With an Obvious, Accessible Focus to channel his powers, and, more importantly, a girlfriend to get him out of trouble, yes.
Girlfriend? Dunh dunh dunh.
Chapter 2, 23: Chaperone
Chris slid
his hand down over Morning Glory’s hip, gently cupping it and lifting to bring
her soft lips closer. He could hear her heart through his own chest, beating
faster, as she came up on the balls of her feet. Her hair filled his face with
a smell that mixed green grass, tea, and some kind of flower. Like a fighter or
a dancer, he looked down into her eyes, looking for clues about what to do
next. She he ducked her glance so that he couldn’t see behind her eyes, but he
also felt her hands, soft and warm, gliding across his back in opposite
directions, one towards his shoulder, the other down towards the curve of his
hip. This was crazy, some part of him warned. They were on a battlefield.
The little
voice could be ignored. The blinding flash and shocking boom couldn’t. Chris
and Morning Glory broke apart. She gasped, and Chris noticed that he was
sweating. Looking east, they watched the flaming wreck of the clone trooper’s
gunship hit a rooftop two blocks away.
“I hope
Twelve made it out,” Chris muttered.
“Who?”
Morning Glory asked.
“One of the
clone troopers that I met in that department store over there. Chris gestured
with his jaw, as his hands were still wrapped around the girl.
Morning
Glory put her head to his arm. Again he caught the floral/tea/grass smell of
her hair. “I hope so. Poor kids. Do you realise that they’re bred for these stupid fights?”
“That’s what
they’re told, Glory. It doesn’t have to be true, unless we let it be true.”
“Are you
saying they have a choice? Look at them! They don’t know anything! They came
out of the vats last week!” He could feel her muscles stiffen next to his.
Chris felt that
he needed to defend himself. “It’s not about them. ’m criticising their teachers.”
Glory
relaxed against him. “Well, that’s Teleios the mad genetic scientist, and those
crazy training tapes of his. Not exactly Moral Philosophy 101.”
Chris looked
into the distance as he let his thoughts shape themselves. “We all teach, Glory. Fathers, mothers, instructors,
yes, but also friends and bosses.”
Glory pulled away from him, her eyes raked
across his, angry, but then went wide. Chris spun around, looking for the
threat. But there was no threat. Instead, the street below had silently filled with
menace. Four tall figures in familiar spacesuits were gathered around a
singed-looking clone trooper and an even more beat up guy in the ripped remains
of a HAZMAT suit. Both humans were kneeling, their hands pinioned behind their
backs. Around the scene, writhing black tubes formed a circle, ends sliding up
over their barrel-thick curves and opening up into those awful grey-green
flower ends.
The clone
trooper looked like Twelve to Chris, although admittedly he had no idea how to
tell them apart. He had no idea who the HAZMAT guy was. Perhaps a local? The lead
spacesuit thing gestured, and a light pulsed from the front of its helmet. It
shone vomit yellow on the crumbling cement walls behind the captured clone
trooper, washing out the fading sun. Black, suggestive spots swam in the light,
gradually gathering around the shadows that the clone trooper and HAZMAT guy
cast on the wall. As soon as the spots formed a continuous blotch around the
shadows, the HAZMAT guy fell straight forward on his face, and began to scream into
the ground while writhing. His feet, which were tied as well, began to beat the
sidewalk. As Chris watched, the exposed skin around his wrists began to turn an
earthworm pink, and his head began to stretch.
The clone trooper watched for a long moment, an increasingly horrified
expression on his face. Then it turned into something else, a combination of
shock and pain.
Chris felt
an urge to motion through his body. He couldn’t let this go on. Instead of
standing, though, he looked over at Morning Glory, and the restraining hand
that she had put on his sword arm. “Just a second, Chris.”
Chris
paused. She continued. “Nitroglycerin is an ester. It’s not that hard to get the buds on the trees
to release it. But…” She took her hand off his arm.
Chris stood
up. “Down!” He yelled, as loud as he could. He was amazed at how loud that
turned out to be. His word echoed off the concrete. The clone trooper threw
himself flat on the sidewalk next to his writhing fellow. The spacesuited
things turned as one to look at him. They were the most horrifying thing yet.
