Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (28 page)

“The hole
he
created,” I added.

“The hole that could have
killed
an innocent man,” Hotshot pointed out.

“Stop trying to cloud the issue,” the Gunk said, pulling himself to his Lionheart-clad feet. “I’m bringing you
both
in.”

Hotshot and I glanced at each other, then back at the Gunk.

“Like
hell
,” we both said. Hotshot whipped a pair of darts from his belt and fired them into Gunk’s chest while I grabbed a steak knife from one of the tables and took aim at his head. He walked straight into them, taking the blasts like they were nothing, as civilians scrambled around like ants whose hill had just been kicked over. Apparently when he regained control over his malleable body (I
gave
him that control, I cursed at myself), he also gained the ability to make himself even denser than Noble’s head.

“Firing around all these innocent people? For
shame,
” he said. “You won’t escape. Your kind never do.”

“Go ahead,
Gunk
!” I shouted. “Play it up for the crowd!” I socked him in the gut, making my own body as dense as his. The result was that neither of us felt much of anything.

He swatted me aside like a roach and charged Hotshot. “And
you!
You were in my LightCorps! You’re betraying everything we stood for.”

“Lionheart
never
called it ‘his’,” Hotshot spat.

I leapt to help, but by now the few people left in the restaurant were charging for the door in a wave, pushing me back. I leapt over their heads and saw Gunk blocking a punch from Hotshot, delivering one of his own to the hero’s jaw.

“Tsk, tsk,” I said. “No manners at
all
!” I jackhammered his shoulders, knocking him away from Hotshot, and followed up with an aerial kick to the face.

“Come on, Lionheart!” I shouted. “Why don’t you
fly
after me? Huh?”

“I don’t
need
to fly to deal with the likes of
you
.” He jumped at me, catching me around the waist. “Let’s see how well
you
fly with a
passenger
!”

“I’ve got a better idea!” Hotshot flew up and grabbed the Gunk’s ankles. “Josh! Make a wish!”

Catching his meaning, the two of us drifted in different directions, pulling the Gunk between us. Visible strain appeared on his face as he fought to keep himself solid and finally, let go of me, swinging through the air. Hotshot hurled him at the wall and he crashed, breaking through into the gift shop which, by now, was as empty as the restaurant.

I gave Hotshot a mid-air high-five and we both swept through the hole after him. We found him lying in a pulverized glass display case, picking shards out of his shredded (but non-bleeding) flesh.

I charged him and started pounding. My fists struck like sledgehammers and, the more blows I landed, the more it seemed to affect him. It was like touching a flat LCD computer screen -- the colors were all distorted wherever I would make contact, and the distortion flowed out in ripples.

“Josh! Fall back!”

Trusting my partner implicitly, I fell away. Hotshot leapt at the Gunk, holding a five-dollar, spire-topped model of Simon Tower. He drove it into the center of the proud Lion emblem on the shapeshifter’s chest, then pounded it in further with both fists. When he dove out of the way I saw that the model was glowing.

“
Hit the deck!”
he screamed. Just as I managed to fall to the floor and cover my face, the model blew, spraying the entire gift shop with orange slime.

I looked up to see that the bottom half of the Gunk’s Lionheart-body was still intact, black boots and all. From the waist up, though, drooped a skeleton dripping in goo, flailing about like a marionette having a seizure.

“Did that stop him?” Hotshot moaned, not really looking.

“Slowed him down,” I said as the slime began to creep back in towards the skeleton. “I don’t really think you
can
kill a shapeshifter like that
.
He’s already starting to re-form.”

“Okay, that’s it, we’re out of here.” Hotshot charged up a ceiling tile and blew open a hole to the roof.

“Wait, why don’t we just wait for someone to show up and
see
him?” I asked.

“He’s probably using Mental Maid to keep anyone from coming until he’s reformed!” Hotshot shouted. “Don’t
you
feel the urge to run away?”

“Yeah, but I doubt that has anything to do with Mental Maid,” I said. “Let’s blow.”

We flew up through the hole (Gunk had only reformed about an inch of his torso by then) and were about to blast into the sky when we got hit by the sound of a rising, sorrowful chorus.

“I can’t let you go anywhere,” the Conductor said. He was sitting on the rail with his arms crossed and his eyes blazing.

“Aw,
geez
, not you too, Ted,” I said, landing by my friend. “You
know
me! Do you really think I’m capable of this?”

“I
thought
I knew you!”

“Just go look in that hole! You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

For a second he looked like he was going to do it, but then he scowled and muttered, “I don’t want to.”

I cursed. “Do you really think you can
stop
us, Ted?” I asked. This was a foolish thing, because at that moment he cranked the volume on the choir up to ear-splitting and both Hotshot and I fell to our knees, clutching our heads.

“Okay, okay!” I believe you can stop us!”

The music fell back down to tolerable levels. Ted’s voice was still loud.

“You’re
rabbiting
, Josh! Didn’t I tell you that’s as good as an admission of guilt?”

“Not
this
time, Ted! Not
any
time! Come on, I’ve got to get out of here so we can find a way to prove I’m innocent. I trust you Ted. You know you can trust me. Please,
please
trust me now
.
”

He exhaled and closed his eyes.

“
Go.”

“
Go!”

Hotshot and I only spared a glance for Ted, who looked more enraged and confused than anyone I’d ever seen before. With a silent prayer, we rose into the night and left him behind.

RABBIT

The phone rang about six times before a connection was made on the other end. Rather than the angelic female voice I’d hoped to hear, though, I got a horny teenage boy muttering, “--me
alone
, Tom, who’d be calling
you
?” Then in an artificially deepened voice he said, “Hello, Heather?”

