The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5)
Read The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) Online
Authors: Lucas Flint
Tags: #General Fiction
The Superhero’s Origin
Book Five in The Superhero’s Son
by Lucas Flint
Published by Secret Identity Books. An imprint of Annulus Publishing.
Copyright © Lucas Flint 2016. All rights reserved.
Contact: [email protected]
Cover design by
Damonza
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, send an email to the above contact.
Chapter One
G
otta say, when I went to visit my grandparents for the first time, I really didn’t expect to get attacked by their gardener ninja. For that matter, I didn’t even know that gardener ninjas existed. I wondered if I could hire one off Craigslist or something.
I stood alone in the front garden of what I assumed was my grandparents’ mansion. I say ‘assumed’ because I had never actually been to their place before and so I didn’t know for sure if this was it. I mean, I only found this house because it matched the address that Mom had given me before I left Texas, but Mom had admitted to me that it was possible that my grandparents—who were my late Dad’s parents—might have moved in the years since she last spoke with them and she didn’t know how to contact them to let them know I was going to visit them ahead of time. Apparently, my grandparents didn’t even have a land line or had not given Mom their phone number for some reason.
I looked carefully around the garden, but the gardener ninja was nowhere to be seen. I called him ‘gardener ninja’ not because he was a gardener or even a ninja, but because I didn’t know what else to call him. I had just walked into the garden about five minutes ago when a guy in a ninja costume just burst out of nowhere and started chucking throwing stars at me. I’d dodged them (one of the perks of super speed), but he’d vanished the second I went after him.
And man, was this garden
huge
. Or it felt that way, anyway. Lots of trees and flowerbeds everywhere, statues and birdbaths shaped like Cupid and other things like that, plus tomatoes and other veggies growing everywhere. Mom had told me that Grandfather liked to garden, so I took this as a sign that Grandfather and Grandmother were still here, but I couldn’t be sure about that.
“Okay, Mr. McNinja,” I muttered, looking this way and that for the ninja. “Why don’t you come out and play? I am really not in the mood to play with you right now.”
Of course, the ninja didn’t respond. I listened for him, but all I heard was the leaves blowing in the wind. I was tempted to just use my new lightning bolt power to blast the entire garden into pieces and force the ninja to reveal himself, but since I didn’t want my grandparents to hate me, I didn’t.
Instead, I tapped my earcom and said, “Val, do your sensors pick up any heat signatures nearby?”
“No,” said Valerie, my late Dad’s AI assistant and who was now my assistant. “You appear to be the only person in the entire garden.”
“What? That’s bull,” I said, scowling as I looked around again. “Even ninjas can’t hide their body heat.”
“I am merely reporting what my sensors indicate, Bolt,” said Valerie. “But if I may make a suggestion, perhaps you should have brought the rest of your team along with you. Treehugger, in particular, would have been very useful here, since her powers over plant life would have made it easier to use the plants to find the ninja.”
“Val, you know this is a personal mission of mine,” I said. “The others don’t need to get involved in my life like this. Besides, I doubt my grandparents would be happy to have a bunch of rowdy super-powered teenagers in their mansion anyway.”
“Perhaps, but backup is always nice to have,” said Valerie.
“Yeah, but that would require knowing ahead of time that my grandparents employ ninja gardeners,” I said. “And there’s no way I could have known that, so the point is moot.”
“I know, but—”
“Val, just can it,” I said. “If you sense anything, let me know. Otherwise—”
I didn’t get to finish that sentence because I heard something flying through the air toward me. I looked over my shoulder to see a ninja throwing star coming my way. I immediately flew into the air, allowing the throwing star to soar past me harmlessly and disappear into the foliage somewhere.
“Ha!” I said, turning in the air to look for the ninja, though I couldn’t see him anywhere. “Can’t get me up here, you dumb ninja!”
I heard shuffling in the trees nearby and looked at them just in time to see the ninja burst out of them and fly toward me. He came fast, so fast that I didn’t even have time to move. He flew past me, pulling a rope around my neck and dragging me down to the earth with him.
We landed on the ground hard, the ninja on his feet and I on my back. Before I could react, the ninja tied my arms and legs up, but since it was just normal rope, I snapped it and jumped back to my feet instantly.
But just as I got back to my feet, the ninja was gone, though I noticed his footprints in the muddy earth heading deeper into the garden.
“Hey, get back here!” I shouted.
I ran after him, though not with my super speed because I didn’t want to run straight into some trap he might have set. I pushed aside huge leaves and branches as I made my way deeper into the garden. I couldn’t hear him, but I assumed he must still be somewhere up ahead.
Then I burst out into a clearing, shouting, “Ah ha! I got you now, you—”
I cut myself off when I saw that I was standing on the edge of a shallow pond all by itself. I looked this way and that, but I didn’t see the ninja hiding in the bushes or in the trees. It seemed like he had just up and vanished … again. The bastard.
