Dean Shomshak, everyone. I wish I could write like that.
“So
Eldritch just let Professor Paradigm go?”” Tyrell sounded even more interested in that than the granola bar wrapper
that he was staring into regretfully.
Chris
shrugged. He really didn’t have an answer. Graydon, however, dramatically
shifted his right hand off the steering wheel to press something. The monitor
hanging from the roof of the Mercedes flicked on to show a newsfeed. There was
Eldritch, this time in his bathrobe-like costume and hippy beard, throwing
battle magic spells one after another at a horrifying, pallid wormlike creature
humping its way down a hilly San Francisco street. Ahead of it came a small
army of creatures in full-body humidity suits, their glistening, worm-like pink
flesh visible beneath their transparent helmets. They were holding guns, and
using them with enthusiasm on some fleeing (former) bystanders.
The camera
panned around from Eldritch, catching the other members of the Bay Guardians,
labelling them each quickly for the benefit of the viewers: Druid, Stigma,
Hannibal Grey and Totem. Then a fast-flying man crossed the screen to grab a
few lagging civilians. Chris recognised him as Blacklight. He took a blast as
he barrel rolled to bring his body up to guard his passengers, his shadowy
defence field flaring with black as it absorbed the shot . Tyrell whistled.
“What?” Eve
asked.
“Blacklight
better be careful. The Slug has a gadget that turns people into his followers.”
Eve sounded
disgusted. “Like those things?” She
gestured at the wormlike creatures in the suits.
“Or the big
worm,” Anne Fay said, turning around to face the back. “That’s Condor, of
Champions West. I hope they figure out how to turn him back. He’s hot.”
“I’m being
objectified!” Graydon objected.
“No, you’re
not. Condor is.”
“But he’s a
guy, and I’m a guy.”
“That would
be funny, in a world that was exactly opposite to this one,” Anne pointed out.
“Shh!” Chris
said. The news announcer was talking about the “unknown” new superheroes
helping the Bay Guardians. Chris recognised Billy Washington, in his Black
Titan uniform, was throwing cars around on the ground, backing up Cousin Henry,
in his mustard-yellow karate-inspired uniform with the horse on its back. Chris
wondered if he would look that cool when he finally got to wear his gi into battle instead of his boring
Tatammy fatigues. And there was Nita, in her gadget-encrusted almost armour.
And there was Brad and Cousin Jenny, both flying, in matching uniforms, firing
green energy beams of some kind, like yet more members of the Green Lantern
Corps that no-one but a complete nerd could name.
“Why do Brad
and Jenny have the same superpowers?” Chris asked. “Did they have a matching
radioactive accident? I thought the Neilsen powers were like their cousins’.
Somehow, it all goes back to the needfire?”
“The
needfire is creepy, then,” Eve said. “The Neilsen kids lived with the Wongs for
a few years, right? In the Noughts? Like, they were thirteen, I guess? And the
needfire just got into their DNA or whatever and gave them matching superpowers?
Matchmaking superpowers? What if they break up? It's worse than getting matching tattoos!”
“It was twue
wove,” Graydon said, lisping for extra effect.
“What the
lunkhead means is that they used to have different powers. The needfire didn’t
get involved until they were legal. Then it had to. Because of the power of
love.”
“’It’s a
curious thing…’” Chris began.
“’Drives one
man crazy,’” Tyrell responded, putting heavy emphasis on the crazy.
“Boys. Don’t
you have any romance under those awful clothes? The needfire is about what you
need. It’s practically another word for love.” Anne finished, Chris couldn’t
help noticing, by looking at Graydon. Chris wondered if he noticed. Probably
not. People didn’t think about that sort of thing very well when it was about
them.
“So, to
summarise, Eldritch couldn’t take off after Professor Paradigm because the
alien slug people were about to try to take over San Francisco.” Tyrell paused
for a second. “And that would be bad.”
“Hey. Hey!
Maybe there’s a connection,” Chris said excitedly.
“How’s that?”
Graydon asked.
“One of
those Rebellion guys at Black Light’s party. He said that Istvatha V’han had a
major hate on for Elder Worm magic-science-whatchamacallit. And her empire is
mixed up in the Apocalypse Plague, too.”
“Crusaders
of the Infinite Realities. Yea, but Istvatha’s mixed up in a lot of stuff.
She’s the Empress of a Million Dimensions. Goes with the territory.” Graydon
pointed out. “Look, Rose is right. Find Patient Zero, and it’ll all make
sense.”
