Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (11 page)

He took the wolf-totem and put it back on its peg. “I just wanted to let you know that before I tell you to never do that again.”

SHEILA OBSERVES

A few days later, on the day of my first rumble, Sheila wandered into my cubicle again. I was going over an archive piece on Nancy Drake, the reclusive romance novelist who had a weird talent for writing stories involving Capes. It wasn’t exactly my kind of article, but you took the assignments you got. Sheila poked her head into my work area and opened up with the sort of warm, sisterly concern I had grown to expect from her.

“What the
hell
are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just having a cup of coffee,” I said, drinking straight from the pot I’d stolen -- along with several packets of sweetener and cream -- from the office snack area as soon as I got to work.

“Where were you last night? We were supposed to go to the coffee shop together and make fun of the other people who didn’t have dates.”

“I was... at work.”

“You know, your
mother
called me last night. I have no idea how she got my number.”

“Mom’s resourceful.”

“But she hasn’t heard from you in a week and she’s getting worried.”

“Moms
always
worry.”

“Are you
kidding
? I’m getting absolutely
golden
material here. We’re talking guaranteed Pulitzer, Sheila.”

“But it’s
dangerous
, and you’re not in any shape to really watch yourself. Plus you’re exhausted.”

“Well sure, now, but -- You know, it’s funny, but I’m
never
this wiped when I’m actually
there.
It’s like that constant influx of powers I feel prevents me from getting tired.”

“Until you come down off your high. Then you can barely lift a finger to write with.”

“Come on, Sheila, you make it sound like I’m an addict.” I chugged more coffee.

“Your caffeine fix notwithstanding, what if you wind up getting hurt, Josh? Or worse? You know, the average ‘permanent retirement’ age for your new profession is pretty low.”

“Yeah, but Heaven’s retention rate for us
sucks
.” In fact, I had discovered, about ninety percent of the superheroes and villains who “came back from the dead” were retirees who thought they could live the high life with the money they had stowed away, then squandered it all on magic beans or the like, so they had to come back. It was only about ten percent that
actually
returned from the grave.

Sheila gave me a look I interpreted as “You
male,
” and stomped off. As usual, after one of these conversations, I was left both smiling and thinking. Sure, it was worth it to irritate her on occasion, but she
did
have a point. I was dead on my feet and I had been for nearly a week now. Maybe after my rumble with the Spectacle Six I’d keep away from Simon Tower for a while -- just enough to get my energy back. Then I’d be able to dive straight back in.

The rumble.
Crap
. What time was it?

I looked down at my watch, but the face and hands had totally vanished. Upon closer, examination, and drawing upon detective skills that would have made Nightshadow proud, I determined this was, in fact, because I was wearing my cat’s flea collar on my wrist. Achilles was no doubt scratching up a storm back home. I was more tired than I thought.

“Danny!”

Dan Cardigan was walking past my cubicle at that moment and my eyes were firmly fixated on his wrist. “Dan, I left my watch at home, what time is it?”

Of
course
it was eleven-forty-five. Because I was due to rob a bank at high noon (Morrie thought it would add a “classic” flair) and I had to get way the hell across town.

I cursed the editor under my breath and grabbed a couple of paper-clipped sheets from my inter-office mailbox on the way out. I got in the elevator -- alone -- and hit the lobby button.

As the doors to the elevator glided shut, I looked down at the papers in my hand. It was another profile piece, like the Doctor Noble mess I suppose had started this whole thing... but the
subject.

“Well what do you know?” I mumbled.

That’s how I went to my first rumble -- not concerned with my choreography, not hoping I’d be able to put on a good show. Instead, I was wondering how in the hell I was going to write a profile piece on the Goop.

