Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (17 page)

“Yeah. I didn’t like his plan, I didn’t want to go along with it, but the city was falling apart. Violent crime was the highest in the country. Burglaries were peaking... people were starting to get scared to go outside in the
day
time.”

“So how did turning all the Capes into pro wrestlers
fix
things?”

“You’re looking at it from the wrong end, Josh. We didn’t do this because of the
Capes
. At least,
I
didn’t. I did it for the Masks. We put all of the real threats behind bars for
good.
As for the minor crooks, the ones that were only in it for a quick buck... well, they got what they wanted. Good money, relatively
honest
money, and nobody had to go to jail. Even those who just wanted the rush of adventure got a fix out of Morrie’s plan. And you know what? Most of them aren’t half-bad guys when you get to know them. When you’re not trying to kill each other. Sure, they aren’t all rushing out to pull kids from burning buildings or anything, but neither are the
Capes
-- except for the pure, tried-and-trues that would have gone that route anyway. Folks like you.”

I felt my legs give way beneath me and I slid to the roof, sitting next to him. “I never realized--”

“How could
you? But
think
, Josh. This city is no paradise, but it’s not bad, either. Almost zero
real
crime. A ready brigade of heroes to fight off any
natural
disaster or calamity that should hit. And if the price for that is that we’ve got to put on a show for the sake of Joe and Jane Average? That’s not such a bad trade-off.”

There was a cry and a streak of light blue in the now-darkened sky. We looked up to see what, at a glance, was an azure comet. But in the head...

“Noble,” muttered Hotshot. “Come on. After what happened with Photon Man I’ll be damned if I let
him
get to Icebergg first.” He pulled his mask back into place and scrambled to his feet.

As I stood, brushing the dust from my helmet, I asked, “Hotshot... did Lionheart ever save... besides me, I mean... did he save any other Capes with this Heart of the Lion?”

CONFLAGRATION

By now the red-purple sky had given way to darkness and stars were beginning to glitter. The efforts of various environmentally-conscious Capes over the years had eliminated much of Siegel City’s pollution concerns, and once you got above the city lights you could see practically to the ends of the universe.

We weren’t using our eyes to look up at the stars, however. Instead our gaze danced the streets looking for a sign -- a lump of ice, a frost-covered streetlight --
anything
that would indicate Icebergg’s passing. But flying was still totally new to me, so I think I can be forgiven if my stare occasionally craned up to the sky.

We flew, buzzing the towers and swooping into the alleys, almost totally silent, for about a half an hour until one of those moments when I ogled the sky and I saw a patch of orange on the horizon, eradicating the stars above and illuminating the ground more than any electric light could. “Hotshot,” I said, “is that what I think it is?”

He followed my gaze to the point in the distance where orange light touched the sky. “Dammit,” he said in the affirmative.

“What do we do?”

“See if there’s anything we
can
do. Hope they don’t need us. Then, most likely, we help anyway. Welcome to the Cape-club, pal.”

We turned in the direction of the lights and poured on the speed. In a few seconds we’d covered several blocks worth of sky, crested the buildings and saw tongues of flame trying to lick the stars. The burning structure was an apartment complex, a three-story walk-up, and for the briefest of instants I had a vision of Tom, clothes aflame, hurling himself off the balcony and screaming like the Goop during Final Jeopardy. I had to clear my head. We were nowhere near Annie’s house. Tom was safe. But there were almost certainly others in that building that
weren’t
.

Hotshot and I landed by the fire chief, a mahogany-skinned man of about my mother’s age, whose look of relief was almost immediate. “Thank God,” he said. “We were getting worried for a minute, Hotshot.”

“Oh yeah, the wasp-guy. Hey, you’re experienced with this sort of thing too, aren’t you? A buddy of mine uptown tells me you pitched in at that warehouse fire a couple of months ago.”

“Um...” I said. “Yes. That was a hot one.”

“What’s the problem?” Hotshot asked.

“Oh, you know how these stupid buildings are put together. No windows in the back rooms, and of
course
that’s where the children sleep. I’ve got my boys trying to make sure there’s no one left in there, but--”

“It’ll go faster with the two of
us
, right?” Hotshot frowned, but nodded. “Let’s go, Stinger.”

