by Pab Sungenis
“Fine. Stick around if you want. Go upstairs and watch TV or something because I’ve got stuff to do down here.”
“Like what?” She leaned in close to me. “Sulk?”
“Maybe.”
She leaned in closer. “Fine. But the stuff you’ve got to do down here better include a bath because you really need one about now.”
Any hope of my coming up with a witty retort dissolved as my brain shut down and blood rushed to my face. Dammit, she really did know what buttons to push with me. No guy wants the girl that makes him go all soft in the head suggest he take a bath unless the unspoken part of the suggestion is that he take it with her, which was not the case.
“Like I said, I’ve been busy down here.” I put down the soldering iron I had taken up after ordering everyone out and unplugged it. There was no way I was losing myself in work now, so I spun back around to look at her. “I meant what I said. I’m not mad at you. Or Tommy.”
“Maybe not.” She pulled up a stool and sat in front of me. “But you are mad at Rick. You know he thought he was doing you a favor. So did Mystery. I thought it was a generous gesture.”
I shrugged grudgingly. “I guess so. But it was also a stupid gesture.”
“How? Wouldn’t it be nice to have this whole hero gig actually pay you back somehow, instead of screwing with your life? Don’t look a gift diploma in the mouth. Especially after you’ve worked so hard this year.”
“You don’t understand, that’s all. Yeah, I’ve worked hard this year to max out my grades to get into a good college. But that’s the point. It was me doing the work. I was the one making the effort and investing the time.” I went over and picked up the envelope Rick had thrown back at me. “This, I probably could have had this months ago without lifting a finger. Uncle Jack also gave a hell of a lot of money to colleges and private schools. He could have made the calls Mystery made and gotten me into a very respectable school. And if he’d been alive when I found myself facing being kicked out of school, he could have probably arranged a similar diploma from some other boarding school. Hell, he might even have been able to get one from the school I’d just dropped out of. But I didn’t want that.”
Sarah stood and walked over to my side. She took the envelope out of my hands and tossed it onto the workbench. I was afraid she was going to be as confused as Rick had been when I’d thrown my little tantrum, but the look in her eyes told me she sort of had an idea where I was coming from. “Go on.”
“I wanted to earn my diploma. And when I got accepted into college, that was supposed to be the reward for the hard work I’d put in. It was supposed to be my achievement and no one else’s.” Tears came to my eyes, but I held them back with all the willpower I’d ever hoped to have. “I loved my Uncle Jack. He literally saved my life. He metaphorically saved it, too, because I’ve seen too many punk kids that I probably would have wound up like if he hadn’t given me some direction six years ago. On top of that, he gave me a more comfortable existence than I ever could have dreamed of. But that became the problem. He saved my life. He gave me direction. And after a while, I kind of wanted to do something for myself.”
“You didn’t want to live in his shadow.”
“Not so much that.” I found my way back to my stool and sat down again. She did likewise. “It’s just that since I came to live with him, my life has sort of been defined by him. I was Jack Horner’s foster son. I was the Scarlet Knight’s sidekick. There really wasn’t a way of describing me that didn’t rely on comparing me with someone else. Hell, even now that I’m supposedly a hero in my own right, look at me. I’m wearing his costume and using his name. Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be carrying on the legacy and honoring his memory and shit, but the way I see it, the only reason I’ve stopped being defined by him is that now I’ve become him.”
“That’s really not fair. You may have taken his name and his outfit, but you’re not him. You’re still you.”
“Am I? Sometimes I wonder if the real me died in that warehouse years ago.”
“Bobby.” She leaned in closer. “No matter how much influence, or how much pressure, people put on you to make you what they want, when you come right down to it, you’re still you. We’re all the sum of our experiences. You’re not the little thug being used as a courier service by his dad any more. You’re not the scared little boy being rescued by the big hero. And you’re not Jack Horner’s sidekick anymore, either. But there are still parts of each of them in you. And that’s what makes you, well, you.”
