Ordinary Champions

by Hayden Thorne

  I did, though, watch the bizarre drama that could only be called RPG unfold as a visitor. Don’t ask me how long it took for me to find that site, finally. Just…don’t.

  And all I could do was bookmark sites as I surfed to cut down on my ongoing online grief.

  I also checked local news.

  Magnifiman was still cleaning up the streets, his efforts redoubled now everyone had discovered my dirty little secret. Calais stayed at his side, Miss Pyro at Calais’. It was pretty hard not thinking more about those two every time I saw them standing next to each other, but I figured this was the way the world turned. Better to suck it up and be a stronger man for it.

  “Search Intensifies for Manipulated Energy Boy!” was the common headline. “The Devil’s Trill: Escapee and Mad Scientist Experiments on Teenager!” was another. “The Cloak: Victim or Willing Disciple?” was another.

  Well—at least they finally got the spelling right.

  I’d read news items that vaguely referred to my family, especially my parents, as they pled for my safe return.

  I was grateful that the reporters who covered my story showed enough respect for my family not to show them on camera or in photos. Their real names—and mine, for that matter—were never revealed. Mom and Dad were quoted, nothing more, and they were always referred to as “the boy’s devastated parents.” Liz wasn’t interviewed, but that was likely because Mom and Dad wouldn’t allow it. I also had a feeling Magnifiman had something to do with their protection, and I made a note to thank him when the time came—well, in a manner of speaking.

  Hopefully I’d get a chance to show him my appreciation before he pounded me to dust.

  “Son, if you’re reading this, please know that we still love you, no matter what,” Dad once said. “Whatever happened—or whatever may happen—it’s not your fault. We all know that. Just come back to us, safe.” I had to walk away before I lost control of myself.

  I hated reading those news items, but I couldn’t help myself whenever I spotted references to the Cloak’s family. It was my only connection to my parents though it killed me every time. Would they understand what I was doing? Someday, maybe? Would my friends? I had a plan—my own scheme of turning the tables on the Trill—but it was turning out to be way harder than I’d first thought.

  It was easy to work on perfecting my powers—to use them against the forces of good as a way of fooling the Trill about my allegiances. I remembered my final confrontation with Peter, though. I remembered losing control of myself, like I was suddenly defenseless against something inside me that was way, way stronger than I expected. I didn’t know what it was that took over, but it was real, and I was afraid of it. I didn’t know how I’d respond to coming face-to-face with Peter again—and I expected to do that more and more often in the near future.

  The Trill didn’t believe in TV, so I didn’t have any way of watching breaking news. If the guy wanted to create a world of his own that was stuck in a time loop of some kind, he sure succeeded. I was actually surprised he gave me a computer, not an abacus.

  I tried to get on a local news site to watch a video of the most recent news, but the stupid page froze on me. Before I could reboot, the computer shut itself down since I’d already used up my allotted hour.

  “Oh, man.” I sighed, looking around. It sucked, being so closed off from the rest of the universe. I guess the only consolation I had was the crazy stacks of books that littered my room. I didn’t even have a blank journal where I could write my haiku—loose sheets of filler paper didn’t count.

  Since it wasn’t dinner time yet, I dragged my self-pitying butt over to one pile of books and rummaged through them. I didn’t know who Rochester was, but his portrait on the front cover looked pretty interesting, so I pulled out a collection of his poetry and plays.

  I figured if I were to be holed up somewhere in Vintage City’s rotting underbelly, I might as well expose myself some more to classic literature and be really intellectual. And if I didn’t get it the first time around, I had plenty of time to make up for it, being trapped like this.

  I crawled into bed and stretched out on my stomach. Reading poetry from the Earl of Rochester was a pretty cool way of immersing myself in class and culture.

  * * * *

  I counted slowly, my face hot and pressed against a pillow. It took a little time, but I stopped blushing eventually. Nearby the book of Rochester’s poetry lay open, some of its pages a little wrinkled. And a bit damp.

  God, that was embarrassing. Class and culture, my horny ass.