Underneath their transparent facemasks was a long, thin head, pink like a worm
in the middle and blotching off to colours of old-man-grey and bottom-of-the-crisper
brown at the edges. They had no mouths, but their eyes were the same vomit
yellow as their magic, and gemstones in their foreheads pulsed with a somehow dirty colour. Chris felt the beginning
of a flood of yellow water in the basement of his mind before the nitro went
off in a massive fuel-air explosion that swept the street from right to left,
scything through the black tubes and knocking the spacesuited things over.
Well, there
was no help for it now. Chris yelled again, “St. Elizabeth and the Holy Sangha!”
He jumped for a car on the street below, drawing his sword from its scabbard as
he plummeted, bouncing with the slide rebound of the car’s roof and rolling to
come up amongst the spacesuited things, only inches from one of the chestnut
trees that lined the street. Their reactions seemed glacially slow as Chris
began the Eight Dragon Spirit sword exercises at top speed. Two, then three of
the snaking blossom things were falling, severed, simultaneously, before he put
the flat of his blade to the facemask of the first spacesuited thing, skipping
across the cracking glass and redirecting the blow to cleave the mask of a
second, holding the blow just short of its disgusting, gelid face.
Chris hoped
that Earth air wouldn’t kill them, while being really bad for them. He didn’t
like the idea of killing things that could think, even things that looked like
Earthworm Jim, if he were real and disgusting, instead of a cartoon and funny. But
he would be in real trouble here, very quickly, if he couldn’t put them down. A
third spacesuit thing tried to draw back, and Chris stepped in, sweeping out
his ankle to the rear and pushing it in the shoulder while guarding against a
lashing pink tongue-thing with his sword. As the severed tongue fell, he guided
his point, out of the corner of his eye, into the side of the fourth thing’s
helmet.
Oops. The
thing didn’t have an ankle, bouncing
back like a rubbery action figure to grasp Chris’s arms. It was unexpectedly
strong, although not nearly as strong as Chris with his qi concentrated on his strength rather than his speed. As Chris
bunched his muscles, however, his eyes filled with yellow light. He stared in
the direction that it had come in, into the pulsing gem on the head of the
fifth spacesuit thing. A searing pain filled Chris’s mind. He felt the strength
draining out of him. It was everything he could do to hold onto his sword. A
tube writhed around his legs, then began inching up his thighs.
An eerie
voice sounded in his head. “Another resistant? What are the odds. Well, I meant
to offer you the glory of belonging to the Great Race; but you will do just as
well as food. The Family will eat well tonight.”
“I . . .
resist?” Chris managed to ask.
“Yes. My
Talisman is usually quite enough to make one of your feeble kind over into an
Elder Worm. It’s a pity. You have a strong mind for a slave race. Though that
will make you taste better, so I do not mourn unreservedly. I …Lords of the
Shining Darkness!”
The last
mental curse was a reasonable response, Chris thought. Who liked having a
napalm bomb set off ten feet behind them? Chris, stared, helpless in the
freezing grip of the powerful Elder Worm sorcerer, into the licking flames.
More shapes writhed in the flame, but now they were clearly tree roots,
grabbing and rending the black tubes.
A moment
later, in that disorienting way that teleportation always had, Chris was
standing in a grove of trees, the bare lattice of their naked branches casting
an openwork shadow on the waxy green leaves of perennial shrubs and the green
grass below. Morning Glory was standing, facing him. “Don’t get me wrong. I like being rescued. But I’d be letting
the girls down if I just let some hunk do all the saving. You guys okay?”
“Crap.
Better than the alternative, anyway.” Chris looked to the familiar speaker on
his left. Twelve, or his identical clone trooper brother, was kneeling there,
still tied. Chris bent over to and began to untie his wrists.
“I thought I
was going to be able to get the other guy, too. But he was too far from a tree.”
She sounded sad, and Chris almost went to her instead of getting Twelve –or whoever’s—ankles.
Focus, he reminded himself. Get one thing done before you move on to the next.
The clone
trooper turned, gingerly, to look up at Chris once the ankle ties were gone. “Oh!
Oh! Circulation. It hurts. Thanks, Kung Fu Boy. Consider us even for you not
saving my brothers.”
“Dude,”
Chris said. “You guys have been shooting at me for two weeks now. There is a
limit.”
