Rise of Heroes

by Hayden Thorne

  I’m definitely not an old-fashioned girl.

  “So—the whole time I was passed out at the Trill’s hideaway—he wasn’t using his Nocturne thing to manipulate my mind? All he did was rig my glasses and then screw around with me by saying he used music on me.”

  You got it.

  “The bastard.” I paused, rubbing my eyes with my damp sleeve. God, I wanted to beat the crap out of him. “My family—he said that he’ll kill them if—”

  “It’s not a good idea to go home yet,” Peter replied. “Your family’s fine. They’ve all been evacuated from your house. At the moment, the place is being searched for hidden devices and stuff.”

  “Where are they?”

  “At a safe place. I’m supposed to take you there.”

  I watched Peter fold my glasses’ temples, but he held on to them. “What about the Trill? Shouldn’t you be going after him?”

  “Trent’s taking care of him as we speak. He’s got the rest of Vintage City’s police department with him, backing him up. Althea kept the conversation with him long enough for us to trace the source.”

  “The Trill’s screwed, then,” I said, laughing tiredly.

  Peter smiled behind his mask. “I’d help Trent out, but we agreed that this is his fight. The Trill’s thugs are mostly behind bars. The rest of them are hiding somewhere. We might not be able to round them all up, but as long as their boss is taken in, they’re defenseless.”

  I nodded. “How’d you guys find out about my glasses?”

  “Poked around your room when you were returned, unconscious. It was Althea who spotted them when we visited you.”

  “You sense hidden computer chips or something? Is that another power of yours? Super sense?” I prodded, bringing my face closer to my glasses and talking into it as though it were a microphone. I felt ridiculous.

  Uh—no. I spotted them. And there’s no need to shout, dude. Ow.

  “So—that’s it?” I looked at Peter, shaking my head. “It’s a little too simple for someone like the Trill.”

  “The Devil’s Trill might be a supervillain, but he’s still like one of us, Eric. We haven’t completely mastered our powers, and he’s yet to master his.” Peter grinned wryly. “We’re sort of going about the whole good guy-bad guy battle to the death thing pretty awkwardly right now. We’re all beginners at this. He’s bound to screw up, and so are we.”

  “I hope not. I’m talking about you, that is. He can screw up as many times as possible, but not you,” I said. My teeth began to chatter, and my nose ran. I was definitely on the verge of pneumonia, bronchitis, and malaria, which might account for why something about the whole thing didn’t sit well with me. I was relieved beyond words to have Althea and Peter there, but a strange fear stayed, and I couldn’t figure out what it was—or why it existed.

  Peter held on to my glasses. “We need these, Eric,” he said. “Althea and I never had enough time to study the technology used on you, and I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be easy extracting it from your glasses.”

  “It’s okay, I guess. My old pair’s still at home, and I can use them for now. I need a new prescription, anyway.”

  Another wave of pain surged through my skull, and I stumbled against Peter. He caught me by my arms and held me steady. “My head hurts like hell. It’s probably from the radio signals or whatever that kept hammering at my ears.”

  Peter listened grimly. “You need to be tested. I’ll talk to your parents about X-rays or CT scans—”

  “No, no—we can’t afford it.”

  “We’ll figure something out, but you do need to be tested.” He hesitated, looked around, and quickly gave me a reassuring kiss on the forehead. “Come on. I’ll take you to your family.”

  Aahhhh—just another day in the life of a superhero.

  “Thanks, Althea,” I called out. “You were brilliant. I should take you out for a banana split or something.”

  I know. Too bad I’m grounded.

  “What? Why?”

  Oh. Mom found out about the ATM stunt I pulled—remember, Eric? I killed the bank’s camera and all that?

  “She knows about your powers, then…”

  Yeah. It was her idea to give me an almost genius IQ, after all. My coming out to her was more of a shock to me than it was to her. I guess in a way I kind of knew, but I didn’t really accept it, you know?

  I glanced at Peter, who smiled sadly before leading me away. The squad cars had already gone—no doubt in the direction of the Trill’s hideaway.