  I never thought I’d be giving myself a boner just reading poetry. With a slightly sweaty hand, I reached out and pushed the damn book farther and farther away until it fell over the edge of my bed, and I listened to it land on the floor with a dull plop.

  I took a deep, relaxing breath as I felt myself calm down some more, my mind forcing a bunch of pretty kinky images out of my overheated brain. I missed Peter.

  Badly. I was sure my nights were doomed to be haunted by his hot, spandex-covered image against the backdrop of Rochester’s porn-y verses. I groaned against my pillow. I hoped the Trill had plenty of spare bed sheets on hand.

  I suppose the only good thing was that my mom wasn’t around to catch me reading something dirty. I could only imagine she’d have the Trill’s balls in a square knot if she found out her son was being subjected to classic English Lit porn.

  When dinner time came, I made sure to say something about the corruption of a minor. The Trill merely dabbed his mouth with a napkin—really proper-like—while chuckling the whole time.

  “My dear Mr. Plath,” he began.

  “Considering I’m kinda, sorta your ward now, I think it’s okay to call me Eric,” I cut in a little testily. “I mean, seriously—all this ‘Mr. Plath’ stuff is getting a bit out of hand, know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I know, but calling you by your Christian name just doesn’t come to me so easily, dear boy.”

  “Oh, and the ‘boy’ bit, too. You’re not that much older than me, right? Like, you’re probably around Magnifiman’s age, which makes you twenty, twenty-two, tops? Sure, you guys look a bit older than you are, but I guess superpowers come with some kind of a price. Look at me. I’m only sixteen, but with my powers, everyone thinks I’m nineteen or something.” Which was a pretty cool thing in itself, I wanted to add, but I didn’t want to feed his loony ego any more than I should.

  The Trill sighed, and if I’d had the ability to see his eyes, I’d surely have watched them roll in their sockets.

  “Look, can we get back to the subject at hand?”

  “Literary porn, you mean?”

  “You say toe-MAY-toe, and I say toe-MAH-toe.”

  I shook my head, frowning, as I sipped my lemonade. “Dude, you’re so bizarre.”

  “Well, what I was trying to get at, young man, was that literature runs the gamut, just as music does, and what one considers to be objectionable might not be so to another. From classical music to hip-hop. One man’s trash, as they say…” The Trill pointed a fork at me for emphasis, and I blinked.

  “So—what does that have anything to do with what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “That you’re blowing things well out of proportion, of course. If you find some of the books in your room objectionable—yes, books that are given to you for your own intellectual improvement—you’re most welcome to set them aside and turn your attention to something else.” He paused as he helped himself to more pasta, his pale lips still curved in a smile. “I trust your judgment, of course. That’s the reason why I thought to gift you with a range of titles. I could, of course, treat you like a slobbering little child and dictate your reading choices, if that’s what you want. But I’m not a fan of censorship.”

  I pressed my mouth into a tight line and shook my head. “No, that’s okay. Never mind.”

  “It’s really a non-issue, if you think about it,” he said, raising his wineglass to his lips as he watched me eat.
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br />   “Yeah, I guess so,” I replied with a vague, noncommittal shrug. “Then again, I’m still only sixteen, and Mom’s going to kill you if she finds out. Unless my dad gets to you first.”

  “How do you like the pasta?”

  “Oh—it’s good, I guess. The lemonade tastes a little too sweet.”

  I looked up and met his gaze—sort of. All I could see were those creepy little crescents in his mask that served as his eyes. “Is it? I’ll have to tell cook to double the lemon for you next time,” he said, and I hesitated before turning my attention back to my meal. He was seriously creeping me out, and I dreaded the long, dreary days that waited for me as his “ward.”

  Crap. If it was in my bad karma genes to be taken in by a supervillain, why did it have to be him, fer chrissakes? I was sure there were other supervillains out there, and if I were to be royally screwed by someone, I’d rather be under the thumb of someone awesome like—oh—Dolly Parton or something. I mean, she always had that “cool aunt” vibe about her, and, hell, if she were turned into a genetic monster? I’d kill to be her sidekick!

