by Lucas Flint
I waited in my room for what felt like an eternity, although it had only been about forty minutes according to my phone before the door opened and Adams stuck his head inside. His expression hadn’t changed at all; in fact, he looked angrier than ever. I sat up in my bed, feeling even guiltier than before, even though all I had done was sit on my bed and eat lunch for the past forty minutes.
“Mr. Fry,” said Adams, his tone laced with anger, “Mr. Pullman has returned and wishes to speak with you about your future employment with us.”
“Did he beat the supervillain?” I said. “Is he okay? How did he—”
I abruptly stopped speaking when Adams’s glare became even harsher. It felt like he was firing invisible laser beams at me from his eyes, so I just slid off the bed and followed Adams out of my room.
Rubberman sat at the kitchen table. His mask lay on the table next to a tall glass of water that he sipped from. His hair, which normally was combed back and neat, looked messy and out of place now. And, even though he was only 30, he looked much older, based on his haggard face. Based on the way he winced when he moved, I could tell he must have taken a pretty serious beating from whoever he’d fought, especially when I noticed that the chest part of his costume was ripped, revealing the white under suit beneath.
I sat down on the other side of the table opposite him, while Adams stood just behind Rubberman to his right, like a soldier awaiting orders from his general. Rubberman didn’t smile when he looked at me, but he didn’t scowl at me like Adams, either. He just looked tired, even though he had only been gone for an hour at most.
“Uh,” I said, breaking the ice. “You look … bad.”
Rubberman didn’t change his facial expression. He just ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you fight supervillains. I’m used to it, though it does start to take a toll on your body after a while, even when you have a rubber body like mine.”
“Who was the supervillain you fought?” I said, although I felt stupid asking the question.
“The Demolisher,” said Rubberman. He rubbed his forehead. “He and I have clashed before. His gimmick is super strength combined with fists like hammers, which he uses to demolish his opponents; hence his name. He was robbing a bank and had taken hostages. Of course, he’s not very smart, so I managed to beat him fairly easily, but he still got in more than a few good hits.”
“Did he kill anyone?” I said.
Rubberman shook his head. “No. He injured a lot of people, but nothing lethal or serious. The bank is a mess, though, and it’s going to cost them a lot of money to fix all of that. But the Demolisher is now in police custody and will be shipped to prison, probably for life, so I don’t think he’ll be a threat to anyone for a while.”
I nodded, but my guilt finally overrode me and I suddenly leaned forward and said, “I am so, so sorry for destroying your office. There was a ninja and I—”
I shut up as soon as Rubberman held up a hand. Based on how he was still rubbing his forehead, I wondered if he was suffering from a bad headache or something.
I thought Rubberman was going to start shouting at me, but instead he said, “Calm down and start from the beginning. Tell me what happened. Leave out no details.”
Rubberman, again, did not sound angry. He just sounded tired, but also a little curious. I took that as a good sign, so I told Rubberman and Adams exactly what happened, just as I remembered it. Neither of them interrupted me, not even to ask questions, but I could sense that Adams didn’t believe a word I said. Rubberman was a harder read; he just seemed to be listening without judgment.
Once I finished my story, neither Rubberman nor Adams spoke for at least a minute. I didn’t know why. Were they just thinking it over? Or were they thinking about how to respond? Maybe Rubberman was thinking about exactly how he was going to tell me that I was fired and would never be allowed to come back here again.
I couldn’t handle the silence, so I said, “Rubberman, I’m sorry. You probably think I’m just making it up to avoid getting into trouble and you’re going to fire me, so I’ll just go and grab my things now. I’ll leave my costume in my room; maybe you can give it to your next sidekick.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up, but then Rubberman held up a hand and said, “Stay.”
He spoke very authoritatively, so I immediately sat back down. I started tugging at the sleeves of my costume; it was a nervous habit I’d picked up over the years. I also pushed the frame of my glasses up the ridge of my nose, which was how I remembered I was wearing glasses and explained why Rubberman and Adams looked so odd through my cracked lenses.
Finally, Rubberman said, “So a ninja tried to kill you in my office.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I know that’s no excuse for wrecking your office, so—”
“I wasn’t done talking,” said Rubberman. “Please don’t respond unless I ask you a question.”
I immediately shut my mouth. I still tugged at the sleeves of my costume.
Rubberman continued speaking in the same level tone as before. “Fixing the damage that you caused to my office will cost a lot of money. It’s not the worst damage I’ve ever had to repair—in fact, it’s quite cheap in the grand scheme of things—but it is an expense I didn’t expect to have to pay this month. Thankfully, I have a special bank account set aside for paying for these kinds of repairs, so I won’t have to worry about taking money from other expenses.”
“Special bank account?” I said. “Do you mean you—”
“Alex,” said Rubberman. “What did I just say?”
I immediately shut my mouth again. I wondered if I could use my laser beams to melt myself into a puddle; at least that way, I wouldn’t have to endure Rubberman’s disappointed look.
