Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  Thinking about future-ifs made my head hurt, but I was suddenly, burningly curious.

  “Does the DSA know about them now? Their possible destinies, I mean?”

  Blackstone sighed again. “No. After many drinks and more sleep, I segregated the potential future records of any breakthroughs who didn’t start their villain careers before last January. If they still go supervillain, the files will become available.”

  “Oh.” That was...good. A neat solution to an ethical dilemma I hadn’t been able to unravel.

  He read my thoughts (sometimes I’d swear he was telepathic, but no), and smiled. “On the other hand, I did flag them ‘watch carefully.’ There is principle — they haven’t done anything yet and shouldn’t be punished for what they might do — and then there is blind optimism. Which brings us to you, my dear. Which one are you being?”

  I didn’t flinch, but I gripped my epad too hard and felt the screen crack under my thumbs. “There’s precedent. Riptide. And their Hillwood councilors all give them good marks for ‘adjusted,’ even Ozma. If we give them a path now — ”

  “You can’t save the world, Hope,” he said gently, and I flushed.

  “And, I approve.”

  He chuckled at my confusion. “It’s good strategy. We’re looking at multiplying threat-sources; every potential threat we can turn into an asset is weight to our side. This isn’t going to be a second-chance program, but even Ozma will be acceptable to our public — all truly powerful breakthroughs of her type are delusional in some way, so it's even normal.”

  His smile turned serious. “Hope, I wouldn’t have made these choices, but they’re good choices. Very good. Four flyers, three lift-capable; three ranged force projectors, two heavy close fighters, one evac-specialist, one outstanding support generalist. And picking your team is a leadership function. So is making it work. Are you ready for this?”

  No, no I’m not. “Yes, I am.”

  “Well then, let’s see if your draft picks are open to our proposition. You realize, my dear, that Quin is going to want to strangle you?”

  I sighed. “Yeah...”

  Quin had been on all of us to keep our publicity positive since Katy Barnes’ exposé, Watching the Watchmen, came out and hit the New York Times Bestseller list. The investigative journalist sold it as “the shocking dark side of superhero celebrity,” but it was really just a collection of anecdotes and speculation. Rush’s well-known sexcapades and Chakra’s whole Sacred Sex philosophy had given her a lot to work with, but so had Atlas with his old Atlas-girl hookups.

  And she’d devoted a whole chapter to me and Atlas and our January “getaway,” managing to make it sound like he’d taken advantage of my innocence and like I’d gone after him. Insinuation and innuendo made what had been so beautiful seem so wrong and just thinking about Katy’s smarmy speculative “account” made me feel dirty. It also made me feel guilty, like I was responsible for dirtying Atlas’s reputation, when it hadn’t been that way at all.

  It wasn’t fair. John had died saving the President of the United States, his friend, and the city had dedicated the Atlas Memorial just last month, but the book practically insinuated he’d been a sexual predator. Quin was still doing damage control, grabbing every item of news she could for positive spin and a bright, shiny, clean junior team would have helped. The future teammates I’d chosen — a juvenile delinquent, a crazy, and a monster — weren’t going to go over real well with the skeptics, even with a lot of our fans. And if any of them blew up on us...

  When I didn’t add anything, Blackstone nodded.

  “Well then, don’t you need to be in court? Dan called to ensure you wore your formal uniform. Good luck, my dear.”

  I got out of his office before he noticed I’d wrecked my epad. Once safe in the hall, I leaned against the wall and just breathed for a moment. I was actually shaking. Please God, don’t let this be my biggest mistake ever. Did Blackstone understand what I was doing? What I was trying to do?

  Maybe. Probably. Meanwhile, I had to go see a judge and jury. It was going to be so much fun.

  Chapter Six: Grendel

  Teenage superheroes are huge — in comics and on TV. In real life? Not so much. Forget child-endangerment laws; want to know why kids with superhuman powers make adults twitchy? Just imagine the daily life of any high school. Remember the angst, the drama, the hazing, the pranks, the insecurity and attitude, rivalries and one-upmanship? Remember what it was like for you? Got it? Now add superpowers.

