Women. Even with the help of superpowers, I still didn’t understand them. It baffled me that an educated, accomplished, and pretty woman like Hannah would be proud of dating an abusive gangster. Then again, if there was one thing my twenty years on the planet had taught me, it was that life wasn’t a movie where the nice guy wound up with the girl at the end. More often than not, the jerk walked away with the girl as he laughed and kicked sand in the nice guy’s face. Screenwriters who crafted movies where the nerdy guy with the heart of gold walks into the sunset arm-in-arm with the blonde cheerleader who has learned to appreciate the nerd’s true value were filthy liars. Or, maybe they were simply nerdy guys deluding themselves. Then again, maybe I was just jaded, bitter over what had happened between me and Neha.
If Hannah had told me when I first moved to Astor City that a gangster could tell cops what to do, I wouldn’t have believed her. The brief time I had spent fighting crime at night plus the local news I’d consumed as a part of my job had disabused me of the notion that all Astor City cops had the noble goal of serving and protecting. My short time in Astor City at that point had taught me that a lot of the cops here were essentially uniformed criminals with a badge and a license to kill. The problem was there was no easy way to tell the corrupt cops from the good ones. Life wasn’t an old western where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. And, even if I found a good cop and reported Antonio to him, he wouldn’t be able to do anything if Hannah wasn’t willing to press charges against Antonio.
So, me going to the police myself about Antonio’s abuse was out. Also out was confronting Antonio as the Hero Kinetic. Licensed Heroes were not vigilantes. Just as the police didn’t have the authority to do anything to Mad Dog without Hannah being willing to press charges, a Hero didn’t have the authority either. Real life was not a comic book where masked superheroes could go around punching lowlifes in the face willy-nilly. If I accosted Mad Dog as Kinetic without legal justification, he would be well within his rights to call the police on me and have me arrested. The Heroes’ Guild, the self-regulating body all Heroes belonged to, would be compelled to investigate my arrest, and would probably punish me for breaking the law. The Guild might even take my Hero’s license away. Pitbull, the chief proctor of the Trials whom I had pissed off during the Trials, also served on the Guild’s Executive Committee. He would be thrilled to have an excuse to rip my Hero’s cape off me.
On top of that, if I confronted Mad Dog as Kinetic after Hannah had confessed to her co-worker Theo that her boyfriend hit her, Hannah wouldn’t need her high-priced Ivy League degree to figure out that the masked Hero Kinetic and the only guy she had told about her boyfriend’s abuse were one and the same person. A secret identity was supposed to be kept a secret. If it wasn’t, it would be called a tell-everyone-and-their-mother identity.
So, as the Hero Kinetic, my hands were tied. If I were being a good little Hero, I’d simply shake my head at Hannah protecting her douchebag boyfriend and turn my attention to something I had the legal authority to do something about.
That’s exactly what I did for months. Then, one day Hannah had come to work with her arm in a sling, broken in two places. Her face was battered as well. She told everyone at the office that she had slipped and fallen down the stairs. She couldn’t look me in the eye when she tried to sell me on that lie too. She and I both knew what had really happened to her.
That incident had not only broken Hannah’s arm, but it was also the straw that broke the camel’s back. I knew I had to do something about Hannah’s abuse before Mad Dog injured her further or, worse, killed her. If I couldn’t do anything as the Hero Kinetic about Antonio, then by God I would do something about him as Theo.
Since I shared a rental house with Isaac and another roommate, Isaac had seen me preparing to go out to confront Antonio the night after Hannah had come to work with a broken arm. Isaac had wormed out of me what I planned to do to Antonio. At first, he had tried to talk me out of it. He had seen that my mind was made up. Though he still didn’t approve, here he was now with me, falling out of the night sky like a shooting star after being blasted out of Antonio’s apartment.
If a willingness to risk life and limb over something you had advised against wasn’t true friendship, I didn’t know what was.
CHAPTER 3
Antonio blasting me and Isaac through his apartment window was not the first time I had been thrown through glass. You don’t get used to it. Then again, if you get to the point where you do get used to it, you probably need to re-evaluate your life choices.