Quentin snorted into the phone. “Whatever.” Then, his mouth away from the receiver, “he wants to talk to
you
mushbrain.”

“Sorry, I don’t know,” he said. “When she got home this afternoon she was all upset and crying and stuff. Mom took her out somewhere.” Then he fell to a hush and I could just picture him in the living room, eyes darting from side to side to make sure no one was watching. “I think she broke up with that creep Todd,” he hissed, his voice equal parts informative and suggestive.

“Yeah,” I said, “I think I heard that somewhere. Look, I don’t suppose you have any idea where she went or what time she’s coming back.”

I shook off the strangeness of his reply -- I didn’t have time to dissect it. “Okay. Look, do me a favor, if you see her
don’t
tell her I called. I’ll catch up with her later.”

“I’ll keep quiet, but what about Quentin?”

“Are you
still
on the phone?” a cranky voice bellowed.

“I think his mind is probably on other things,” I said. “Thanks, buddy. Good-bye.”

I hung up the pay phone – I didn’t dare use my cell, Particle could track that effortlessly. Next to me Hotshot frowned and said, “No luck?”

“None. Dammit, if there were
anybody
I’m sure I could convince of my innocence--”

“We’ll find somebody. But for now, let’s get moving. We’re not exactly the most inconspicuous fellas on the face of the Earth.”

That was an understatement. We’d pulled our masks off, tucked our capes away and put on a couple of castoff jackets we dug out of a goodwill dumpster. In other words, we may as well have been wearing a neon sign reading, “Trying not to be noticed.”

“Where do you think we should go? I’ve got an apartment--”

“Probably the first place they’d check,” Hotshot said.

“Yeah, you’re right. Hey, wait a minute, how
thoroughly
would they check it?”

“Pretty well. Why?”

“
Crap
. I need to make another phone call -- you more change?”

He dug into his pockets. “Here. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I hope.” I dropped the change into the phone and pounded the keys. It rang once, then waited a supernaturally long time before ringing again. Then another excruciating pause before the third ring, when it was finally picked up.

“Hello?”

“Sheila, it’s Josh.”

“Josh? What’s going on? You’re all over the news! There’s a manhunt for Copycat and Lionheart just rose from the freaking
dead
or something and--”

“Sheila! I can’t talk long, just
listen
. First of all, that’s
not Lionheart.
Second, remember when I told you never to break into my apartment again?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to break into my apartment again.”

I saw a flash in the sky that got me very nervous. “I need you to break in, find my notebook -- you
know
which notebook -- and
destroy
it. Shred it, burn it,
eat
it, but don’t leave a scrap
of paper big enough to read so much as a
vowel
, you understand?”

I stepped out of the phone book and pointed to the sky.
“That.”

Spectrum was lancing through the sky over the streetcorner we occupied. At first I wasn’t sure if he saw us or not. Then I decided he’d
absolutely
seen us and I was wondering if he realized who we were. This question was answered a few seconds later when a laser blast sizzled past my head and melted a hole the size of a silver dollar in the brick wall next to the phone.

“I think he may have noticed us,” I said.

We shed our trenchcoats and blasted into the sky, yanking our masks into place. Another blast ripped at the air between us and we both tore off, giving Spectrum two targets to concentrate on.

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you I’m innocent, would it?” I asked.

“I’ve never met the man who admitted his own guilt,” Spectrum said.

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Then, taking a cue from First Light, I took his light-manipulation powers and turned them back on him, flashing his face with a high-intensity beam of pure white light. For a moment I shuddered to think how much it looked like the Soul Ray. The beam hit him square in the eyes, but he didn’t even flinch.

“Copycat, I’m
king
of light manipulation!” he shouted. “Do you really think you could get me
that
way?”

I dodged another blast and looked around for Hotshot, who was buzzing the rooftops with his arms extended out from his sides, like a flying cross laid flat. “Hey!” I shouted, “a little help here?”

“You’re fighting too literally, kid!” he shouted. I think he said something else, too, but I lost track of what it was when a laser clipped my shoulder. My largely-insulated suit protected me a bit, but I would still have to treat at least a second-degree burn there.

I spun in the air and aimed my good right first at Spectrum’s jaw. Hotshot shouted something else, but again I missed it.

“Sorry, Scott!” I said, bumping up my speed so it would hopefully be enough to take him out. My fist made contact with his chin, right where I aimed it.

Then it passed
through
his chin.

Then, unable to stop in time, my entire body passed through
his
entire body.

“That’s what I was trying to
tell
you, kid!” Hotshot shouted. “Spectrum controls light-rays! That doesn’t mean he can
fly
! He turns himself invisible during a fight and
projects
himself into the sky! You’re fighting a
hologram,
the real Spectrum is on one of these rooftops!”

I thought about how Spectrum’s power must work -- he was bending light rays around himself so that Hotshot and I couldn’t see him. But I had
his
light-bending powers. Dodging the occasional laser-burst projected from the hologram (I guess he was able to concentrate light from any point) I
felt
the light-rays in the area, trying to find a disturbance, a spot where the rays bent.

“
There!”
I shouted, pointing at the roof next to the one Hotshot was strafing. I tried to restore the bent rays to their natural position, but Spectrum fought me. He began flickering in and out, which only made him that much more noticeable.

Hotshot took my direction and charged Spectrum’s
real
body, slamming him hard. The hologram vanished and Spectrum clicked solidly into view.

“Dammit, Copycat is
innocent
!” Hotshot was shouting as I landed. “Do you really thing I’d have broken him out if he
wasn’t
?”

“‘Lionheart’ has you
all
snowed,” I said.