The Legacy Superhero Omnibus Read online

  I paused and looked over my shoulder at the car. “It’s got Texas license plates, so it’s not from out of state, but I don’t know anyone in Rumsfeld who would own such a vehicle.”

  “Me neither,” said TW. “But you should go inside and find out who it is.”

  “That was the plan,” I replied as I resumed walking up to the house. “Probably not anyone worth worrying about, but just to be sure, be ready to suit up, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Entering the house, I heard two voices coming from the kitchen. One was Mom, who sounded as peppy and chirpy as she ever did. The other, however, was deeper, more like the voice of a man than a woman, although it had a bit of a humorous edge to it as well.

  “Mom!” I said, raising my voice as I dropped my backpack on the floor next to the shoe rack. “I’m home!”

  Mom poked her head out of the kitchen and waved at me. “Hey, Jack! I thought you were having lunch with Kyle. What are you doing back so early?”

  “Kyle had an emergency at home,” I said without missing a beat. “Had to cancel, so I decided to come home early instead of hanging out in the Park.”

  “Well, I hope that Kyle’s emergency isn’t too serious,” said Mom. “But in any case, come in and sit down. We still have some pizza left over, just the way you like it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “’We’? I thought Dad was at work.”

  “He is, but we have an, uh, special guest over,” said Mom.

  “Special?” came the deep voice from the kitchen. “Come on, Mary. Just tell the boy who I am. It’s not like it’s any great mystery.”

  “Uh, right, Josh,” said Mom, who seemed a little taken aback by the man’s response.

  “No, wait, I’ll just introduce myself,” said the man.

  A man stepped out of the kitchen. He seemed to be close to Mom in age, maybe a little older based on the gray hairs that stood out against his black hair. He wore a red polo shirt and jeans, making him look like an ordinary middle-aged guy you might see grocery shopping in a supermarket. But it was his face that almost stopped me dead, because it looked almost like Mom’s, except far more masculine and with brown eyes instead of black.

  “Hi there, kiddo,” said the man, waving at me. “You’re Jack, right? Walter’s son?”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. “Um, yeah. Who are you?”

  “You mean you don’t recognize your Uncle Josh?” said the man. “Come on. I know the last time I saw you was when you were just a baby, but I hoped you would remember your own uncle.”

  Truthfully, I hadn’t forgotten him. I’d always known that Mom wasn’t an only child, unlike Dad, who was. She had had two sisters and one brother, all of three of them older than her. The two sisters, Jane and Donna, I saw at Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, but the brother, Josh, was not one I could recall ever meeting. I was a little dubious, to be honest, that this man was actually the same Uncle Josh Mom had told me about when I was younger, mostly because I had never seen him before.

  “Well, it’s like you said, Josh, Jack was just a baby when he last saw you,” said Mom, who seemed a little more polite than usual. “You really shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t recognize you right off the bat.”

  “Point taken,” Josh said. “And I must admit that Jack is barely recognizable from the three-month-old baby I once held in my arms. He’s a sixteen-year-old boy now, or should I say, man, seeing how in some cultures a sixteen-year-old is already considered a man.”

  I didn’t really feel like much of a man at the moment. I mostly just felt awkward, because it had been so long since I had last seen him that I didn’t quite know what to say.

  “But it doesn’t really matter how long it’s been since I last saw him,” said Uncle Josh, rubbing his hands together. “We’re family, after all, and family always sticks together no matter what.”

  “Is that why you haven’t seen us in sixteen years?” said Mom dryly.

  Uncle Josh flinched when Mom said that. “Come now, Mary. You know I have a perfectly good reason for not seeing you in so long. Besides, I acknowledge my mistakes and have come to make repentance for what I did. It isn’t very Christian to be unforgiving toward the penitent, as our dear old Dad used to say.”

  “What did you do that requires you get forgiveness from Mom?” I said, tilting my head to the side.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Uncle Josh, waving off my question as though it were irrelevant. “All that really matters is catching up with each other. So, Jack, do you have a girlfriend yet?”

