Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (16 page)

“Relax, Ben. You know perfectly well he can’t leave the city.”

“Why can’t he leave the city?” I whispered.

“Mental Maid,” Ted hissed back. “As soon as the alarm goes off she sends out a subconscious command that keeps us all within the city limits. None of us could leave now if we wanted to.”

“Why doesn’t she just do that to the guilty party? In fact, why doesn’t she just make
him
come to us? Why do we have to scour the city at all?”

“Morrie says her powers aren’t that precise. Not from long range.”

I frowned and settled back in my chair. At this point I had decided that the preface “Morrie says” could very easily be translated into “This is utter B.S.”

Morrie looked out over the crowd and inhaled sharply. “Icebergg is on the lam,” he said. There were the requisite gasps of shock and someone even managed an overly-dramatic “It can’t be!” I simply sat with my arms folded and scowled.

“Apparently there was some sort of disagreement--”

“It was a
fight
!” Flambeaux spat.

“An
altercation
,” Morrie stressed. “Flambeaux was the witness. Um... First Light, if you will?”

First Light raised her unbandaged arm and a hologram of Deep Six and Icebergg appeared in the air. “Mental Maid takes the image from Flambeaux’s mind and gives it to First Light,” Ted whispered. “We’re seeing the whole scene through his eyes.”

The hologram shimmered in place and we watched Icebergg and Deep Six, still in full gear, standing in the dorm-level hall and flailing their arms at each other. There was no sound, but it was the sort of encounter even a deaf man couldn’t mistake for a friendly exchange. In fact, I couldn’t recall Icebergg ever moving so fluidly before.

Deep Six opened his hands and fired a cannon of water at Icebergg, but the frozen Mask trapped the water in midair, turning it into a column of ice. The stream of water continued to freeze, the iced-over portion flowing backwards until it finally captured Deep Six’s hands. The ice block then began to grow, spreading across his chest and down his torso.

“Why the hell isn’t Flambeaux doing something?” I asked. “Isn’t Deep Six his
brother
?”

As if in answer, a burst of flame erupted from the bottom of the hologram -- the “camera,” as it were -- and lurched in at Icebergg. The flame met with a wall of ice and its creator pointed his cold, blue finger to meet the fire’s point of origin. A block of ice leapt from his hand and the hologram went momentarily black.

“He knocked Flambeaux out?” Animan whispered.

The images flickered back in a few seconds, although to be fair there was no way to tell how long the time-lapse really was. When we could see the combatants again, Icebergg was standing by a Deep Six completely encased in ice, except for his diving-helmeted head. He grinned a blood-chilling smile and the ice closed in around the helmet.

“He’s got air in there, right?” I asked, getting worried despite myself. “He can still breathe in that helmet?”

As it turns out, it didn’t matter.

We watched as the ice began to contract around the helmet. Even
I
was feeling sick at this point. The helmet, inside the ice, began to shrink, and then dent, and then crack.

Then there was a red stain against the ice and the hologram ended.

“He rabbitted,” Morrie said. “He was last seen heading towards the vicinity of Lee Park. I want everyone in a Cape after him. Animan, Hotshot, Corwood, don’t go anywhere yet. Everyone else, do what you gotta do.”

I glanced over at Animan while the rest of the Capes and Masks began filtering out of the auditorium, most visibly distressed. “What do you think he wants?” I asked.

“Me, he probably wants to tell which identity to use. You? Hell if I know.”

As the two of us and Hotshot approached our boss I noticed that First Light wasn’t going out either. The rest of the Six -- DoubleGum Man, Fourtifier, Five-Share... even the robotic V3OL -- were all fuming, enraged and ready to grind Icebergg into a daiquiri. First Light headed off quietly in the direction of the dorms.

“Animan, you’re gonna be using that polar bear totem of yours today,” Morrie said.

Animan grumbled. “Man, I
hate
Great White...”