JOSH’S FIRST CRIME

I changed into the Shift costume in an alley on the way to the bank, proving again the glamour of the business. To cover it up the rest of the way Morrie gave me the two least conspicuous articles of clothing ever designed: a trench coat and a fedora to pull down over my face. Practically everyone I passed on the street pointed or glared or simply tried to avoid my gaze, while a couple of kids actually pulled out decks for a
Capes and Masks
trading card game and tried to see if they could find a Shift card as their mother hurried them away from me. The kid’s face and shock of blonde hair looked kind of familiar to me, but I didn’t have time to try to place it.

I was still a block away from the bank when I could feel the Rush starting to come over me from Flux and LifeSpeed, who were supposed to be nearby. I switched on my mask-radio. “This is Shift, do you read?”

“I read you, Josh,” Particle said. He was back at Simon Tower with microphones connecting him to all the “combatants,” as well as a readout of the bank’s security system so he would know when the alarm was tripped. That would be the clue for the Spectacle Six to come crashing in and capture me. “Are you in position?”

I stood outside the tall, glass doors of the Siegel City First National Bank. I took several deep breaths. And then, in one smooth, practiced motion, I burst through the door, tossed the hat from my head, threw off the coat, got my arms tangled in the sleeves, thrust it aside in frustration, hit a small child in a stroller, sheepishly apologized to a furious mother and finally managed to shout, “Everybody freeze! This is a stick-up!”

There were only three or four customers and three tellers there, all of which hit the ground as soon as my trench coat was clear. They got bored waiting for me to get it off, though, and most were now sitting cross-legged, patiently waiting for me to begin the robbery. Meanwhile the two guards bolted straight for me as they reached for their firearms.

I yanked my left arm up, hand cupped, and cut off the gravity to the first guard, sending him to the ceiling. With my right arm I punched straight out at the other guard, charging him with backwards momentum and plastering him to the wall. Neither of these hand motions were particularly necessary
,
mind you, but they added to the dramatic effect and I rather liked the way they looked.

As I approached the teller on the end I saw two guys on the floor near a credit card display grinning like maniacs and giving me a thumbs-up. Flux and LifeSpeed. Real subtle. I pulled a canvas sack from my coat and thrust it at the first teller in the line. “Fill ‘er up, sweetheart,” I said, “and
no funny business.
”

As corny as the dialogue was, saying it
did
give me something of an adrenal jolt. I was beginning to understand what actors mean when they say it’s more fun to play the bad guy. As long as it’s fake, as long as no one gets hurt... God help me, I
enjoyed
it.

The panicked teller handed the bag back to me, filled with cash. I grinned and cocked my head back. “Well,” I said, “ta-ta for--”

“Shift,” Particle’s voice echoed in my head, “we’ve got a problem. Nobody tripped the alarm yet. The Six can’t go in.”

“
What?”
I shouted.

“I didn’t say anything!” the teller squeaked.

“Stall!” Particle shouted.

“Um... okay, you! Next in line! Gimme whatever
you’ve
got.”

I shoved the bag at the next teller over and snarled. This one had a little more fire in her than the first one, though. “If you think I’m going to cooperate with the likes of
you
--” she began. I sent out another stream of inertia, this one in pulses and directed at the guard plastered to the ceiling. As a result, his head began bobbing up and down, banging against the ceiling like a metronome.

“All right, all right!” The teller began feeding money into the bag and I lowered the poor guard to the ground, hoping I hadn’t actually hurt him -- I calibrated the pulses so they shouldn’t be more than an annoyance.

“What is this, your first day?” I shouted to the tellers. “Okay, keep it going. Um... change, too. You got any of those quarters with states on them? Gimme a few. I’m still missing Vermont.”

“Nothing!” Particle shouted.

“This is the
worst bank
ever
!” I howled to the staff and patrons.

“Well do
something
!” Particle said.

The bag was almost overflowing now, there was no way the next teller could fit any more cash in it. She was a cute blonde, though, and kind of reminded me of Sindy. There was only one delaying tactic left that I could imagine. “Hey baby,” I said, doing my best Doc Noble imitation, “what’re
you
doing after the robbery?”

