by Drew Hayes
“Guess they’re jealous we had a livelier time,” Johnny said with a shrug. He threw a few more chips into the pot, hoping to bluff his way out of yet another bad hand.
Chapter 50
Tori was a bit surprised by the hangover that woke her up on Saturday morning. While she liked the occasional beer, she rarely drank enough to actually catch the ‘brown-bottle flu’, as her father had called it. Yet in the midst of all the craziness the night before, she’d probably put down more booze in one evening than in the rest of the month combined. It was, mercifully, an easy fix as she pulled herself out of bed and trudged toward the bathroom.
Before stepping in (making certain she was on the tile, just to be safe), she pulled off the t-shirt and shorts that served as her pajamas and turned into living fire. Regeneration was a handy aspect of her abilities, one for which she’d been constantly grateful over the years. Using it to cure a hangover might not qualify as the most noble of pursuits, but with a day of guild training ahead of her, the last thing Tori wanted was to start off sluggish.
She stood there for about five minutes before shifting back, her once more human anatomy now completely cured of any lingering hangover effects. That problem solved, she hopped in the shower, scrubbing off a night of excitement, panic, and worry. Once clean, she dried off and dressed in her apprentice costume, the default outfit for all guild endeavors. Glancing at the clock, Tori realized she was up a full hour earlier than necessary. With nothing else to do before training started, she decided to head over to the rookie lounge and grab some breakfast. It wouldn’t be as good as the stuff Ivan made, but it would be filling enough to keep her going until lunch.
When Tori walked into the large room, she immediately noticed that she wasn’t the only one with a hankering for caloric intake. Beverly, adorned in her own generic apprentice costume, sat in front of the television watching the news as she wolfed down a breakfast burrito from the vending machine. Based on the wrappers at her side, it was her third or fourth so far.
Neither said anything as Tori plunked her money in the machine, getting two burritos of her own along with a soda. Things had been a bit strange between them ever since Beverly found out Tori was friends with a cape. She’d expected that reaction from the older members, who’d turned out to be unbothered by it, but not from Beverly. Silence wasn’t fixing anything though, so as Tori took a seat on the couch, she decided it was time to try the other thing: actual talking about the issue at hand.
“Are we cool?” She hated the words even as she said them, but Tori Rivas had not been blessed with the gift of subtlety. Beverly looked over at her, so she decided to just power through and get things done. “You’ve seemed kind of bothered since last night when you met Donald.”
“Guess we had to do this eventually,” Beverly muttered. She picked up the remote, turned the television on mute, and then gave her attention back to Tori. “Look, I get it. He was your buddy at work, you became friends, and then he got turned into a cape. Completely impossible to predict and nobody’s fault. Well, sort of his for choosing to be one, I suppose, but I’ll admit it sounds like things sort of snowballed on him. I don’t have any problem with Donald as a person or you for being his friend. I just really dislike the AHC.”
“Why? I mean, sure, we’re villains and technically enemies, but you heard Morgana last night. We mostly stay out of each other’s way.”
Beverly shook her head. “I’ve disliked that place since long before I got these powers. It’s part of why I stayed with the guild; I needed to learn control, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to the capes to get it. Remember how I told you that the amulet I found was among my great-grandmother’s knick-knacks? Well, I wasn’t the first in my family to come across an artifact from her collection. My grandpa found one, a special one she’d kept tucked away in a safe almost no one knew about. It was a crown, silver and studded with three gems in the center. When he put it on, grandpa was suddenly adorned in medieval armor. He was strong, fast, could fly, and had a few other powers as well. He figured that after a lifetime of hunting and hoarding, great-grandma had actually found one item of genuine power.”
“I’m guessing your grandfather joined the AHC,” Tori said.
