School for Sidekicks (22 page)

“Low blood sugar is bad for crime-fighting,” he said. “It'll make you stupid and shaky. Speaking of which…” He pulled a MaskerAde from his bandolier and drained it in one go.

“Are you sure that stuff is good for you?” I asked.

“I'm
very
sure it's not,” he said, making a face.

“Then why don't you drink something else?”

“Why don't you shut up and drive the freaking car!” he snapped, turning away from me and staring out the window.

The rest of the trip back to the Den passed in a long and uncomfortable silence. Great, now I'd screwed things up with my parents
and
my mentor. By the time Denmother had served us each a plate of Vietnamese chicken lo mein, my stomach felt so horrible I couldn't even
imagine
eating it.

After a few minutes Denmother asked, “Is there something wrong with the meal, Master Quick?”

“No. It's fine.”

“But you're not eating. If you don't like lo mein, I can make you something else.”

“No, I like it fine. I'm just not hungry.”

Foxman had gotten yet another energy drink to go with his dinner, focusing on it with an intensity I'd hoped would keep him from noticing me picking at my food. Now he set it aside and gave me a speculative look.

“Look, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but…” He sighed. “Let's just say that was a really stupid question to ask a drunk, especially a dry drunk, and leave it at that. Okay?”

I nodded, and Foxman went back to eating his food while I went back to pushing mine around the plate and wishing I knew how to handle my parents. After a few minutes he looked up again.

“What's chewing on you, kid? I'm thinking it's more than getting yelled at by one old has-been.”

I looked down at my plate because the edges of my eyes had suddenly started burning. I wanted to talk to someone about my parents, needed to, really. But at the same time I didn't want to let anyone into a pain that felt so personal and private.

“Kid, I didn't agree to take you on to be your friend. I did it solely to piss off Captain Commanding. I don't even like kids,” he growled. “But, I
am
your designated Mask mentor, and the last thing in the world that I need to do is add another failure to what is an already epic list of guilts.” Foxman sighed. “There isn't anyone in the world less qualified to offer good advice to an up-and-coming hero than I am. But there's also no one in the world who has less of a right to judge somebody else's failings either. So, cough it up. It can't possibly be as bad as all the stuff I've screwed up over the years.”

I laughed, and it eased the burn in my eyes and the ache in my throat. I looked up at Foxman. “That's the least inspiring thing anyone's ever said to me.”

He grinned. “Hey, I am the undisputed world champion of uninspiring. Not only am I an alcoholic, and a has-been, I'm also a raving egomaniac with delusions of grandeur. Or, I was at one time, anyway. I might be a recovering egomaniac right now—it's hard to say.”

“You don't seem that self-absorbed to me,” I said.

“Maybe not right at the moment, but how many people do you know who spent five hundred grand having the then-number-one-selling heavy metal band, Iron Ratt Riot, write them their very own theme music?”

“You have Iron Ratt Riot theme music? Why have I never heard of this marvel before?”

“Because Iron Ratt Riot sent it to me the same day I almost knocked the IDS Tower off its foundations. It was another two weeks before I was sober enough to notice I'd gotten the file, and at that point the only thing Heropolis wanted from me was that I dig a hole and bury myself in it. I never actually got to use the theme, which is a shame, because A) it rocks, and B) the upgraded speakers in my suit were a total waste of time and money.”

“Suit speakers?”

He nodded and touched a button on his wrist. Plates slid aside on his shoulders, exposing a thin metal mesh. “Right there. Flat panel sound broadcast technology better than anything you've ever heard before.”

“Play your theme song for me. I'd like to hear it.” That would have been true even if I wasn't looking for anything to distract myself from my own worries.

He raised an eyebrow. “How about this: I'll play the Foxman theme for you, if you tell me what's got you feeling so messed up you can't eat Denmother's excellent cooking.” He extended his hand. “Deal?”