“I thought
your Aunt Elizabeth was Patient Zero?” Tyrell said, nudging Chris.
“She can’t
be. She was infected too long ago. If that makes any sense.” Chris said.
“No, no, it
doesn’t,” Anne observed.
Tyrell
started to talk“Wait, though.” Then he paused, for a long, dramatic moment,
almost like a lawyer-on TV. Once you knew them both, you could really hear
Tyrell’s Dad in him, and you couldn’t argue with results. Everyone was waiting
for Tyrell to continue. “There’s time travel involved, right? You said that you
need to take your aunt’s body back in time to bury it, and we’ve got Eve, who
time travelled up from the Old Stone Age, also
with Apocalypse Plague antibodies in her system. Maybe the Apocalypse
Plague took a time machine to where it needed to be.”
Ooh, good
point, Ty,” Eve said. “Except the divergence point between our time line and
Rose’s is late last fall, and, as far as we know, there was none of this time
travel stuff going on there.”
“Can you
actually say that?” Chris wondered.
“Oh, sure,” Graydon
answered. “Time machines leave a heck of a wake when they’re used along one
timeline. Easy to see with the right equipment, or even from your own time
machine.”
“And we know
that because?” Chris prompted.
“Dude. We
repair time machines in shop class!”
“We do? That
sounds too cool for school.” Chris said, perking up at the thought. So far, all
they’d done in Tech Studies was take apart a VIPER jet pack.
“Last
semester,” Graydon supplied. “Mrs. Crudup’s ride.”
“What? That
bigass Winnebago in her garage?” Chris asked.
“No. Well,
it might be, too. You never know. Her car.” Graydon spoke almost off-handedly
as he pulled off the street and into the Tatammy parking lot. It was time for
another day of school.
“Okay then. Rebecca’s other mom has a
time machine disguised as a 1955 Cadillac Fairlane with a paint job out of a
rap video. I sure transferred into the right school.” With that, Chris got out
of the Mercedes.
As he closed
the door, he heard a raucous crowing above him. He looked up. Old crow was
directly above him, his head twisted down ahead of his body so that one eye
could look at Chris while his beak pointed into the distance. Chris followed
the line of the beak. A group of boys in oddly off-matching pleather dusters,
with Russian-style fur hats perched on their heads and bright Gryffindor scarfs
hanging down, surrounded a small Asian girl in a cute knitted hat.
“See you
guys inside,” Chris shouted, hurrying to see if he could catch up with the
group, not really understanding why. The needfire must, he thought to himself,
before the thought was driven from his mind by his Eight Spirit training,
whispering of danger. He turned around, his hand lashing up to take a Frisbee
from the air.
“Hey, good
catch,” he heard. Chris looked in the direction that the Frisbee had come from.
Over the low fence that separated the school parking lot from the public park
beyond, he saw Mario and his expelled football playing friends.
“You almost
hit me with this,” Chris said, throwing the Frisbee back.” Mario and his
friends just burst out laughing. Chris, angry, went up to the fence. “What’s so
funny?”
Michael
caught the Frisbee. “Don’t you even know how to throw it?” He turned the disc
over so that he was holding it under hand, then flicked his wrist to send it to
one of his teammates. It looked like a practical way to play soccer with
Frisbees, he thought he should point that out. “No. I only throw Frisbees the
not-stupid way.”
“You want to
come off school property and say that?” Mario asked.
“Should you
and your usual gang of idiots even be here? When you’re suspended?”
“Chris,
Chris, Chris,” Mario said, shaking his head. “You know, when I first saw you,
with that leather jacket and the hair and the attitude, I thought you were a
bad boy. A lone wolf. The kind that gets the girls, right? Now you just can’t
stop finding new rules to buy into. Turns out the lone wolf was just a little
doggie looking for a kennel. Instead of going down on you, the girl is going to
tie a bandanna round your neck and take you down to the park to catch Frisbees
and watch while she makes out with a real
man.”
Now Chris
was really angry, and he didn’t even know why. Or care. He took the fence in
his hands, and was thinking about jumping over when he heard the clatter of a
bike dropping behind him. He looked back. Snowflake was standing six feet away
at the bicycle rack, stooping over, clumsily, to pick his bike up from where he
must have dropped it as he was trying to padlock it to the rack. Coming up
quickly behind him was Dr. Cambridge, who checked her stride when she realised
that Chris had seen her. Adopting a more casual pace, she walked the rest of
the way to the fence.