“Tried to, anyway. This was way back in the day, before Quorum and Lodestar, before the AHC was even called that. Professor Quantum was the biggest powerhouse around, and he was in charge of what was then the League of Metas. My grandpa went by there after learning how to use his powers, wanted to join up and make the world a better place. Their response was that they didn’t have a spot for him on the main roster, but they were working on a ‘Colored Division’ to do some lesser jobs and they thought he’d be a great fit.”
“Hoooooly shit.” Tori set down her breakfast burrito, appetite momentarily lost.
“Yeah. The fifties, you know? That wasn’t even the worst of it, though.” Beverly put her hands together, using each to stop the other from trembling in anger. “When he rightfully told them to go fuck themselves, guess what they said? If he didn’t want to join up, that was perfectly fine. He could leave anytime he wanted. The crown, however, stayed with them.”
“No fucking way. They couldn’t...”
“Different times,” Beverly replied. “Media was carefully controlled, and there were no internet or cell phone cameras to record that sort of thing. Grandpa hadn’t gone out and done anything heroic yet—he wanted to get training so he could be as effective as possible—so no one out there even knew he existed. Just like that, those fuckers took away the source of his power, saying it needed to be in the hands of someone who would make proper use of it. They took the heart right out of grandpa along with it. To the day he died, there always a sadness around him, like a piece of him was missing. I guess because there was.”
“God. Damn. No wonder you hate the AHC,” Tori said. “I’d be trying to light their building on fire if I were you.”
“Not going to lie, the day I discovered the red dragon power, I was a little tempted,” Beverly admitted.
“Probably for the best you didn’t, at least for now.” Tori shook her head in disbelief and picked her breakfast back up. Terrible as Beverly’s tale was, it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t train on an empty stomach. “Do you know what happened to the crown? Like, which cape is out there using it?”
“Strangest thing, actually,” Beverly replied. “We’ve never seen hide nor hair of anyone out there wearing it. It’s possible that the appearance is different depending on who uses it. Or maybe it only works for certain people, limited by genetics or inherent goodness or something. Trust me, if I did know who had it, I’d be beating it off the top of their head right now.”
“If that day ever comes, just let me know and I’ll hold them while you hit them,” Tori offered. “But, and please don’t hate me for saying this, that was a different organization than the AHC. I’ve got no love for capes in my heart, either, but it’s not like it was when they did that to your grandfather.”
“You know you’re talking about the same organization that has a member who flies around in a robotic Klansman’s outfit, right?”
“We all know they tried to kick out Whitest Knight,” Tori reminded her. “The lawsuit was a media circus for the full year it took. I’m not proposing we drop out of the guild and run to see if they’ll let us join, just advocating for a clear perspective when dealing with them. That kind of grudge can lead to mistakes, the sort that might end in breaking the code. And, in case you didn’t notice last night, I’m not big on the idea of seeing my friends killed.”
“I might have picked up on that. Sort of surprised me, actually. I mean, who’d have guessed that the terrifying Pseudonym’s apprentice was actually a big ole softy?” Beverly chuckled. “I’ll take the point to heart, though. I don’t plan on taking many, maybe any jobs once the apprenticeship is over, but I also didn’t plan on getting dragon powers. Best to be ready for anything.”
Beverly reached over, picked up
her pile of wrappers and began smushing them together into one greasy, wadded-up ball. “And to answer your question, yeah, we’re good. It isn’t your fault you had a friend go cape, and it isn’t his fault that they did what they did to my family. I might not like the organization, but I’m trying to judge the people on a case-by-case basis.”
Leaning back, Beverly tossed her paper ball through the air, where it arced gracefully before plopping down a solid two feet away from the open trashcan where she’d been aiming. “Guess it’s a good thing no one expects me to handle ranged fighting.”
“Not when they’ve got me on hand.” Tori balled up her own wrapper, took careful aim, and proceeded to miss the exact same shot, her wadded up ball landing a few inches away from Beverly’s. “Well, shit. Maybe Lance has a good aim.”
“We can only hope,” Beverly agreed.