Just as I was about to turn and leave, however, I heard something small flying through the air and then felt something sting me in the side of the neck. It felt like an insect, so I grabbed at the spot and pulled off a small dart that was leaking some kind of black liquid.
“Huh?” I said. “A dart? Where did this—”
I stopped speaking because I felt my body starting to stiffen. Dropping the dart into the pond, I staggered backwards, but I couldn’t escape the effects of the poison that I belatedly realized the dart had injected in me.
Thus, I fell over backwards onto the ground with a
thunk
. And I couldn’t get up, because the poison had paralyzed my body. I tried to move, but I couldn’t even make my pinkie finger twitch.
Before I could do anything else, the ninja suddenly appeared out of nowhere and stood over me with a long, sharp-looking knife in his hand. He raised the knife above his head, clearly about to bring it down on my neck and kill me.
But before the ninja could stab me, a rock flew out of the bushes and smashed into the back of the ninja’s head. The ninja immediately staggered to the side and collapsed, though he looked more unconscious than dead.
Panting, I had no idea who had knocked him out until someone stepped out of of the bushes and said, “Bolt? What are you doing here?”
I looked up at the man standing above me and was surprised to see that it was a tall, Japanese man in a long coat. “Triplet? Is that you?”
The superhero detective known as Triplet nodded as he looked down at me. “Yes. But I noticed that you still haven’t answered my question.”
“Well, that’s because I was going to ask
you
the same,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew here. Are you on a case or something?”
Triplet opened his mouth to answer, but then the ninja suddenly jumped back to his feet and lashed out with a kick aimed at Triplet’s head. Triplet, however, ducked and threw a punch at the ninja, but the ninja quickly dodged and then vanished back into the trees and bushes around us.
“Damn ninja,” said Triplet, looking around in annoyance. “I hate it when they do that.”
“When they do that?” I said. “Have you fought ninjas before?”
“Once, when I visited my grandparents in Japan,” said Triplet. “Tricky bastards. But anyway, he won’t get far.”
I was about to ask Triplet what he meant when I heard rustling in the bushes, followed by what sounded like a fist punching someone’s jaw, and then the ninja stepping out of the bushes again. Only this time, the ninja’s arms were being forced behind it, held by none other than Triplet himself.
For a moment, I was confused at how there could be two Triplets until I remembered Triplet’s superpower, which allowed him to split into three different clones that were all the same as him. Of course, he called them ‘Thirds’ rather than clones, but that’s basically what they were, regardless of his preferred terminology.
The Third forced the ninja down to his feet. The ninja didn’t say a word, but he did glare up at Triplet, who nodded at his Third.
“Good job, me,” said Triplet. “Keep him down while I help Bolt here. Feel free to punch him in the head if he tries to escape.”
The Third nodded while Triplet turned to look at me again. “Can you get up, Bolt? Or is the ninja’s poison keeping you down?”
Suddenly, I was able to bend my fingers and I could feel movement starting to return to my body, so I nodded and said, “The poison is fading, I think. Either the ninja didn’t get to put as much poison in my body as he wanted or it doesn’t have any permanent effects.”
“Sounds good,” said Triplet. “Let me help you up.”
Triplet held out a hand, which I grabbed, and he then helped me up to my feet. I could stand on my own now, although my body was still fairly stiff and I doubted I’d fully recover for a little while.
“Now, can you tell me what you are doing here?” said Triplet. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon after your Dad’s funeral.”
I rubbed the back of my head as I said, “I came here to visit my grandparents. I was told they live here.”
“Your grandparents?” said Triplet. “Paternal or maternal?”
“Paternal,” I said. “They were Dad’s parents, but I’ve never met them before. Mom told me about them and so I’m trying to meet them.”
“Interesting,” said Triplet. “So you are the grandson of Matthew Jason, then?”
“How do you know my Grandfather’s name?” I said in surprise.
“Because I’m also here to meet him, though not for the same reasons as you, evidently,” said Triplet. He nodded at the ninja. “If this guy is any indication of your grandparents’ desire to see people, I guess they aren’t exactly welcoming to guests.”
“Why are you here to meet my grandparents?” I said. “Do you have some business with them or something?”
“Yes,” said Triplet. “It’s part of a larger investigation that I’m undertaking, but before I tell you about it, I am going to have this ninja tell me about his masters and if he’s alone or not.”
Triplet walked up to the ninja—which was still held down by one of his thirds—and said, “Okay, ninja, talk. Are you alone? Or are you just one of the bodyguards protecting Matthew Jason and his wife?”
The ninja didn’t answer. He just glared at Triplet from behind his mask, causing Triplet to say, “Okay, then I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
Triplet grabbed the ninja’s mask and ripped it off. That was when we discovered that the ninja wasn’t a ‘he’ at all, but a woman, and a young one, at that, who didn’t look much older than me. She had skin that was either naturally dark or just very tanned and she had short brown hair. She still glared at us, as if her looks alone could kill.