And oh, did I mention that about halfway through the run it started to rain? Hard. After a while, I didn’t know if I should continue running or start swimming.
Once we runners returned to Camp Avatar, our group hit the weights in the gym under Athena’s critical eye and even more critical mouth. The other half of the trainees who had lifted weights while we had run left to go for a run with Carbon Copy. Other than the few of us trainees who were gifted with superhuman endurance, most of us looked like we were going to be sick. A few of us were.
I sat on a weight bench with a trash pail pressed between my legs. I felt like I had just thrown up every meal I had in my entire life. As I tried to recover from throwing up what felt like all of my internal organs, I looked over at Athena. She was encouraging a pudgy and pasty trainee who lay on a bench and was struggling under a loaded barbell. By “encouraging,” I mean she was berating him. Despite having run with us, Athena looked as fresh as a daisy as she yelled at the guy. I looked down between my legs. I wondered what a daisy would look like with a pailful of puke dripping down it. Could I send it over to her with my powers without her knowing where it came from?
Then I remembered how easily Athena had dealt with Brute, Nimbus, and Smoke. I shuddered at what I had thought about doing. Exhaustion and puking my guts out had made me go temporarily insane.
As if she could read my mind, Athena looked over her shoulder at me.
“Enough goldbricking, Carolina,” she barked at me. “Get up and shake a leg. Those weights won’t squat themselves.”
Suppressing a groan, I put the trash can down. I got up. My legs were wobbly. My body felt like an old man’s. Then I had a sudden terrifying thought:
What if Athena actually can read minds? God help us!
13
At the end of the first day, we trainees assembled in the mess hall for dinner. None of the instructors were present. Enough food to choke a herd of elephants was arranged in the center of the hall buffet-style. Long tables were arranged around the room, with bench seats on either side of them. Each trainee had been issued dietary guidelines that were specially tailored to each of our bodies based on our earlier physical examinations. My guidelines were a page long and talked a lot about my metabolic rate, carbohydrate loading, amino acid diversification, and a bunch of other stuff that sounded like bro science. But it could all be boiled down to a one sentence mandate: Eat more, and more often.
Even so, I would have thought I would be too tired to eat when I dragged myself into the mess hall. My body felt like I had competed in the Olympics right after having run a marathon backward. But, when the smell of the food hit me, I realized I was ravenous. I inhaled my first plate. I was not sure if I even chewed. I might have just swallowed the heaping pile of food whole, boa constrictor-style.
I got up from the table, fixed myself a second helping, and returned to my table. Everyone knew me thanks to Athena yelling at me. They all called me Carolina. I did not correct them. When Athena had dubbed me that, I thought the name would then be used by my fellow trainees to make fun of me. That was not the case. They called me Carolina endearingly, like it was a cool nickname. I never had a cool nickname before. I was usually on the outside of social circles looking in. I got called names, not nicknames. That was not the case here. Though we had not even spent a full twenty-four hours together, we trainees had all been through a lot together already. Besides, we did not have the energy to waste by picking on one another. We focused our energy on a common enemy: the drill instructors, especially Athena. Since I had been the first to be singled-out by Athena, everyone seemed to like me even though they knew nothing about me. It was a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of thing. I was popular for the first time in . . . well, ever really. I wondered how long it would last.
“Next time, I’m gonna screw her head off her body like it’s a beer cap,” Brute said about Athena. He went on to detail what he would do to her next. There was a lot of smashing and stomping involved. Brute was one of the dozen or so trainees at my table. It turned out Brute had not been hurt when he had been slammed to the ground by Athena, so he had worked out with the rest of us after being cleared by the infirmary’s doctor. I seriously doubted Brute would be able to do as he said. I did not think he would be up to doing anything to Athena she didn’t want him to do, even after he trained more. Too much brawn, not enough brains. Besides, he was talking too much about what he would do to Athena. Like Dad always said, the biggest talkers were usually the smallest doers. I of course kept my thoughts about Brute’s threats to myself.