It was a silly, simple conversation, but by the time breakfast was done, both women felt a lot better. There were few people they could trust and lean on in a situation like theirs; losing that trust with each other would have made things much harder.
Especially as they drew closer to their goal, when they’d need to rely on the other apprentices more than ever before.
* * *
“Come in!” Donald didn’t bother getting up from his bed, controller still in hand as he fired several rounds into the alien hides of his attackers. From the door, an audible click could be heard as it unlocked, responding to his voice command and allowing the person outside to step through. Donald wasn’t sure how he felt about every aspect of the AHC, but the accommodations they had in place were nothing to sneeze at.
“What the hell, man?” Ren pushed open the door, once again cloaked in his human illusion. Instead of a suit, he was wearing a tank top and basketball shorts, having no doubt come right from the gym. “When I asked what you were doing at breakfast, you said you were going to spend the whole day training. I’ve been in the gym since this morning and you haven’t set foot in there.”
“I’m doing a different kind of training,” Donald replied. He punched the pause button, freezing the screen as his character looked over a small hill where an ambush was no doubt waiting to try and surprise him. “Last night, I noticed something that had never come up before. I explained that the items I pull have to come from real games, right? They can’t just be pieces of code.”
“Yeah, that’s why your fancy wrist pad has like twenty whatchabytes of memory on it. It’s running a dozen or so games at once in the background.”
“Exactly. Well, when they built it, they installed fresh copies of all the games. Which means all I can access are the default, unleveled versions of the items. If I’d had a fully fleshed out blaster and armor last night, I could have lit that monster up before it even managed to climb the wall.”
“Your items have levels?” Ren stared at the screen, then at Donald, then at the wrist computer that sat on the floor, wires connecting it to the television screen. “I do not get you video game guys.”
“Some have levels, some are just shitty until you find upgrades, and sometimes you have to play through to the end of the game to get the really cool gear,” Donald explained. He held up the controller in his hand and pointed at the screen. “That’s what I meant by training. I’m playing through Blaster Brahs so next time I can actually take a few hits and not need ninety seconds between every shot.”
“Weird,” Ren said. “I mean, I get it, or I think I do anyway, but it’s still strange to me that you sitting in here, playing games, is going to make you stronger. Are you even sure it will work? What if you still pull the default item?”
“It took me an hour and a half to figure out how to hook up a controller and television to that thing, so I definitely made sure it was worth the time first,” Donald assured him. He hopped off the bed and walked over to a small desk where his laptop, the one he’d gotten for his project at Vendallia, sat humming softly. “This morning I logged into my Legacy World account and created a new character. When I took a sword from him, it was just a sword, and kind of a shitty one at that. When I switched over to my usual character, I was able to pull the same sword that had gone through some serious upgrading and gem-crafting.”
Donald wiggled the mouse, bringing up a screen that showed his small character sitting in a pub, head down on the table, asleep. With a few clicks, he opened the item screen, reached over, and plucked the sword from inside the game. Ren took a step back on pure instinct. The blade in front of him was glowing with a dark purple light. Power seemed to radiate off it, occasionally appearing in short bolts that crackled between the blade and the guard.
“The upgrades definitely carry over.” Donald let go of the blade, which quickly dissolved into sparks and numbers. “Hence why I’ve been in here playing Blaster Brahs all morning.”
“Why not just use items from the game with the sword?” Ren asked.
“MMO’s require constant internet connections, the sort that are hard to manage wirelessly.” Donald cast a long, lingering glance at the computer screen still acting as digital portal into Legacy World. “Much as I’d love to pull out some of my LW character’s items, the wrist-unit can’t reliably connect, which means it’s too dangerous to count on them. Instead I’ve got to work with stuff I can keep offline copies of.”
Ren held up his hands in surrender. “You win. I give up. This somehow counts as training. But you still need to hit the gym sometimes. Basic strength and cardio are useful no matter what your power is.”