  “Um, no,” I said, shaking my head, “but I’m more interested in finding out where you’ve been for all these years and why you’ve suddenly decided to show up again.”

  “I just want to reconnect with my family,” said Uncle Josh in a voice that made me even more suspicious than before. “I’ve been traveling for a while and got burned out, so I decided to come back to Rumsfeld to refresh myself and catch up with my family.”

  “Traveling?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I was just talking with your mom about that,” said Uncle Josh, scratching the back of his neck. “I’ve been traveling around the world for years, enjoying life and seeing new things and exploring foreign countries. I’ve climbed the Himalayas, crossed the Great Wall of China, and plunged deep into the Amazon rainforest. All while working whatever odd jobs I could find.”

  “It sounds like you lived a pretty interesting life,” I said, folding my arms in front of my chest. “Why did you come back to Rumsfeld?”

  Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, I thought I saw Uncle Josh’s eyes shift ever-so-slightly to the right, as if he didn’t want to meet my gaze directly. “Like I said, partly because of family. Traveling the world can be a lot of fun, but at the same time, it’s easy to get burned out if you’re not careful. Sometimes, you just need to come home, and that’s what I decided to do recently, to relax and refresh myself.”

  “Where are you staying while you’re here?” I said. “Do you have a hotel room or something? And how long are you going to stay before you leave?”

  “About that,” said Uncle Josh, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m going to be staying here in this house with all of you, of course.”

  “What?” I said. I looked at Mom. “Is he telling the truth?”

  Mom nodded, albeit reluctantly. “Probably. I mean, I’ll have to talk with Walter about this, of course, but—”

  “But I’m sure good ol’ Walt will be willing to let me stay here for a while,” Uncle Josh interrupted. He flashed an overly friendly smile at me. “I know Walt and I haven’t always been the best of friends, but I’m absolutely certain he’ll let me stay, since I’m family and all.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, frowning. “Dad doesn’t like it when people drop in like this.”

  “But I’m not just ‘people’ here,” said Uncle Josh. He patted his chest. “I’m his brother-in-law. I’m family. And sis, you’ll convince him to let me stay, right?”

  “I … I suppose,” said Mom, still quite reluctantly. “As long as you help around the house and don’t cause any trouble, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to stay. You can even stay in Thomas’ old bedroom, which we converted into a guest room exactly for this kind of situation.”

  “Thomas, eh?” said Uncle Josh. “Last I heard, he graduated from college a few years back. How’s he doing?”

  Both Mom and I exchanged quick but significant looks. Though neither of us said a word, the looks conveyed all the thoughts we were trying to communicate to each other very well.

  “Thomas died last year,” I said, looking at Uncle Josh again. “He injected himself with the Power drug and ended up dying when his body reacted badly to the drug.”

  Uncle Josh put a hand over his mouth in horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ve been away for so long that I just didn’t know—”

  “Nah, it’s fine,” I interrupted, waving a hand a
t Uncle Josh. “Though I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t know, to be honest. Mom, didn’t you invite him to the funeral?”

  Mom shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I tried, but because of his traveling, it was impossible to contact him.”

  “Well, I would have come if I had known,” said Uncle Josh. He shook his head. “Power … that’s an awful drug, all right, one of the worst out there. When I was in Japan a few years ago, I ran into a yakuza member who had taken the drug. Damn near killed me, too, but then he lost control of his powers and killed himself. Sorry to hear it happened to Thomas. He was a good boy.”

  There was something mechanical in Uncle Josh’s apology, almost as if he was reciting a speech he had memorized. Maybe it was just the awkwardness of the situation making Josh seem stranger than he was, but I wasn’t so sure. There was just something off about Uncle Josh in general. I decided I would have to be careful around him for now.

  “Well, what’s past is past,” said Mom with a shrug. “Perhaps you can go visit his grave in the city cemetery at some point during your stay.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Uncle Josh. “I’ll definitely have to visit at least once before I leave.”