“Hello,
Chris,” Dr. Cambridge said. “Hi, Mario. You and your friends shouldn’t be so
close to the school when you’re suspended,” she continued.
Mario
actually looked down, as though he were ashamed, and Chris thought for a moment
that he would be sick. “I’m sorry, Dr. Cambridge. We’re all sorry.”
“Yes, Dr.
Cambridge,” the five football players said, in harmony.
“And, Chris?
I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed in you. I can’t believe that you’re
trying to start a fight again. I thought
we were making progress.”
“I wasn’t
trying to start a fight! He was
trying to start a fight!” Chris protested, gesturing at Mario, who was already
rapidly retreating towards the far end of the block-long park, to the side with
the bleachers, opposite the Panther Heights community recreation centre.
“Chris,
Chris. There are always two people
trying to start a fight. That’s why we call them fights, and not assaults. Or
beatdowns, as you kids say.”
Chris had no
idea what to even say. “But I wasn’t!” Even to himself, he sounded like a kid.
This wasn’t the way that the Fonz would handle it. But the Fonz always had a
line, because he was on TV. He even had a laugh track, in case his line wasn’t
very good.
“Well, this
isn’t the place to discuss it. I’ll make an appointment for you this afternoon
during your Language block.”
“But Ms.
Grey was going to go over brush work with me if I get an 80 in my Chinese
homework!” Chris had worked very hard to make sure that he got that 80.
“Pff,” Dr.
Cambridge waved it away with her hand. “I’ll never understand how Ms. Grey
motivates you kids to do all that extra work. I suppose it’s good for you, but
you should focus on what’s actually on the curriculum. Spanish isn’t a dead art
form. You might actually need it in the real world.”
“It’s not a
dead art form, it’s a mindful practice,” Chris began, then shut up. Was he
actually starting to talk religion with Dr. Cambridge? Auntie Ma was rubbing
off on him!
“Potato,
potat-oh,” Dr. Cambridge said. “See you at 2:30.”
Great. The
whole day was ruined, now, Chris thought, watching Dr. Cambridge walk away and
checking his phone to see how many minutes he had to wait before heading for
class without looking like a brown noser.
“Dr.
Cambridge is my therapist. She makes me feel like a very bad boy.” Chris looked
up. Snowflake was still standing next to the bike rack, his pale face almost
hanging out of the huge, cloudy mass of his winter jacket, his eyes
indefinitely focussed on Chris through his heavy glasses.
Chris
thought about that for a moment. “Is that what therapists are supposed to do,
though?”
“I’m sorry.
I don’t understand. Maybe you should ask a smart person, Chris,” Snowflake
said.
“Aren’t you
smart, Michael?” Chris asked.
“Oh, yes.
Chris. But I’m fooling people. I’m fooling everybody.”
“Everybody?”
Chris asked as he looked at his phone, and mentally calculated. If he went to
class right now, he’d probably arrive at the same time as Tyrell and Corey.
Good enough. Snowflake didn’t seem to have an answer, so Chris waved at him and
headed off towards the Old Schoolhouse.
When he got
to class, Chris was relieved to see Babs sitting at the girl’s table, not so
relieved to see that she was hunched over, sobbing like she was getting over a
big cry. Savannah sat on both sides of Babs, hugging her, almost crowding out
Eve who was bent close enough that red hair almost collided with blonde and brunette.
A third Savannah was sitting with Tyrell and Corey at the boy’s table.
Chris sat
down. He nodded at Babs. “Where did she turn up?”
“She stayed
with Ms. Grey last night,” Tyrell answered, without taking his eyes off the far
table.
“So,
everything’s better?” Chris asked flippantly, getting ready to complain about
Dr. Cambridge.
“No. She ran
away from home, last night.”
“I thought
she lived with her Dad at his apartment at the Philadelphia Club?”
“Home is
where you hang out, dude.”
“You’ve
never lived in a trailer.”
“Oh, come
on,” Savannah interrupted. “Trailers aren’t that bad!”
“True,”
Chris answered. “They’re way better than a musty old room in a zombie-filled
building made of old varnish.” The gang had slipped into the Club once, just
before New Year.
“I told
you,” Tyrell said peevishly, “The Members are too rich to be zombies.”
“So where’s
she going to stay now?”
“I don’t
know,” Tyrell said, sounding worried. “Maybe she’ll go back to Ravenswood.”
“She’s going
to live in the Mansion, with her uncle,” Savannah said. “I asked earlier.”
