We Could Be Heroes

by Harmon Cooper

  He let those four into his home, and he stupidly tried to show off his invention, knowing that it would have been better to give them his mind-control drug before asking Mia to transform into the monster.

  He had been hasty, blinded by the money he assumed the Knight Corporation was going to throw at him.

  “Mia!” he cried, knowing that she wouldn’t answer.

  She was either dead or gone, Dr. Hamza couldn’t remember, all he could remember was passing out at the start of the explosion, his eyes blinking open as he was dragged out of a hole and set on the grass, trying to take out one of the damn kids with his wrist guard weapon and failing, his energy leaving him, becoming weak as something drained him of his lifeforce.

  It was a damn shame how it had played out.

  Dr. Hamza had put his inheritance into building this lab, and without it, he wouldn’t be able to continue his experiments. He wouldn’t be able to perfect his medicines or try new chemical combinations.

  And there was more.

  His dormant power—one that allowed him to identify chemicals instantly, to see their molecular makeup, to know how to combine them, the words and molecular structures literally appearing before his very eyes—was making itself known and didn’t seem to be going away.

  Which was something he didn’t want.

  While Dr. Hamza wanted others to unlock their potential, he only liked to use his sparingly. It was too strong, and he preferred being able to dose himself with small amounts of his serum, just enough to use it for a limited time.

  But now there were chemicals everywhere, and focusing on anything showed him their molecular structure, 3D diagrams appearing before him, diagrams he knew he could move aside and zoom in on, and do other things that made him, or would have made him, a profoundly powerful intelligence-based exemplar.

  It was overwhelming, and knowing he couldn’t get his hallucinations to go away would drive him mad.

  An idea came to Dr. Hamza, a thought regarding how he should proceed.

  He started laughing, stretching his neck back, the crown of his head on the ground as he looked behind him, laughing harder.

  It was a wonder he had never come up with the idea before; it only went to show just how narrow-minded he had been.

  Dr. Hamza could start the experiments in what was left of his home, clearing a space in the living area if it still stood. He knew who his enemies were, and it wouldn’t be very hard to find a famous heiress like Helena Knight.

  And Dr. Hamza would have continued laughing too had he not felt the force of something landing behind him, a silvery form taking shape in the starlight, scaled metal, large wings, a terrifying jaw, orange eyes.

  Oh shit...

  “Mia,” he mumbled, trying to press himself back to his feet but ultimately failing. Mia walked around Dr. Hamza until she was facing him, her muscles pulsing as she breathed deeply, staring him down.

  “I can fix it, Mia, I promise!” he cried. “I promise!”

  Mia placed her foot on his knee, and put pressure on it, reaching down with her hands and pulling his leg up in the opposite direction, snapping the bone instantly, a terrible pain whipping through Dr. Hamza.

  Crouching down, she brought his leg up and broke it at the shin, and from there at his ankle. Dr. Hamza beat at the ground, screaming for her to stop, pleading with her, promising that he could cure her, that he could fix all of this, that she just needed to give him a little time.

  But Mia wasn’t going to give him any time. Instead she was going to focus on his other leg, and from there his thighs, and finally his lower spine.

  Standing and moving to his other knee, she performed the same routine, pulling his leg up until it snapped.

  By the time she had finished, Dr. Hamza knew he would never walk again. And in that moment, he wished she would just end it, that she would finish him off.

  But this demoness, this beast of a woman, simply crouched before him, her wicked mouth lifting into a grin as she stared deep into Dr. Hamza’s dark little eyes.

  Her wings rose and she was airborne, leaving him crippled and stranded.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Bedroom Scene

  (But not in the way that you are thinking…)

  Longest day ever?

  That was about how Sam was feeling as he retired to his bedroom and took a quick shower, not at all hungry. Food continued to be an issue for him; instantly knowing its origin had definitely turned him on a course to vegetarianism.

  Now relaxing on his bed, his hands behind his head, Sam took a big breath in, taking in some of the history of the room. Decades ago, this mansion had belonged to Helena’s grandfather, and it had been built to be a family home, a host of bedrooms connected to a large living space.

  One sniff of the pillow and he knew that the pillowcase was crafted of the best cotton in Centralia, a rare form of blue cotton grown in the Eastern Province, under the shade of beautiful oak trees at a farm that only produced a couple of bales a year.

  He sensed that the wood of the bedframe was from a rare type of sycamore that grew in the Southern Alliance, known for its sturdiness, its thickness, and its considerable price. That the piece was custom-made for the Knight family’s mansion, a general aesthetic that ran through all the bedrooms.

  Everything had a history, and he actually liked that part about his new ability, aside from when it was overwhelming. It was nice to understand more about the life of things, to get a sudden appreciation of something that he may not have noticed before.

  And Sam would have continued sniffing and observing shit in the room if Dinah hadn’t passed through the door, startling him.

  The ghost woman stood there for a moment, her head tilted to the side before finally lifting a finger toward the door.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Ozella said, letting herself in.