  But, nooooooo. I had to be manipulated by Mr. Cultured Freako instead.

  I changed the subject as quickly as I could before full out panic set in. “So when’s our next assignment?” I prodded, taking another sip of my lemonade. Man, it was gross. Whoever prepared the drink must have poured a one-pound box of sugar into it. Bizarrely enough, I couldn’t help myself every time, even with me so grossed out over it. It was vile and yet addicting. I just made sure to chase it down with lots of water.

  “Ah, good boy. I like your enthusiasm. Tomorrow, Mr. Plath, we go downtown to the Schell Hall, where a very interesting private auction is scheduled to take place.”

  I nodded. I could see where this was going. “So we go there to steal important stuff, with me for your bodyguard—sort of.”

  “You really are a very astute young man.” The Trill laughed. “I made a very good choice in sidekicks.”

  “Yeah, well—it’s not like this hasn’t happened in every superhero comic book before, you know,” I said, twirling my fork in my pasta. I also didn’t expect anything else from him, but I decided not to share that.

  “Good point.”

  I hesitated for a moment and watched him butter his dinner roll. I suppose the weirdness of the whole scene should have sunk in by then, but it just hovered around the fringes in a way, and I was barely aware of it. It was kind of odd, the way my life shifted like it did. It seemed like it was only yesterday when I was sitting at the dinner table, enjoying the usual meal with my family: Mom forcing me to eat, Liz coughing up conspiracy theories, and Dad vanishing behind the afternoon paper. Now? I couldn’t even come up with the words for it.

  No, actually, I could: I was Robin to a twisted-ass Batman.

  “So how can you be so sure of me?” I asked, breaking the brief silence.

  He looked up and regarded me in some surprise—at least from what I could sense, anyway, given his mask and all. “Sure of you, my dear boy?” he echoed.

  “Yeah, how can you be sure that I’m not going to let my emotions get to me again the way they did before? I’ll be up against Magnifiman and Calais, so don’t you think I’ll be at a disadvantage when the time comes?”

  The Trill nodded and gulped down the rest of his wine. Then he sat back in his chair with a satisfied little grunt, folding his hands on his lap and tilting his head a little as he watched me from across the table. “There’s nothing for you to be concerned about in that sense,” he replied. “Don’t you remember your last fight with them? How do you think you fared?”

  “I—I guess I kicked their butts.”

  He spread his hands before him. “There you have it.”

  I nodded. “That’s cool, I guess.”

  “Yes, it is.” He paused, grinning. “Try not to overthink things. If the situation looks easy, it most likely is. Learn to move with the flow, young man.” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “I suppose I should expand your reading with some Bruce Lee books. He studied philosophy, you know.”

  I drank the rest of my lemonade, feeling a little smug.

  A while ago, he mentioned something about tweaking with the program he used on me, but he hadn’t lifted a finger since we’d holed ourselves up in his hideout. I wasn’t bombarded with more coded music. I wasn’t injected with mind-altering fluids. I wasn’t told to light a tricked out joint and inhale deeply. He’d done nothing to “fix” me up. I held on to some hope that I’d be under the control of my emotions enough to minimize the damage once we confronted Magnifiman and the rest of the good guys. I seriously needed to play my “ambivalent character” cards right.

  “In that case,” I said, taking care to sound eager and cheerful, “I should turn in early. Better to be well rested and prepared for a showdown tomorrow, right?”

  The Trill watched me push my chair back and stand up. He was grinning broadly. “Yes, indeed. Sweet dreams, Mr. Plath. Sweet dreams.”

  I marched off to my room, chewing a fingernail and scowling at my sneakers. I suppose things weren’t as complicated as I’d been making them out to be and told myself that I worried too much.

  Chapter 3

  Schell Hall was one of those not-quite-historic buildings in Vintage City that couldn’t be touched by anyone who earned less than two hundred fifty thousand bucks a year—unless, of course, they happened to work there in the housekeeping or maintenance departments. The interior was all polished wood, heavy velvet curtains, and chandeliers that cloaked everyone with a jaundiced glow, which made me wonder which of the auction attendees really had issues with their livers and which ones were just badly lit. With the absence of rugs or carpeting, each attendee walked around with a light clattering of shoes against waxed floors, so the buzz of voices mingled with noise underfoot, which proved to be a bit of an irritation after a while.