Back when we were at the Academy, Athena had told us more times than I could remember that in an unexpected crisis, you rose or fell to the level of your training. That was why, as silly as it sounded, emergency preparedness experts advised people to practice dialing 911—when the poop hit the fan, you would have a hard time remembering your name, much less how to get into touch with the authorities. That was also why I had been drilled in the use of my powers so thoroughly that using them to save my bacon in an emergency was as automatic as ducking when a baseball was flung at your head.
Endless training was why I had instinctively raised my force field around me and Isaac when Antonio had spat his energy blast, or whatever in the heck it was, at us. And, it was why I still had my force field erected around us when we had been flung through the thick glass of Antonio’s window. Otherwise we no doubt would have been sliced to ribbons by the breaking glass. Assuming Antonio’s energy blast hadn’t blown us to bloody bits before we even hit the window.
The city’s lights spun like a kaleidoscope around us as we fell down the side of Antonio’s apartment building. I felt like a James Bond martini: thoroughly shaken. But despite being rattled, thanks to my training and force field, I seemed to be uninjured. I was flustered, startled out of a year’s growth by the fact that Antonio was a Metahuman, and spinning ass over teakettle as we fell, but uninjured. Being unhurt would change all too soon if I didn’t shake off being shaken up.
Shake off being shaken up? Huh. One is not as eloquent as one might hope when one is plunging toward the ground like a duck full of buckshot.
Preventing the ground from performing the world’s most violent cosmetic surgery on my body was obviously priority number one. Priority number two was to fly back up to Antonio’s place and kick his ass.
Isaac tumbled in the air near me, close enough to spit on. The fact he hadn’t transformed into a flying mythological creature to save himself showed he was even more shaken up than I was. I used my powers to slow and then halt both of our descents. We were still several stories up from the ground. We hovered in the air a few feet from the face of Antonio’s building like two tethered helium balloons.
Isaac shook his head as if to clear it from cobwebs. He looked as unsettled as I felt.
“Tell me you didn’t know Mad Dog was a Meta,” he demanded. His voice was raspy. The wind whipped around, making it hard to hear him. “Because if you did know and neglected to share that niggling little detail, I’m going to punch you in the face as soon as I finish punching Mad Dog in his face.”
“I had no idea. Honest.” I was breathing hard. “If Hannah knows, she didn’t tell me. My guess is that she doesn’t. She was so proud when she told me Antonio works for the mob. If she knew Antonio is a Meta on top of that, she’d probably shout it from the rooftops.”
“Well, the cat’s certainly out of the bag now. Let’s go back upstairs and do some of that face-punching I mentioned. We need to make it quick, though. Mad Dog’s blasts probably woke up half the neighborhood. Surely someone’s called the police by now. We need to be long gone by the time they show up. I’m a black man wearing a ski mask in a white neighborhood in the middle of the night. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
Isaac was right. I had no interest in going to jail again. It hadn’t been much fun the first time. I had even less interest in the Guild finding out a Hero was illegally skulking around people’s apartments.<
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I lifted us back up toward Antonio’s floor. I slowed as we approached the hole in the glass we had been ejected from. We cautiously peeked inside Antonio’s apartment. We didn’t want to want to rush in recklessly and get our asses handed to us again. Once spat at, twice shy.
The only part that remained of the huge glass window we had been blasted through were jagged shards. They lined the perimeter of the hole like shark’s teeth. Inside, Antonio spoke animatedly on a cell phone to someone. My first thought was that he had called the police. My second thought called me an idiot. A guy like Antonio didn’t call the police; he had the police called about him. He was probably calling for reinforcements on the off chance his blasts hadn’t already taken care of us.
Antonio looked up and spotted us. His eyes widened in surprise. His mouth began to open. There was a yellow glow between his parted lips.
I had seen this movie before. I had no interest in the sequel.
I rocketed through the gaping hole in the glass with my force field around me. I had the presence of mind to simultaneously drop Isaac inside the apartment.