I hung my head. She was right, but when you feel like I felt, you don’t always want to accept the truth. Sometimes because it hurts and sometimes because it stops you from hurting when all you want to do is be miserable. In my case, it was a little of both.
She leaned in even closer, almost close enough for her face to brush against mine. “I know what you need right now. How to make you feel better, more self-confident. At least, I know it always works for me.”
I lifted my head and looked her in the eye.
“Are you suggesting we … ” I didn’t want to complete the thought.
“Of course I am.” She took me by the hand and stood up. I followed her to the wardrobe. “Suit up, Bobby. Time for some action.”
You Can’t Get to Heaven on the Frankford El
Harbor City looks so beautiful at night.
It’s not one of the largest cities in the country, not by a long shot, but it really is one of the most unique. Built up over a span of decades by different people with different tastes and different dreams, the City had grown almost organically. Every person who comes to the City imposes their own vision of it over the top of what was there before, remaking at least a little part of it in their own image.
In the heat of summer, when it’s swelled far past capacity with tourists and beachcombers, the City becomes a big, bold, brash beacon filled with noise and life. Screams of joy from the amusement piers blend with the noises of the downtown crowds and the roars of traffic and trains to create a kind of music. It’s the soundtrack of the City, the heartbeat of a living thing in and of itself. It’s truly a joy to behold.
Even then, in the middle of February, it still lit up like a Christmas tree on steroids. It shone out over the ocean like a lighthouse, half-beckoning people toward it and half-warning people away from the peril of answering its siren song. The music of the City was softer, more of a quiet serenade than the boisterous opera of the summer, but it never faded away. The City’s heartbeat may weaken as the days grow shorter, but it never stops. I think that’s why I love having it as my home.
Pandora followed me down and up the tunnel, rocketing out behind me as I pushed my way out the trapdoor in the dunes and spun around over the heart of the City. I held my breath, wanting to make sure I heard her reaction as she got a proper glimpse of the City as I saw it.
“Wow.” A small word, but one that packed a lot of wallop behind it. I could tell she was impressed, and it made me as proud as if she had said the word about me.
“Quite a view, huh? Nothing like Buffalo, I’ll bet.”
“Are you kidding? Buffalo is pretty big, but it’s just not as … ” She scrambled like she was trying to find the right word. “As real as this.”
“You should see it Fourth of July weekend. It’s overwhelming.”
I took her along my usual patrol routes, flying lower than usual to point out all my favorite sites. I took her over the Milk-Jug Lady’s house, explaining how the woman loved to decorate her lawn with painted milk jugs arranged to form images like pixels on a computer screen. I showed her the elephant-shaped building and the old pier where there used to be a Vaudeville theater before developers took it over. Then, dipping down until we were five stories up, I led her down the cavern of Ocean Avenue, between the casinos and other tourist destinations. As we dove into view, cheers rose from the streets. The residents who’d gotten used to seeing their city’s hero around gave me a thumbs-up and hooted. The tourists grabbed th
eir cameras and snapped pictures as if we were the sight they had come to see.
“There.” She flew right up next to me. “Doesn’t that make you feel better? You’re appreciated here.”
“Maybe. Of course in that outfit the guys are probably cheering for you.”
She smacked me, gently and playfully, on the back of the head. I laughed, which made her laugh, too. We waved to the people below before regaining altitude and sweeping back over the City.
Technically, we were out on patrol, but to be honest, it wasn’t much of a patrol. We only barely kept a lookout for trouble, preferring to play the roles of tourist and tour guide. I wanted to show off my city, and she seemed genuinely interested in everything I pointed out. I felt like a kid showing off his toys, taking such immense pride in stuff that I had nothing to do with the creation of, but felt the right to brag about just because it was mine. I was glad she couldn’t see through the helmet’s visor because I was certain I was grinning like a fool.