  “Peter, did you really need to have all those cops here, pointing their guns at me? I thought I was going to be blown away.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry. That was the chief’s idea, not mine. Okay, now stop. I’m taking over.” He ordered me to turn around and embrace him. I held on tightly and pinched my eyes shut.

  “Don’t go too fast, plea—AAGH!” By the time the last word came out of me, we were in space, and my stomach was doing somersaults.

  I should’ve properly timed the trip to the “safe place” where my family hid, which was, it turned out, Bruno’s Pizzeria and Casino. It must’ve been no more than five seconds, I think, and while I nearly threw up as a side effect from Peter’s incredible speed, I didn’t suffer whiplash.

  Chapter 29

  The Devil’s Trill’s hideaway was apparently directly below Vintage City’s Opera House. How very gothic Victorian. I hoped it also had an underground lake and stuff, with secret doors and passageways connecting it to different dressing rooms backstage.

  Andrew Lloyd Webber would’ve been pleased.

  It was no wonder then the window through which I looked when I was there was blocked. It only made me wonder if the Trill suffered from any vitamin deficiency, given his lack of sun exposure. Obviously, his brain did.

  At any rate, Magnifiman triumphed in the end. The showdown there was pretty impressive, according to accounts. The Trill was traced to his underground lair, and there the head-to-head battle began, with Magnifiman inching his way up to the main opera house, luring his nemesis out. There the police waited.

  City Hall tore its hair from the roots after seeing the damage done to one of the city’s greatest buildings. Smoke, crumbling plaster, tattered velvet curtains, broken seats—anything that could happen to an historic icon of high culture did happen. I think the mayor bawled like a baby in his office for days. He hadn’t gotten over the decapitated statue of Vintage City’s founder, and now he had the Opera House. Vintage City looked like a broken mosaic, with its faux nineteenth-century charm seriously torn up in places.

  But they had the Trill, and I guess they needed to take the bitter with the sweet. When the smoke cleared, he was dragged away in a straitjacket, howling and swearing to return, and I’d no doubt that we’d be seeing him again soon.

  Magnifiman rose from the carnage, dusty, soot-covered, but pretty much unharmed. Still perfect, still gorgeous, still striking a heroic pose with that self-consciousness that felt so theatrical to me. I thought I saw a breeze pick up, moving his hair and dust particles just like in the movies.

  I guess it was only proof positive that Trent just loved being a hero, and I was glad for him. He smiled grimly at the camera, while Bambi Bailey, also covered in dust and soot, interviewed him. She’d picked her way through the debris just to get to his side before he flew away—her hair disheveled, her dress torn at the skirt.

  “It’s my duty to uphold the law, Miss Bailey,” Magnifiman declared in a clear, low voice. “Crime doesn’t pay, and it will never pay. While I have breath in me, the people in this great city can be assured that their safety is guaranteed.”

  Yikes. I guess the DNA manipulation used on Trent involved cheesy lines from old movies.

  “And we thank you and Calais, sir, for everything,” Miss Bailey said between coughs, flapping her hand in front of her face to fan away dust and dirt. “Your presence is greatly appreciated, and Vintage City is all the better for it.”

  “It�
��s not to say, though, that the good residents should depend on us all the time.”

  “Oh, no, of course not!”

  “We’re here to serve you, but a city can’t be safe without its people’s cooperation. We all need to be vigilant. We need to respect the law. It’s truth, peace, and justice we need to hold dear…”

  And he went on and on and on. Nearby, Liz sighed dreamily, and Mom called out an approving word or two. My skin crawled now I’d latched on to Magnifiman’s old school, good guy, cliché talk. It was like, once I heard it, I couldn’t unhear it.

  Dad merely shook his evening paper, which he preferred to read while the news was on. I blinked and squinted and sighed as my eyesight adjusted to my old prescription.

  My other glasses never found their way back to my face. Peter and Trent kept them, and they’d been studying their technology with Althea’s help. All of the information they pulled out was once again classified, which meant I was doomed never to know. Once they were done, they handed my glasses over to the police department for processing and whatever else Sgt. Vitus Bone had in mind for them.

