The Legacy Superhero Omnibus Read online

  “Obvious lies?” I repeated. “Look, man, I’m not lying about anything. I’m innocent, even if I can’t prove it.”

  “Only a court of law can prove your innocence,” said Bug Bite. “Or, far more likely, your guilt.”

  I gulped. “Listen, Bug Bite, I know you don’t like me that much because I’ve been stepping on your turf, but you’ve got to realize that I’m not a killer. I’ve never killed anyone. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

  Bug Bite regarded me with cold eyes. “When you first appeared in Rumsfeld, I was unsure what to make of you. You obviously weren’t the original Trickshot, Gregory McDonald, but you didn’t seem like a criminal or supervillain, either. I thought you might be a decent guy, but it is now as obvious as daylight to me that you are no different from the Injectors or any other criminal scum I’ve fought.”

  It was clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to convince Bug Bite that I was innocent. Which meant I had no choice but to fight.

  I pulled a disk out of my pouch and threw it at the webbing. The disk cut through the webbing with ease, but instead of falling to the floor, I flew toward Bug Bite and swung a fist at his face. But Bug Bite dodged the punch and, grabbing my outstretched arm, threw me over his shoulder across the apartment.

  I crashed into the wall, almost through it, but I just left a big hole shaped like myself. Shaking my head, I looked up in time to see Bug Bite running toward me with his wrist knives out. He slashed at my face, but I dodged at the last second, rolling to the side. As soon as I got back to my feet, I pulled two disks out of my pouch and hurled them at him, but Bug Bite deflected them both with his wrist knives and leaped toward me with his blades flashing.

  I flew forward, narrowly avoiding his blades, and made my way to the window. I didn’t need to fight Bug Bite. I just needed to get out of here before the police got here. I could probably beat Bug Bite in a fight, but I didn’t hate him and didn’t want to hurt him, because Bug Bite was not the real enemy here.

  But I didn’t get very far before Bug Bite leaped through the air toward me and tackled me out of the air. We crashed on top of the coffee table in the middle of the apartment, which fell apart under our collective weight, and immediately began struggling with each other. Bug Bite kept trying to stab me in the face, while I held back his hands as much as I could, though Bug Bite was so vicious that I had to work harder than usual to keep my face from being torn apart.

  “I … don’t want … to fight you,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’ve got the wrong guy!”

  “That’s what every murderer says when he’s confronted about his crimes,” said Bug Bite. “I’ve heard that excuse a million times. Do you really think I’m going to believe you now?”

  That was it. I activated my super strength and crushed Bug Bite’s wrists, my fingers crunching the wrist knives. Bug Bite cried out in pain, but I didn’t care. I just threw him off me at the couch, which he crashed into hard enough to knock over. I jumped to my feet and ran toward the windows, but then I tripped over something and fell onto the floor. I broke my fall with my hands, but the fall jarred me nonetheless.

  Shaking my head, I looked over my shoulder and saw that I had tripped over some houseshoes I had not noticed. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t care. I just got back to my feet, but before I could do anything, I heard a very faint buzzing sound coming from the nearby fireplace. At first, I thought it was just a fly or something, but the sound was growing louder and louder very quickly, as though there was an entire swarm of insects coming down the fireplace.

  I heard a laugh behind me and looked over my shoulder to see Bug Bite. He was rising to his feet, though his wrists looked almost broken and he held his hands in an awkward way. Despite his injuries, Bug Bite was chuckling under his breath, like he had just heard a great joke.

  “What are you laughing about?” I said. “And what is making that buzzing sound?”

  Bug Bite tilted his head to the side. “My bees, of course.”

  Before I could respond to that, an entire swarm of bees exploded from the fireplace and surrounded me like a cloud. There had to be millions and millions of the bastards, enough that I couldn’t see anything. They surrounded me on all sides, swooping in and stinging me on every part of my skin. My costume, thankfully, protected most of my body from their stingers, but the constant buzzing and thick swarming around me was still disorienting. I swung my fists back and forth, but it was like trying to punch air. For every bee I managed to hit, a million more would take its place.

  Eventually, I stopped trying to hit the bees at all and just brought my arms around my head to protect my face from their stingers. All that did was make their assault on me even worse. The buzzing was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. I staggered around, trying to make my way to the window, but the swarm of bees was so thick that I had no idea where I was anymore. It was like I was caught in a storm in the middle of the ocean, only this storm hurt.

  All of a sudden, Bug Bite appeared within the swarm of bees and slashed at my chest. His knife cut deeply through my costume and my chest, making me cry out in pain and fall to the floor. As soon as I fell, the bees ceased swarming around me, instead hovering up to the ceiling, where they buzzed loudly, though their buzzing was a lot more muted than it had been just moments before.

  Bug Bite stood over me, his chest heaving in and out with every breath. He raised his knife above his head and said, “This is the end, Trickshot. In another time, perhaps you and I could have been allies. But here and now, we are enemies, and I never show mercy to my enemies.”

  Bug Bite brought his knife down on me. Right before it hit me, however, I raised my arm and caught the knife directly in my forearm.