“Plus, who else there has the courage to spot you?” Donald closed the laptop and went back to his bed. Nice as it was to hang out here, he was looking forward to the AHC finally making his apartment safe enough to go back to. This was like living in a giant dorm, which was not something Donald had enjoyed even during his college days. Though it wasn’t quite so bad now that he had a friend.
“Heaven save us if you’re actually needed to help lift,” Ren replied. “I guess I should get back to it. I’ve been feeling pretty confident in my own strength lately, but last night made me realize just how lacking I am. You burned a giant hole through that thing; I could barely leave scratches on it.”
“Whoa there. The only reason I lived long enough to get that shot off was because you were there to draw its attention,” Donald said. “Given how it was smashing through freaking everything it touched, I’d say it’s outright amazing that you were able to last like that.”
“Maybe so, but there’s still a long way for me to go.”
Donald didn’t have a good reply to that, because Ren was right. Both of them were only just starting out; it would probably take months, if not years, before they were even semi-competent superheroes. They might have different ways of doing it, but they each understood how important training was.
“When you finish at the gym, feel free to swing by,” Donald offered. “This can be a two-player game, you know.”
“Appreciate it, but...” Ren held up his hands, turning them carefully so his palms were facing Donald. “They only look human, remember? Not sure the claws are built to handle fragile electronics.”
“We had someone build a computer that fits on my forearm and runs more than twenty video games all at once,” Donald replied. “I bet they can create a controller that you’ll be able to use. I’ll tell them you’re my training partner. It’s a lot easier to level in these things when you have a friend.”
Ren hesitated then lowered his hands. “If you can get me the gear, I’ll play some games with you. But you have to agree to keep hitting the gym with me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
* * *
In his chambers, Balaam was perusing a tome of ancient power, searching for a spell he could use to properly reheat an old stew without boiling it over, when he felt the familiar twinge of pain behind his right eye. With a heavy sigh, he shut the book, went to where his carefully concealed and padded box was stored, and removed the silver mirror. His hands rested against the smooth surface, d
ulling the pain that told him it was time to converse. A familiar voice entered his head.
“Balaam, how go your preparations?”
“As good as they can with no actual deadline to work with,” Balaam snapped. How were his preparations going? He wasn’t the one holding things up, though even Balaam would admit that his task was the easier of the two.
“That, I’m happy to say, is no longer good enough.”
A trickle of excitement, tentative but undeniable, wormed through Balaam’s heart. Could it be? After all these years, were things finally progressing? He kept his voice stoic—even if no one but the mirror’s other holder could hear him, there was still a certain way evil wizards were supposed to act during these things.
“Are you saying that the time has come?”
“I am saying it draws near. Very near. Within a week, perhaps two, I will finally have the last pieces we need. I have prepared my loyal ones as much as I can. A few days to bring them the rest of the way into the light and purge those who dissent and we will be ready to move.”
Balaam resisted the urge, barely, to lift his hands off the mirror and clap with enthusiasm. With that timetable, it would be only two or three weeks until they could begin. Amid his excitement, he also felt fear slither its way in. For so long they’d been plotting. For so long it had been but a scheme that was more mad dream than tangible plan. Now that it was finally turning into reality, it was a bit scary. What they were about to do could never be undone.
“Very well. I’ll bring the ones I trust in and get them up to speed. There will only be a few of them, of course, but it should suffice for what’s needed on my end.”
“A few will be plenty. Once the fuse is lit, others will be drawn in whether they like it or not. We only need enough to get things started. Move forward. I will tell you when things are ready on my end.”
With that, the voice faded. Balaam slipped the mirror back into its box. He put it away and didn’t even glance at the tome of spells he’d been perusing earlier. Balaam now had far bigger concerns than reheated stew. There was much work to do, many contingencies to plan for, and so many pieces to put in motion. He’d done the vast majority of the groundwork already, but what remained was no small task.