  Yeah, now you’ve got it. Hillwood Academy.

  Brian Lucas, aka Grendel.

  * * *

  “Brian Lucas, Her Royal Highness requests your presence!”

  I rolled over and up off the bed, nearly stomping Nox before I’d woken enough to realize I didn’t need to maim somebody. Two years of Hillwood Academy pranks had turned me into a light sleeper. I growled at the doll and he sneered back — neat trick for a foot-tall ball-jointed toy made in Japan.

  “When shall you attend her?”

  Sitting back on the bed, I retracted my claws to push dreads out of my eyes. I held one up and squinted at it. I needed to dread-ball and wax soon.

  “Did someone break into the lab again?”

  Now he just looked insulted. “No one would dare, and we wouldn’t need you.”

  “Right.” On both counts; the last student who’d tried to raid the lab on a dare had disappeared for three days while Ozma wore a new hat. Todd never remembered those three days, and she promised to burn her next hat.

  When it came to psychological warfare, the princess took no prisoners.

  “Then you can tell Her Highness that I’ll see her after breakfast and before first period.”

  “She — ”

  “Tell her, Nox.”

  “As you wish, monster.” He dodged my kick, not that I’d been trying, and disappeared back into the vent he’d come through. With two students on campus who could shrink, forgetting about Nox and Nix, you’d think the school would invest in more secure air conditioning.

  Nox’s wake-up had put me a few minutes ahead of the alarm, and I used it to work on my dreads before heading down to the dining room. Latisha had convinced me to style them back from my face, almost like cornrows so they stayed off my forehead and hung down my shoulders and back. The locks were so long they hung almost to my pecs now, nearly a mane, and she considered that progress.

  “Nice.” She grabbed one and sniffed when I sat down with a full breakfast tray beside her, smiled back at the stares she got. Nobody touches the hair was one of the best-known laws of Hillwood. She’d made it Nobody touches the hair except Latisha. It worked for her; most Hillwood kids at least talked about wearing the cape after graduation — she talked about hairstyling, and since her mom was a world-famous celebrity stylist, she’d do better than anybody here.

  She eyed my stack of bleeding steaks. “Plan on doing a lot of morphing today?”

  “Nope. But Her Highness calls, so you never know.” I grinned around fast-growing fangs.

  She sighed and reached across the table to snag a double handful of napkins. “Then I’m gone, sugar. Tuck your tie in your shirt and use some of these.” Planting a kiss on my cheek, she rose and sashayed away, paused at the door to toss a final finger wave. It was my turn to grin back at stares. I even put a little Nox-sneer into it.

  Yeah guys, you just wonder and weep.

  Nobody else tried to talk to me, not that I could talk back with a mouthful of serious fang. I finished fast and flexed my jaw to dial my pearly whites down from their breakfast time shark-like size. Pushing Nox’s buttons was always fun, but if Ozma had sent him to get me then something was up; with still half an hour until class, Stanniger Hall was empty, echoing as I took the stairs up to her lab three at a time.

  “Normal” students don’t rate their own labs, and lots of us would rather be anywhere but Hillwood; two years ago, Ozma had demonstrated that she could be anywhere but here, and the school had given her
the lab to get her to stick around. She had plans, they had plans, and the relationship was a friendly one. Probably.

  I knocked politely and the door swung open; it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been someone she’d introduced to it as “on the list.”

  “Good morning,” her Royal Majesty Princess Ozma of Oz said without looking up. Already in her school uniform, she wore a surgical mask over her face as she measured something gram by gram onto a set of apothecary scales. Without asking, I grabbed a mask from the box by the door.

  “More Powder of Life?”

  “Crystallized Water of Oblivion.”

  “No freaking way.” I’d read all the Oz books, even though most of them, canon and non, made me want to stick nails in my brain. I edged for the door and she laughed, a bright, sparkly sound.

  “Don’t worry. In crystallized form, the effects are determined by dosage — if you accidentally inhaled a speck, you would forget a few minutes, not your whole life.” She put another gram on the scales. “Nox says you tried to kill him. Did he deserve it?”

