School for Sidekicks (14 page)

She headed off up the hallway without another word. I considered quietly following along behind Backflash, but somehow I didn't think Burnish would have any trouble catching me alone again if she really wanted to. So I might as well see it through now. Once Backflash had vanished around the curve of the hallway, I turned back to Burnish, but instead of getting ready to pound me, she was staring blankly off into space. Eventually, she seemed to come back to herself.

“Are you still here?” she asked, her voice cold and bitter.

“I didn't think there was much point in running.” The words came from the same place deep down inside that I had spoken from with Spartanicus—some inner font of reckless bravery that I could only tap into at the worst possible moments. “If you really want a piece of me, you might as well try to take it.”

She sighed. “Not right now I don't. But we're not done, you and me. Not after you inserted yourself into my family's story back at the museum.”

Great.

She reached out to the conduit again. Lightning arced and plasma flowed. This time she didn't stop and, as the purple light engulfed her, she began to stretch and twist. A moment later, there came a faint
fwoomph
of inrushing air as she suddenly flowed into the conduit.

The only thing she left behind was a whisper: “Tell anyone my name is Comendelia, and you're dead, Quick. Dead.”

When I got back to the dorm, Speedslick was bouncing around impatiently outside the door to our room. “Thereyouare!”

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Jeda slowed himself down and spoke more carefully. “Nope, but Mike wants to see you in his office like twenty-minutes-ago.” His words started to run together again. “I'll-go-tell-him-you're-onyourway.”

Jeda blurred out of focus and rocketed away before I could even think to say anything. When he hit the end of the hall his powers hiccupped and he
really
hit the end of the hall, bouncing off the wall with a
thud
and a yelped “ow!” But he never slowed down.

When I got to the office, I found Mike waiting for me in the doorway—Jeda had come and gone already. “Come on in. I'm glad they found you in time.”

“In time for what?” I followed him through the door.

“For this, for starters,” he slid a shrink-wrapped bundle across the desk—black, faintly squishy, and about the size of a typical school backpack.

“What is it?” I poked the bundle.

“Your uniform. I'd meant to give it to you once you settled in a bit, but my timeline got advanced.”

“My uniform?”

“Yes, the one the machine measured you for that morning at Camp Commanding. Back when you first got your powers.”

“I—” I stopped dead—so that really
did
happen. “I'm confused. When I went back to the building to pick up my uniform a couple of days later the whole place had changed into a set of restrooms. What happened?”

Mike looked very uncomfortable. “Your marker wore off.”

“Marker?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of … wait.” An interesting thought occurred to me. “The machine does a lot more than measure you for a Mask uniform, doesn't it? It's the Hero Bomb, in ray form.
That's
why I was able to lift those barbells! And why I got my powers that day!”

Mike nodded reluctantly. “Yes. I said marker, but what I was really talking about was the charge from the hero beam. If you'd gone back within forty-eight hours, the doors would have detected the charge and you would have gotten your uniform.” He took a deep breath and looked straight into my eyes. “You can't tell
anyone
about the hero beam. It's classified information, OSIRIS level 1A, which will buy any person who's not supposed to know it a memory purge. I know you don't want to bring that down on someone's head.”

I had another leap of understanding. “But I'm not supposed to know about it either, am I? Why not purge
my
memory? It's the same reason Agent Brendan reacted so harshly to Captain Commanding's suggestion. It's something to do with being a meta, with how we react to memory alteration, isn't it?”

He nodded reluctantly. “You're a very smart boy, Evan. Too smart for your own good, probably. The memory ray is closely related to the hero beam. Using it on a fully activated metahuman can have
very
unpredictable results—as unpredictable as the original Hero Bomb. Powers get changed, amped up, lost completely. You could die, or go mad, or even explode with tremendous force.”

“Explode?” I whispered.

“So they tell me.”

“That's … I don't know. Wow.” Another question occurred to me then. “Why me? The hero beam, I mean. Why pick me?”

“Genetic predisposition. The hand scanner that sizes you for your class ring tests for a bunch of gene complexes to sort out likely candidates at the same time. If you're a good bet for genetic enhancement, you get the fancy ring and the hero beam. If not, you get a plastic decoder ring and a gift certificate for a free meal at one of the vendors.” Mike's phone chimed and he grimaced. “But we're out of time for now. We can talk more about this later.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, I promise. But right now, you need to run to the bathroom down the hall and put that uniform on.”

“Why?”

“Because you're starting your internship today.”

“I'm what?! Three days ago you said it was too early for me to even be thinking about finding a hero to intern with. What changed?”

“Someone asked for you.”

“Captain Commanding?” It burst out of my mouth before I could stop it. Even now, knowing what he had done, I couldn't help myself. Somewhere deep down inside, he was still
my
hero.

“No.” Mike's voice came out flat and uninflected.

“Then who?” I'd never met any other Masks, and I couldn't imagine that my powers, such as they were, would generate much demand for me.

“Foxman,” Mike said quietly.

I felt like someone had kicked me in the chest. “You're kidding. He's a failure, and a drunk!”

“No, Evan, I'm not kidding, and he's sober now—going on six months—or we wouldn't even consider him as a mentor. Now, go get your uniform on.”

“But he's a complete washout and he's
never
had a sidekick. This isn't fair!”

“We
really
don't have time for this, Evan,” Mike's voice took on a note of exasperation. “He's already arrived on the station. He's going to be here any minute.”

“What if I don't want to work with him. Can't I refuse?”

Mike frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I wanted to wait to tell you this, and I wish I could do it gently, but there is no more time. No. You can't refuse. Not if you ever want to get your Mask license. The day you were sent to the AMO, Captain Commanding put the word around that he would take it as a personal insult if anyone accepted you as a sidekick. He blacklisted you. No sidekicking means no hero license.”

