The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) Read online

“Yes, but they’re still a threat,” said Blizzard. “Especially since Thaumaturge and the others know about Hero Island’s defenses. I just worry that they might try to attack the Island at some point.”

  “Aren’t the G-Men going after them?” I said. “The G-Men arrested Mimic, remember. I imagine they’ve probably interrogated him and know where the other Visionists are by now. Why do we need to worry about them?”

  “Because I read a news report that said that the interrogation revealed that Mimic doesn’t know the location of Thaumaturge and the other Visionists,” said Blizzard. “But it doesn’t matter, because as long as Vision is out there, they’ll always be a threat to us.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. I wondered where Blizzard’s new found determination to hunt down Vision came from. “And you were trying to convince Mecha Knight to let us hunt them down?”

  “Yeah,” said Blizzard, nodding. “But he says it’s against the rules, since the Young Neos are only supposed to go to the locations that Mecha Knight tells us to. We can’t go hunting down villains on our own.”

  “I know that,” I said. “And I don’t see what the problem with that is, because it’s worked out pretty well so far.”

  “Maybe, but I think we’d be a more effective organization if we were allowed to hunt down certain criminals or supervillains,” said Blizzard. “Don’t you want to take them down? I mean, you have more experience with Vision than the rest of us do.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’d love to see those smug bastards get what’s coming to ‘em, but at the same time, we can’t really hunt them down effectively if we don’t know where they are. It’s best to wait until they show themselves; then we can go take them down.”

  “Like they’d ever do that,” said Blizzard. “But come on. Can’t you talk to Mecha Knight about this for me? He might not listen to me, but you’re the leader of the Young Neos, so he probably will be willing to listen to you.”

  “Maybe later,” I said. “I just got back from upstate New York and I want to go back to my room.”

  I was about to step around her, but then Blizzard stepped in my way. I tried to go the other way, but again, Blizzard blocked my path.

  “What?” I said. “I need to go.”

  “Not until you promise to talk to Mecha Knight for me about this,” said Blizzard. “Please?”

  Okay, I could never deny Blizzard a request when she looked at me with her puppy dog eyes, so I nodded and said, “All right, all right. I’ll talk to him later about this and see if I can get him to at least reconsider the idea.”

  “Yay!” said Blizzard.

  She hugged me suddenly and tightly, and then let go of me just as quickly. Yet I could still feel the coldness of her body on my suit and found myself wishing she was still hugging me.

  “Thanks,” said Blizzard. “See you later. I’m going to the Training Room to get some practice in.”

  I just had time to nod before Blizzard turned and ran up the steps into the main hall of the House itself. I watched her white cape disappear into the House and I just stood there for a moment, still feeling her coldness on me, before I shook my head and entered the House as well.

  Ever since I regained my powers, Blizzard had been a lot more openly affectionate with me. And I had to admit that I actually liked it. We hadn’t dated or anything like that, but out of all of the Young Neos, Blizzard seemed to be happiest about the fact that I had regained my powers. She had also sat very close to me at Dad’s funeral, even put an arm around my shoulders to comfort me.

  And yeah, I did think she was kind of cute, but I had never actually managed to gather the courage to ask her out. Partly this was because I had spent a lot of time recently grieving Dad and not thinking about romance, but at the same time, I was honest enough to realize it was just pure cowardice on my part. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of; maybe I was just worried about how it would affect the team dynamics if she rejected me or if we started a relationship and then ended it at some point. Would we be bitter exes or would we manage to stay friends even if that happened? How would the rest of the team react if we started dating?

  I honestly didn’t know and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, not if that meant endangering the effectiveness of the team anyway. Besides, I was pretty sure there were rules about no dating teammates somewhere in the NHA Constitution, even though I couldn’t quite remember where at the moment. Maybe I’d ask Carl to look up that particular clause later so I could shut up that voice in my head that keeps calling me a coward for not asking her out.