As we rose into the air, he asked me, “Do you know how far you can be from me and keep the powers?”

“I’ve been working on controlling my range. I should be cool as long as you don’t leave the block.”

There was a nasty backdraft and a ball of flame erupted from one of the apartments.

“Cool, of course, is a relative term...”

Some kids probably would have had a lifelong fear of fire instilled in them if they’d gone through what I had. I guess Lionheart’s timely appearance had saved me from that phobia, because I dove straight into the conflagration without so much as the bat of an eye. The first two units I searched were empty. In the third I came across two howling yorkies that got fur twisted in my gauntlets as I flew them to safety. As I launched back into the building to check room number four, I caught Hotshot’s eye. The veteran Cape was carrying a basket full of kittens and sneezing uncontrollably.

“Don’t these people take their pets
with
them when their houses catch on fire, dammit?” I shouted. Under any other circumstances I would have been ecstatic to be involved in a real, honest-to-God rescue. As things stood, though, I just wanted to get this over with so we could get back to looking for Icebergg.

Apartments four and five were clean, too. When I kicked my way into six, though, I could hear shrieking coming from -- of course -- the back.

My “wings” turned out to be good for something after all. They beat away the smoke and cleared my vision enough to follow the sound of a voice shouting, “It’s okay, Joanie! We’re gonna be okay!”

The voices were coming from the other side of a door with a towel stuffed under the crack. My gloves were insulated, so I didn’t feel the heat as much, but the doorknob must have been red-hot. I yanked the door open and crashed in to find a small bathroom, water all over the floor. There were two girls in the tub, clad in soaked pajamas that clung to their bodies as they flailed about. The older one was trying to calm the younger down and they were splashing everywhere.

“
Deja-freakin’-vu
,” I said.

The smaller girl screamed as soon as my wings shoved away enough smoke for her to see my wasp-armor. I hadn’t considered what a frightening visage I’d be to small children. The older one, God bless her, was keeping her head about her much better.

“No, Joanie! I saw him on the news! He’s a friend!”

“That’s right, I’m a friend, Joanie.” The girl kept screaming, though. I took a quick glance down the hall to make sure no one was looking, then I fell to one knee by the tub.

“It’s my face, isn’t it?” I said. “Sweetie, I know it’s scary, but
look
.” I popped the helmet off and set it down. “It’s not real, see? It’s just a mask. Like for Halloween.”

“See, Joanie? He’s not a monster.”

Joanie’s howls regressed when she saw my bare face. She couldn’t have been older than three years old, her sister no more than eight. Why the hell were they
alone?

“She went to see Miss Elsie -- she lives downstairs -- and she said she was only gonna be gone a minute, but then there was all this smoke, and--”

“I know, I know. You did the right thing, honey. But don’t worry, I’m going to--”

There was a scream of bending metal and the howl of burning wood falling collapsing on itself. I looked back at a blocked hall and said a word that consisted of precisely four letters.

“Mommy doesn’t like that word,” Katie said.

“Sorry, your mom’s right. Come on.” I lifted the girls out of the tub, closed the door to the blazing hallway and put them behind me. “Hold tight.”

I pulled a handful of plastic shafts from my utility belt, tucked them into my gauntlets and charged them up. An ion stream erupted from my hands and I blasted the wall behind the bathtub. The wall was scorched and a small indentation appeared, but nothing more.

I brushed the dust that remained from the plastic off my gloves and managed to refrain from swearing again. Those things were meant to be stunners, they just didn’t have enough mass to do any serious damage. I could probably charge up the whole wall, but the explosion would kill me
and
the girls. I patted myself down, looking for something, and felt a bulge in one of my belt-pouches.

“Girls,” I said, “you promise not to tell anyone what I’m about to do?”

Katie nodded, but Joanie just quivered. I took that as a “yes” and pulled one of the golf balls from my belt. I charged it up, tucked it into the hole I’d created and put my own body between it and the girls.