“You’re also
a superhero,” Twelve pointed out. “You fight supervillains. You know? Like Wormy
McWorm there? Maybe you’ve met? According to your job description, you’re
supposed to be kicking his ass so he can’t get any more of my brothers.”
“Pro-tip,”
Chris replied, as he moved around beside Glory. “You want superheroes to help
you? Don’t chase them and shoot them with pulson blasters. It distracts us.” He
put his arm around Glory’s waist, and she snuggled in beside him.
“Hey! Hey!”
Twelve protested. “Fraternisation. Superheroes in one corner, supervillains in
the other. And does your boss know?”
“No! And you’re
not telling him! I just saved your life!” Glory protested. But she also pulled
free of Chris’s arm and stepped one stride away.
“Sorry,”
Twelve said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m programmed with total loyalty to
my employer. It’s part of the Teleios Instant Army Customer Service Package.”
“B.S.!”
Chris protested. “That treatment didn’t work on you and your gang! It’s why you’re
so cheap!”
“Jeez. Where’d
you hear that? Sure, the Boss’s so-good-it-should-be-patented genetic loyalty treatment doesn’t work
on our germ line, but we do still have his full Code of the Mercenary
conditioning. And we’re not cheap. We’re expensive.”
“Because of
that immunity to the Apocalypse Plague thing. Which isn’t much of a selling
point, because there’s only one kook out there trying to weaponise it.”
“Hold on
there, Chr- KFB,” Morning Glory interrupted. “The Professor isn’t trying to
weaponise the Apocalypse Plague. It is a
weapon. Istvatha V’han’s weapon.”
“What?”
“That’s how
my Mom got involved. Three years ago she tried to publish a paper about a commensal
disease in Mollusca. Someone had a
look at it and told the journal that it was actually a V’hanian war plague. She
hasn’t been able to get funding for her research since.”
“But the
Professor wants the Plague. Why?”
“So he can
use it, Chris.”
“What? Oh my
God!”
“Just as a
demonstration. We’ll hand over the cure the moment the Empress gives us her
medical data. And when the Professor has that . . . .”
“He’ll rule
the Multiverse!”
“Whatever. I
just want to know who finked out my Mom and stuff. So she can get her grant application
moving.”
“I thought
that you thought it was your Dad.”
Morning
Glory shrugged uncomfortably. “Dad was . . . Dad was trying to do some kind of
deal with Wayland Talos. Talos is the kind of guy who’d sell that kind of info
to anyone, and pass it on free just to start trouble. But Dad knew that. He wouldn’t . . .. I mean, he
did. Mom says that he’s the only one who could.“ Her voice trailed off at the
end, and she wrapped her arms around her body as though she were cold.
Twelve stuck
up his hand. “Okay, we’ve covered the hot teen action, the expository dialogue,
and the emo crap. Can we, maybe, get back to watching for horrifying monsters
and King Slug-For-A-Butt?” Twelve asked, sounding annoyed.
“I’ll feel
any intrusions into this park through the morphogenetic field. And there’s a
pond down past the trees there if you’re feeling like a third wheel,” Morning
Glory answered.
Chris asked,
“Seriously. How much Earthworm Jim did
they put in your training tapes, anyway?” Chris only knew about the worm
superhero in the spacesuit and his enemies because his cousins had mentioned it
after seeing the tape of the Slug’s rampages in San Francisco.
Twelve
gestured dismissively. “Pff. Tape training counts as sleep, mostly, and you can
only do it for, like, six hours a day. Eight hours down, six hours in the gym.
We had plenty of time to watch the Cartoon Network..”
“Geez,”
Chris said. “Why don’t I get to be a clone?”
“’Cuz you’re
some weirdo norm. Except for the superpowers.”
“Technically,
KFB doesn’t have superpowers. He has a mastery of a mindful practice that looks like superpowers. And he has a
sister.”
“With Kung
Fu powers. Yeah, I read the briefing notes. Blah blah, big class of teenaged
superheroes. Fight evil, date each other, mope about how life sucks. Your
school leaks like a sieve, just FYI, Kung Fu Boy.”
Chris
smirked. “Oh, I see what this is about. There’s no-one for you to date at your
underground lair! Well, except for your brothers.”
“Gross,”
Morning Glory said, sticking her tongue out.