  “And when, exactly, will that be?” I said. “Do you know when you’ll be leaving Rumsfeld?”

  Uncle Josh waved off my question like it was irrelevant. “I’ll tell you later. Right now, I just want to enjoy my time with my sister, her husband, and my favorite nephew. You don’t want me to leave right away, do you?”

  I had to admit that I didn’t know if I did or not. Uncle Josh seemed friendly enough, but like I said, there was also something off about him that I just couldn’t place. The best I could figure was that he probably was not telling us the whole truth, though what he was hiding, I could not say.

  “Anyway, I need to get my stuff from my car and unpack,” said Uncle Josh. “I usually travel light, so I don’t have too many things. Just the essentials.”

  Without further ado, Uncle Josh walked past me and out the front door, closing the door behind himself on the way out.

  I looked at Mom. “Is there something wrong with Uncle Josh?”

  Mom sighed. “No, he’s always been like that. I wouldn’t worry too much about him. He’s probably still jet-lagged, which can have a strange effect on a person’s mood. It’s why I don’t like flying.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” I said. I rubbed my forearm. “But what caused the obvious falling out between you and him? He mentioned mistakes and repentance, but—”

  “It’s nothing,” Mom said, shaking her head again. “Nothing you need to worry about. That was a long time ago and I’ve already forgiven him for it. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, so I would suggest that you forget about it and focus on enjoying your summer vacation. It’s already June and school will be back in session before you know it.”

  I wished Mom would just tell me what happened, but there wasn’t really anything I could do to force her to tell me. Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have a few secrets of my own that I kept from her, like my secret identity as Trickshot.

  So I just nodded and, picking up my backpack, climbed the stairs up to my room, where I would take a nap and catch up on my sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As it turned out, Uncle Josh was correct about his belief that Dad would let him stay. When Dad came home right before dinner and met Josh, I thought for a moment that Dad was going to tell him to get out of the house and go away, but to my surprise, Dad allowed Uncle Josh to stay, but only on the condition that he get a job somewhere so he didn’t stay in the house all day. Uncle Josh agreed and Dad even offered to get him a job in his construction company, an offer Uncle Josh accepted, which I found even more surprising, because Uncle Josh did not seem like the kind of man who would like construction work.

  And, of course, our talk over dinner soon turned to the news about the assassination of Baron Glory. The Rumsfeld City Journal claimed that Trickshot had assassinated Baron Glory for unknown reasons and that the Rumsfeld City Police Department was asking every citizen to keep an eye out for any sign of Trickshot and to report any information about him to the police. They even claimed that one of Trickshot’s silver disks had been found in Baron Glory’s head, which confused me because Baron Glory had been shot with a gun, not with one of my silver disks. Either the assassin had somehow managed to steal one of my disks while I wasn’t looking or else it was a forgery, though the pictures I saw on social media made it look like a very convincing forgery.

  Dad and Uncle Josh had sharp disagreements over whether Trickshot actually killed Baron Glory or not. Uncle Josh seemed to think that Trickshot was innocent, while Dad opined that an illegal superhero probably would kill Baron Glory. It was kind of disconcerting to hear my own Dad essentially say I was guilty of murder, though given how he didn’t know that I was Trickshot, I didn’t let myself get too freaked out by it.

  Uncle Josh, on the other hand, thought that there wasn’t much evidence that Trickshot had killed Baron Glory and that the disk didn’t prove anything. He said that he didn’t think that Trickshot, who up until now hadn’t done much more than operate as a superhero illegally, would kill Baron Glory for no reason. It was a surprisingly reasonable thing to hear from Uncle Josh, who I hadn’t thought would come to the defense of my alter ego.

  And Mom, of course, had no real opinion on it one way or another, saying that she wanted to wait until the police found more evidence before she jumped to any conclusions. I could tell, however, that Mom just took that position because she didn’t like Dad and Uncle Josh fighting and just wanted them to get along.