“Keep your faces covered!” I shouted just before the golf ball exploded. My back was showered with dust and small chunks of debris. When I turned around, though, there was a small hole, not nearly big enough for even Joanie to wiggle through.

I sputtered out two false starts before my diction settled on “Crap! I need something bigger.”

My eyes danced around the room, looking for something I could jam into the wall that was big enough to blow us free. No hair dryer, no curling iron -- this was a kid’s bathroom. I could only find one thing with real mass.

“Ah, geez, Morrie’s gonna
kill
me.” I snatched my helmet up, charged it, and jammed an antenna into the hole. I spun around and blocked the girls just before it exploded.

The side of the tub was blown off and water rushed out, hitting my feet in tiny waves. Chunks of plaster fell into the puddles and wiring sparkled, then died. Through a hole quite large enough for the three of us I saw the bathroom of another apartment -- one that wasn’t quite an inferno yet.

I snatched a blue gel beauty mask from the sink in the next room and slid it over my face. “Katie, sweetheart, can you get on my back?”

“You’ve got
wings
!”

“Aw....” my brain searched for a non-swearing swear word, finally settling on “
pumpernickel
!” I reached back and snapped the wings off, tossing them aside. “Climb on.”

With Katie on my back, Joanie in my arms and their neighbor’s beauty mask on my face, I darted through the apartment and kicked the door open, getting a quick running start before I flew away from the building. A few seconds later I handed them off to their hysterical mother, who looked like she had been crying for years and didn’t stop when her girls fell into their arms.

“We’re okay, Mommy,” Katie said. “The wasp-man saved us.”

A few seconds after
that,
Hotshot landed next to me. After a long moment of trying not to laugh at me, he sputtered out, “That’s a good look for you.”

We looked to the air and saw Spectrum flying overhead. He pointed hard in the direction of Kirby Square and made a desperate “N”-shape with a thumb and two index fingers. Seeing this, Hotshot said a word which, while not as severe as the one I’d said, Katie’s mom would almost certainly have disapproved of.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“They found him” Hotshot said. “And Noble got there first.”

THE BATTLE OF KIRBY SQUARE

Kirby Square, along with the observation deck at the top of Simon Tower, was one of the major tourist attractions in Siegel City. Lined on all four sides by what the brochures called “quaint shops and outdoor cafés,” the Square itself was about an acre and a half of open spaces frequented by street performers, vendors, young lovers on romantic moonlight walks and anybody looking for an open bar.

In short, it was the most dangerous place in the city to hold a superhero rumble.

The fight had already begun when Hotshot and I arrived. One of us -- probably me -- groaned an “Oh
crap
” when we swept down into the Square to see Icebergg standing atop a three-story mound of snow and frost. He was dueling Spectrum, but the Gunk and Goop were also there, trying to scale the mound and sliding down off the ice. The Conductor must have been nearby too, because as I approached I heard the low rumble of kettledrums and a French horn fanfare that reached a miniature climax each time one of the combatants fired at each other. Spectrum’s lasers were evaporating chunks of the mound, but Icebergg’s frozen darts were merely passing through Spectrum’s light-form and shattering to the street below.

As I got in range I began to feel rushes from each of the fighters, particularly the Gunk. My limbs turned to mush and I felt my body begin to seep through the ceramic mesh of the Stinger armor. The stupid elastic on the beauty mask I was wearing contracted violently and the gel-pack was sucked into my slimy head, tight against my skull.

Cursing, I landed on the roof of a flower shop as Hotshot jumped into the battle. This was getting ridiculous -- I’d always felt Gunk’s powers, from the first time I’d met him outside of Simon Tower, but every time they washed over me they got a little harder to assimilate and I began to feel my mind slipping away. Even with the greater degree of control I was getting over my own powers, with my brain scrambled I couldn’t seem to get away.

I drove my gooey fist into my own head, wrapped my fingers around the mask and pulled it out. I managed to extract my own body mass from the thing and tossed it aside. Then, drawing on one of the other Rushes I was getting -- Icebergg’s, to be specific -- I shoved most of the heat-energy out of my body. I wasn’t thinking straight, all I knew was that I wanted to be
solid
again.