“Corwood, you’re gonna tag along with Hotshot.”

“But--”

“Shut up. Head to the locker room, we’re gonna suit you up as Stinger -- Animan’s wasp-character. You’re gonna partner with Hotshot and use his flight and ion-blasts to simulate Stinger’s powers.”

“How about I just use the wasp-totem and hang around with Animan?”

“Hey brother, just because you
can
don’t mean you
do
,” Animan said. “Those totems are my babies, I don’t want ‘em getting all scuffed up.”

“
Go,”
Morrie said.
“Chase.”

“I’ll wait for you here,” Hotshot said.

I didn’t try to disguise the dirty looks on my face after I stormed away to the locker room.

Once there, I found the Stinger costume waiting for me in the empty room. It consisted of a gray bodysuit (which I was finding myself less and less embarrassed to get into as my weight continued to fall) and several pieces of red armor -- boots, a codpiece, a chestplate with slits down the back, gauntlets and a helmet I
knew
was going to be hot as hell. Rather than metal, though, the armor was made of hard, lightweight plastic and the bodysuit was a flexible ceramic mesh. The gauntlets extended into points -- “stingers,” I suppose -- with ports for the bioelectric sting he fired. I, on the other hand, would have to fudge the points of origin for my blasts.

As I snapped the chestpiece into place I realized that, even though it was a trifle loose on me, it was still obviously not intended for Animan, who now that I thought about it wouldn’t have needed the armor anyway, his totem would create it. That meant that Morrie had the armor made already, intending this little Hotshot expedition to be my next fight all along. Jackass.

“Why do you keep
staring
at me? What do you know?”

... completely without a soul...

“Dammit! Will you for
once
in your life
say
something?”

... until she opened her mouth.

“Watch,” she hissed. “Learn. Help.”

I was too surprised to do anything but stare as she closed her mouth again, gathered her robes and left. I popped the helmet on and followed.

ISSUE EIGHT

WHAT HAPPENED TO LIONHEART?

I met Hotshot and we took the express elevator to the roof of Simon Tower. It was dusk and the sky stretched out in front of us, a field of orange and pink and red that was slowly receding into purple.

“Your ‘stings.’ There’s stuff in those pouches you can convert to blasts-- plastic shafts, mostly. Golf balls, too, but you should probably steer clear of those. The energy grenades don’t quite mesh with Stinger’s powers.”

“Lovely.” I clipped the belt on. “All right, Hotshot, I guess you’re the boss here. Where are we going?”

“Let’s start at the park.”

I flicked a switch on my chestplate and a pair of fake wings snapped out of the slits in the back of the red plastic. They swiveled into place and began humming. “
These
things are supposed to pass for flight powers?” I asked.

“They work for the
real
Stinger,” Hotshot said. “Come on.”

I wasn’t exactly pleased to be with Hotshot but I had to admit, flying was an experience well worth the poor company. I’d done a little of it in the gym, working with various powers, but
nothing
compared to hitting the skies over Siegel City, the buildings stretched out below me, the sky stretched out above. From this vantage point I could see a lot of the other Capes scouring the city. LifeSpeed was racing around in concentric circles, trying to smoke Icebergg out. The Gunk and Goop were bounding around as usual and, in stark silhouette against the falling sun, I saw the Spectacle Sled bearing its four passengers. (Most of Five-Share, obviously, had stayed behind and would teleport in if the situation demanded it.)

“Of course,
he’s
just a jackass. He, at least, didn’t betray everything he should have held sacred.”

We flew silent for a moment.

“
Land,
” Hotshot said.

“What?”

“Land.
Now,
Junior, or I take off and you can try to ape powers off a nearby pigeon.”

I reluctantly swept down to the empty roof of Barks Plaza, Hotshot right behind me. He yanked his mask off and growled, “The helmet.”

“No,
you
go ahead.”