That explains why she saw the guy first. She called me over and pointed to a lone figure standing in the middle of the elevated railroad tracks. She didn’t need to say more, and we changed course to head over to him. A guy standing alone in the middle of an El track was bad news for one of many reasons. Either he was suicidal and waiting for a train to run over him, or he was stuck there and hoping to escape before a train ran over him, or he had some nefarious scheme in mind and was hoping to turn the tables and actually, so to speak, run over the train.
I cycled through the modes on my visor until I found the zoom feature and got a close look at the guy. My worst fears were confirmed when I saw what he was carrying with him. “Crap,” I yelled over to Pandora. “It’s one of the Snack Cake Gang.”
“What? Never heard of them.”
“Uncle Jack and I tangled with them a lot. Weird bunch. They like to throw cupcakes and stuff at people when committing their crimes.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. What kind of damage can a cupcake do?”
“Their cupcakes explode.”
“Say no more.” She scanned the tracks. Here in Harbor City we might not make the trains run on time, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t count on one coming by when you wanted one. Or when you didn’t want one. “Train pulling out of the next station up the line. Looks like we’ve got maybe three … no, scratch that, two minutes at best.” She shook her head. “How do you get trains that run so fast in this city?”
“What can I say, we’re proud of our infrastructure. Try to stop or slow down the train. I’ll take care of the thug.” She peeled off quickly, and I poured on the speed toward the saboteur, hoping to get the jump on him.
“HA HA! SCARLET KNIGHT, WE MEET AGAIN!” No such luck. I hated how the craze for witty banter in the middle of battle had prompted so many criminals to carry around megaphones these days. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say, just knock the snot out of them. I could see the guy clearly now. He was wearing a garish, rainbow colored outfit topped with a white chef’s hat. It took me a moment, but I remembered which one of the Snack Cake Gang dressed that way. Simple Simon. It was easy to predict what was coming.
I spun up the controls for the cell phone I’d added to the helmet a few days before (something that, surprisingly, Uncle Jack had never thought of) and rang 911. Before the operator could say anything, I blurted out the guy’s location and suggested a couple of dozen cop cars converging on that point would probably be a good idea. Then I turned my full attention to Simon. “Come on, Simon. There are two ways we can go about this. We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the fun way. I know which one I’d prefer. How about you?”
“You think you’re so smart, Scarlet Knight? Well, maybe these fruit pies will stop you!”
He lobbed a bunch of spinning oblong discs at me, and I dove downward. The “pies” burst above me, showering me with heat, shrapnel, and blueberry filling. The suit provided some protection against all three, leaving me with just a bit of a bruise and a horrible purple splotch on my back. Dammit, I did not want to have to do laundry tonight. “Fine. The fun way it is.”
I spun around and headed back toward Simon. He kept throwing pastry. The closer I got, the harder the deadly confections were to dodge. Especially because it can be kind of hard to concentrate with Peanut Butter Bar missiles zipping past your head. I made the mistake of looking over to my right to see how Pandora was doing, and a Butterscotch Whatzit banged into my helmet and exploded.
My ears rang louder than the bells of Old St. Mary’s, and my vision blurred. My visor blinked off for a second as the helmet’s systems quickly rebooted. From what the readouts told me, the helmet itself didn’t appear damaged, but I was willing to lay even money that I had at least a minor concussion. That did it. The bozo was going down.
As soon as I recovered my senses, an act that took only a few seconds but could make all the difference when in the middle of battle, I went to grab Simon. Sirens heralded the arrival of cops—and apparently the fire department—on the scene, but there was no way I was going to hand him over to the police this time. If they wanted him, they could drive out to City Hall and cut him down from the flagpole after I’d given him the worst wedgie of his life.
But my childish dream of revenge was not to come to fruition, since by the time I could see straight again, Simple Simon was gone. I couldn’t tell if he’d jumped off the tracks, climbed down, or found some other way to escape, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that when I dove down to grab him there was no him to grab. All that was left was four pound cakes tied to the rails, and a sack of various snack cakes lying in the center of the track.