  I had never been stabbed before. The worst I’d ever experienced was accidentally cutting my finger when I was chopping up carrots for Mom when I was helping her make dinner once back when I was ten. Even then, the cut had been pretty shallow and healed after being bandaged for a week.

  So when the sharp knife plunged into my forearm, I was unprepared for the pain that shot through my body. I screamed louder than I’d ever screamed in my life. I yanked my arm away, pulling the knife out of my arm at the same time, while Bug Bite looked at me in surprise, as if he had not expected me to respond that way.

  But even in my pained state, I saw an opportunity. I slammed my other fist directly in Bug Bite’s gut. Bug Bite doubled over, gasping in surprise, before I delivered another upper cut that knocked him flat on his back. He hit the floor hard and lay there, clearly unconscious.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I rose to my feet, grasping my bleeding arm and cursing foully under my breath. Even just rising to my feet was a herculean task, because the pain in my bleeding arm was so great that I could think of little else. I suppose I should have been happy that I managed to knock out Bug Bite, but it was hard to be happy when I was suffering from some of the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life. It was even worse than when I broke my collarbone when I was six, which had been so bad that I practically cried myself dry.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the buzzing bee swarm above. Looking at the ceiling, I saw that the bees were starting to lose their cohesion. It occurred to me that without Bug Bite to control them, the bees would soon stop being a collective, and once they did, they might be a big problem. At the very least, they might try to sting me again.

  Breathing hard, I walked over to the window, though each step was painful due to my arm. I pulled back my other arm and, gathering all of my strength, smashed the window out. Without waiting to see if the bees would follow, I jumped out the window and flew away as fast as I could, going up high into the sky to avoid being spotted by pedestrians on the street.

  But I couldn’t stay up in the sky very long. My bleeding arm was practically dumping blood and the sharp, cold wind made it hard for me to focus. I was forced to land on the roof of the Rumsfeld First National Bank, which was not very far from the a
partment building I had just been in, though there were a couple of buildings between the bank and the apartment, so I wasn’t afraid that one of the apartment dwellers might see me.

  Gripping my forearm, I sat down on the rough roof and groaned. TW flashed into existence before me, a concerned look on his face.

  “TW, is there anything you can do about my arm?” I said, my voice tighter than usual due to the pain.

  “Well, it’s like I told you when you first put the suit on, your costume doesn’t have healing capabilities,” said TW apologetically. “If it were just a small, surface level wound or something like that, your suit would heal it up by itself. Unfortunately, that knife went very deep in your forearm, so you will need to see an actual doctor to fix it.”

  I winced. “I wished you wouldn’t say that. Can the suit dull the pain until I can get to an actual doctor, at least?”

  “Yes, and staunch the bleeding as well,” said TW. “Look.”

  Before my startled eyes, the part of my suit which had been torn apart by Bug Bite’s knife slowly but surely began to cover my arm. Soon, the suit had repaired itself and was even applying pressure to the wound, causing the bleeding to pretty much stop, though it still hurt a lot.

  “Huh,” I said, twisting my arm around. “Interesting. I didn’t know it could do that.”

  “It’s useful, but not actual healing,” said TW. “As I said, you will need to find an actual doctor if you want your arm fixed. The suit can’t heal a wound that deep, unfortunately.”

  “But I don’t know who I could go to,” I said. “I can’t go home like this. If I did, Mom and Dad would want to know where I got this wound from and the last thing I need them to know is that I’m Trickshot. Especially since the police still think I’m the guy who killed Baron Glory.”

  “Don’t you have a family doctor you could go to for surgery?” said TW. “Surely there must be a doctor you and your family go to regularly for check-ups, at least?”

  “There is,” I said. “Dr. Gonzales, who works at the Jones & Gonzales Health Clinic. But if I go to him, he’ll just tell my parents, which will result in them finding out my identity, which will put us right back where we started.”

  “This is a troubling problem indeed,” said TW, stroking his chin. “I’m not quite sure what to do. Whenever Gregory suffered any serious injuries like this, he would always go to his local doctor to get fixed up. Of course, Gregory was a legally licensed superhero, so he didn’t have a secret identity to keep hidden like you do. Your situation is more complex.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. The pain in my arm flared and I grabbed it again. “Stupid Bug Bite. Stabbing me in the arm … dang it, that hurt. Now I know why so many criminals are afraid of him. I’d be scared of him, too, if I was a criminal.”

  “Technically, you are a criminal,” said TW, “since you operate as a superhero without a license, which is against the law in this country.”

  “Whose side are you on, TW?” I said in annoyance.

  TW shrugged. “Just pointing out the obvious.”

  I wasn’t much in the mood to hear about the ‘obvious’ right now, but I decided it was fruitless to argue with TW about this. “Okay, fine, whatever. Just help me find a doctor or something, will you? I’m not going home until I do.”

  “As I said, I don’t know where to look for one,” said TW. “Of course, I could do an Internet search of all the available hospitals and health clinics in the city, but given your desire to keep this particular wound a secret, I don’t think that would be very helpful.”

  “Yeah, it wouldn’t,” I said. I gripped my forearm in a failed attempt to dull the pain. “But I can’t go home until I get this fixed. I just can’t.”