“Wh--”

“I swear to
God,
if you say ‘what’ one more time I’m gonna feed you to the Gunk. This is your chance. Whatever it is that’s eating you, whatever it is you have against me, you get it off your chest
right now.
”

I was momentarily stunned. Momentarily. “You want to know what my problem with you is?”

“I’d
love
to.”

“You were
there
!” I shouted. “You were
one
of the LightCorps. You
knew
Lionheart, you fought with him, and now... now...”

“What, you’re
jealous
, is that it? That I stuck it out with him and you never had the chance?”

“No. I’m not jealous. I’m
mad!
How
could
you? After
knowing
him,
fighting
with him,
learning
from him, how could you buy into Morrie’s scam? How could you disgrace his memory like that? No, this is beyond disgrace, this... this is
blasphemy.
”

“It was the nature of his powers, Josh. Lionheart never forgot
anyone
he rescued, but every so often he’d come across someone special, someone... like him. Do you know where he got his powers?”

“No.”

“He was chosen. By who, I don’t know, he never really elaborated, but once in a generation, a champion is chosen, someone who possessed what he called, ‘The Heart of the Lion.’ Someone brave, and honest, and incapable of a malevolent action.”

“Yeah, well... that
sounds
like Lionheart, at least.”

“Along with his position came his power and he became a protector. That was a different procedure -- powers don’t
always
accompany the Heart of the Lion, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“You
are
aware of how ridiculous this sounds, aren’t you?” I asked.

“No more ridiculous, I think, than a man who copies someone else’s power by walking in the room.

“I stand chastised. Go ahead.”

“Every so often, while Lionheart was out stopping cosmic menaces or getting cats out of trees or whatever, he’d encounter someone else who could just as easily have been chosen, someone else with the Heart of the Lion. And what’s more, when one Child of the Lion saves the life of another, they become bonded somehow -- blindly loyal and faithful and willing to do
anything
to protect each other. Or their legacies. God, Josh,
that’s
why you hated me so much? You thought I was disgracing what Lionheart built?”

I felt myself choke. “Well... well
aren’t
you?”

He sat down, back to the railing along the roof, and buried his face in his hands. “You can’t know what it was like out there, when we lost him.”

“Then
make
me understand. What happened?
What happened to Lionheart?
”

“The same thing that happens to every
real
hero, sooner or later,” Hotshot said. “He died.

“We were fighting a Mask who called himself Carnival -- some heavily-armored lunatic we’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. The entire LightCorps was there -- Lionheart, Lightning, Tin Man, the Defender, Condor and Oriole... and me. I was still the rookie then; I’d only been a Cape for maybe a year and I guess I didn’t really believe anything could hurt one of us.

“I still don’t know how it happened, but Carnival took over our minds... made us do things... the Defender, the kindest man I ever met, nearly beat a
child
to death. Tin Man blew up factories and army bases. Condor nearly murdered Oriole, his own
wife
. And I...”

Hotshot began to stammer and tremble. I choked as the memory of his own actions welled up inside of him.

“Lionheart was the one who broke Carnival’s grip. He had to fight his way through the rest of us, but he finally took on that psychopath. There was this incredible burst -- people all over the city were blinded for days. Once it cleared, Carnival was gone. All we found of Lionheart was... was his...” He bit down on his lip so hard he nearly drew blood and pressed a tight fist to his forehead.

“You don’t have to--” I tried to say.

“His
skeleton
,” he hissed out. His wet cheeks were very red now, and his voice escaped only in brief intervals.

“We didn’t want to tell people he was gone. Every crook and scumbag we’d ever put away would have come crawling out of the woodwork. The crime wave that would have resulted -- we didn’t even want to
think
about it. But soon enough people realized he was missing. I even tried wearing the suit a few times to throw people off, but I was no good at the charade. Heh... ironic, huh?”

“No. Not really.”

“The rest of the team... they decided they couldn’t do it anymore. They went into retirement and I was all alone. And then...”

“And then Morrie came to you.”