Some of the guys at the table jumped in on what Brute said to add what they would also do to Athena and other the drill instructors. The statements were vulgar, funny, biologically improbable, almost certainly illegal, and unlikely to ever occur. I threw in my two cents as well. It felt good to blow off some steam. The camaraderie felt good too. I was not used to it.
“Some of the girls got together and told Athena the girls shouldn’t have the same physical requirements the boys do,” Smartphone interjected. She was a big blocky girl with short platinum blonde hair. “I was there when they did it. They told her it wasn’t fair.”
“What did Athena say about that?” I asked.
“She said, and I quote, ‘If you want fair, enroll in a fancy women-only liberal arts college, take your teddy bears, blankies and trigger warnings to their most comfy safe space, and watch an Oprah Winfrey Show marathon about how to actualize your best self. If you want to be a Hero, you’ll do exactly what the males have to do, and you’ll shut up while you’re doing it. Supervillains won’t go easy on you because you’re female. You’re here to be trained, not coddled.’” Smartphone had an eidetic memory. If she said that was what Athena had said, I believed her.
An argument soon broke out about whether the physical requirements should be lowered for females. I did not have a dog in the fight. Besides, I was hungry again despite having polished off my second plate of food. So, I got up and fixed myself a third plate from the buffet table. As I did so, I noticed Smoke sitting at the far edge of a table at the end of the mess hall. While she was not alone at the table, the six or so others at the long table sat on the other end of the table far from Smoke. They were carefully ignoring her. The fact Smoke had trained with a notorious supervillain clearly had not gone down well with the other trainees.
I felt badly for Smoke. I knew what it was like to not feel like you a part of the larger group. When I was in the fifth grade, I had run for class vice-president. The election rules had said I had to have a campaign manager, which involved zero work other than the fact you would have to say you were my campaign manager. Not a single kid in my class would agree to be my campaign manager. I had been that big of a social outcast, mainly because I was more than just a little nerdy and because I was seen as little more than the dirt my Dad farmed on. I never forgot that incident and others like it that happened throughout my life. More to the point, I had never forgotten how those incidents had made me feel.
That was why, though I knew I was risking my newfound and unaccustomed social cred, I took my plate over to Smoke’s table.
“Hi!” I said to her. I was quite the smooth talker. Cary Grant from one of those old movies did not have anything on me.
Smoke looked up at me. Her eyes were hazel, and quite the contrast to her darker skin. I was struck again by how pretty she was.
“Hi yourself.”
“Do you mind if I join you?”
Smoke glanced around. The people on the end of the table were staring at us from the corners of their eyes while pretending not to. “Aren’t you scared of catching my cooties?” Smoke asked me. “I seem to have a particularly virulent strain of them.”
“I’m a Hero trainee. I’m not scared of cooties. Cooties are scared of me.” I winced, and sat down. “That sounded way cooler in my head, by the way.”
“I would hope so.” She smiled at me. Her teeth were white and even, like she had spent a lot o
f money on dental care.
“The name’s Carolina,” I said, extending my hand over the table. I winced again. I sounded like a character in a bad Western. Smoke took my hand.
“I know. I saw your run-in with Athena. My name’s Smoke.”
“I know. I saw your run-in with her too. You have a bit of an accent. Where are you from?”
“You’re one to talk about accents Mr. South Carolina,” she said with a slight smile. “I was born in Gujarat.” My face must have looked blank because she added, “It’s a state in western India. I was raised here in the U.S., though.”
We fell silent. I was at a loss for what else to say. I had not planned this out beyond the go over and say hello stage. I looked down at Smoke’s plate. There was no meat there, only vegetable-based dishes.
“Are you a vegetarian?” I asked, grateful for the lifeline.
“Yes. I’m Hindu. I very occasionally eat meat, but I generally avoid it.”
