It was the day after graduation. After saying our farewells to our fellow graduates, we had started our trek toward where the Old Man had told us to meet him in the woods on the outskirts of camp at 0800 hours sharp this morning. He had told us we would fly from there to his home outside of Washington, D.C. It would be our new residence for the duration of our Apprenticeship.
As instructed, the three of us had our Academy masks and uniforms on. The Old Man said we could keep them for the purpose of continuing training during our Apprenticeships. We also had our camp earbuds in and our silver wristbands on. We had stuffed the rest of our meager belongings into a single chest. Using my powers, I had it float behind us as we tromped through the woods that surrounded Camp Avatar toward the location the Old Man had specified.
Soon we stepped into a small clearing in the woods. The Old Man was in the middle of it. As usual, he was fully costumed. He hovered five feet or so in the air. His legs were tucked under him in the lotus position. A large brown leather satchel was on the ground under him. The Old Man’s eyes were downcast. He tapped on a computer tablet as we approached. There was no jet, futuristic or otherwise.
“Oh my God!” Neha said to us. She pointed to the empty area around the Old Man. “Myth was right. Amazing Man does have an invisible jet.”
“You’re not funny,” I said. I was disappointed there was no jet.
Neha looked smug. “Apparently your sense of humor is invisible too.”
The Old Man looked up when we arrived in front of him. “There you are. And right on time, I see.” He tapped on his tablet some more. “I’m sending the coordinates to your new home to your communicators’ computers.”
“How are we getting there?” I asked. The Old Man looked surprised by the question.
“Flying, of course.”
“Yes, but in what?” I asked, confused. There was nothing in sight except the four of us.
“The question is not in what, but with what.” The Old Man made a slight flapping motion with his hands. “The answer is with your powers. I would have thought graduating from the Academy would knock silly questions like that out of your head.”
“You want us to fly across country with our powers?” Isaac said. He sounded as incredulous as I felt. “We’ve never done that before. It’ll take us forever.”
“By my calculations Myth, assuming a moderate pace, you can make the flight in six days. Kinetic is a much faster flyer than you, but I expect the three of you to stay together during the trip. Iceburn is still out there somewhere after all.” The Old Man reached down, picked up his satchel, and slung it over his shoulder and across his chest. He began to rise higher in the air. He looked down at us. “I said you are capable of making the flight in six days. I’ll expect you all in five. See you then.”
With that, the Old Man rose higher in the air, faster and faster, until he was but a large speck in the ocean-blue sky above us. Then, as if he had been fired from a gun, he shot off toward the east. In an instant he was gone from view. We heard a small boom as he broke the sound barrier.
“Myth, you can make the flight in six says, but I’ll expect you in five,” Isaac said in a deep voice, doing an eerie impersonation of the Old Man. “Is this another test?” he asked, now in his normal voice. “It feels like a test. The day after graduation, and we have to pass another test. Does everything have to be a freaking test?” He looked and sounded disgusted.
“Life is a test,” Neha said.
“Well it’s certainly no cabaret.” Isaac jabbed a finger in her direction. “‘Life is a test’? Really? I’m gonna start calling you mini-Athena. Next you’ll be telling me the obstacle is the way and spouting more Stoicism double-talk.” Isaac let out a long sigh, and shook his head.
“How far is it from here to D.C. anyway?” he asked.
“About twenty-eight hundred miles,” I said immediately. I surprised myself by knowing. It must have been yet another random fact that had sunk into my head during all of my studying at the Academy.
“This is all your fault for getting my hopes up, Theo. You had me convinced there would be a superhero jet.”
“My mistake.” I shrugged. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”
Isaac shook his head again. “Becoming a Hero is not going as I anticipated. I expected glamour. The adulation of an adoring public. Maybe a groupie or two. Or twenty. I instead get latrine cleaning, memorizing so much random info that I think my brain’s bleeding, working my fingers to the bone, getting blown up by a Meta assassin, and having to fly cross-country under my own power. What’s next, a proctology exam from Edward Scissorhands?” He rubbed a hand over his bald head. “I once thought about being a beekeeper for a living. I should have done it.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“‘Cause I’m afraid of bees. I’ve got a bad case of melissophobia. That’s fear of bees for those of you not up on your bee lingo. The struggle is real.” Isaac let out another long-suffering sigh. “Oh well. Like they say, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk after the horse has been stolen.”
“Or something like that,” Neha said. She looked amused.
Isaac ignored her, saying “We might as well get started. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get there.” He started glowing as he always did when he commenced a transformation. In moments, a white pegasus stood where Isaac had been. I marveled at how quickly he was able to transform compared to how long it took him when we first met. Practice apparently did make perfect.
Neha vaulted up onto Isaac’s back like a gymnast vaulting on top of a pommel horse. She patted Isaac’s muscular neck by his thick white mane.
“There’s a good horsey,” she said. “If you continue to be such a good boy, momma will give you some sugar cubes when we get to D.C.” Isaac stomped his front hooves angrily. Neha laughed.
“The best part is, he can’t talk while he’s in this form,” Neha said to me. Her eyes danced merrily. “Maybe we can get some peace and quiet for a change.” Isaac whinnied ominously.