  No one found anything planted in our house, but Peter reassured us we were under Magnifiman’s protection.

  “Mostly yours, I’m sure,” I chided him as we sat on the rooftop one warm, clear evening, chilling out. He was again taking a fifteen-minute break from crime-fighting, and, no, my family had yet to be told that my boyfriend was a superhero.

  “The whole city’s under my protection—and whoever else crawls out of the woodwork, flexes his superpowers, and identifies himself as a good guy, I guess.”

  “My house gets special attention from you still.”

  Peter laughed as he pushed me down on my back and stretched himself out beside me. “Okay, you got me. My bad, my bad.” I reached out for him, held his face between my hands, and kissed him hard. He was five minutes late back from his break that night.

  * * * *

  I had a really freaky dream a week after my ordeal.

  In it I was simply floating in space, unable to move any part of my body. In the inky nothingness, the Trill’s voice could be heard—laughing in that creepy, manic way of his.

  You didn’t really think I could do something so absurdly simple and elementary, did you? Your glasses, the computer-radio I fixed onto them, my orders for you to find Magnifiman’s headquarters? Good lord, you all took the bait, looked only for what was so obvious, not knowing things are a good deal more complicated than you think. Why should I bother going through all that trouble, spiriting you away just to “fix” a pair of glasses?

  Poor moonstruck Romeo got it wrong—all of you did.

  And how easy it was to prove your gullibility with such a ridiculous “errand.” My dear sir, if I wanted Magnifitwit, I’d have used far more sophisticated methods, not send an unarmed boy like that. I told you the truth one time about the music in your room, yet you refused to listen.

  Tsk, tsk.

  Does it bother me to be detained like this? Why, not at all. I used myself as a pawn, gambled away my freedom, but still emerged victorious. This is going just as I’d hoped, and I can afford to wait and watch my young protégé from a distance. It’s all a matter of time, you see, before the bud unfurls its petals. I’m in a drab little cell now, but not for long. Believe me, when the time’s ripe, you’ll feel it, and you WILL come to your maestro. Until that day arrives, rest, young Mr. Plath. Rest. All good things, as they say, come to those who wait.

  I woke up in a panic, my shirt drenched in sweat, my breath coming in rapid gasps. “It’s only a dream,” I whispered again and again, but I could still feel his voice—no longer in my head, but all over me. Like airy fingers, his fading words touched, traced, and mocked.

  I told my family the next morning. Dad insisted I needed more X-rays, so I was once again fed into the CT scanner. Nothing was found wrong with my head just like before, and the doctors waved me off with a clean bill of health. I didn’t want to ask my parents how badly those scans set them back financially, but they didn’t seem to care.

  “Just stay healthy, Eric,” Mom said and left it at that.

  Neither the nightmare nor the headaches returned, and little by little, my nervousness eased. Peter and Althea claimed it was nothing more than an after-effect of my trauma.

  “Sometimes I just don’t know what to believe anymore,” I said. “No one’s ever screwed with my head the way he did.”

  “Even if he does get out, he’s crippled. His hideaway’s gutted, his thugs—whoever’s left—are scattered. He’s got nothing, Eric. He can’t touch you like this, all homeless and abandoned. There’s no way,” Peter replied, and I took comfort in his confidence.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Althea patted my hand. “Time to move on, sweet cheeks. We’ve got more crime fighting to do.”

  The new bad guy on the block made his presence known a couple more times, but nothing happened. He was merely spotted here and there, his two tiny minions following him around. They were always cloaked in shadows, but I figured it wouldn’t be long. It was going to be his turn next, with the Trill’s operations halted indefinitely.

  “We’re keeping an eye on him,” Peter said as we both people-watched from our comfy spot on the grass. The sun was out, the weather was fairly warm, and everyone was taking advantage of the respite from the rain. We spent as much time as we could, lounging around the park, some snacks packed in a canvas bag nearby.

