Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (8 page)

“Oh man,” he chuckled. “This is too sweet. I
didn't think I'd find you here. I get you and Springfield both at
the same time. Bonus.” He whipped his hands out to the sides, and
arcs of lightning made a sort of web out behind him, scorching the
floor, four coming from each of his forearms.

“What happened to you?” Trent said. “One
minute I'm lying down in the hospital, the next thing I'm getting
told that if I look at you the wrong way again my parents are gonna
have to move out of town. What's that about, I want to know? You
baby up on me, that what happened? Run crying to mommy and daddy?
Get them to talk to the principal? Well they're not here to stop me
now, Mikey.”

His hand flashed up, but Michael was already
diving away. A zing and the smell of smoke and burnt hair followed.
He tumbled to the ground, sprang up, and started running. Away.

“Aww come on,” Trent said.

Blue arcs flew by him, along with a crisp
smell of air frying just beside him. He got another three steps
before something went throughout his entire body like a freight
train. One second his legs were pumping, his lungs huffing and
puffing, the next minute every muscle in his body freaked out,
shooting new pain from scalp to toes. He went down on the floor
with a crack, and felt warm blood on his lip. And his shirt was
probably on fire.

“You don't turn your back on the enemy
Michael.” He came over and stomped down on Michael's back. “There
you go buddy. Don't want you to get too badly scorched, you know.
We've got a little catching up to do.”

Michael looked back at Charlotte and the
meteorite who had face planted on the gym floor.

“You stop right there, young man!”

“Samuelson?” Trent said in a mildly curious
tone, like you would comment on finding an Armani suit on sale for
twenty bucks.

“I don't know what the devil is going on
here, but you can stop this nonsense right now.”

Trent chuckled. “And you're going to stop me,
are you? How exactly?”

He held out his hands, and Michael had just
enough time to yell 'NO!' before electric bolts flew out
everywhere. One jabbed Mr. Samuelson on the shoulder. In a second,
Michael saw what had just happened to him. The principal's hair
stood on end, and his teeth clicked together as every muscle in his
body seized up.

“Stupid lightning bolts,” Trent muttered.

“That...” Mr. Samuelson gasped.
“...is...enough...of that...young man...I am...calling your
parents.”

Trent snorted, but Michael saw the fear
there. The real world hadn't existed for Trent before, there were
no parents and no police and no army with tanks and high-powered
rifles. Only Samuelson had said the magic words.

“Don't listen to him dude!”

“Davey?” Trent asked.

“Go ahead man. Fry that sucker!”

Another flurry of lightning came out, and
this time latched onto Mr. Samuelson's body like a dozen remoras.
He didn't scream, but did a sort of jerky dance before the
lightning winked out and left him smoking on the ground. Davey came
out from behind one of the overturned tables at the side of the
gym, still loping like a chimp, and grinning like one too.

Charlotte was stirring. This wasn't good. She
probably had no idea what was going on.

“Now back to this little...what the?” Trent
looked from Michael to Charlotte. “Oh ho! Hey man, nice work on the
chicklet. She's a pretty nice one, hey?” He walked over and bent
down over her. “Prime, bro. Prime. Got to say though, I find it
hard to believe you snagged one this hot. What are you, paying her
or something?”

Michael caught sight of one of his teachers
in the far doorway, waving over to him. Yeah, just run away. No
problem. Leave Charlotte and Mr. Samuelson and the human cannonball
over there to Trent, with Davey to egg him on.

The orange water cooler was standing nearby.
Michael could just reach it. If he remembered anything about
science...

He lunged towards it, and Davey shouted.
Trent, bent over and with his back to them, was too slow to react.
He only just turned his head before a five pound cooler whacked him
in the head and splashed freezing water all over him. As soon as he
stood, the lightning began to play over him. Only it went wrong,
and Trent staggered back, jerking the same way Mr. Samuelson had.
Then, to Michael's horror, he started to trip over Charlotte, and a
visible web of electricity jumped from Trent's leg into her body.
Michael was on his feet and pelting across the gym before he could
think of anything else to do. Before Trent could properly fall
over, Michael had barreled into him, both of them airborne and
flying over Charlotte. And the shocks were back.