  “He was rude.”

  She gave a regal nod. “Nix says he’s been bullying students. There wasn’t much point in making Nix so he could have a girlfriend if she can’t stand him.”

  “I wouldn’t call it bullying, but the little Goth maniac has some of the nastier guys convinced if they don’t toe the line they’ll wake up with a fork in their eye.”

  “Well.” No more needed to be said; Ozma was a big believer in applying the Golden Rule, which to her meant “you got what you gave.” For some, that might be a fork. I edged closer to the bench.

  “So, Your Highness summoned me?”

  “Her Highness did.” She finished her measure and carefully tipped the grains into a glass vial. When she sealed it I breathed easier. “We need you to look in the Question Box.”

  “The last time I did, it told me to go away.”

  “That’s because you were asking it for football spreads. Naughty.” She carefully wiped her hands and dropped the wipe in a hazmat burn can. She’d explained once that while Oz magic was fairy magic underneath it all, it looked a lot like chemistry and computer programming; all powerful sorcerers and sorceresses, witches and wizards, were careful. Or they were careless and a potted plant. A confused potted plant.

  She raised an eyebrow. “So, the box? We both need to get to class.”

  “Right. Okay, fine. Where is it?”

  She pointed to an oak cabinet, which opened to reveal Glegg’s Box of Mixed Magic. She’d managed to find it last year, and she was still looking for most of the other Royal Treasures. It didn’t worry me anymore that she was actually finding them, and the school didn’t complain as long as she kept most of it in the lab.

  Most schools might object to a student keeping the magical equivalent of high-grade explosives on campus; at Hillwood, a lot of the students counted as high explosives — or at least military ordnance — and Ozma’s security measures were better than the school’s.

  Even the Magic Belt, which she wore all the time and used for her famous hat trick, didn’t freak me out like the GBMM. The chest was an “empty” casket of gold filigree studded with gems. You knew it was empty because you could see right through its wire-thin sides. If you held it up in a sunbeam, the light shining through made cool patterns on the wall that were almost letters (you could never quite read them because they changed when you blinked). You could tell which side was up because the Great Sorcerer Glegg had considerately spelled out Gleggs’s Box of Mixed Magic in gemstones on a plaque on top, the modest bastard. To open the lid, you said the magic words, which Ozma changed as often as she changed her locker combination.

  I went over it in my head, already feeling stupid.

  “Ras rats rax rast rascal.”

  The lid popped open to reveal the red velvet-lined interior that still wasn’t there from the outside. Carefully removing the top tray with its four gold flasks, I pulled out the miniature tea set with its pack of Triple Trick Tea to get to the bottom and the acid-etched silver box labeled Glegg’s Question Box: Shake three times after each question.

  The guy had no imagination. The other box read Re-animating Rays, guaranteed to re-awaken any person who has lost the power of life through sorcery, witchcraft, or enchantment. If the rays didn’t work, did you get your money back?

  I held the Question Box up. “So? What do I ask?”

  “That was a question.”

  “Crap!” I shook the stupid thing three times, opened the sliding lid and carefully pulled out the slip of paper inside. Putting the box down, I unfolded the note. It read Ask what you’re doing today.

  “Seriously?”

  She laughed. “Go on.”

  I growled, asked, shook the damned box. This time the piece of paper read When all you got to keep is strong, move along, move along like I know you do! And even when your hope is gone

  move along, move along just to make it through!

  “The All-American Rejects? Really?”

  Her laugh was crystal bells. “Well that’s a relief. The Question Box started rattling this morning, and I got a haiku about autumn and moving court. Pack your things, oh mighty Army of Oz — we are going somewhere.”

  Chapter Seven: Astra

  These days more and more people are heard saying (and often shouting, cursing, or screaming inarticulately) “We need to know who they are!” Do we really?