  When I got to my room, I first took a shower, because I was pretty dirty and sweaty from my fight with Twinfist, plus the flight home hadn’t exactly been clean. After I did that, I went over to the large computer on the other side of my room and pulled out the flash drive that Triplet had given me.

  I hesitated a moment before I took the cap off the bottom and stuck it into my suit’s pocket, and then stuck the drive into the USB port. At the same time, I removed the USB drive already in there, which was probably blank at this point, since I had gotten this drive from Mom back in Texas during the funeral and had been transferring some old files from my old laptop back home, and put that drive into my pocket where it would be safe.

  As soon as I did that, the computer tried to open the files, but a message appeared on the screen that read ‘DEVICE ENCRYPTED. CANNOT READ FILES.’

  “Carl,” I said. “Can you decrypt the files on this device for me? I want to read them.”

  “I’ll try, Bolt,” came Carl’s flamboyant voice. “But it will probably take me a little while, because I’ve never seen an encryption like this before.”

  I tapped my earcom and said, “Val, can you help Carl? Since you’re one of Dad’s creations, you might be familiar with the encryption technique he used.”

  “Okay,” said Valerie, though I could tell she wasn’t looking forward to working with Carl. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I nodded. Although Valerie and Carl were both creations of Dad—which basically made them ‘siblings,’ in a sense—I was under the impression that Valerie didn’t like Carl that much. Of course, because they were both AI, they probably couldn’t ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything, but I would still describe her attitude toward him that way. Maybe it was because Valerie tended to be very reserved and logical, while Carl was extroverted and something of a go-getter.

  In any case, I figured they’d crack this encryption in no time. Because I was tired, I decided to take this moment to grab a quick nap. I figured they’d have the encryption cracked wide open by the time I woke up.

  So I went over to my bed and lay down in it, but before I could close my eyes and go to sleep, my suit-up watch suddenly beeped. I looked down at it and saw that Malcolm Rayner—my non-super friend back in Texas—was trying to call me.

  I was reluctant to answer, mostly because I was too tired to talk to anyone, but I decided to see why Malcolm was calling me. So I tapped the screen of my watch and said, “Hey, Malcolm, what’s up?”

  “Hey, Kev!” said Malcolm. “I just wanted to call you because it’s been a while since we’ve talked. How are things in New York?”

  “Okay,” I said as I lay my head down on my pillow. “It’s been pretty boring since Robert’s death, though. Haven’t had much to do.”

  “Maybe all the supervillains are on vacation,” said Malcolm. “Anyway, I heard you were going to go see your grandfather. How did that go?”

  I thought about whether or not I should tell Malcolm about what I learned from Grandfather. Grandfather had warned me not to tell anyone about what he’d told me, but I didn’t see any harm in telling Malcolm about what happened. It wasn’t like Malcolm could actually do anything with this info. Besides, I trusted him to keep secrets, because he had successfully kept my secret identity to himself so far.

  So I told Malcolm about what happened at Grandfather’s mansion. I didn’t tell him every little detail, but I gave him a rough overview of what happened and
what I learned there. Malcolm listened pretty intently and didn’t even ask any questions, which was good because I didn’t want him to interrupt me and force me to spend more time explaining stuff to him. I also didn’t mention Triplet’s theory that Grandfather knew more than he let on; I didn’t want to make it sound like I thought my Grandfather was up to no good.

  When I finished, Malcolm said, “Man, that’s some pretty crazy stuff. What do you think is going to happen to your grandparents?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Grandfather said that they were going to be okay and that I didn’t need to worry about them, but he made that Echo lady and her allies sound dangerous.”

  “Yeah, I’m looking up Echo and Twinfist on Neo Ranks right now, but they don’t have any pages, not even in the Villain section,” said Malcolm. “Guess they must keep a low profile or something.”

  “That is what it seems like,” I said. “I’m just not sure if I should tell Mecha Knight and the rest of the Leadership Council about them. Grandfather told me not to tell anyone, but Echo and the others seem like a threat that the NHA should deal with.”