“Come on guys, stop horsing around,” I said.
Neha looked at me balefully. “How dare you. Puns are beneath you Theo.” I laughed, then sobered.
“C’mon, let’s get started,” I said. “Like Isaac said, the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get there. Besides, you know the Old Man. He doesn’t bark orders the way Athena does, but when he says to do something, he expects results.”
I launched myself into the air, making the chest full of our belongings trail after me. Isaac took off as well with Neha on his back.
With Neha using the telemetry from her communicator’s computer to navigate, we started the long flight to D.C.
The Old Man had said he expected us to arrive at his house in five days. By pushing ourselves hard, we did it in four.
I landed on the front lawn of a sprawling brick house. I set Neha and the chest full of our belongings next to me. The house was about two hundred feet in front of us. We were in Chevy Chase, a Maryland suburb about six miles outside of Washington, D.C.
Moments later, Isaac touched down next to me. Huge white wings were on his back. His naked upper body was massive, and well-muscled. A halo, glowing yellow, was around his head. His facial features were subtly different than how they normally were, changed so he was now so handsome he was more attractive than the biggest of movie stars. He was literally an angel. I had started carrying Neha during the last part of our journey because Isaac had gotten too exhausted to keep carrying her and still keep up our grueling pace.
Isaac was soaked with sweat. His chest heaved with exertion. He looked as exhausted as I felt despite the fact we had stopped a couple of times during our trip to grab some food and a few hours of sleep. Regardless of how tired I was, I was still elated by how quickly we had made it across the country. Before entering the Academy, there was no way I could have flown across the country, much less done it carrying the chest and Neha part of the way. It seemed as though with each passing day I got stronger.<
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Isaac shifted back into his usual form. Together, we looked at the brick house in front of us. Actually, saying it was a house understated the facts of the matter. The house was in fact a mansion. It was mostly red brick, with white brick accents, and built in a Neocolonial style. Only two stories tall, what the mansion lacked in height it made up for in length, having a square footage of around 30,000 feet unless I missed my guess. The front of the mansion was symmetrical. There was an accented front door in the middle of it, and huge, evenly spaced windows all along the front. I had gotten a good look at the property the mansion sat on before I had landed, and it appeared the property was about five or six acres. The grounds were as green as a well-maintained golf course, and the grass looked like it had been carefully cut by someone armed with a jeweler’s loupe, a pair of scissors, and a level. The tall shrubs surrounding the house were cut into various images and shapes. Clearly a group of skilled topiarists had worked their magic on the greenery.
The three of us looked at each other. Isaac’s mouth was open in disbelief.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked Neha dubiously. This place was a far cry from the spartan living conditions at Camp Avatar.
“Positive,” she said. “This is the address the Old Man gave us.”
Isaac rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. He looked suddenly energized despite the rigors of our trip. He said, “Now this is more like it. We didn’t get a superhero jet, but we do get a dope mansion to live in. I’ll take that. Guys, we’re moving on up in life. I feel like George Jefferson.”
“I think you mean George Washington,” Neha said. “Since we’re right outside the city named after him, you should get his name right.”
“Maybe he means Thomas Jefferson,” I suggested. “Jefferson was President just a few years after Washington. It’s an easy mistake to make.”
“I don’t mean either George Washington or Thomas Jefferson,” Isaac said in exasperation. “You think I’m stupid? I meant George Jefferson.”
Neha and I looked at each other blankly.
“From The Jeffersons?” Isaac said impatiently.
Neha and I shrugged in ignorance.
“The classic TV show from the seventies and eighties?” Isaac sounded increasingly indignant.
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Me neither,” Neha added.
Isaac looked at us with disbelief. “You two know-it-alls can lecture me on the best way to disable a man with a clothespin and dryer lint, and tell me so much about Hannibal crossing the Alps that I feel like I personally saw it happen, but you don’t know about The Jeffersons?” He shook his head in dismay. “I’ve fallen into the clutches of cultural illiterates.” Muttering to himself, Isaac stalked off toward the front door of the mansion. Neha and I hung back.
“You know about The Jeffersons, I assume?” she asked.
“Yeah. We didn’t have cable or satellite TV when I grew up. Too expensive. The only thing we had was broadcast TV. One of the five channels we got aired classic shows, including The Jeffersons. I used to watch it all the time. You?”
“Of course I’ve heard of The Jeffersons.” She grinned. “It sure is fun to get Isaac all riled up, isn’t it?”
“It’s better than television,” I agreed.
We hastened after Isaac so we could find the Old Man together.
26
The dream began as it always did, and ended with the same inevitable fiery conclusion.
I abruptly sat up in the bed with visions of flames dancing in my head and the smell of cooked human flesh in my nostrils. My eyes burned, my cheeks were wet, my body was damp with sweat, and my chest heaved. After a few seconds of sickened confusion, I realized I was not holding my Dad’s charred body. I was in my room in the Old Man’s mansion.
It was not the first time I had had that dream. I knew it was not going to be the last time. The dream seemed to occur more and more frequently these days. It was as if the universe was taunting me about things I could not change and about tasks that were still left undone.
