to be a superhero.”

  She giggled. “I really do. Honestly. I've always wanted to be a superhero. But I can see better than other people. That's it. I can see like... really far. Or like... really small things. I can even see through things if I focus hard enough. But like... I never thought that would be enough for them to put me in a costume and...”

  “And what?”

  “And I don't know. I have no clue what I'm doing here. They told me that they'd find a way to use my powers, but...”

  Rainfall nodded his head and looked deep into her eyes. “Promise me something.”

  Lucy was taken aback by the seriousness in his voice. “S-sure. What?”

  “Promise me that no matter what happens, you'll remember why you came here. Promise me you'll remember what it meant to you, right here and now, to be a superhero.”

  “Okay?”

  Rainfall stared at her for a moment, then returned to his lunch. He plucked a cherry tomato out of the salad and held it in front of his eyes, turning it over and over in front of him.

  “When I started here, I thought all I could do was make it rain. They put me in charge of the hydroponic garden. Sure, I wished I could travel the world, help farmers and stuff when there's a drought, but if I had to work in this place, I knew I could be happy in the garden, growing food. It felt satisfying, like I was building something. All you ever see people with powers do is knock things down.”

  Lucy shivered. She was trying to block out the memory of Malignus and how terrified she was every time it turned toward their neighborhood. For nearly an hour she constantly felt like she was seconds away from dying.

  “But then my powers grew,” Rainfall said, his head lowering. “They discovered I could control all aspects of a storm. And as soon as they saw me strike something with a bolt of lightning, they were much more interested in me as a field operative than a gardener.”

  “But you're still saving people. You're stopping something that's trying to kill them. People are scared, and then you show up and they're not scared anymore. You give people hope. Those are amazing things.”

  Rainfall unabashedly smiled, for the first time.

  “I like you,” he said.

  Lucy felt her face blush. She smiled into her buffalo chicken wrap.

  He continued, “you have this naiveté that I find kind of contagious.”

  “Oh,” was all she could muster. She wasn't sure how to react. She was pretty sure he was trying to be nice, but she was also pretty sure he called her naive. And contagious.

  Rainfall took the last bite of his salad and wiped his mouth. He stood up from his chair, grabbed his tray, and whipped his dreadlocks over his shoulder.

  “Thanks for listening to me.”

  “Sure,” she said, searching for something else to look at besides his piercing eyes. “Any time, Rainfall.”

  When he stepped around her, he stopped and leaned in close, his breath tickling her ear as he spoke. “Connor. My name is Connor.”

  She spun around, but he was already walking away and she couldn't help noticing that his butt looked good in his costume. She watched him toss his tray in a bin and step into a transport tube. He gave her a slight wave goodbye before the tube whisked him upward. She let out a sigh when he was gone, her smile wr
apping around the straw in her strawberry shake.

  Being a superhero was going to be awesome.

  24

  MIGUEL

  He was already suited up when his father entered the arsenal. He had been practicing equipping his own suit without his father's help, trying to beat his previous time. It was a subtle way for his father to see him as more of a partner and less of a sidekick, which was everything Miguel wanted. He saw hints, moments here and there when his father saw him as something more, something closer to equal, but those moments were fleeting. Miguel was realistic. He knew that it may take years for his father and mother to trust him, to respect him, to believe in his abilities. Miguel knew that when that moment arrived, the three of them would be unstoppable.

  “Everything has been set in motion,” his father said as he walked right past Miguel. “The plan is on schedule. There is no room for error or delay from this point forward.”

  “Yes, sir.” Miguel nodded.

  Miguel's father slid his arms into his suit coat. “Your mother is preparing the helicopter for us. We leave in five.”

  Miguel smiled with excitement and tightened his tie as he followed his father through the back door of their secret command center. A stairwell led upward, opening into a small hangar. An unmarked helicopter, designed by his mother, sat on a small landing pad. Dual rotors extended out on either side of the sleek body, and when Miguel followed his father toward the vehicle, he saw his mother sitting in the cockpit.

  “You always say we shouldn't fly in this,” Miguel said to his mother. “You said it was elitist to look down on the city.”

  “In order to never forget who we are, we should spend as much time as possible among the people, with our feet on the earth,” his mother said as if reciting her favorite poem. “If you spend too much time flying around the heavens, you might think you're a god. But even though we shouldn't flaunt our abilities, we should never let our humility handicap us. Tonight's plan will require the use of a helicopter. We have a helicopter. Therefore, tonight we fly.”

  Miguel hopped into the back seat next to his father. His mother flipped a few switches above her head and pushed forward on the rotor accelerator. The helicopter lifted off the landing pad and the rooftop split open, exposing the night sky. They rose out of the MajesTech building and banked to the right, pointing the nose of the helicopter toward the coastline. Crews of Alliance members and city workers could be seen working throughout the night, every night. They had quelled all the fires, but there was still a black cloud that hung over the entire scene of the battle. The city would come together to help in the rebuilding, and MajesTech would be at the forefront. Miguel's mother told him that rebuilding the city was a very lucrative thing to do, and his father reminded him that it was also the right thing to do. They could help others, and themselves.

  When they reached the coast, Miguel's mother lowered the helicopter's altitude, flying a few feet above the ocean. While the waves rolled underneath them, Miguel searched the horizon with the low-light vision in his glasses activated. A glimmer of light grew in size as they approached it, and as it did, Miguel could begin to see a man-made island floating in the ocean. Four white towers stuck up from the center of the island, surrounded by tall walls.