“I thought
her Dad and her uncle had a huge fight about something and she was going to be
disinherited if she did that. That’s how Anne explained it.”
Tyrell made
an expression like he was sucking on a lemon. “She says that her Dad was going to disinherit her anyway. Because
she’s a freak.”
“That’s
crazy,” Chris said.
“She says he
said it to her. Just like that.”
“Wow.” Chris
said. “Were they having a fight?”
“Yeah. About
Babs going back to Ravenwood.”
“Then he’ll
probably get over it,” Chris said. Dads could be like that, Chris knew. Chris’
Dad never seemed to get angry, except when he was trying to get the kids to do
something.
Then El
Professore walked in. Savannah3 went back to her table and merged with her
duplicates, after telling Tyrell to call her if he needed anything, and it was
time for class.
El
Professore turned on the Power Point. “I scheduled today to talk about tactical
elements ahead of tomorrow’s Danger Room run. But it seems that we have a
teachable moment going on in San Francisco right now.”
He flicked
on the monitor screen. The battle had moved to the rigging above the Golden
Gate Bridge, and a zeppelin moored to one of the towers. Condor’s monstrous
worm form was nowhere in sight, but now the Elder Worm stormtroopers were being
supported by a thing that looked almost like a giant, leathery pancake that
flapped the edges of its disk to fly. With a better idea of what to look for
this time, Chris spotted the Worm Gem gleaming in what therefore had to be its
forehead.
“I’ve
delayed the feed a little so that we can pause and get our tactics down,” El
Professore said. “We’re going to shadow the Young Guardians here. Our team
balance is admittedly a little different, but to get you thinking about
tactics, I’m going to assign you dissimilar roles, anyway.” Which is how Chris
spent the morning trying to figure out what he would do if he were Nita Guzman.
And daydreaming about what someone might do if their gadget theme was “plant
powers.”
None of
Chris’ other classes were anywhere near as interesting as the first one.
Instead of school dragging, it seemed that his meeting with Dr. Cambridge was
on him before he knew it. Chris walked into her office just as the new drama
teacher, a big, shave-headed man, walked out.
“Ah, Chris,”
Dr. Cambridge said. “I’ve been going over your test scores. Really, young man,
you are a master of dissimulation. If
I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were normal!”
“Maybe
that’s because I am normal,” Chris
said, firmly.
“No-one’s
normal,” Dr. Cambridge said, equally firmly. “And in your case, especially so.
You know, Chris, that the first step on the road to effective therapy is
admitting that you have a problem. Sociopathy like yours is nothing more than a
dysfunctional defence mechanism against bipolar disorder. Your bipolar is Type
II –so mild that it can’t even be diagnosed with the tools at hand. We may not
have much experience in treating sociopathy, but everything I’ve seen suggests
that you can make a lot of progress if you’ll just involve yourself. “
“Where do you get the idea that I’m a
sociopath?” Chris asked.
“I’m an
expert, Chris. I can tell when someone is faking a personality inventory.”
“But I
don’t! Well, I did on a few questions, but…”
“No buts,
Chris. Unfortunately, this therapy isn’t getting us very far, because if your
resistance. Fortunately, as a DOSPA field agent, I have access to some unusual resources.” She opened up a lap
top, pointing the screen towards Chris. “Behold the Eighth Light of Luathon,
implemented in an app! And running on Macbook with Retina display, too!” The
laptop fired up, and a swirling light reached out. When it touched Chris, he
felt his muscles relax. But the light didn’t end there. It wrapped around the
back of the laptop, reaching out to Dr. Cambridge before she had time to
do more than say, “That’s odd.” When it
touched her, her head flopped like someone falling asleep on the bus.
Chris tried
to get up. He couldn’t. Instead, he sat there for a long moment, until a
sibilant voice began in his ear. “Ah. Mr. Wong. I am devastated to admit that
there have been some intentional misunderstandings
allowed to grow here this afternoon. The spell that you are currently under is
not, in fact, the Eighth Light at all. It doesn’t have a name, but its Yiinashc
power will be quite sufficient to bind you for the minute or two that it will
take Professor Paradigm to overcome your school’s pestiferous shields and
wards. In the mean time, I see that some alterations would greatly improve the
serviceability of your mind.”
Chris felt a gathering power, cold and slimy to
the touch, impinging on his brain. He wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of
being kidnapped by Professor Paradigm, but he had no doubt that the sibilant
voice meant him the worst kind of ill. He strained to feel his muscles.
Nothing.
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