  It was the first time he’d seen her in sleepwear, a cute, pale blue nightgown, which allowed her breasts to relax a little, less of the push-up effect of the bra she normally wore. It had her initials monogramed on it; Sam instantly knew this had been something Helena arranged.

  “What’s up?” Sam asked as he sat up a little, his head now on the headboard. He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand.

  “I just wanted to strategize with you a little more,” Ozella said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  Sam didn’t quite feel sexual tension between them, but he did notice that she was closer to him than she normally would have been while wearing such a revealing outfit.

  “I’m going to stay up most of the night anyway,” she explained, “and I want to start preparing us for our future.”

  “You mean the team?”

  “Yes, we have these powers now, and we were already talking about forming a group before. Now we have no reason not to. I believe it’s going to be a little hard for Zoe at first, but with her strong will, I think she will become an asset in the future.”

  Sam started to say something but stopped himself, letting Ozella continue.

  “We already have the wrist guard we took from Dr. Hamza. And we can get you some more weapons which will provide long-range capabilities for you. Me too. I will probably have to get something that’s long-range, and will need training on that. But Helena can afford to get us training, uniforms too. I’m glad her power has made itself known.”

  Sam nodded, impressed that she was leaning into this so hard.

  But the look of conviction on her face didn’t match her twitching pupils. She had already revealed that she could see the stats that she wrote in her book; he imagined once she got used to it, she would be able to do much more than that, allowing them to improve, almost as if they had a trainer who could see every part of their ability.

  Yet at the moment she looked beat to hell, just about as tired as he was.

  “We’ve already discussed this,” Sam reminded her. “It’ll take a few days to get everything together. We’ll follow up on this lead that we picked up from the crime scene,
the piece of paper from the notebook with blood on it, and go from there. But we need to rest first, and make sure the transformations are complete.”

  “We’re freaks now,” she said firmly.

  “Freaks?” Sam smirked at Ozella. “Have you been talking to Zoe?”

  “I see details of everything around me, and now Dinah is constantly following me, and even you all can see her. I would classify that as somewhat freaky. Zoe too with her tiger face.”

  “Quiet, she may hear you…” Sam was joking, but then he remembered that Zoe now had tiger ears, and he assumed that her sense of hearing had been heightened some.

  “I don’t mean that in a mean way. I think she looks cool; I’m just saying we’re freaks now,” Ozella finally said, biting her lip.

  “Is this what you came in here to tell me?”

  Ozella yawned. “Maybe I should get some rest.”

  “That’s exactly what you should do; you shouldn’t be up all night thinking about how all this works together, or our stats, or how we’re suddenly freaks. Just get some rest, and we’ll see how we feel in the morning. Maybe there’s a way that we can turn your power on and off, I really don’t know. Also, about Dinah…”

  Just saying her name caused Dinah’s form to brighten, as she moved from nearly invisible to semitransparent.

  She stood at the edge of the bed now, awaiting an order.

  Ozella looked at her fondly. “She’s been in my life since I was young. As young as I can remember.”

  “And you have no idea who she is exactly, right?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, she clearly doesn’t talk, but she does seem to understand gestures.” Sam waved at her and the pale, ghostlike woman lifted her hand and waved back, no expression on her face as she did so.

  “I’m sorry that you all see her now. Maybe I can get her not to come around as much.”

  “She doesn’t really bother me too much, and I don’t think she bothers the others,” Sam assured her. “Besides, she’s an integral part of what we might have to do in the future. Her ability to heal us is why we’re all alive. She led me to all of you back in the laboratory, I might not have found you in time if she hadn’t. Thank you, Dinah.”

  Dinah grinned, moving her hair out of her face so Sam could get a better look at her.

  “I guess it’s a good thing,” Ozella said.

  “We’re going to get through this,” Sam assured her, “but we all need some rest. Let’s regroup tomorrow, start some training, follow this lead if we’re feeling up to it, get some uniforms, the whole nine yards. Let’s become some heroes.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, and part of Sam knew this. But it seemed to cheer Ozella up, which was important.

  It was going to be easy for them to become heroes, but to become an officially registered exemplar team, well, that was going to be damn near impossible.

  The odds they would face were incredible, from being discovered as non-exemplars (regardless of the fact they now had powers), to run-ins with officially licensed exemplar teams.

  There wasn’t a part of their plan that would be easy.

  It would take blood, sweat and tears, something Sam was willing to put into this endeavor, something he was willing to give his life for.

  He only hoped the others felt the same way.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: To Exemplar or Not to Exemplar

  (No time to sit around the mansion licking their wounds when there are vampires afoot!)

  Zoe Goa Ramone awoke early the next morning.

  She had slept better than anticipated, but once she was up, her brain was alert, her eyes able to take in the smallest details of her darkened room.

  “That’s new,” she said as she glanced around, a greenish outline to everything.

  She moved out of bed quickly, springing to her feet, noticing a strength in her upper body that she hadn’t felt before.

  Sure, Zoe had always been limber, but she didn’t have the agility that Helena possessed, able to flip around the room, maintain her balance and equilibrium at high speeds. And Zoe was doing this in the dark, rolling onto her bed, springboarding off, flipping, landing on her hands or feet, it didn’t matter, she never lost her balance.