  I watched the proceedings—sort of—in a tux. I guess having some classy art buff supervillain for a guardian meant showing up in some pretty swanky disguise, which wasn’t that hard to do since I didn’t own a costume. Note to self: file a formal request for my own kickass gear, seeing as how I suddenly had superpowers. Then again, I suppose the occasion required it.

  I didn’t come as an attendee, though. Well before the auction was scheduled to take place, I managed to sneak into the hall, clonk some poor catering guy on the head, apologize, and stuff him, bound and gagged, in one of the basement closets. It was easy enough, and the Trill provided me with fake ID to show that I was part of the staff. For a moment, though, I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off since the head guy—what would the head waiter type guy be called, anyway?—didn’t know who I was.

  He was this tall, skinny man with too much grease in his hair, and he literally looked down his nose at me. Never mind the fact that I was only about two inches shorter than him.

  “Who’re you?” he demanded as I showed up in my tux, silently cussing at my new pair of Italian leather dress shoes, which seemed to be made of steel that shrank around my toes with every step I took. I wished tuxedoes could be complemented with sneakers.

  “Oh, hi,” I said, smiling and unveiling my dimples. “I’m part of the catering staff.”

  His gaze moved up and down my front, and his eyes narrowed. “Where’s Dino?”

  “Out sick. Food poisoning. He called me at the last minute to fill in for him.”

  “Food poisoning?” he echoed, his nostrils flaring. “Again? What was it this time?”

  I shrugged. “Fried sardines.”

  “He didn’t call me.”

  “Well—did you really want to listen to him puke into the phone? ‘Cause that’s how it was with me. Took him a long time to get to the point, too, which was pretty disgusting.”

  Mr. Head Catering Staff’s face hardened, and he fumbled around his pockets. “This smells fishy, and I don’t mean fried sardines,” he growled. “I’ve never been aware of support or backup staff till now
.” He whipped out his cell phone and started pressing buttons with a very quick and flexible thumb, which seemed to be guided by pure instinct since not once did he take his eyes off me.

  “I’m getting to the bottom of this,” he said. “Stay where you are.” He pressed his phone to his ear and nodded at me. “And fix your damn tie. It’s crooked. Once I confirm everything, I’m not going to let you walk in that room, embarrassing the company with your carelessness.”

  I was making a show of fumbling around with my tie when I spotted furtive movement behind Mr. Head Catering Staff—a dark, lumpy shadow that flitted from potted fern to potted fern, creeping forward until it vanished directly behind my “boss.”

  “Uh, hello? Dino?” he barked. “Dino?”

  The lumpy shadow rose behind him, raised a dark arm, and BAM! Mr. Head Catering Staff became one more heavy burden for me to drag downstairs, and I must admit I felt a little torn between relief and annoyance. It was like being made to dump the trash twice in one day, which happened fairly frequently in my home—my real home, that is.

  The Trill stood before me, his hand still balled in a tight fist. “There,” he said. “One less staff member to worry about. Now hurry up and take care of this before the auction starts.”

  “Why me?” I demanded. “Where’s everyone else? I thought I was your sidekick or something, not some minion thug.”

  He stared at me for a moment. “The rest of my men are busy setting things up and taking their positions, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Well, you could have spared at least one of them to do drudge work! I mean, come on! Who’s got powers, anyway? Me or them?”

  The Trill shook his head. “Quit placing yourself on a pedestal, kid. Now go on and take care of this.”

  I watched him stride off in the direction of the elevators since the catering things were all in some big, fancy room on the third floor. “Oh, so it’s ‘kid’ now, is it?”

  “I’m getting used to it,” he called back without a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t even bother to look back. “I thought you’d welcome the change, Mr. Plath, as I believe I sound more like an ordinary gentleman when I patronize you like that.”