Trainee Superhero (Book One) (6 page)

“We’ll wait five minutes, and then I’ll start
shooting at whatever I can see while you keep the skies clear. When
this area gets too hot we fly out and start again, just like in
training.”

Blue Twelve
shimmers and fades until
his body is invisible against the roof.

“I didn’t get much training,” I say, “and I
can’t-”

“Above!”
Blue Twelve
shouts and I see
a pair of hooded snakes racing in the air towards us on jets of
fire. I take them down, but more are gathering in the air around us
until we are surrounded. They take turns dropping down at us, and
one pushes me right off my feet with a blast of plasma.

“They found us too soon!” shouts
Blue
Twelve
, “we need to move.”

He takes out a snake with a blast that
disintegrates the alien into dust, but I can see that his heavy
rifle isn’t made for this kind of close work. He drops it and pulls
out a pair of long knives. My powerglove does better than he does
and I claim another two kills, but then my collar explodes in pain
and I double over. The pain is incredible, and the snakes use my
moment of weakness to bombard me with blasts. I try to move but
can’t, and a snake starts biting my helmet.
Blue Twelve
hits
the ground beside me, a snake wrapped around his neck. He’s
stabbing at it with a knife, but it’s too strong for him. I try to
blast it, but my power is too low. A snake comes in for the kill
and I close my eyes. Nothing happens.

I open one eye and see a severed snake head
lying in front of me. The others are all in pieces on the ground. A
superhero is floating in the air before me with his visor open.
It’s
Past Prime
, and he does not look pleased.

He’s holding a long, thin power sword in one
glove and has a huge cannon of some sort mounted on his left arm.
The air around him is filled with flying bladed discs slicing the
flying snakes into ribbons of metal. These discs are what
Bansuri
was famous for, and any doubts I had as to who
Past Prime
once was disappear.

“I know you are there,” he says, swishing his
sword.

Twelve
appears as if stepping out of
thin air and slumps beside me. He looks wounded.

“Our collars activated during an attack,” he
says, “and we were disabled.”

“Accident?” asks
Past Prime
.

“No.”

I can see the saucer in the sky behind
Past Prime
. It is huge and threatening, a reminder of what
we are fighting, a reminder that we aren’t winning. A light flashes
as the saucer lifts a multistory building out of the ground and
starts dissecting it with lasers, casting bits off. I’ve heard
about this before, but very few civilians have seen it and lived.
It looks like the saucer is looking for something, but no one knows
what. Saucers have been known to tear apart hills in the same way,
or dig out chunks of ground.

“
Bad Day
was meant to be looking after
him,” says
Past Prime
, “so where is he?”

“
Day
is on bomb delivery.
Firestorm
Commando
insisted. They-”

The saucer lights up in bright orange light
and then explodes into huge pieces that come crashing down to
Earth. It’s the largest fireball I have ever seen, with flames
reaching up to the heavens as lumps of metal drop down around us.
The sound of the explosion is incredible.
Blue Twelve
and I
shelter from the falling saucer, but
Past Prime
just nods
thoughtfully.

“At least someone has their mind on the job,”
he says, “now all we have to do is the clean-up.”

He grabs my suit and tows me into the air. He
flies well, and my weight doesn’t even slow him.
Blue Twelve
follows us with long jumps between buildings. Our path takes us
over a couple of triclops, and
Past Prime
doesn’t even slow
as he cuts them down with his spinning discs.

“The aliens slow down after a saucer is
destroyed, but they can still fight. Hunting the last ones down can
be tricky,” he explains to me as
Blue Twelve
blasts a scout
into pieces.

I’m feeling pretty good: one of the most
powerful superheroes of all time is helping me. I take a few shots
of my own at a passing scout and hit it square on.

“Excellent shot,”
Past Prime
says
calmly.

Oh yes, I’m definitely getting the hang of
this superhero malarkey. All I need now is my own codename, and the
ability to fly without being a passenger.