And the last thing Michael was aware of
before going black was his head jerking forward from the
electricity, bashing against Trent's nose.

“I did ask you not to call me here,
right?”

“Yes, but this is important. We can't afford
any sort of delays on this, Harold.”

“There's nothing more important to me than
the life of my grandson.” A sigh. “What do you want?”

“Do you have any idea how many witnesses
there were?”

“Oh, I'd imagine roughly two hundred. What
with that Sulzsko girl, we were at one oh three sixth graders and a
hundred one seventh graders. Or have we lost one in the last hour
that I haven't been told about?”

Silence. In the dark, Michael began to
realize that he wasn't dead after all. He couldn't remember whether
or not he'd been dreaming something very painful and bright bluish
white, but as soon as he moved his body, it screamed at him that
no, it hadn't been a dream. He listened to his body and quit
squirming.

He couldn't help but interrupt his
grandfather. He groaned and cracked his eyes open. He was in a
hospital bed, propped up to an almost sitting position. A tray with
his e-reader glasses and page turners was there, along with some
flowers. Grandpa was facing away from him, and in the second before
he turned, Michael got a look at a squat, unhappy face with too
many chins. His frown had gotten so big that it was basically
dripping off the sides of his face. It was smack in the middle of
Grandpa's tablet, and it disappeared as Grandpa turned to look at
Michael.

His face was set in an even more terrible
scowl than last year, when he discovered the truth about Trent and
the paper route.

“I see that you're upset,” the froggy faced
man said.

“You're goshdarn right I'm upset. Listen, we
will talk about this after I talk to him.”

He jabbed at the tablet, which clicked like a
telephone being hung up.

“Michael.”

“Wuh.”

“Here...drink some water.”

He couldn't move his arms very well, so he
and Grandpa slopped water all down his chin. But enough got down
that he could talk again.

“Hey Grandpa.”

“Hey yourself. How are you feeling
kiddo?”

“Terrible.”

“But alive.”

“Yeah.”

“That's the important part anyway.”

“Where's mom?”

“She worried herself to sleep.” He pointed
over to where his mother was sitting and lying uncomfortably in one
of those boxy hospital chairs. It looked like she'd almost fallen
out of the chair, but stopped herself, and fallen asleep just like
that. Her hair was mussed up and a few strands were clinging to the
wall.

Grandpa put a hand on his shoulder. “Mighty
brave thing you did yesterday, son.”

“Yesterday?” The moon was shining brightly
through the window.

“You've been asleep, what, sixteen hours?
Roundabouts.”

He sat bolt upright on the bed.
“Charlotte!”

“Relax kiddo. She's fine.”

But he couldn't relax. As soon as he laid
back, a big patch on his back flared to sudden, painful life.

“Doctors say you're mighty lucky to be
alive.”

“Where's Trent?”

“Don't you worry about him. He isn't gonna
hurt anybody anymore.”

“Is he...” He couldn't even finish the
question.

Grandpa chuckled. “Dead? No, no. But I heard
through the grapevine, the police got him off to a secure
location.”

“Police?” He could just imagine how long it
was going to take before Trent's super electric power snapped open
the electronic locks on the cells, and he zapped everybody in
sight.

“Well, if I were going to disable a super
kid, I'd throw him in a plastic and rubber room, myself. And
everybody in his complex will have some rubber damping suits. If it
were up to me.”

“What about Samuelson?”

Grandpa's cracked face crumpled. “He's...he
may pull through. The doctors are working real hard on him. But we
should talk about you. You're fine.”

“Fine,” Michael replied.

“Not shaken up.”

“My body hurts.”

Grandpa looked ready to say something, but
stopped and settled for, “Okay then.”

“Why?”

“Just...well, plenty of people aren't ready
to meet a real Active.”

“Active?”

“Yeah, somebody who's like a superhero.
Active. As in the switch's been flipped.”

“Why don't you just call them supers or
something?”