“Not me. I’ll eat anything as long as it’s dead. Sometimes even if it’s just moving slowly.”
“Note to self: don’t die or move slowly.”
We both laughed. The ice was broken. I asked her about Hinduism. I had never met a Hindu before. We talked for a long while about that, life in India, and a bunch of different things as the conversations of the other trainees swirled around us. I wanted to find out the story about her being trained by a supervillain, but I did not want Smoke to think that was why I approached her. So, I did not ask. Besides, after talking to her for a while, I did not care if or why Smoke was trained by a supervillain.
I liked her.
Several trainees quit the Academy that first night, including most of that group of girls who had asked Athena to have different physical standards for males and females. We all had the right to quit, at any time and for any reason. It said so right here in the Academy manual, part of which I stayed up late memorizing after lights out using a pen light Carbon Copy lent me. The manual made clear that if you did quit the Academy, you could never return. You certainly could never go on to become a licensed Hero.
Honestly, lying there in the dark straining my eyes reading, I kind of felt like quitting too. Despite the fact I had enjoyed my chat with Smoke and the camaraderie of the other trainees, I was not used to being yelled at, embarrassed, humiliated, and pushing my body like I was a slave on a cotton plantation. Everything on my body hurt except my eyelashes. Even they did not feel quite right.
I might have quit had I not had a picture of the Meta who murdered Dad firmly in my mind’s eye, like a target I was aiming at.
After finally memorizing the page I needed to recite to Athena the next morning, I flicked off the pen light. The room was dark. Some of the guys in the barracks were snoring. Dad had snored too. The familiar sound made me sad. It also made me very homesick for a home that no longer existed. Though I was surrounded by dozens of people, I felt both alone and lonely.
I rolled over in my cot. I winced as I pulled the thin cover over my head. Muscles I did not even know I had hurt. I buried my face into my pillow. I felt sorry for myself. I am not proud to say I cried a little before finally drifting off to sleep, but that’s exactly what I did. I prayed no one heard me.
In my troubled dreams I saw, as I often did, the masked face of the Meta who killed Dad.
14
Reveille sounded at 0600 the next morning. I tried to sit up in my barracks cot. My body refused. I was sore all over, but especially in my legs. I could barely move them. I felt like a well-tenderized steak.
The world spun. Suddenly I was on the cold floor. I looked up to see Carbon Copy walking away, doing the same thing he had done to me to others who had not gotten up promptly. If I had been able to move my sore arms, I might have tried to choke him.
At exactly 0700 hours, full from breakfast and feeling only slightly less like death warmed over, I stood in front of Athena in her quarters. Her furnishings were unsurprisingly spartan and cold. I recited to her the page of the Academy manual she had made me memorize. She read a book as I spoke, not even looking at me. I wondered if she was even listening. I also wondered if she was reading about the Spanish Inquisition. Looking for tips, maybe. I sneaked a peek at her book as I recited. It was in another language. It could have been Spanish. Then again, it could have been Inuit. I only knew English. Even with English I sometimes questioned my fluency.
I finished my recitation. There was silence for a few moments, which was broken only by the sound of Athena turning the page of the book she was reading.
“You left out the word ‘appropriately’ from the last sentence of the second paragraph,” Athena finally said, still not looking at me. I was dubious; I had lost a lot of sleep perfecting my memorization of that page. I was not about to argue with her though. “But for now, that’s close enough. I expect perfection the next time, Carolina. Remember that details matter. A small detail can mean the difference between life and death. You can go now. I believe the men’s latrine awaits you. Be sure to only use your powers to clean it.”
“My powers?” I didn’t know I was allowed to use them here without a Hero looking over my shoulder as I did so.
“Yes, your powers. We’re here to teach you how to be a superhero, not how to be a maid.”
I hesitated, unsure if she was finished with me. Athena looked up. She made a shooing motion with her book. “Why are you still here? Go.”