“But yes, this type of damage is to be expected in this business,” said Rubberman. “You’d be surprised at how often supervillains break into superhero’s bases and tear them apart. It’s something that every professional in this business anticipates and prepares for. We also anticipate accidents caused by powers, either from ourselves or from our sidekicks. So I won’t be docking this from your pay.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, but I still didn’t say anything.
“But I won’t be paying you time and a half for your training,” said Rubberman. “You will just get normal pay.”
I looked at Rubberman in hope. “So I’m not fired after—” I cut myself off when I remembered what Rubberman said about not speaking.
“No, you won’t be fired,” said Rubberman. “I believe your story about the ninja because Adams showed me the melted knife. I also found evidence on my computer that someone had stolen files from it and I know you didn’t steal it.”
I looked at Rubberman with a questioning look, because I still wasn’t allowed to ask questions.
“That was the first thing I looked at when I got back,” Rubberman said. “I found evidence that someone had copied and tried to delete some very important files. Whoever did it wasn’t very smart, though, because I have all my files backed up, so it was easy to restore them. Still, it’s pretty clear to me that this was a case of corporate espionage.”
I bit my lower lip, so Rubberman said, “You can talk now if you want.”
“Corporate espionage?” I repeated in a breathless voice from holding it in for so long. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that one of my competitors sent a spy to steal some important information from me in order to undermine and possibly even cripple my business,” said Rubberman.
“You mean another superhero hired someone to steal from you?” I said.
Rubberman nodded grimly. “Or someone else who wants to destroy my business.”
“Is that … common in this industry?” I said.
“More common than you’d think,” said Rubberman with a sigh. “We superheroes like to put on a cheery picture for the public, but the truth is that this business is just like any other. There’s a ton of competition and sometimes
this competition causes us to act in … ethically questionable ways, to put it lightly.”
“Who do you think could have done it?” I said. “Someone you know?”
“I can think of a few people who would be more than happy to cripple my business,” said Rubberman. He scowled. “But I never thought they’d try to kill my own sidekick. I can tolerate a lot of things, but threatening the lives of my employees is not one of them.”
“What are you going to do?” I said. “Sue them?”
“No,” said Rubberman. “I don’t even know for sure who did it. But I will find out one way or another, even if that means bringing down the full wrath of the law upon them.”
“How will you find out who did it?” I said.
“That’s not for you to know,” said Rubberman. “What is for you to know, however, is your future with us.”
“But you said you weren’t going to fire me,” I said quickly. “Right?”
“Right, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to make some changes,” said Rubberman. “It is my fault that you had been left alone and had to defend yourself from that thief. I want to make sure that you don’t end up in that situation again.”
“How so?” I said.
“First off, we’re going to make training you our top priority,” said Rubberman. “Every day for the next week or so, we will spend an hour and a half training your powers. I see great potential in your eye beams, but at the moment they’re more of a problem than a help. So we will focus on making sure that you can control them so you don’t end up causing more damage than is necessary in a fight. I’ve trained sidekicks in using their powers before, so I know how to do it.”
“Okay,” I said. “What else will we do?”
“We’ll also enhance the security of the Elastic Cave,” said Rubberman. “I have no idea how the ninja got in here without our security systems informing us. Adams, I want you to run a diagnostic check on the security systems and see if you can find any flaws that the ninja may have exploited to get in.”
“Yes, sir,” said Adams, nodding.
“In addition, I will give you more training in actual hand to hand combat,” said Rubberman. “Not every supervillain or criminal can be handled with eye beams, so you will need to learn how to fight in other ways as well.”
“Like boxing?” I said.
Rubberman frowned. “Boxing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to learn boxing. Will you teach it to me?”
“I can’t teach you boxing, but I can teach you general self-defense techniques,” said Rubberman. “Given how you managed to survive against that ninja, even though he was obviously aiming to kill, I think you have potential. Was that your first fight?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve fought my brother before, although he didn’t try to kill me.”
“I figured as much,” said Rubberman. He stroked his chin in thought. “You have the right instincts. We just need to refine them.”
“All right,” I said. “Are there any other changes you will need to make?”
“No, that’s about it,” said Rubberman. “I still need to think over this situation and investigate the stolen files. That will help me narrow down the list of suspects who would want to steal from me.”
“All right,” I said. “What will we do for the rest of the day?”
“I think you should go home,” said Rubberman. “You can come back on Monday after school. Home is safer than the Cave at the moment, so that is where you need to be right now.”
“But I just got here,” I said. “Can’t I stay a bit longer, even if only to learn a few more things about the Cave?”
Rubberman, however, shook his head. “No. You’ve learned the basics and you can learn the rest on Monday after school. For now, Adams and I will need to secure the Cave and do the necessary research to figure out how this happened.”
My shoulders slumped. I wanted to argue with him more, but Rubberman was the boss, so I said, “Okay. Guess I’ll be leaving now.”
“Remember to leave your costume,” said Rubberman, gesturing at the door to my room behind me. “It will be here when you get back and it will be nice, clean, and repaired, too.”