I hit Antonio like a battering ram right in his fat midsection.
Antonio grunted like a wild boar at the impact. The cell phone flew from his hand. I shot forward several feet with my head buried in Antonio’s stomach, like a fist that had punched rising bread dough. I slammed Antonio against the wall. His big body collided with it with a satisfying crash.
I bounced back a bit from Antonio, landing on my feet. As for Antonio, he slumped off the wall and sank to his knees. He groaned weakly. His eyes were a little crossed. Despite having been rocked, he tried to stand up again. I hated to give the devil his due, but I had to admit Antonio was a tough bastard.
I sealed Antonio’s mouth shut with my powers to avoid being blasted again. I could have immobilized his entire body as I had before, but I refused to hit a man who couldn’t defend himself, even a piece of crap like Antonio. I launched a back leg side kick into his ribs. Antonio fell to the side, catching himself with an outstretched arm before he hit the floor. With my force field still up to protect my hands, I swung a flurry of punches at Antonio’s head. Antonio’s arm slipped from under him. His upper body toppled heavily to the floor like a felled tree.
Since Antonio was out of commission, I should have stopped there. I knew that, but didn’t. There was so much I had been frustrated by and mad about since coming to Astor City: I was mad at myself for stupidly getting caught off guard by Antonio being a Metahuman; frustrated by Hannah’s stubborn refusal to break up with Antonio; angry and hurt about Neha having rejected me; frustrated about not knowing what to do about the Hero Mechano, who was the main reason I had moved to Astor City; and dismayed about how big city life had taught me that the morality I had grown up believing in few others shared. These days, it seemed like black was white, and up was down. Nothing in my life was going as I had expected or hoped. There was so much I couldn’t do anything about, and so much I didn’t even know how to go about doing.
I could do something about Antonio’s big fat pig face, though. So I did.
Repeatedly.
“Jesus, get off him,” I faintly heard Isaac say. I didn’t. My arms and shoulders felt loose and easy, like I had found my rhythm while hitting a speed bag.
“I said get off him! You’re gonna kill him.”
Arms grabbed me from behind, stopping me from punching more. I was roughly pulled to my feet. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had been on one knee, punching Antonio’s supine body over and over like my fists were pile drivers.
As my bloodlust faded and the scales fell from my eyes, I saw that Antonio was barely moving. His fleshy face was busted up, more red than white now. It looked like a raw ribeye steak. Antonio’s blood dripped off the force fields surrounding my clenched fists. Crimson blood splatters on the carpet around Antonio’s head looked like a Rorschach test. I was glad there wasn’t a psychologist around to ask me what the splatters looked like. I would have been forced to admit they looked like I had gone way too far.
Antonio writhed sluggishly on the floor, like a snuff film stuck in slow motion. His moans reminded me of a hospital patient’s whose pain meds had worn off.
Mortified, I shrugged out of Isaac’s grasp. Shame stabbed me like a rusty knife. I tried to keep it out of my voice as I spoke to Antonio with a roughness I didn’t much feel anymore. My anger and frustration were draining out of me like dirty water out of an unplugged bathtub.
“If you thought that was bad,” I said to him, “imagine what I’ll do to you if you lay a hand on Hannah again.” Antonio’s left eye swam red with blood. I wasn’t sure if it was from his scalp wound from earlier, or from the beating I had just given him. His remaining good eye looked up at me, partly unfocused, partly a dull basilisk stare of hate. “Break up with her, and do it today. After that, never speak to or see her again. Then, you better pray she has a nice long life and dies peacefully in her sleep. Because if she so much as skins her knee or gets a hangnail, I’ll assume you were responsible and come looking for you. What I did to you today will look like a kiss on the cheek compared to what I’ll do to you then.”
I thought I heard the wail of police sirens wafting up from far below through the broken window.
“Come on, let’s go,” Isaac said impatiently. He pulled insistently on my shoulder. The faint wail of police sirens, now louder than before, was not a figment of my imagination.