We find the others standing in the ruins of a
sporting stadium. The green grass and good memories are long gone,
replaced with poisoned soil and rusting chairs. It was quiet,
empty. I feel the ghosts of spectators watching us as we land.

We are just in time to catch the action:
Bad Day
is crouched down with a pistol in his hand and
One Trick
is lying beside him.

Firestorm Commando
is floating nearby,
balls of blue energy in his hands. He throws a ball at
Bad
Day
who dodges in a blur but doesn’t fire back.
Firestorm
Commando
lashes out with rings of fire, but
Day
moves
too fast to be hit.

“ENOUGH!” roars
Past Prime
, dropping
me to the ground and dashing between the two arguing
superheroes.

“You? You weren’t meant to be here,” says
Firestorm Commando
in surprise.

“No, and you weren’t meant to be trying to
get your team killed, but here we are.”

Firestorm Commando
points at me and
shakes his head, clearly disappointed that I’m still alive.

“Him? Do you know who he is? What he has
done?
The General
wants him dead-”

“-and you want to get back in
The
General
’s good books by throwing a trainee to the aliens
without even giving him a fighting chance. You coward,” says
Past Prime
calmly.

“Careful, old-timer.
One Trick
said
that, and it didn’t end well for her,” says
Firestorm
Commando
.

“Coward,” repeats
Past Prime
.

Firestorm Commando
touches his glove,
but nothing happens.
Past Prime
slashes at the air with his
sword, and then sinks the blade deep into the ground. His razor
discs gather around him, humming with power.
Firestorm
Commando
looks worried; I would be too, if I was in his
position.

“I wear a collar, but it doesn’t respond to
you, son,” explains
Past Prime
, “so if you want me dead
you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Go ahead and try, I’ll
even give you the first shot for free.”

For a second
Firestorm Commando
looks
like he is considering it, and I am silently egging him on. I would
love to see that fight, because there is no way he can take
Past
Prime
. I think the whole team is hoping
Firestorm
Commando
is stupid enough to start something.
Past Prime
looks serene, but he holds his blade ready for action.

“He’s too much of a coward!”
One Trick
calls out from the ground, and I laugh.
One Trick
is
cool.

Firestorm Commando
shakes his head and
spits on the ground. He may be a coward, but he isn’t a stupid one.
He floats into the air and away from
Past Prime
and throws a
bolt of energy at
Blue Twelve
, knocking my fellow trainee
over and then flying away. I can’t believe I had his poster on my
wall for months. It makes me wonder what the other supers are
like.

“What a dolt,” says
Prime
, “I was
truly hoping he would try his luck. Anyway, we still have the
clean-up to do, so-”

A pair of octo-apes falls out of the sky in a
wash of flames. The other superheroes scatter, but I’m slow to
react and an ape hits me right in the chest. It hammers my head
with a mace while simultaneously stabbing me with a long bladed
arm. I fight back, but the octo-ape has too many arms and too many
weapons.

“Help!”

Prime
splits it in two with his sword
and the parts fall to either side of me. He looks down at me and
sighs.

“Looks like you need a medical team. This is
why we can’t afford to get distracted,” he says.

I try to agree, but breathing is becoming
harder and my vision fades. My words get jumbled up as I speak and
make no sense. No one cares what I think, anyway.

“Most of our trainees do not survive their
first ten missions. The reason for this is as difficult to accept
as it is simple: our training is not preparing them for battle. We
are failing them.”

-
Master Bansuri
, Senior Trainer in the
Superhero Corps, in his final address to the Corps Inner
Council.

“Most of our powers are based on pure
instinct. Instinct can’t be taught, and it’s a waste of time to
try. Our training should focus on surviving.”

-Extract from
Dark Fire
’s journal read
at his trial.

I wake up on a soft bed. My head hurts, and
my body is stiff and painful when I try to move. My tat-a-gotchi
buzzes on my arm impatiently, so I smash the feeding button until
it quietens down. It takes me a few minutes before I realize that I
was in a superhero battle.

“I’m alive,” I say, and I can hear the
surprise in my own voice.