I shook it. “Deal.” But where to start … I chewed on my lip for a little while, then decided I had to cowboy up and simply start talking. “It's my parents … they don't really want me to be a Mask.”

I waited to see if Foxman would say anything, but he only nodded for me to continue. So I did. Slowly and with a lot of long silences between the bits, I gave him the whole story. My dreams, my hopes, my relationship with my parents before and after the hero beam. Everything. I even showed him all the e-mails.

Finally, when I was done, I looked at him and said, “Well, what do you think?”

“I said right up front that I don't have any right to judge anyone, and I won't. That's a lot of pain you've got there, kid, with no easy way out. I've only got two things to offer on the subject that have any chance of being useful. First one's a piece of my past.”

Then he went silent for so long that I finally said, “Which is…”

“That wall downstairs, the one I was staring at when you showed up. It's carved with the name of every person that died in the original Hero Bomb blast, and every person that's died because of metahuman activities since. You probably couldn't see it, but some of the names are in italics. Those are the ones I personally failed in some way. There's only one italic name on the M-Day part of the wall.”

Again he went quiet for a long while. This time I kept my mouth shout.

“The name is Archibald Hammer, and he was my dad. We had a big falling-out when I was a bit older than you are. I'd just turned sixteen and he bought me a fancy car as a birthday present. After he left my mother, he spent a lot of money on me trying to—I don't know—buy off his guilt maybe. He was a very rich man. Anyway, I was mad because he kept giving me presents instead of his time, and I threw the keys down at his feet and walked away.

“That was in October of '88. For the next month and a half I flat refused to take his calls or talk to him. Then, on the Ides of December, someone put a bomb under the I-94 bridge. Afterward, I was a billionaire Mask and he was dead. I never got the chance to straighten things out with him. I don't know if I would have, or if we could ever have fixed all the stuff that lay between us, but I would have liked the chance to find out.”

“I'll answer the e-mail tonight.”

“Good kid.”

“What was the second thing you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

“That there's nothing in the whole world for easing some of the sting of hard times with family like taking down a bad guy.” He smiled grimly and finished his drink. “I guarantee that it'll be easier to write that e-mail after you've punched your first real Hood in the nose, and I know just the guy. Now, come on. The Foxmobile awaits.”

As he got up, the speakers on his suit started blaring a heavy metal anthem.

 

17

Heroing Without a License

“Sweet barking cheese, Foxman!” Put that one down on the big list of things I never thought I'd find myself saying.

But then, I never expected to find myself battling vicious guard Gouda in the hideout of the Fromagier either. Sure, I knew that he existed in a vague sort of way, but until you've nearly been KO'd by a giant wheel of Wensleydale, it's hard to take someone seriously when their power is listed as “fromaginesis.”

I threw myself to the ground as the Fromagier hurled a handful of Cheddar stars my way. Three of them clipped me anyway. Fortunately, the Armex reinforcements in my uniform blocked two. The remaining star grazed the lighter Invulycra over my left bicep, leaving a long shallow cut that bled wildly. It was nothing my healing powers couldn't handle, and the red vanished beneath a web of gray goo within a matter of seconds, but I played dead until he turned his focus back to Foxman.

Then I started creeping toward the side wall and the stairs that led to a catwalk overhead. The Fromagier was really out of my league, but I figured if I could drop stuff on him from above I might have some chance of taking him out. I'd just gotten to the first landing when the Gouda came at me. Three wheels of the stuff, all studded with spikes and raring to run me down. I had to throw myself over the railing to avoid their charge. I fell nearly fifteen feet, landing in a Dumpster full of discarded cheese seconds. Worst smell of my life, but it got me clear of the Gouda. It also took me off everybody's radar for a little while.

As I was climbing out, I picked up a long, slender brick of combat-grade Swiss. It looked like the unholy offspring of a hockey stick and a cheese press. Coming out of the back of that Dumpster did an even better job of moving me out from under the Fromagier's eye than the catwalk would have.

