Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins (34 page)

“What?” he says. “Aren’t you done dumping on me?”

“Is calling you a total ass dumping on you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then I’m not done dumping on you, because you’re acting like a total ass.” With a flutter like the flapping of papery bird wings, a copy of
Scientific American
strikes the wall near my head. “Point proven.”

“Go away.”

“No, not until we hash this mess out. We’re not doing ourselves or the rest of the team any good letting this fester.”

“
Your
team, you mean.”

“It’s not
my
team. It’s not your team either. We’re all part of it.”

“I started the Hero Squad.”

“So you get to call the shots?”

Matt throws his arms wide:
Yes! Finally you get it!
“I started the team, not you,” he says, jumping to his feet. “Hell, you’re only one of us because I brought you in, so stop trying to take over!”

“I’m not trying to take over!”

“Then stop acting like it! Stop acting like you’re
smarter than me or a better super-hero than me or—”

Matt’s finger hovers near the tip of my nose. His mouth works like it can’t remember how to form words anymore.

“Is that what this is about?” I say. Matt sinks back onto his bed. “You’re mad at me because you think I’m a better super-hero than you?”

“You are a better super-hero than me,” Matt says miserably, the confession crushing the last of his pride. “You came up with the plan to beat Archimedes. Sara told me that trick she used to paralyze Minotaur was your idea...”

“Matt, I’m not trying to—”

“I know. That’s what really hurts: you’re not trying,” he says to the floor. “This isn’t fair. I’m the one who wanted to be a super-hero.”

I sit next to him. “Why?” He looks a question at me. “I asked you once why you wanted to be a superhero and you never answered me.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a super-hero.”

“I know, Sara told me, but even she didn’t seem to know
why
.”

With a shrug, Matt says, “I want to help people.”

“You can help people lots of ways. Most of them don’t involve a funny costume. Or getting shot at by mechs or getting smooshed by a flying car. Why this?”

Matt deflects. “Why are you doing it?”

You know, a month ago I would have deflected back; I wouldn’t have had a good answer. Matt invited me in and I accepted because I was lonely, plain and simple. I wanted—
needed
—friends, and Matt and Sara, Stuart and Missy, they wanted me, so I went along for the ride without ever stopping to consider who or what
I was getting involved with (and boy, there’s some sick full-circle irony for you).

Now? What Stuart said about bad stuff happening when people stand by and let it happen, I can get behind that, but that’s not what drives me. I found my purpose when I returned from my weekend with Dad and saw a town filled with wrecked lives and people who got steamrolled by circumstances beyond their control.

“Life’s not fair. Bad stuff happens to good people all the time and there’s nothing they can do to stop it,” I say, “but maybe I can. Normal people, they can’t do jack against someone like Archimedes or Manticore or Minotaur, but I can. And I will. Even if I have to do it alone.”

That last part, that’s a lie. Can I pull off a solo act? Maybe. But I don’t
want
to do it alone.

“Now. Your turn. I answered you, you answer me.”

Matt is unreadable.

“You don’t have a reason, do you? At least not a good one. Is Concorde right? Are you nothing but a bored kid playing super-hero for a cheap thrill, like Natalie?”

What Matt says absolutely floors me. Out of all the possible responses he could give, I never in a million years would have expected him to say, “I wanted to be like Concorde.”

“You...what? You wanted—
what?
”

“Yeah. When I was, like, five years old some super-villain went monkeyhouse in the middle of Boston, started blowing crap up. I don’t remember what his deal was, but it was all over the TV news, live coverage
on every last station, and I remember Concorde—” his hand making a swooping motion “—zooming down out of nowhere and dropping the guy like a bad habit. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.”

Matt smiles the way one smiles when recalling a fond childhood memory.

“Afterwards, all these people were gushing over him because he’d saved their lives, and he was all like, no, it’s cool, just doing my job, but they were so in awe of him. I wanted to be like him. The guy who saves the day. The guy everyone loves.”

His sad, battered black trench coat hangs on the back of his bedroom door. He goes to it and takes from the pockets his Mickey Mouse gloves and holds them out to me, displaying them like the prized possessions they are.