  TW stroked his chin, a thoughtful look on his face. “Clearly, this is a terrible dilemma for you. On one hand, you can’t just spend all night out here on the roof of the bank, but on the other hand, you also cannot go home in this condition without revealing your secret identity to your parents. Furthermore, you cannot go to any of the hospitals or health clinics in the city for the same reason.”

  “Thanks for the recap, TW,” I said sarcastically. “It isn’t like we just went over all of that like two seconds ago.”

  “I’m merely recapping the information for my own benefit,” said TW. “It is useful to summarize a situation for oneself in order to make sure one understands exactly what is going on. Failure to do so can mean acting hastily, and acting hastily is never a good thing.”

  “A little haste certainly wouldn’t hurt me right now,” I said. I sighed. “All right. It looks like my only real chance is to go home and tell my parents about my secret identity. Maybe, once they get over the shock of me being a superhero, they’ll agree to take me to the hospital. It’s not perfect, but—”

  “Actually, I don’t think you’ll need to do that at all,” said TW. “There is another option, a way to get your arm healed without having to reveal your secret identity to anyone.”

  “There is?” I said. “But didn’t you just say that the suit can’t heal this injury?”

  “I did, but I’m not saying we should use the suit,” said TW. “I’m saying I know someone who can help.”

  “But you also said that you didn’t know of any doctors who could help me.”

  “The person I am thinking of isn’t a doctor,” said TW. “At least, not officially. But she is good with medicine and healing. And she’s right here in Rumsfeld, Texas.”

  “Really?” I said. I rose to my feet slowly. “Then why don’t we leave and find her right away?”

  “Because I am not entirely sure if she’s still around or not,” said TW. “She was a friend of Gregory back during his superhero days, but I don’t know if she’s even still alive. She was a very old woman back then, even older than Gregory. The reason I didn’t bring her up right away was because of her age, which may have rendered her useless.”

  “Then that just gives us even more reason to hurry,” I said. “The only way to know if she can help us is if we go and find her. Tell me where she is and I’ll fly there as fast as I can.”

  “I suppose you have a point,” said TW. “Very well. Let us take to the skies. I’ll give you directions as we go.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Luckily, it didn’t take me long to reach the location to which TW directed me. It was about three miles outside of Rumsfeld, closer to the country than to the city. According to TW, the person who could help me lived in a small bungalow far off the main highway, because she liked to live alone and didn’t care much for visitors. He said that Gregory had been one of her only friends and that she might be willing to help me because I was his grandson, if she was still alive.

  It was somewhat risky for me to leave Rumsfeld on what might have seemed to anyone else like a flimsy memory of an AI, but it was the only option I had that would allow me to preserve my secret identity. As a result, I was willing to fly wherever I needed to go in order to get myself healed.

  About ten minutes of flying later, I landed on a lonely country road twisting through the hills and trees outside of Rumsfeld. Though this road was off the main highway, I was far enough up it that no one on the main highway would be able to see me. TW had told me that I should land somewhere on the road to the person’s house, rather than on their property, because Gregory’s old friend didn’t take well to intruders and would likely shoot anyone who suddenly landed on her property without warning.

  When I landed on the dirt road, I looked around at my surroundings. It was even darker out here than it was in Rumsfeld. At least Rumsfeld had street lamps to light its streets. Out here in the country, there were no lights, save for a single glowing green light at the end of the road which I assumed was the light for the person’s property. It wasn’t a very powerful light, however, and it flickered on and off every now and then, which made me think that it must have been old as well.

  “Here we are,” said TW. “Marge’s house should be just beyond
that light. I wouldn’t rush if I were you, however, because that might set off her alarms.”

  “Alarms?”

  “Marge cares about her security,” said TW. “Or cared, at least. If she’s not alive anymore, then it may not matter so much.”

  As I walked along the country road, I said, “Okay, who is this Marge lady and how come this is the first time you’ve told me about her?”

  “I might as well tell you, now that you’re going to see her,” said TW. “Her full name is Margaret Lois Rumsfeld. She’s a distant descendant of Hamilton Rumsfeld, the founder of the city of Rumsfeld, and one of his last known descendants.”

  “Huh,” I said. “I thought Hamilton Rumsfeld died childless. That’s what I was taught in school.”

  “I’m just repeating what she told Gregory,” said TW. “In truth, I think she may not be entirely sane, but she’s still a good woman at heart.”

  I stopped suddenly. “You mean you’re telling me to knock on the front door of a crazy woman in the middle of the night? A crazy woman who values her security and privacy above all else? And is willing to shoot anyone who trespasses on her property?”

  “What other choice do you have?” said TW. “And besides, she’s not that crazy. Or wasn’t when I last saw her, anyway. She’s just … eccentric.”

  I frowned, but continued walking anyway. “How did Grandfather meet her?”

  “The exact story is too long to get into right now,” said TW, “but it was not long after he started his superhero career that he suffered an injury that would have ended his career prematurely. None of the doctors he went to could heal him and it was thought that he would be a cripple for the rest of his life. But then he heard rumors about Marge’s healing abilities and went to see her for help.”