  New York is a No Privacy State, and the only breakthroughs allowed to use their powers as first-responders there are cops. They wear supercop uniforms and take codenames on the side, but their identities are public and masks are verboten. Illinois is a Privacy State: any breakthrough here can shield his identity with a mask and a legal codename. If he wants to work with the police or emergency services, then the state needs to know who he is, but no one else. A third of all CAI heroes are masked mystery men. Guess which state has more superheroes and less superhuman crime?

  Terry Reinhold, Citywatch.

  * * *

  “Your honor, I would like to call Astra, of the Chicago Sentinels, to the stand.”

  I took a deep breath and stepped past the oak rail. The courtroom was packed, and Judge Sanderson had threatened to clear the gallery if he saw another camera flash; it wasn’t often that a “mystery man” testified in court, and the newsies, wild and domesticated, smelled blood. Or hoped they did.

  I smiled briefly at the judge and jury, switched Malleus to my left hand so I could take the oath on the Bible, and sat at the judge’s invitation. Putting Malleus down with an audible thud, I adjusted my fringe of a skirt. Both Legal Eagle and Dan Raffles, the fresh young assistant DA prosecuting the case, had insisted I wear the velvet sapphire blue one-piece I thought of as my “skating costume.” I insisted on the maul and convinced them it was a good idea.

  Dan smiled at me. I smiled at him. We both smiled. I’d been coached.

  “Can you state your legal name for the court?” Dan opened.

  Smile. “My legal codename is Astra.”

  “Objection, your honor.” The defense attorney stood behind his table.

  “Grounds?” Judge Sanderson asked. He didn’t smile.

  “My client has a constitutional right to confront his accuser, your honor. Not someone hiding behind a mask and a fake name.”

  “Your honor, if I may approach the bench?” Dan had already stepped back, and when Sanderson nodded he returned with a page his assistant had ready. The judge accepted it without looking at it.

  “This point has been addressed before, your honor. Stacy v. Illinois. The Supreme Court of Illinois has ruled that state-granted aliases are fully legal identities so long as the state knows the person’s private identity and can hold that person liable for any perjury or malfeasance for actions committed under his state-sanctioned public alias.

  “As to whether or not the young lady under the mask is indeed the person legally known as Astra ... Miss, will you please stand?”

  I picke
d up Malleus and stood.

  “Did anyone here see you arrive?”

  I nodded, waved. “Hi, Terry.” He waved back; the exchange got a ripple of laughter out of the jury and observers. Judge Sanderson tapped his gavel lightly.

  “Order. Your point, councilor?”

  “Just this, your honor. A show of hands, please? From everyone who saw her fly in?” A scattering of hands. “And if your honor and the jury will observe, the person in question is carrying a weapon formerly wielded by Ajax, one of our city’s fallen heroes. Miss, would you care to describe it?”

  I nodded again. “It’s cast titanium, about one hundred pounds.” I flipped it like a baton and gently set it on the front corner rail of the witness box, handle up.

  “Your honor?” Dan invited.

  Sanderson waved a bailiff forward. The beefy court officer looked appropriately serious, but he gave me a friendly smile before he braced himself, wrapped both hands around Malleus, lifted with a soft grunt, and carefully put it back down. Dan looked at the defense attorney. “Would you like to give it a try?” Another laughter-wave. The man shook his head as the guard returned to his post.

  “Lastly, your honor,” Dan said, “we have requested the presence of someone acquainted with our witness. The Sentinels have provided Doctor Jonathan Beth, the team physician. Doctor Beth is also a noted research scientist, but in his medical capacity he examines each of the Sentinels after any physical altercation. Doctor? Could you please stand?”

  Doctor Beth stood from where he sat behind the rail, smiling and looking totally at home. Was he hiding as many butterflies as I was?

  “Doctor, please consider yourself under oath. I saw you speaking with the witness before this session began. Is she, to your satisfaction, Astra?”

  He smiled at me, faced the jury. “Yes, she is.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” Dan turned back to the bench. “Of course, our witness may in fact be a shapeshifter, or a duplicate of some sort. But then, who isn’t these days?” Another ripple and a light tap of the judge’s mallet. The latest round of tabloid revelations claimed President Touches Clouds had been replaced with a mind-controlled clone. By Martians.