“When I found these,” he says, “and realized what they could do? That I could be a super-hero like Concorde? Greatest day of my life.” Matt turns the gloves over and his smile withers. “And then I met Concorde. And I learned he was a ginormous d-bag.”

“What happened?”

“After the first ARC robot went rogue and plowed through town, I started carrying my gloves on me all the time. Just in case, you know? Then the second one showed up, and by dumb luck I was in the right place at the right time, and I stopped it.

“The thing hadn’t even stopped sparking when Concorde showed up. He asked what happened and some cop pointed at me and said ‘Right there, Concorde. That kid stopped it.’ Concorde walked over to me and I stuck out my hand and said ‘I’m Captain Trenchoat. It’s an honor to meet you, sir,’ ” Matt says,
recreating the moment, “and I expected him to shake my hand and tell me I did a great job...”

Matt’s hand falls to his side. He swallows audibly.

“Right there in the middle of the street, he yelled at me. Called me a stupid kid. Asked me what the hell I was thinking. Told me to go home and never ever think about doing anything like that again.”

The gloves go back into his trench coat.

“Are you doing this to prove Concorde wrong?” I ask.

“...Pretty crappy reason to be a super-hero, huh?”

“I never meant to take anything away from you,” I say. “Not your team and not your friends. And I’m not trying to be the leader here.”

“I know,” Matt says. “But you are. You deserve to be.”

“How about instead of either of us being the team leader, we focus on simply being a team?”

Matt considers my olive branch. He nods.

“But I’m leaving Concorde to you,” he says. “Sara’s right. I can’t talk to the guy without getting fired up.”

He steps aside to let me out. I pause in the doorway. “I never thanked you.”

“For what?”

“Letting me be part of the group. For wanting to be my friend.”

“It was for your own good,” he says. “God knows how many more people you would have exposed yourself to, landing in the woods behind school like a dope.”

He means it as a joke, but he’s not wrong. All the more reason to be grateful to him.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

THIRTY-FOUR

“Archimedes. Report to your office immediately.”

Archimedes rolls over in bed. The clock tells him it’s a little past eight. “No,” he says to the loudspeaker mounted in the ceiling directly over his head. “It’s Saturday.”

“That wasn’t a request,” the voice says, shocking Archimedes upright. It does not sound so artificial this morning.

“Foreman?”

“You have five minutes. Don’t make me come get you.”

“Don’t make him make me come get you,” a second person says.

In the name of punctuality, and more in the interest of having his basic cable restored, Archimedes foregoes coffee and a shower and getting dressed. He arrives at his office with three minutes and change to spare. He fancies he sees bewildered expressions playing on the Foreman and Manticore’s masks.

“Nice bathrobe, Hef,” Manticore says.

“Simply trying to save time,” Archimedes says.
His full support staff is present and preparing their systems with a distinct air of urgency. “What’s so important that it warrants bringing them in? And waking me up at eight on a weekend?”

“Don’t whine at me, pal, I’ve been awake since five,” Manticore grouses.

“And I haven’t been to bed at all. I spent my night on a red-eye flight back to Boston, so both of you can shut up,” the Foreman says.

“Oh? Care to explain? Or am I to be kept in the dark once again?” Archimedes says. The Foreman leans over one of Archimedes’ techs and types in a command. The face of a young girl, her features obscured by her glowing aura and poor image resolution, appears on the display wall. “That’s the girl who calls herself Lightstorm.”

“Correct. And she is now a priority objective.”

“She is? We’ve known about her for a couple of months. Why is she important now?”

“We’re a very large organization, and, as with any large organization, it takes time for information to filter up to the top. The reports from Minotaur’s completely unauthorized exercise,” he says pointedly to Archimedes, “only reached our mutual employer yesterday. This girl has been red-flagged as a potential high-level threat to the organization.”

“Yeah?” Manticore says. “What’s so special about some little girl?”

“That’s what you’re going to find out,” the Foreman says.