I
like
being alive.

I’m in a small, windowless room I’ve never
seen before, and I’m wearing my tracksuit again. I notice two words
carved into the wall beside the bed, over and over again.

“
Simon Smith
,” I read aloud.

The wall is hard plastic, and I have no idea
why anyone would bother to carve their name into it. This must have
been Simon’s room, and I wonder why he doesn’t need it anymore. I
shrug and look around the room for clues. My room is sparse: just a
bed, a chair, and a desk with
Simon Smith
carved all over
them. That guy really liked seeing his own name.

“I wonder if we are underground?” I say
aloud, because the room has no windows and everything around me is
built of metal rather than brick or concrete.

I sit down at the desk and find a stack of
thin books lying in a folder. I pick one and read the cover:
‘Tactics and Weapons Use’.

“I’m… really in superhero school?” I ask.

There are two doors to the room. One leads to
a tiny bathroom, and the other is locked. Apparently I’m not free
to wander, so I sit back down at the desk.

“Computer on,” I say. There is no sound.

I sigh. How can it be possible that this room
doesn’t have a computer? Maybe the voice recognition is disabled. I
touch the metal chip behind my ear. It beeps once, then twice. One
beep for on, two beeps for a wireless connection. Win. A display
flickers across my tat-a-gotchi. Most people don’t know that the
tats can also work as computer screens, which is a useful trick. I
open up the settings and find that voice control had been turned
off months ago and that the computer had not been used since then.
I turn the voice and hand controls on, because using the chip gives
me a headache. That’s the problem with untested technology, but I
suppose I can’t really complain.

The computer is connected to a network with a
lot of security and firewalls, but I have a lot of skills from my
misspent youth. Most of the security is designed to prevent people
from accessing the network from outside, not from within. It takes
me about an hour before I get onto the Internet and log onto my
email.

“Eight video mails,” the computer says.

The first is from Tenchi. His worried face
appears in miniature on my arm.

“Dude where are you? The hospital said you
were taken away to a special facility, WTF. CALL ME.”

“Reply,” I say.

“No upload possible.”

Okay, I guess replying is out. The next video
is from my dad.

“Where are you? I was on the way to the
Superhero Corps Office to see you but they said you were already
gone. Then I was caught up in the attack. They said you were taken
to hospital. Call me!”

Typical Dad: the best intentions but always
late to the party. I’m just glad that he is safe. I can’t reply to
that email, either. The next five videos are from Dad again, Tenchi
again, Dad and Tenchi together, a spam company offering me millions
to work from home, and Dad a last time. He looks a lot more
cheerful than before.

“We were told you are healthy and in
training, but that you can’t communicate with us. Good luck, son, I
know you’ll be great!”

The last video mail is from a sender I don’t
recognize. I open it up and see Stace looking right back at me. She
smiles, and my heart misses a beat.

Wait, what?

“Stace?” I say in surprise.

“Hey, I got this email from a friend who says
you were taken to a training camp. I just wanted to say thank you
for saving me! I hope training is going okay, I heard it’s pretty
tough! Hang in there and you’ll be fine. I know you will be a great
superhero!”

Someone bangs on my door and startles me. I
initiate the power down and memory wipe programs I had loaded to
remove any trace of my messing with the computer and then answer
the door.

A steward in a white shirt is standing with a
plate of fresh fruit and pastries. He offers them to me and I pick
a few. There is a glass of fresh orange juice that I down far too
quickly, and a set of multi-colored tablets. I eat quickly while
the steward waits for me.

“
Past Prime
wants you in the training
room. Please follow me.”

He leads me to the training hall where
Past Prime
and a handful of technicians in green are
waiting. The technicians hand me a set of padded gloves and a
helmet. The gloves are comfortable enough, but the helmet is heavy
and cuts off my peripheral vision in much the same way as my suit
helmet had.
Past Prime
dons similar gear and pulls two
batons from his belt. The batons start glowing brightly; I have a
bad feeling about this.