“Remember what I said. Don’t make me have to come back,” I said to Antonio. He just stared up at me balefully through his one non-bloody eye. He didn’t answer. I still had his mouth sealed shut since I had no idea if he could still spit energy blasts at me even when hurt. Antonio let out a noise that was half grunt, half moan. I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered all the times I’d seen Hannah limping or wincing in pain. My pity for him died stillborn.
Isaac and I rushed over to the opening in the window. A couple of police cars with their lights flashing were below, in front of the building. Unless it was the world’s biggest coincidence, they had been summoned to investigate all the noise coming from Antonio’s apartment. Lingering to have a chat with the cops about why two Heroes out of costume had illegally broken into a man’s apartment and beaten him bloody seemed a bad idea.
I launched into the air, pulling Isaac along with me. As soon as I was high enough to avoid the tall buildings around us, I shot off toward the west. Toward home.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Isaac demanded angrily as soon as we were safely away from Antonio’s apartment. He had to shout to be heard over the rushing wind. “The plan was to threaten to beat him to death, not to actually try to beat him to death.”
I didn’t respond. I stared straight ahead into the murky night sky. Even though Antonio was a criminal, a bully, a woman beater, and a rapist, I had gone too far. I knew I was in the wrong.
And yet, part of me was satisfied I had finally done something proactive after spending months frustrated and feeling impotent. Not only because of Hannah, but because of everything. That satisfied part of me didn’t care that I was in the wrong.
Later, when I’d cooled down some more, I wondered if my frustrations and my life in Astor City were turning me into as much of a thug and bully as Antonio was.
CHAPTER 4
The afternoon after my encounter with Mad Dog, I dutifully waited with a small crowd of people at the crosswalk for the light to turn so we could cross Tennessee Avenue. So many races were represented in the throng, it was like standing in the middle of the United Nations building. I had just walked several blocks to here from the Tennessee Heights subway stop with my work messenger bag bouncing against my thigh, its long strap diagonally across my chest. Tennessee Heights was the suburban neighborhood in Astor City Isaac and I rented our house in.
The people at the intersection with me looked simultaneously exhausted and relieved, the look of people who had spent all day slaving away in pursuit
of someone else’s dreams. I imagined a similar look was on my face. I had just left work at the Astor City Times. My fellow rodents and I had been given a temporary reprieve from the rat race. It would resume tomorrow morning, long before we could grow to miss it.
I walked to and from the subway during the work week because I did not have a car. I did not need one. Between walking, Astor City’s extensive public transportation system, cabs, and ride-sharing apps, I could get anywhere in the city I needed to go. In fact, I could get to most places in the city just using the subway. Except the northeastern quadrant of the city, which was by far the most affluent part. When the subway had been redesigned and rebuilt after an alien invasion had destroyed most of the city in the 1960s, the residents of the northeastern quadrant successfully lobbied to keep subway stops out of the northeast. They wanted to minimize public transportation there to keep the riffraff out. As a college dropout with a pronounced Southern accent and a low-paying, entry-level job, I had no illusions about the fact they would consider me part of that riffraff. I wondered if they would be so quick to call me names if a supervillain attacked and they needed me to rescue them. It was hard to look down your nose at someone saving your life.
When I needed to get somewhere in the city really quickly, I could always fly. Flying to and from work, though, would make it far too easy for someone to connect the Hero Kinetic to the riffraff Theodore Conley. Marvel and DC had taught me the key to maintaining a secret identity was to keep it a secret. And people said comic books did not teach you anything.
While we all waited for the light at Tennessee Avenue to change, I turned a bit to gaze at Star Tower, the building I had left less than an hour ago. The UWant Building was next to it. Though they were downtown and miles away from where I stood, the silver-colored Star Tower and the emerald-colored UWant Building poked up out of the trees in the distance like erect phalluses. If my penis, erect or otherwise, were as green as the UWant Building, I’d consult a doctor; if it were big enough to tower over trees, I’d consult with a porn casting director.
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