“But then, why is Foxman … I don't understand.”

“Evan, come on, you've already proved you're smarter than this. Foxman hates Captain Commanding's guts. He's not alone in that. Lots of Masks hate Captain Commanding, but Foxman is pretty much the only one who hates him more than he fears him. If you really want to be a Mask—and we both know that you do—Foxman is your only door into the game, and it's open right now. You can go and put that uniform on, or you can give up the dream. Those are your only choices.”

I went.

 

12

Foxman Jr.

I took one more quick look at myself in the bathroom mirror. My costume was so cool! All black; Invulycra with thick Armex reinforcement in the torso and cowl and various other vulnerable points. It made me look about three times as muscular as I really was and
super
tough. All it really needed was a logo and a cape, and I would be
made
of awesome. For the first time since I'd arrived at the school, I felt completely good about the whole Mask thing.

That lasted right up until I heard “I think we'll call him
Foxman Junior
” coming through the open door of Mike's office as I returned from changing.

“What!” I couldn't help myself. The word burst out of my mouth. “Seriously?” I stepped into the doorway. “Foxman
Junior
?”

Mike was sitting behind his desk wearing the expression I'd come to associate with dealing with an “outburst” from one of us students. Foxman stood across the desk from him wearing his full battle armor, complete with the long-eared helmet and fluffy-look tail, all in red and white. As I spoke, the nearer of Foxman's ears rotated toward me, making a faint metallic grinding noise as it moved. He turned to follow his ear a moment later, and suddenly I found myself face-to-face with the most infamous of Masks.

“Is this him?” The question came out gruff and hard, not at all in keeping with the ironic grin built into the helmet's long muzzle.

Behind Foxman, Mike frantically signaled me to pull off my half mask and cowl. “Evan, this is your new mentor, Randall Hammer, better known as Foxman.” I reached up and hooked my fingers under the cheek piece of my mask, pulling it back as Mike continued, “Rand, meet Evan Quick.”

There was a pause as Foxman reached over and pressed a series of almost invisible buttons on the back of his left gauntlet. With a sharp clunk, the fox mask began to yawn, exposing the face within. The long muzzle slowly opened wider and wider, making a faint whirring sound as it did so. The top half slid up and back between his long ears while the bottom lowered to touch his chest. Eventually, the man inside the helmet was fully visible.

Randall Hammer looked like he could have been an actor once upon a time, a leading-man type. But that was years ago. Now the short hair held as much gray as black. His dark skin had developed deep lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and across his forehead. His goatee and mustache were marked heavily with gray, as was the thick stubble across his cheeks and on his neck. Dark brown eyes looked at me out of bloodshot and yellowing whites. His expression was grim and it deepened his wrinkles.

“You have a problem with ‘Foxman Junior'?” he growled.

I shook my head and hoped my eyes weren't betraying what I was really thinking.

“The storied name of Foxman isn't good enough for you?” he demanded.

I took a deep breath while I tried to think of an answer that didn't start out with something like, “No, Washed-Up-Man Junior doesn't exactly sing.” Finally I settled on, “It's not that. I just think a hero has to have his own identity if anyone is going to take him seriously, don't you … sir?”

He frowned. “I've never liked kids. Really, why does anyone have them? Is it a sense of inadequacy? The need to leave a legacy beyond their own deeds? Mortality issues?”

He shook his head. “Not important right now. What is important, is how to deal with one kid in particular—you. It's good you're willing to stand up for yourself. I like that. Only up to a point, of course, but we can go with it till you get there.” His words came out manic and staccato like a machine gun firing or like someone who's had way too much coffee. “I still think Foxman Junior has a nice ring to it. But if you can come up with something better, we'll try that. Deal?” He stuck out his hand.

I crossed my arms. “No ‘Junior.' No way. No how.” If I was going to stand up for myself, I might as well go all the way.

He raised an eyebrow speculatively. “Foxboy?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Kid Kitt?”

“You're joking, right?”

“Brainstorming. Flufftail?”

“Forget it.”

Foxman snorted, and his eyes went distant. Finally, he half smiled. “How about Meerkat!”

Where on earth did that come from? It was a little better, maybe, but … “I don't know.”

“Foxman and Meerkat,” he said, spreading his hands like he was painting it on a marquee. “Yeah, it scans.” He nodded sharply. “We'll go with that.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Mike caught my eye and made a throat-cutting motion.

“I guess we can try it,” I said.

“It's settled.” Rand extended his hand again.

This time I shook it. What choice did I have?

“Okay, next point,” said Rand. “We need to get your costume sorted.”

I pointed at my chest. “I thought this was pretty good.”

“For the basics, maybe. But we need to fill in the colors, make you a logo, add some ears to the cowl, equipment belt, Meerkat blaster, maybe some exoskeletal power boosters—”

“I kind of like the black,” I interjected. “It's mysterious.”

“It's clichéd,” he barked. “You look like something out of a low-budget comic book starring some Mask who got hit in the head by one too many bats. The flying kind, not the ones used by overamped steroidal baseball players.”

He started walking around me in a slow circle, lightly tapping the Armex across my chest and shoulders as he went. “We want a costume that goes with the Meerkat name. It'll have to complement my own uniform, of course. Maybe dusty gold with some red-brown stripes on the shoulders and thighs, shading across the neck and up into the cowl, contrasting boots and gauntlets, logo front and back of the chest plate, maybe echoed on the backs of your hands … Yeah, that could work. Come on, off to the booth with you.”

“Booth?” The way he said the word, it sounded more than a little alarming.

Rand ignored me, turning back to Mike. “Everything's still in the same place it was last time I came up?”

“More or less,” replied Mike. “Backflash has modified the controls a bit, but that's to be expected.”