  “Yeah, you probably should,” said Malcolm. “At the very least, the NHA will be able to help protect your grandparents from them if they know.”

  “Right,” I said. “But I don’t know where my grandparents are going to hide, so even if I told the NHA, they wouldn’t be able to find them. Maybe I’ll just keep it to myself for now.”

  “Do whatever you need to do, man,” said Malcolm. “But anyway, did your grandpa say anything about your new lightning powers? Help you understand them at all?”

  I shook my head. “No. I didn’t even get a chance to mention that to him. He was in a real hurry to leave after Twinfist attacked, because he thought that Echo would send someone else after him now that she knows where he lives.”

  “What about Professor Hernandez?” said Malcolm. “Has he helped you understand where your new powers came from?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t spoken to him much since the funeral. He told me that he was studying the scans of my brain I’d allowed him to have to see if he could detect any differences, but he says it will take him a while to see if he can figure it out. I’m not really holding my breath, though, because even Professor Hernandez doesn’t perfectly understand the superhuman brain.”

  “Darn,” said Malcolm. “But hey, it’s cool that you got new powers anyway. I mean, you can shoot red lightning! Your superhero name has never been more fitting.”

  “Yeah, they’re pretty nice,” I said. “By the way, how has Tara been? I haven’t spoken to her since the funeral.”

  “She’s okay,” said Malcolm. “She was really shaken up after being kidnapped by Robert like that, but she’s back to her usual self now.”

  “Has she mentioned what she thinks about me being a superhero at all?” I said, remembering how Tara had learned of my secret identity last month.

  “Nope,” said Malcolm. “She’s barely even mentioned you. I’m not sure if she hates you now or if she was just too traumatized by the kidnapping to talk about you. Frankly, I haven’t even brought it up.”

  “I see,” I said. “Well, I’m glad to hear she’s back to normal, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” said Malcolm. “But hey, man, no need to worry. You know how Tara is. She may not be the biggest fan of superheroes, but she’s loyal to her friends. She probably still likes you. If she hasn’t talked about you, it’s probably because she’s still trying to recover from being kidnapped by Robert, you know?”

  “I know,” I said. “But thanks for the reassurance, Mal. I think I’ll call her up sometime and see how she is doing. She might be more willing to talk to me about it than you.”

  “Right,” said Malcolm. “But anyway, have you seen your Neo Ranks page? Your ranking has gone up to eight. I think it was your fight with Robert that knocked you up a bit, because you were a seven point one for the longest time there.”

  “An eight?” I said. “Huh, that is pretty amazing. That’s almost a ten.”

  “Yeah,” said Malcolm. “I bet that you’re going to—”

  Malcolm was suddenly interrupted by a loud alarm, the alarm that I recognized as being the alarm that went off whenever Mecha Knight had a mission for us.

  So I said to Malcolm, “That alarm is probably for me. We can talk again later, okay?”

  “Sure, Kev,” said Malcolm. “But just be safe out there, okay?”

  I nodded, said, “Okay,” and then turned off my watch.

  Although I didn’t want to, I rose from my bed and ran out of my room, though not before I made sure that Carl and Valerie would contact me if they managed to decrypt Dad’s files before my team and I got back from our mission.

  Chapter Six

  Picture this: You and your team are on the streets of New York City fighting a giant lizard man who apparently doesn’t believe in wearing shirts. Not only that, but the lizard man isn’t by himself; he’s got back up in the form of a small man with a brain twice as big as the average brain (coincidentally, his face is twice as ugly as the average face).

  That’s what my team and I found ourselves fighting not an hour after Mecha Knight gave us our mission. Though these two guys had fought superheroes like the Black Blur or Mr. Miner before, they were apparently considered weak enough now that Mecha Knight thought that we could handle them on our own.

  The lizard man was a guy called Hammond Krill or, as he called himself, Jawtooth. Apparently, he used to be a normal sewage worker before he was mutated by a vat of mutagen he found in the city’s sewers, which made him huge, ugly, and looking kind of like a crocodile walking on two feet with the proportions of a human. He didn’t wear any clothes aside from some ripped pants that had a hole in the back for his long tail, but he didn’t really need any because his skin was tough and he had claws capable of shredding human skin.