Crap.
I zoomed as high as I could as quickly as I could as the sugar-sweetened bombs all detonated below me. The explosion took out the tracks, the rails, and the El bridge over Frankford Avenue, showering the street below with wreckage and chocolatey frosting.
I looked for Pandora again. She was pushing mightily against the engine of the train but was only barely managing to slow it down. She may have been the strongest girl in the world, but that didn’t mean she was anywhere near as strong as her mentor or anyone else who could conceivably stop a train in its tracks. “More powerful than a locomotive” was not part of the job description of too many of us, and sadly, neither she nor I really qualified in that area.
I kicked my boots into higher-than-high gear and zipped right toward the train. I put my arms against it and added my momentum to Pandora’s, and the train slowed a little bit more. “Why isn’t the conductor slamming on the brakes?” I shouted.
“He’s dead, that’s why. Jellyroll grenade in his sack lunch it looks like. Your guy had this well-planned.”
“Dammit.” Without help from inside, there was no way we were going to be able to stop the train before it plunged through the gaping hole in the tracks up ahead. “Can you get inside?” I shouted to her.
“What?”
“Fly inside and pull the emergency brake. It’s the only hope we have of keeping this train from winding up scattered all over downtown.”
“You go inside. I’ll keep pushing. I’m stronger than you are.” Not a judgment, just a statement of fact.
“Yes, but that’s why you need to pull the brakes. I might not be strong enough to engage them in time.” A blatant lie, but I was banking on her not knowing much about the workings of trains. “I have a plan to slow it down, but I need someone on the brakes to make it work. Don’t ask for details, I don’t have time to explain it.”
She looked at me, her eyes a blend of question and concern, but she obviously trusted me enough not to keep second-guessing me. She zipped upward and swung in a loop toward the window into the control car. I amped up the anti-gravs until they were just short of overloading and pushed with all my might, but the train kept moving forward.
The muscles in my arm screamed at the torture I was subjecting them to. If I kept up this pace, my bones were bound to shatter. Of course, tha
t would be the least of my worries, because if that were to happen, the train would pick up speed and smash right into the rest of me. If I lived through that impact, which was unlikely, I’d only have about a minute of agony to go through before the train and I both fell to our mutual destruction on the street below.
I felt the emergency brakes kick in as Pandora pulled at the lever with all her might. The train slowed but still had more than enough momentum to carry it forward through the gap. The readout on my visor flashed me a warning: the anti-grav system was overloading. “Great,” I muttered to myself. “One more way I’m going to die.”
That’s when my brain finally kicked into full gear. The anti-gravs were talking with my helmet. I had forgotten about the helmet control system. I didn’t need to work the boots with my feet; I could do it through the helmet. And that meant the weakest link in this operation, my fragile human body, wasn’t necessary. I spun through the menus quickly and engaged the controls. My visor flooded with data readouts and command options.
I dropped the power on the anti-gravs to give me a little time and room to operate. I spun around so my boots, not my arms, braced the front of the car, then I undid the fasteners on the boots so they only loosely hung onto my legs.
I could see Pandora through the window, and a look of terror came over her as she realized what I was planning to do. I looked right at her and gave her a quick hand gesture. I had no way of knowing whether she knew what it meant, or thought that I was making one of those stupid “devil” signs that hard-rock poseurs would flash while headbanging but with my thumb outward. If she didn’t get the message that I was signing to her that I loved her, at least I knew what I had said.
I re-engaged the anti-gravs, pushing me off the front of the train for half a second, then with the helmet, I slammed them into reverse as fast as I could, pouring every last bit of their battery power into the front of the train. The force from the anti-gravs pushed the train back, slowing its forward momentum more than I ever could have by pushing myself. Meanwhile, inertia carried me away from the train and through a graceful arc into empty air.