I nodded, stood up, and turned around and left. I was relieved that I was not going to get fired; however, I was now worried about that ninja. Would he come back to finish the job? I doubted it, because if what Rubberman said was true, then the ninja really only wanted to steal some of his files and had only tried to kill me so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. Now that I had told Rubberman, though, there wasn’t any reason for the ninja to come after me.
I hoped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I rode my bike through the streets of Golden City slowly, partly due to how exhausted I was from my fight with the ninja, but also partly due to the fact that my glasses were still cracked. I had to go slowly so I wouldn’t accidentally run into someone or something else, although I took a back route that would allow me to avoid most of the people and traffic. I didn’t stop anywhere to grab a bite to eat, mostly because I wasn’t hungry, but also because I just wanted to get home. I thought I saw a ninja hiding in every shadow and on top of every building, but whenever I looked, I would see nothing, except for maybe a dog or a cat every now and then.
I still didn’t relax or slow down until I arrived at my house. It was a typical suburban house located on the outskirts of the city amid dozens of similar homes built years ago. I had been born and raised in this house, so just seeing it was enough to make me feel safe and secure. Of course, I didn’t feel entirely safe until I passed the gates and locked them firmly behind me; granted, the fence was short enough that anyone could jump it if they wanted, but the sound of the lock closing made me feel safer anyway. I looked up and down our street one last time before I turned and walked up to the front porch. No one else was out on the street at the moment except Mr. Tyson, one of our neighbors, an elderly man who lived across the street from us. He was tending to his garden and didn’t even seem to be paying attention to me, which was pretty usual, since Mr. Tyson always seemed to be in his own world, at least whenever I interacted with him anyway.
Turning around, I took my bike up the front steps and leaned it against the porch’s railing; I didn’t bother to lock it up, since my neighborhood was pretty safe and crime rates were extremely low. I also doubted that the ninja, if he was still after me, would try to take my bike; it wasn’t very valuable and wouldn’t help him get me anyway.
Before I entered the house, I looked over at the driveway. Dad’s car was gone, probably because he had gone to work (although given that today was a Saturday, I didn’t know what Dad would be doing at the high school where he worked as a coach). James’ red pickup, however, was still parked in the driveway, which meant that James was staying home today, rather than going out on a date with a new girlfriend or something. I didn’t understand how James always managed to have a new girlfriend pretty much every time he visited from college; in fact, I was shocked when he came back home this time without any girlfriend, and when I asked him about it, he just blew off my question and claimed that he was taking a ‘break’ from girls for a while.
That made even less sense to me. How do you take a ‘break’ from girls? I had never had a girlfriend of my own. Yes, I had a crush on Greta, but that was all. It wasn’t that I was creepy or a weirdo; I just found it hard to approach girls. I kept asking James for tips on how to pick up girls, but he always seemed to ignore me whenever I asked, and when he didn’t ignore me, he’d just tell me to figure it out on my own because it wasn’t ‘rocket science.’ Maybe so, but that didn’t mean it was intuitive or obvious, and Dad wasn’t much help despite having been married to Mom for 20 years now. The only thing I could figure out was that girls liked guys with money and cars; that’s what I hoped my sidekick gig would get me, assuming I didn’t accidentally blow up the Elastic Cave during one of my training sessions, anyway.
Shaking my
head, I entered the house and shouted, “Mom! I’m—”
I stepped on something on the floor and looked down to see that I had walked into a string of some sort. At first, I had no idea what it was until I noticed that the strong went above my head. I heard something metal tip over and I looked up just in time to get a bucketful of cold water in my face.
The water splashed all over me, instantly soaking me and my clothes. I cried out in shock and almost slipped, but I grabbed onto the door for support, although I didn’t feel very supported at the moment. The floor underneath me was wet, too, and my glasses were now covered with water, which I would have wiped away if my own shirt hadn’t also been wet.
A loud laugh—more like a snort—came from above, causing me to look up at the top of my stairs. Through my wet lenses, I saw the grinning and chuckling face of my older brother James, his brown hair draped around his face like a curtain, chuckling like he had just pulled off the prank of the century. My eyes began to heat up, but I caught myself before I could turn James into slag and I snapped, “James, what the hell? How did you know I would be back home early?”
James clapped excitedly. “I didn’t. I actually expected it to be Dad, but the fact that you got the bucket instead is even better.”
I scowled. Even though James was three years older than me, he sure acted like a big kid at times. That made his acquisition of different girlfriends an even bigger mystery; why would any girl like such an immature guy? I didn’t go around playing dumb pranks like this, except with James and that was only occasionally, too.
Regardless, I heard Mom shout from the kitchen, “James! I heard the bucket fall. Mop up that mess right now before your father gets home.”
I was pleased to see James’ smug grin instantly vanish. James may not have been afraid to upset me, but he always did what Mom told him to do even now that he didn’t live in the house any longer. And he never disobeyed Dad. Ever.