“Well, there’s
one. Clonette. No-one’s sure how Teleios made her, but she’s the only female
clone in our entire lair, and---“
“Oh, come
on! They probably had the Smurfs back before KFB got in the time machine.”
Chris shook
his head. He had no idea what they were talking about. And there was something
bothering him. “Uhm, Glory, how do you know that Professor Paradigm isn’t just
going to release the Apocalypse Plague on the Empire?”
“You don’t
know the Professor, KFB! He’s kind and thoughtful! He even remembered to get me
a present for my birthday last month! No-one else did except my Mom and my
boss!”
Two thoughts
crossed Chris’ mind. First, that Morning Glory’s boss actually sounded nice,
and second that when she said “no-one,” the person she actually left out was
her Dad.
“The
Professor may seem nice, but he’s not your Dad. He’s a supervillain, Glory,”
Chris protested. “And look at some of the guys he hangs with. That Decurion
creep would drop the Bomb on V’han in a second, just because he could.”
Morning
Glory’s face went white. “You think you’re so smart, Chris! But you’re not! I
can’t believe that I did that scabbard for you!”You’re just jealous. Of
Decurion! And you know what? You should be! She reached out her hand, and the ribbon
on the scabbard belt undid itself and flew to her fingers. “I need this now.”
Twelve made
a throat-clearing noise and gestured at the brush where Glory had said the pond
started. It was moving. “Uhm, guys? What’s the morpho-whatever thingie say
about that ?”
Morning
Glory’s head snapped in that direction. “That whoever it is very strong.”
A tall man
with a bare chest and six arms like a Hindu god, (and a caste mark on his face,
although, let’s face it, you noticed the arms first) stepped through the
underbrush. Beside him was Telantassar the Grey, wearing her Lincoln green
outfit and black mask, and carrying her bow, instead of, as usual, generic
hippie teacher duds. “This is your truant student, Miss Grey?”
“Ms. Grey,
please, Rashindar. If you’re so determined to compromise secret identities, at
least you could get the courtesy right.”
“It baffles
me that one of your ancient race should be so willing to conform to the
decadent ways of the West. What would you like done with the other two?’
Telantassar
looked at them for a long moment. “The weave of fate is that if we apprehend
them, the boy commits suicide, and the girl turns to the darkness. No equal ill
is done by letting them go.”
“Wait,”
Chris said. “Can you find your way to safety with Twelve if we leave you here,
Morning Glory?”
“Leave me
alone! I’m not talking to you. Yes,” she answered, her face set and angry (at
least, below the half covered by her mask), and her arms crossed.
“It’s some
small credit to you that you’re worried about your playmates, boy, but you
should be more worried about yourself,” the Indian mage observed.
“What do you
mean by that?” Chris asked, remembering after a moment to add, “Sir.”
“I gather
that you tried to use mind control magic on your counsellor. There will be
consequences.”
Chris looked
at Telantassar. She winced, and nodded.
“What? That’s
stupid. You’re stupid!” It sounded
stupid as soon as it was out of his mouth, but Chris couldn’t help it. He was on
fire with anger. His sword suddenly dragged, inconveniently, against his leg,
and he pulled it off his waist, the scabbard belt parting as easily as a dying
branch. He flung the whole thing into the shrubs as hard as he could. A moment
later, there came a distant splash.
“You won’t
help your case with theatrics, young man,” Rashindar scolded. “Your school is
fatuously lax in its discipline. I’m sure that after a modest suspension, you
will be allowed to attend again, subject to supervision. At least, I hope
subject to supervision.”
“Rashindarji,
you’re not helping. That decision will be made by our faculty.”
“I hope not,
Miss Grey. This sort of thing is the
reason that I insisted that your government appoint a liaison to Tatammy in the
first place. And asked for my current advisory
role.”
“This sort
of thing only ever happens in your head, Rashindar. Honestly!”
“Ah, Miss Grey. Shall we test the question of
whether DOSPA will listen more closely to a retired adventurer a generation out
of practice, or the world’s foremost supermage?”
Telantassar
shook her head, looking defeated. “Good,” Rashindar said, sounding enormously satisfied
with himself. And just like that, they were standing in Principal Guzman’s
office at school.
“My sword!”
Chris shouted.
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