  “What about the carnival?” I asked as I leaned back on my elbows.

  “One thing at a time, Eric,” he laughed, giving me a gentle nudge.

  “Althea still can’t find anything on them.”

  “Maybe we’ll never know what we want to know.”

  I turned to grin at him. “That’s pretty pessimistic for a superhero.”

  “Is it? I always considered it realism.”

  I sighed, turning my attention back to children frolicking on the grass, their families watching and laughing nearby. A couple of dogs ran around, chasing a Frisbee. “I guess you’re right.”

  No one knew much about Althea as a superhero, but word was now getting out about some mysterious being who haunted cyberspace—pretty close, yes, but not quite.

  Althea might be a bit disappointed at being relegated the role of the invisible superhero, but she was good at what she did, and like Trent, she loved being the good guy. When Bambi Bailey christened her Spirit Wire, she laughed herself sick but didn’t argue. The name stuck, and she carried it around, unspoken, proud as hell.

  “I won’t be surprised if some supervillain comes around to be my archenemy,” she said with a smug grin over her raspberry mocha. The Jumping Bean had turned into our own private “conference room” outside Renaissance High’s library. “I’ll kick his cyber ass.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Peter laughed.

  For Peter and Trent, Vintage City remained their playground. There were lowlifes that needed to be swept off the streets. Every now and then, they’d manage to pick up a stray hoodlum or two from The Devil’s Trill’s pack.

  And here and there, they’d keep an eye out for signs of their new enemy, who remained elusive. Trent remained just as elusive to the ladies—and Bambi Bailey—as the new guy. The online RPG communities weren’t pleased, but they had plenty of alternate universe story ideas, and they went wild. Last time I checked, Magnifiman and Bambi Bailey were married and were spawning a brood of half-superheroes, with a couple of them turning into villains. Calais had a string of girlfriends. I decided not to join in as a gay character to complicate things.

  Althea continued to work diligently on her powers, with Mrs. Horace helping her whenever she could. Peter and I were Althea’s support group and mentors.

  For me, regular Joe Blow, humdrum life returned. I had chores, homework, errands. I got scolded, grounded, whatever. I finally decided on an art college—the Hallworth Academy of Arts and Letters in the city of Barron—for my final academic desti
nation, much to my parents’ dismay. A Ph.D. in Literature wasn’t quite what they had in mind for me, I guess. Maybe they thought it was just a phase I was going through.

  “You’re not turning into another one of those gloomy, pot-smoking bohemians, are you?” Dad asked. “What kind of work do you expect to end up with, with a degree from that place?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Mom said, placing a reassuring hand on Dad’s. “It could be worse. He could be a Liberal Arts major.”

  “Maggie, I was a Liberal Arts major.”

  “You know what I mean, dear.”

  Apparently Dad did because he narrowed his eyes at Mom and growled before hiding behind his newspaper again.

  Mrs. Zhang continued to harass me over my weight, and we kept getting free potstickers from her kitchen, bless her.

  “When you come back, I don’t want to see bones poking out of your skin,” she said, waving her ladle at me. She often followed that with a muttered line or two in Chinese. I preferred not to find out what threat it might be.

  I’d been attempting push-ups in my bedroom for some time now. It was partly because I enjoyed a number of very steamy dreams involving Peter, and I always woke up feeling not only hot and bothered, but also self-conscious about my appearance. The last time I’d looked at the mirror, I’d known I needed to take the incentive. I had another haircut, which pleased Mom, but I maintained the uneven blue-and-black dye job. I did, however, give up my blue food coloring fetish. Going around coloring one’s milk or eggs to make one’s sister sick over breakfast wasn’t really cool—especially when one happened to be going steady with a superhero. I did what I could to ensure Peter’s—Calais’s—heroic image would be held up by a mature, stronger, more capable me. Even if most people would never know about us.

  To further that end, I also decided I needed a Bowflex Ultimate 2 and told my parents just that over spongy meat loaf one evening. Mom rolled her eyes. Dad told me to go to a real college.