  As for me, I didn’t offer much of an opinion, because I was worried that my answer would somehow potentially reveal my identity to them. It helped that I was really hungry by the time dinner rolled around, so I mostly just stuffed my face with food so I wouldn’t have to say anything other than the bare minimum, though I participated in other discussions we had around the dinner table.

  Still, even though the conversation topic changed, I was more than happy to leave the dinner table as soon as I was done eating. While Uncle Josh and Dad talked politics, I went back up to my room and closed the door behind me, making sure to lock it so I would not have any interruptions. Then I sat down on my bed and said, “TW, any progress on the killer?”

  TW flashed into existence before me, his arms folded in front of his chest. “Negative. I’ve been searching the Internet for any sightings of a mysterious sniper, but it appears that no one has seen him. At least, no one has reported seeing him, anyway. He must be very good at covering his tracks.”

  I lay down on my bed, spreading my arms in frustration. “You know, if he’s smart, he’s probably not walking around in his black ninja getup walking around with a sniper case. I bet he ditched that outfit as soon as he could. He’s probably walking around in normal clothes now, looking more like an ordinary guy than a trained killer who took down a famous and beloved superhero.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said TW. “Still, I’m keeping an eye on the social media accounts of the Rumsfeld City Police Department anyway, just in case they have any reports on an unknown guy with a sniper rifle spotted somewhere.”

  “I doubt they’re looking for someone like that,” I said, turning on my side, a scowl on my face. “They think I killed Baron Glory, remember? Even if someone reported a sniper to them, I doubt they would make a big deal about it on social media.”

  “Perhaps, but we have no other way to keep an eye out for the sniper,” said TW. “And until we do, this is our only chance at actually finding him, at least until Kyle takes apart the eyepiece and tells us what he found.”

  I nodded. “You’re right, but somehow I doubt the eyepiece is going to be of much help. I bet he’s not going to find out anything we don’t already know.”

  “You seem more depressed than usual,” TW said. “Usually, I’m the one who is cynical about our chances of success, while you’re usua
lly quite the optimist about our ability to succeed.”

  “If you were unfairly blamed for the murder of your favorite superhero, I think you’d be a little depressed, too,” I said. I sighed. “I still can’t believe it. Baron Glory has always been a legendary hero in my eyes and in the eyes of the general public. I can’t even imagine him being dead. When I was really young, I thought he was going to live forever because he just seemed so … so …”

  “Mythic?” TW said. “Powerful? Even divine?”

  I raised my head to look at him. “Not ‘divine,’ but mythic is a pretty good way to put it. Every time I saw him on TV, I would stop whatever I was doing to see him. I even sent him a letter once asking for his autograph.”

  “Did you ever get it?” said TW.

  I shook my head. “No, but I think Baron probably got lots of fan mail every day, too much for him to answer individually, so I’m not very offended by that. It was just an honor to be able to write to him at all.”

  “Hmm,” said TW. “According to the Internet, Baron Glory has been active as a superhero for over thirty years, having become internationally famous when he defeated the supervillain Titan King twenty-five years ago, who had attacked New York City with an army of robots that he intended to rule the world with.”

  “I know,” I said, resting my head on the bed again. “I did an essay on it as part of a research project for history class back in second grade. I did so well that I got an A plus, which was the first time I ever got an A plus in school in any of my classes.”

  “Interesting,” said TW. “Do you think that this Titan King figure may be related to this somehow?”

  “I don’t see how he could,” I said. “Baron Glory killed him by bringing a building down on top of him twenty years ago. His body was recovered from the rubble and he was confirmed dead. Some news stations even did special reports on Titan King’s funeral, though not too many people attended it for obvious reasons.”

  TW held up his hand and a smaller hologram appeared over his palm. It depicted a hulking figure in massive black armor, wearing a wicked-looking crown on his head that appeared to be made out of bones. The figure carried two massive broadswords sheathed at his sides, while two crazy eyes peered out from within the helmet itself.