So, I went. I was met at the men’s latrine by the tall, light-skinned black guy who had laughed at my bear pooping in the woods remark the day before. After dressing him down, Athena had told him to clean the latrine along with me.
We were both armed with cleaning supplies from the camp’s supply building. We went inside the latrine. Both of us immediately winced. The smell that greeted us would have gagged a hog. I held my hand up to my nose. It helped, but not much. I wanted to close my eyes too. The filth we saw looked like something out of a horror movie. I had used the latrine yesterday, but it was way worse in here today than it was yesterday.
“Were these guys raised in a barn?” I asked. “It’s a real shitstorm in here.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” the other guy said. I laughed, then caught myself.
“Don’t make me laugh. I can’t hold my breath and laugh at the same time. You’d think the Heroes who run this place would be able to afford cleaning people.”
“I asked Carbon Copy about that before I came here. He looked at me like it was a stupid question and said, ‘You trainees are our cleaning people.’”
“Wow,” I said. “The shit really does roll downhill doesn’t it?”
“You ain’t shittin’. The problem is, I’m no expert on cleaning bathrooms. I don’t know shit from Shinola.”
I grinned at him. “How many puns do you think we can come up with to help us put off cleaning this place?”
“A shit-ton,” he said. He grinned back at me. “I’m Myth, by the way.” He was dressed like I was, in his trainee uniform and mask. Like all the male trainees, his head was shaved. He was a couple of inches taller than I, and a bit older as well. His skin was the color of a light brown leather. His hands were covered with long, straight black hair. I wondered if he was hairy all over. If so, he might look like part wolfman naked.
“I’m Carolina.” We shook hands.
“Yeah, I know. I heard yesterday when Athena got up in your face. If it’s all the same with you, I’ll call you Theo. I don’t want you to think I’m making fun of you by calling you Carolina. You can’t help how you sound. It’s like making fun of someone from England for speaking with a British accent.”
“Of course you can call me Theo,” I said. I liked Myth already. I looked around again. I did not like the task facing us, though. “I wonder if the females’ latrine is this gross.”
Myth grinned. His brown eyes danced behind his mask. “I don’t know. But, I’m willing to do a surprise inspection and find out if you are.”
I glanced down at the bucket of cleanin
g supplies in Myth’s hand. “Athena told me we have to use our powers to clean this place. What can you do?”
“I can assume the appearance and ability of various mythological creatures. I’ve only mastered a few shapes, but the more I practice and study different cultures’ myths, the more creatures I can turn into.”
“That’s pretty cool,” I said honestly. “How did you find out you could do that?”
“I was watching Game of Thrones one night, and there was a scene showing dragons. I thought, ‘You know, it must be pretty cool to be a dragon.’ And then, all of a sudden, I was one.” He shook his head at the memory. “Almost scared my mother to death. When I opened my mouth to reassure her it was me, I accidentally almost cooked her to death too by breathing fire. Not to mention caving in the roof of our house. What about you?”
“I’m a telekinetic. My powers manifested themselves when I got into a fight in my college bathroom.”
“And here you are in a bathroom again. It’s the Metahuman circle of life.” Myth looked around, disgust evident on his face. “‘You should become a licensed Hero,’ they said. ‘It will be exciting,’ they said. ‘You’ll be able to help a lot of people,’ they said.” He shook his head ruefully. “If they could see me now, surrounded by piss and poo. I feel like Hercules at his Fifth Labor.”
“What?”
“Sorry. I read a lot of mythology because of my powers. I forget sometimes not everybody is a walking fountain of myth trivia. During the fifth of the Twelve Labors of the Greek and Roman demigod Hercules, he had to clean out the Augean Stables, which had not been cleaned out in decades. He diverted the path of a couple of rivers to wash out all the filth.” Myth snapped his fingers. “Actually, that gives me an idea.” He sketched out his idea to me. We agreed to try it.
Omega Superhero Box Set Page 10