“Well, maybe we just figured if we call them
super, they'll either be super heroes or super villains. And nobody
likes a super villain.”

Michael could only say, “Hm.” Grandpa had a
point.

“Anyway, if you want to talk about anything,
you just swing on by and have a sit-down with your dinosaur of a
grandfather.”

Michael laughed. “You're not that old.”

“I'm old enough. I've got to skedaddle, but
I'm around. You come on over and I'll beat you at cribbage a couple
times, alright?”

“Okay,” Michael said. He wanted to ask about
the fat man on the tablet, and how Grandpa knew exactly how many
students were going to LADCEMS, but at that moment his mother
screamed and threw herself across the room at him. Grandpa winked
at him, smiled, and headed out.

He had the rest of the night to read, and the
next day was Sunday, so he spent it recovering and trying not to
talk too much about it when his mother was grilling him. She seemed
to think it was somehow his fault that he was nearest to the half
naked man, and his fault that Charlotte had been in danger. Still,
she was in tears every time she reminded him that he was still
alive, like he didn't know that.

Charlotte poked her head in just after dinner
time.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey!”

“You okay? I guess you got it pretty bad from
that jerk.”

“Yeah,” he said, trying to act cool. “I'm
totally fine. Totally fine. A hundred percent.”

She grinned. “And yet you're still here.
That's strange.”

“Well, the uh...the doctors, they're just
being careful.”

“Oh, okay! Cool, hey, listen, I'm going to
head out and pick up some Taco Bell.”

“Um...is that allowed?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Anyway, the food
here...blech.”

So he decided why not, and asked her to pick
him up something that sounded good. When she brought it back, they
sat down and ate until one of the hospital orderlies sent Charlotte
back to her room.

He had Monday off for Marcus Patterson Day,
which was great. Watching movies, reading, and eating his favorite
food were all way better than facing a broken school and the idea
that his principal might be dead.

Sure enough though, Tuesday rolled around to
start another week at school, but Michael didn't end up in his
classes. He was just sitting down to his first period when a fifth
grader rushed in with a note for Mr. Wozniak. The old teacher
sighed, looked up at Michael, and gestured him over.

“Says here you're supposed to head over to
the counselor's office,” Mr. Wozniak said.

“Counselor?” he asked. “Why?” Contrary to
most of his classes, he rather enjoyed his computer class. Most
everybody else hated it, mostly because it was stuff you learned
while you were potty training, and the school's computers should
have been in a museum somewhere. Still, Michael liked the mindless
repetition of the typing assignments.

“You let me know as soon as you get back,
okay?”

What was strange was that everybody was back
to school on Tuesday, just like he was. Mind, most of the students
didn't have a burn plaster taped to their backs, or nasty burns
over their front half. They also didn't have a shirt worth a
month's paper boy tips burned beyond recognition. They did,
however, have eyes, and all of them were turned on him. Staring at
him. He rushed to the counselor's office with his head down.

Nobody had yet reacted to the fact that a
fireball crashed into their school, and the gym now had a makeshift
skylight, along with some rubble, and-

“What?” he asked, to nobody in
particular.

He stopped and stared in through the gym
doors. The hole was gone. The scoreboard sat in the place where the
man had plummeted through, on fire. There was no fine sheet of dust
from all the crushed cinderblocks, no cinderblocks or chunks of
cinderblocks.

The burned spot between his shoulder blades
began to itch, and he wondered if this was what going crazy felt
like. Then he decided that, no, there was no way he was going
crazy. He had bandages all over, and everybody was staring at him
like...

...like he was crazy.

He rushed to the main office and burst into
the room. Several secretaries with ages old spectacles connected at
the back by chains frowned at him. Okay, maybe all was right with
the world.

The main office was carefully neutral, with
beige walls and gray carpets, a few cubicles and too many pieces of
paper. There were plenty of little pamphlets that probably gathered
dust and a few of those horrible inspirational posters, with
pictures of eagles soaring over pristine lake/mountain scenes, and
slogans like 'you'll never know how far you can fly until you
spread your wings'.