  As soon as they neared the edge of the island, Miguel's father touched Miguel's chest, pushing him back in his seat. Miguel's mother yanked on the control stick and pointed the helicopter straight into the air. Gravity pressed against Miguel's entire body as the helicopter climbed toward the stars, and as soon as it slowed, reaching the apex of its ascent, Miguel and his father dove out the door, just like they had practiced.

  As they plummeted toward the island, Miguel tried to control his breathing. He knew he needed to wait for the count, for his body to be under the radar when he activated his hover shoes, but the solid ground was rushing toward him so fast, it didn't seem possible that the countdown was going quickly enough. He glanced over at his father, who was falling only a few feet away, and put his trust in him. He continued the count without looking down, keeping his stare locked onto the man he knew he could trust with his life.

  The count reached zero and Miguel activated the button on his watch. A focused beam of energy shot out of his shoes, slamming into the ground and jerking his body back upward. It was only a single shot, so his body fell again, but this time it was only from twenty feet above the courtyard. The powered exoskeleton in his suit took the brunt of the fall, but when he stood up straight, he saw six soldiers looking at him. He readied himself for a fight. He raised his watch at them, but his father dropped out of the sky, crushing one of them under his weight. He backhanded another, then swept his leg into another soldier's legs, sending the man to the ground. When he rose up from his crouched position, he slammed the palm of his hand into the jaw of the soldier who was reaching for a radio. He then grabbed the last two by their faces and shoved them backward, slamming the backs of their skulls into the ground. With one last kick, he knocked out the soldier he had tripped and then began dragging the bodies into a small alcove behind a utility building. Miguel hustled to his father's side and helped him move the other bodies. When they finished hiding and sedating the soldiers, Miguel's father pointed across the courtyard.

  “Second tallest tower. Move.”

  They both ran toward the tower, weaving between the searchlights that scanned the ground. When they reached the entrance, there were more soldiers. Miguel glanced up the tower and saw no windows. There was only one way in.

  “I need a loop on the front entrance camera.”

  “Yes, dear,” Miguel's mother responded into their earpieces. “Looping now.”

  Miguel's father incapacitated the guards with a few flying kicks to their heads. Then they took the time to sedate and hide the bodies again while Miguel's mother hacked into the tower's locks from the helicopter. Seconds later there was a loud buzz and his father flung open the front door.

  Once inside, Miguel's mother gave them directions through the maze of hallways, using security cameras to watch the guards. She deactivated motion detectors when needed and bypassed security protocols to gain them access to higher levels. They slowly and meticulously made their way through the facility without anyone knowing. When they reached the last stairwell that led to the top floor, Miguel's father stopped.

  “This is it. No hesitation. We grab her and finish the plan. Got it?”

  Miguel nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  His father nodded back and pushed open the door. Three scientists were on the other side, standing in a large, open room. A few devices housed in cabinets were scattered around the center of the room, dials and readouts covering them. The scientists all looked toward the door with stunned expressions on their faces when Miguel's father entered. He bolted toward them, crossing the expanse of the room and landing a series of punches and kicks between the three of them before they could react. When they all dropped to the floor, Miguel ran over to the large cube in the center of the room.

  “Is this her?” he said with excitement. “Is she inside this thing?”

  Miguel's father stepped up to the controls on the side of the cube and flipped a switch. The cube lit up inside and Miguel saw a small girl laying on the floor with a green, stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. Her dress looked faded and dirty, and her hair was a mess.

  “That's her.” Miguel's father pointed at a strange device sitting nearby and said, “Grab that tube.”

  But Miguel didn't move. He just stared at the girl. She was so small, almost like a toy. Her frail arms wobbled as she lifted herself off the floor. Her eyes blinked open, like pools of green that held the most innocent gaze.

  “Grab the tube!” Miguel's father yelled.

  “This can't be her. She's-”

  His father stomped around the cube and grabbed the device himself. He rushed toward a small circle near the floor of the cube and screwed the tube's connection onto it. When the girl saw what Miguel's father was doing, she ran over
to him and pounded on the wall of the cube. Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes, and when they rolled down her cheeks, Miguel ran toward his father and grabbed his hand away from the tube.

  “What are you doing? We can't-”

  Miguel's father backhanded him, knocking him to the floor. Then his father continued screwing the tube on and picked up the device it was attached to, a small box with dials and switches and a shoulder strap for carrying. He slung it over his shoulder and flipped three switches. The device started to shake and grind until it kicked in. A loud hum emanated from the back of the device, and the tube constricted. Miguel saw the girl's body break apart, turning into a green, cloudy mist that was sucked through the tube and into the device. The device let out a DING and shut down.

  Miguel climbed to his feet, stunned by what he had witnessed as much as his father's strike. His father rushed over to the eastern wall of the building and retrieved small discs from his jacket pocket. He stuck the disks to the wall in a circle. When he was finished, he rushed to the far wall and pressed a button on his watch. The wall exploded outward in a loud concussive blast, leaving a man-sized hole that exposed the outside. Miguel suddenly heard an alarm begin to wail as well as helicopter blades spinning closer. A rope dropped down in front of the hole and Miguel's father took off running. He dove out of the hole and grasped onto the rope, yanking himself up using only his arms. Miguel followed him as the door to the laboratory opened and another scientist yelled for him to stop. Miguel flung himself out of the hole, gripped onto the rope, and climbed toward the helicopter hovering above them. His mother banked the helicopter toward the ocean and Miguel was dragged through the air as soldiers fired at them. Each bullet that managed to hit him bounced off his suit, leaving only a bruise underneath, and when they passed over the wall, Miguel continued his climb. When he reached the edge of the door, his father grabbed the back of his suit and yanked him onto the floor of the helicopter. Miguel moved to climb to his feet, but his father stomped on his back, flattening him back down onto to the floor.