  As for the big brain guy, he was Stephen Yamato, or Intellect, apparently the son of Japanese immigrants. His powers, as I understood it, were similar to Dad’s; hyper intelligence, an ability to grasp complicated issues or subjects quickly and easily, and a talent for building his own gadgets and technology that was often pretty advanced. His problem was that, unlike Dad, he had no real physical ability to speak of and was confined mostly to either floating around on his own personal hover chair or using a personal mecha whenever he needed to fight on his own. He would have been a formidable foe if he hadn’t been so impatient and arrogant, which usually meant that he couldn’t make the kind of long-term plans that other villains at his intelligence level were capable of designing.

  As for why these two worked together, I’m not sure. Typically, they’ve been known to work separately, but I guess they must have decided to work together today. Maybe it was because they complemented each other pretty well; Jawtooth had sheer strength and toughness, while Intellect had the intelligence and knowledge necessary to put that strength to use.

  In any case, it didn’t really matter why they were working together. What mattered was stopping their diabolical plan, which was apparently your generic bank robbing scheme. It seemed like a pretty simple plan, especially given Intellect’s level of intelligence, but I guess they must need the money or something. New York’s an expensive place to live.

  Anyway, my team and I arrived on the streets of New York just as Jawtooth and Intellect left the bank in an attempt to get away. The police hadn’t even arrived yet, although I could hear their sirens in the distance as they attempted to get here in time. But we really didn’t need the help of the police; I figured that by the time the police got here, they’d be just in time to take these two off to jail.

  So I split the team into two to try to separate Jawtooth and Intellect. Stinger, Shell, and Talon went after Intellect, while Blizzard, Treehugger, and I went after Jawtooth.

  Jawtooth was massive, much taller and bigger than all three of us combined. He carried two huge sacks full of money over his shoulders, but when he saw us, he gr
owled and turned to fight us.

  “Jawtooth, what are you doing?” Intellect shouted, stopping in place in midair in his hover chair. “We’ve got the money, now we need to—”

  But Intellect was interrupted when Stinger flew at him and slammed into him, sending Intellect and his hover chair spinning away out of control. While Stinger, Shell, and Talon ran after Intellect to keep him away from Jawtooth, Blizzard, Treehugger, and I surrounded Jawtooth, giving him no way to escape.

  “Okay, Jawtooth,” I said, holding out my hands. “If you drop the money now and come with us quietly, I promise that we won’t hurt you.”

  “If you want the money so bad, why don’t you come and take it?” Jawtooth snapped.

  He hurled the sacks of money at me. The move was so unexpected that I could not move in time to dodge them. The sacks knocked me over, temporarily stunning me before I shoved them off and stood up.

  At the same time, Blizzard’s hands glowed and a strong gust of icy wind blew through, causing Jawtooth to shiver. But he didn’t stand still long enough for her to freeze him; he charged at her, moving much faster than I expected, and was going to get her if she didn’t move out of the way.

  So I zoomed over and grabbed Blizzard, pulling her out of the way just as Jawtooth jumped into the air and landed on the street where she had been standing mere moments before. Stopping a few hundred yards away from him, I let go of Blizzard and said, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but Jawtooth is still active,” said Blizzard, pointing at the supervillain, who was rising back to his feet and looking more pissed off than ever.

  “Not for long!” Treehugger suddenly shouted.

  She hurled a dozen small pods at Jawtooth, which Jawtooth didn’t dodge. The pods exploded against Jawtooth’s skin, but instead of blowing up in his face, they unleashed a ton of thick vines that immediately wrapped around Jawtooth’s body like snakes. Then they constricted, causing Jawtooth to cry out in surprise as he stumbled about trying to maintain his balance.

  “Good job, Treehugger!” I said, giving her the thumbs up. “What was that, anyway?”