After three run-throughs at the arena we’d settled on a routine that
didn’t
include me getting cold-cocked by Five-Share on my way out of the bank. Instead, as I stepped onto the sidewalk outside I made sure to create at least three feet of clearance. There was a clattering of heels and I spun around just in time to get punched in the jaw.

I rolled with the punch, hitting the ground at just the right speed and angle that it didn’t hurt, but I pretended to be dazed as Five-Share -- all five of him -- hovered over me in a circle.

“Didn’t you learn your lesson
last
time, Shift?--Dope.--Dork.--
Please
pick the hard way.--Some guys never learn.”

I rolled to my feet. “Sorry to disappoint, you walking barbershop quintet.” I jutted both arms from my sides, sending a ring of inertia out, knocking all of the Five-Shares away.

“It’s time for the Shift school of combat,” I said as practiced. “Lesson one, don’t make yourselves such an obvious target.”

“Lesson two,” rumbled Fourtifier’s voice. “
Always
keep your guard up when you’re line dancing with the Spectacle Six!” A pair of rock arms wrapped around me and fused together, binding my arms to my side, in theory to keep me from using the inertia powers. Fourtifier may have
admired
my melting technique, but as we soon discovered, he didn’t particularly
like
it. Of course, I didn’t
need
to use my arms, but it made for a better show.

“Wow!” shouted one of the boys I’d seen swapping cards earlier. “The Spectacle Six!”

“Check your deck, Tom!” the other one shouted. “Maybe we can get their autographs.”

“Lesson three,” I said to Fourtifier, trying not to laugh at the kids, “binding a man’s
arms
is pointless when he can always escape
up
!”

I cut my own gravity -- the only part of this entire routine I was still a little nervous about -- and gave myself a burst of upwards thrust, squirting out of Fourtifier’s grip like a greased banana.

As I rose I dared a glimpse upwards, only to find myself zipping straight towards a field of low-flying meteors. “Sweet crap!” I shouted, more for effect than anything else. After all, I knew what was going on. I twisted through the air, applying momentum as needed, and tried to navigate my way through the meteor field. I did okay for a while, too, dodging the three or four biggest chunks before flying headfirst into one...

Which I naturally passed straight through without harm. The entire field blinked out of existence as “Shift” realized the whole thing was an illusion conjured by First Light.

The albino Cape swept down at me. “This is a pointless exercise, Shift,” she said. “You cannot escape us. You never have before.”

“First time for everything,” I said. Then, with a gulp, I restored my gravity and dropped towards the ground. Between careful bursts of inertia and lowering my gravity I managed to make a perfect landing on the sidewalk, quite a distance from Five-Share and the slow-moving Fourtifier. The kids, I noticed, had followed me rather well.

“You’re doing good,” Particle said. “Don’t do
too
good, though. You’re supposed to get
caught,
remember?”

“Right.” I turned and bolted through the crowd, where I was scheduled to run into Five-Share, only it
wasn’t
going to be Five-Share, it was going to be a hologram created by First Light, who was at that very moment landing behind me, ready to create it.

“Hey, Miss First Light!”

I spun around at the child’s voice, and thank God I did, because otherwise I would have kept right on running through all of what happened next. I would not have seen as one of the kids -- the one whose blonde hair and face looked familiar to me earlier -- charged up to the Six-er, begging for her to autograph his trading card. I would not have seen him reach up to get her attention, firmly wrapping his hand around her bare wrist. I wouldn’t have seen the flesh-to-flesh contact cause her to recoil and instinctively lash out with a burst of concentrated light in the child’s face and I wouldn’t have watched the kid, blind and shrieking, stagger into the street. Although to be perfectly fair, my attention probably would have been drawn a second later as the kid’s mother began to scream like a falling missile and as the driver of the big rig that was roaring down the road began blaring his horn at the poor boy as if it were at all possible for him to get out of the way in time.