The mansion was still and quiet in the way it was only in the wee hours of the morning. I looked at the glowing clock on my nightstand. It was 2:34 a.m. I grimaced. I had to be up at 4:30 a.m. for strength and conditioning work before the first tutor of the day showed up for class. Going back to sleep until then was out of the question. I was very much wide awake. I knew from bitter experience from being awakened by that dream many times before that there was no way I was going back to sleep.
I threw my covers off. I got up, and flicked the lights of my bedroom on. I squinted against their brightness. I peeling off my damp tee shirt. I used it to wipe my face and the sweat off of my torso. I then threw it into my laundry basket. I put on a fresh shirt, all while thinking about the past, what was, what could have been, and what one day would be.
Thinking that it would do me no good to sit in my room and mope, I opened the door and left, intending to go downstairs and make myself a sandwich. With us Apprentices training as hard and as often as we did, I was constantly hungry. Though I have always had a big appetite, ever since starting Hero training my body had kicked it up a few notches. My stomach was an all-consuming fire that was always in need of refueling. I frowned. I really wished I had not thought of that fire metaphor.
It was surprising even to me how much food I was capable of putting away. I had joked to Neha once that maybe I had tapeworms. She had said she could come up with a gas that would kill any tapeworms my body was carrying around. She had added there was only a ten percent chance the gas would kill me too, which were pretty good odds. I was pretty sure she had just been joking. I was not positive though. You never could be quite sure with her.
Neha, Isaac, and I had been Amazing Man’s Apprentices for over four months now. If we had thought training like Olympians and swallowing books like we were English majors minoring in Everything Else would end upon graduation from the Academy, we were sorely mistaken. The main difference between the mansion and the Academy was we Apprentices did not have to run from task to task like our hair was on fire. Otherwise, we still maintained a grueling schedule.
Among other things, the Old Man’s mansion housed a gym that would have put a commercial one to shame, an armory containing so many explosives and weapons it looked like it had been stocked by Athena, and a holographic combat training room. The mansion and the grounds it sat on had so many secret security measures in place, it was like living in a fortress. Our lives at the Old Man’s mansion over the past few months had settled into an endless routine of working out, sparring with each other and holographic opponents, studying both on our own and with the assistance of private tutors, going on patrol with the Old Man, and training with both our powers and with weapons. Thanks to the Old Man and a retired FBI bomb technician the Old Man had retained, I now knew so much about explosives I could have hired myself out as a one-man wrecking crew. When I had asked the Old Man why we were learning so much about explosives, he had said, “Because you never know when you’ll need to defuse a bomb. We live near D.C., a prime terrorist target. Besides,” he had added with a grin, “it’s fun to blow stuff up.”
The patrols with the Old Man were my favorite part of the Apprenticeship so far. Sometimes he took us out on patrol individually, other times as a group. On those patrols, we had captured street criminals, helped so many people I was starting to lose track, and had even fought a few Rogues. I was learning so much from the Old Man. Sometimes it felt like he had forgotten more about being a Hero than I would ever learn.
I padded down the stairs in my bare feet. As I approached the kitchen, I saw that the light was on. I thought I would find Isaac or Neha also trying to squeeze in a quick pre-workout meal. I was surprised to instead find the Old Man sitting at the marble island in the middle of the kitchen. He was drinking a beer. At least a dozen empty beer bottles sat on the island in front of him.
The Old Man only had on black shorts and a white short-sl
eeved tee shirt. It was quite a difference from the chrome blue and silver costume I had grown so used to seeing him in before I became his Apprentice. The Old Man’s tee shirt strained against his massive muscles. Silver hair covered his thick forearms. The Old Man was also not wearing a mask. He never did when the four of us were alone at home. After all, he did not need to hide his true identity from us. He had told us his real name the day we showed up to begin our Apprenticeships. His name was Raymond Ajax. He was a wealthy retired industrialist and still active philanthropist. We Apprentices never called him by his birth name, of course, not even in the privacy of the mansion. It would have been like calling the Pope by his first name.
“Good morning!” the Old Man said cheerily once he spotted me. His cheerfulness was almost obnoxious for such an early hour. Despite the time and the amount of beer he had apparently drunk, the Old Man looked as sharp and focused as he always did. His steel-grey eyes were bright and shiny. He was even freshly clean-shaven, which was more than I could say.
The Old Man saw my eyes linger on the empty beer bottles. He grinned, taking another long swig of the beer in his hand. He finished it off.
“One of the benefits of having a heightened metabolism is it is impossible for me to get intoxicated,” he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I haven’t been so much as tipsy since my powers first manifested when I was eighteen. It’s a mixed blessing. Sometimes a man feels the need to get rip-roaring drunk. I still like the taste of beer, though I might as well be drinking water for all the effect it has on me.”
He reached for an unopened bottle and twisted off the top with his bare hand. “Want one?” he offered.
I was tempted, but since I took my training regime very seriously, I was careful with my diet. Plus, unlike the Old Man, my metabolism was not heightened. Being tipsy while you used your superpowers was not a good idea.
Omega Superhero Box Set Page 19