  So that was new.

  And for just a second, she hoped that with her newfound agility had come with a face that wasn’t half transformed. In this regard, she was mistaken, her evidence becoming apparent as she stepped into the bathroom and turned the light on.

  “Shit,” she whispered as she took in her facial features.

  The right side was slightly furry, orange, white, black, whiskers, just about everything a cat possessed. Her human ears gone, replaced by two rounded tiger ears, the tips pointed.

  That was another thing she’d need to get used to: her ears were no longer on the side of her head, they were on top, like a tiger. It wasn’t something she’d immediately noticed yesterday. But now, looking at her reflection, moving her hair to the side and seeing that her jawline simply extended upward, Zoe felt hideous, like some type of mutant.

  “Half-breed,” she told herself, looking down at her hands, her claws taking shape as anger swelled inside her.

  She twisted to look at her tail, which jutted out from the top of her panty line. Upon closer examination, she saw that her thigh muscles were more defined than they’d been yesterday, her ass just a little bigger.

  And she almost broke the mirror at that point, even thinking about punching it until it shattered, but she ultimately decided that type of anger was useless, especially when there was a gym just one door down.

  So, after taking one more look at herself, placing her hands on her breasts, and again seeing that no other part of her body showed signs of morphing into a tiger, Zoe put a bra on, a loose top, and went for a pair of athletic tights.

  She knew that the waistline would press against the top of her tail, which meant that she would need to make a little modification. To do so, she used her nail to cut a hole in the material big enough for her tail to fit through.

  Once they were on, her tail slipped right through, fitting snugly.

  Annoyed, and ready to test her limits, Zoe exited her room, just a bit of yellow morning light coming through the huge windows on the other side of the living area.

  She turned to Sam’s door, stopping in front of it for just a moment, wondering if Helena was in there, her ears twitching at the thought.

  “Fuck them,” Zoe told herself as she continued on her way.

  Once she reached the gym, she flicked the light on, still impressed by such a large training space.

  Helena Knight was rich beyond Zoe’s wildest imagination, and her gym had more equipment than many of the private gyms Zoe had visited since she had started her regimen. Everything from parallel bars to free weights and dummies, Helena’s gym was well-stocked.

  After taking a quick look around, Zoe began with the parallel bars.

  It had never been something she was all that interested in, aside from using it for calisthenics and push-ups. This was why she surprised herself when she ran toward the parallel bars, bounced off the ground and hit the air, able to catch herself with both hands on the bars and actually sustain her weight, twist around, land on the right bar with one foot, nearly losing her balance for a second but immediately correcting, sustaining the pose.

  Zoe was breathing just a little heavier now, shocked that her body had actually pulled any of this off, even if she had been the one to instigate the movement.

  She hopped down and came at it again, this time doing a spin, once again suspending her weight with her hands, performing a midair split before she lowered herself to the ground again.

  Her ears came to attention at the sound of something down the hallway.

  The door opened, and Zoe turned to the entrance to the gym, watching as Helena entered.

  “I thought I heard you in here.” The heiress wore a sweatband that matched the subtle pink of her exercise clothing, her h
air in two tight ponytails.

  “I needed to blow off some steam,” Zoe said.

  “You sure have a lot of steam.” Helena took a few steps closer to her. “Are you becoming more comfortable with your powers?”

  “Something like that,” Zoe said, trying not to snort at the question.

  “I’m assuming you’re faster now, and more agile. Is this what you are experiencing?”

  “Well, when you put it like that, yes. That’s exactly what I’m experiencing. I’m also experiencing this,” she said, pointing at the furry side of her face.

  “I know it’s not what you were hoping for.”

  Now Zoe did snort.

  “Not what I was hoping for? It’s the exact opposite of what I was hoping for. But you know what? It’s my fault. I was stupid enough to think that this wacko doctor’s serum would unlock some dormant power within me. It turns out that it did unlock something, and that power is not going away. So maybe I got what I deserved. Maybe it’s some type of poetic justice. But it sure is going to screw up my career as a model.”

  “We’ll have to see how it plays out,” Helena said, starting her morning stretches. “Care to join me?”

  Zoe gave her a skeptical look.

  “I know that you can do some pretty serious hand-to-hand combat, and that was before you were gifted a pair of claws, but if you wanted to flip around and increase your agility, well, that’s my wheelhouse.”

  And the way Helena said this wasn’t cocky at all, simply matter-of-fact.

  It was true, Helena had been training in combat dance for years, and even though she hated to admit it, Zoe knew she could learn something from the lean woman.

  “Okay, let’s do things your way for a while,” she said with a shrug. “Where shall we start?”

  “We need to start with your core,” Helena said, pointing to Zoe’s stomach. Zoe was muscular, her abs visible, which was why she found it strange that Helena wanted to focus on this part of her body.

  “Why my core?” she finally asked.

  “I can clearly see you’re muscular, but muscles and the ability to truly stretch are two opposite things. So let’s start there, let’s start by seeing just how much we can bend you.”