He was hunkered down behind a thick wall of case-hardened Parmesan that allowed him to lob Limburger grenades at Foxman without putting himself directly in the line of the Foxblaster. I waited till he was in the midst of throwing a particularly thick and aromatic barrage. Then I slid forward through the shattered remains of a double dozen Gouda wheels. I got pretty close, then had to duck under the workbench where the foul Fromagier crafted his cheese of mass destruction when a lull gave him time to look around.

I think the Fromagier might have spotted me, if Foxman hadn't picked that exact second to toss a smoke bomb into the Parmesan bunker and start firing the Foxblaster wildly. As the Fromagier staggered back from the wall of choking smoke, I leapt forward and smashed my Swiss brick against the back of his skull with all my might.

Both the Swiss and the Fromagier's thick Colby shock helmet cracked under the impact, and he went down in a boneless heap.

Foxman was absolutely right! It did make me feel better. Maybe our lack of the proper licenses meant we could never take any credit for bringing the rogue cheese fancier to justice, but I knew that I'd helped bring his reign of terror to an end, and that was enough. For the first time, the idea of being a sidekick seemed like something I might actually want to do.

But when we pulled back into the tunnel that led to the Den, and I remembered I had a much more personal challenge to face in trying to figure out what to say to my parents, my mood crashed and burned. Somehow I didn't think
Hi, Mom, I defeated an evil cheese-monger today, what did you do?
would make for a good opening paragraph.

“What am I going to tell my mom?” I said as I parked the car.

Foxman shrugged. “If I knew how to bridge that kind of gap I might have sorted things out with my dad while I still had time.” He looked down into his lap. “Wish I could do more. Sorry.”

“It's all right, you've already helped a lot. Thanks.”

I headed for my room and my laptop. As I passed the communications monitor, I paused to listen to a report about Spartanicus breaking HeartBurn and Bagger out of the metamax women's facility in southern Heropolis an hour or so earlier. Currently, OSIRIS had no idea of their whereabouts. But I had a job to do, so I moved on.

*   *   *

I had to suppress my desire to fling my laptop into the fireplace as I deleted my fortieth or so attempt at an opening paragraph. Writing a reply to my mom's e-mail just wasn't working!

I pressed my fingertips into my cheekbones and stared at the “Please” she'd put in the subject line of all her most recent e-mails. I didn't know how to answer that.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I needed to write my own message and not just respond to my parents. Maybe I needed to take control of my life and grow up a little. I could do that, couldn't I? Look at how well I'd managed against the Fromagier. I began to type.

Mom, Dad,

I love you. Don't ever doubt that.

But this isn't about you. It's about me. Whether you like it or not, I have the trigger genes for metahuman powers and they've been activated. No matter what else happens with the rest of my life, that's going to be true.

You've read the Franklin Act. You have to know what that means in terms of my legal status both here and in the wider world. Heck, you've been on the wrong side of it when they dragged you away from work. I am a “potential weapon of mass destruction,” and subject to the internationally recognized authority of OSIRIS.

But ignore that for a moment. I know you'd defy the whole world to protect and take care of me. I have never been in any doubt of that, or of your love. That's not what this is about either.

It's about growing up. No matter how much you love me and want to take care of me, someday I have to grow up. Everyone does. Maybe thirteen is earlier than any of us would have liked for me to take such a long step on that road. But this isn't about what we'd like either.

This is about what is. And thirteen is when my world changed forever, when I changed forever. I don't know if I'm ready for this, but it happened, and I have to make the best of it. I have to make the best of me.

Maybe I didn't really understand what being a Mask really meant before, maybe I don't even understand it now, but it's what I always wanted. You raised me to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. Now you have to let me try.

I love you both,

Evan

I didn't hit send right away, but not because I was scared anymore. I waited because I wanted to make sure it was really what I needed to say. That was something my mom had taught me—never send your reply to an upsetting e-mail without giving yourself time to cool down and read it again. If I was going to deal with my parents, I might as well try to live up to them, too.