“I appreciate you taking the time to see me, Concorde. There’s been a lot of friction between you
and us, and I really want to try to work this out, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak my piece and lay everything on the table.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about my own contributions to this conflict. I let my emotions get the better of me and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t right. But, honestly, I feel that you haven’t made it easy for me, for any of us, to actually communicate with you. There’s a wall between us, and I don’t understand why. You clearly don’t care for us, but you’ve never told us what the issue is, and I think if we could clear the air on that point, we’d make a lot of headway in our professional relationship.

“And yes, in case you’re wondering, we do intend to carry on as the Hero Squad. We aren’t taking this lightly; please understand that. If anything, we’re even more keenly aware of the risks involved, but we feel that we have the ability, even the responsibility, to try to make a difference in the world. Isn’t that why you do this?

“We’re not asking you to let us run around without supervision. Just the opposite, in fact; we
want
you to be there. I feel very strongly, and the others agree, that we’d benefit from your guidance and advice. We want to look at you as a mentor and teacher, not an obstacle to work around and certainly not as an adversary. What do you say? Can we put all this conflict behind us and work together for a common good?”

Aaaaaaand scene.

All right, my reflection is impressed. She should be, I kept myself awake half the night coming up with that speech. My next challenge: maintaining my composure while I recite my epic St. Crispin’s Day solil
oquy with Concorde glowering at me.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Mom says by way of a faux casual inquiry. Con: she’s still asking me for a step-by-step breakdown of my every waking hour. Pro: she’s trying to be less obvious about it.

“Meeting up with the gang at the mall for some Christmas shopping, might go catch a movie after that if anything good is playing.”

“You’re still doing your shopping? Usually by now you’ve bought and wrapped everything.”

“Having an off year is all.” Such a lie. There’s a pile of wrapped gifts sitting in my closet, all the people on my list accounted for. “See you later.”

The sky is a wintery slate blue, the color of a sky that wants to snow but lacks the clouds. For now, that is. A ragged line of granite-gray peeks over the tree line and the breeze is pushing it my way.

I’ve never flown in snow before. I bet it’s amazing.

The wind picks up, a hollow howl cutting through the—wait. That isn’t the wind.

I know that noise.

Oh, crap.

I don’t think, I don’t plan, I don’t hesitate, I just go.

Within seconds I’m hundreds, thousands of feet in the air. I glance over my shoulder and sure enough, there’s Manticore, keeping pace with me. A spray of energy sizzles past me, wide and outside. I throw back a few sloppy shots he doesn’t need to try to dodge.

Mach one comes and goes. A second boom echoes somewhere behind me.

I bank hard and narrowly avoid getting fried,
but Manticore reacquires me immediately. This is our first encounter all over again, but I don’t think my trick of playing dead will work a second time.

So I try the tactic I used against Archimedes, weaving and swerving and reversing course at random, pitching attacks as I find my openings. He’s not hitting me, but I’m not hitting him either because my aim still SUCKS. We’re at a stalemate, but it’s only a matter of time before one of us makes a mistake or runs out of steam.

That would be me as I fly right into a light volley. My aura, to my surprise, blunts the worst of it but I still feel the impact. It’s like getting hit with a dozen fists all at once and it knocks the wind out of me. I spiral toward the ground. Manticore follows; he’s not making any assumptions this time around and he’s not letting up. He tags me again.

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t fight back. I can’t fly.

Manticore seizes me by the ankle. He drops, dragging me behind him like a sack of groceries. We descend into a forest and Manticore releases me, pitching me like a bowling ball. The world spins. I am for a moment weightless, and then gravity cruelly reclaims me. I taste dirt and blood and snow.

A shape moves toward me. I raise a hand to ward off a kick to the head but he connects anyway. He grabs a fistful of my hair and jerks me up to my knees. A blade, curved like a talon, pops out of a housing on his forearm. He jams the point under my chin.

I should be scared. No, strike that; I should be wetting myself. I’m not; I’m furious, and Manticore sees it in my eyes.

“Credit where it’s due, kid, you got some solid steel guts, but if you try anything, I will put this through your skull,” Manticore says, poking me for emphasis. “I’ve killed children before. You can ask your buddy Concorde about that.”