Omega Superhero 1: Caped Read online

  I did it! I thought. I shook like a leaf, a combination of relief and excitement. Unless everything I had been taught about the afterlife was a complete lie, I had not died. And, I was flying. Well, not exactly flying. Floating, really. Baby steps. Step one: Don’t die. Step two: Float. Step three: Fly. I was over halfway there. Sweet.

  Okay, I had mastered floating. Now to actually move through the air. Maybe it was like swimming. I starting stroking my arms through the air, simultaneously scissoring my legs. I did move a bit, but I would hardly call it flying. More like an air crawl.

  I stopped flailing my arms and legs, feeling and no doubt looking like a fool. God, I was an idiot. Had I already forgotten what Amazing Man had taught me? Visualize what you want to have happen, concentrate, and then will it to happen, I thought.

  I craned my neck up, trying to get my bearings. Off in the distance was a line of densely packed trees. It was the forest that bounded the southern edge of Mr. Gonzalez’s property. I would try to fly in that direction. I formed a picture in my mind of me zooming towards the forest. I concentrated on the image, willing my powers to make it a reality. My hands burned intensely.

  Suddenly, like a bullet shot out of a gun, I rocketed towards the tree line. The wind burned at my eyes, making me squint. I pressed my legs together and my arms to the side of my body to cut down on the wind resistance. I skimmed over the cornstalks like a rock skipping over the surface of a pond. The line of trees rapidly approached, getting bigger, as if I was zooming in on it with a telescope. This was fun. Flying was easy. Being able to do it almost made it worth it to be a Meta—

  Ow! Something hit my cheek, right under my left eye. Startled and in pain, I willed myself to slow to a halt. Soon I once again floated motionless above the cornstalks. I reached up to touch my aching cheek. My hand came away bloody. Something was in the blood on my hand. I looked at it closely. It was part of a shell of a large beetle, plus bits of beetle legs. I had obviously hit a beetle as I had flown. My cheek hurt as if I had been stabbed. My high school physics again came to the rescue, telling me what had happened. Force equaled mass times acceleration. I did not know how fast I had been flying, but I had been going really fast, fast enough to have traveled almost the entire length of Mr. Gonzalez’s huge cornfield in just a few seconds. That rate of acceleration plus my mass equaled a heck of a lot of force when I had hit that beetle. An inch or so higher, and the beetle would have hit my eye instead. If that had happened, I could kiss my eye goodbye. Goodbye eye, hello eyepatch. Did girls like the pirate look? Doubtful. I had enough problems attracting them as it was. I had really dodged a bullet—uh, beetle. What if I had hit something bigger than a bug, like a bird? I would not have gotten off lightly with just a bloody cheek.

  I started to shake a little as I realized how close I had just come to seriously hurting myself. Surely there was a way to avoid stuff like that happening. I chewed on my lower lip as I thought. I had the power to move things around. Could I repel them, too? Maybe set up a field around myself where things would bounce off of them?

  I pictured what I wanted to do in my mind, concentrated, and willed it to happen. After a few seconds, I noticed the cornstalks below me swam a little in my vision, as if I was seeing them through a slightly cloudy lens. I glanced around at my body. The same waves that emanated from my hands now emanated from my entire body, forming a shield around me. Would it act to repel things as I had pictured? I willed my floating body to drop down slowly. When the cornstalks came into contact with the field around my body, they bent, not going through the field to touch me. It looked like it was working.

  Encouraged, I lifted back up again so I was floating slightly above the corn. Setting my sights again on the forest ahead of me, I took off towards it, careful to maintain the repulsion field I had set up around myself. I actually saw things bouncing off of my field as I rocketed towards the trees again.

  In seconds, I was past the corn and at the edge of the woods. I slowed to a halt. Concentrating mightily, I lowered myself to the ground, twisting in the air to try to touch down feetfirst. I shut off my powers and touched down on the ground. I stumbled a bit. I had made the mistake of not quite being on the ground before I shut off my powers. My arms windmilled. I regained my balance and caught myself before falling.

  I grinned. I did it! I flew. Yeah, maybe I had not stuck the landing, but I bet the Wright brothers did not the first time they flew either.

  “Not bad Theodore. Not bad at all,” a voice said. “The force field was a nice touch. Unexpected, but good.”

  I spun around, startled. Amazing Man was behind me, leaning against a tree. My jaw dropped. That had been happening a lot lately.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “Same as you. I flew.”

  “I mean, how’d you get here so fast without me seeing you?”

  Amazing Man shrugged. “I’m a Hero,” he said, as if that explained everything. The flush of my excitement about flying abruptly wore off. I remembered why I had needed to fly.

  “What’s the big idea, throwing me into the air like that?” I demanded, angry. “You could have killed me.”

  “Could have.” Amazing Man shrugged again. “Didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you come save me?” The fact he was completely unapologetic made me even madder.

  “I’ll say it again: you’re an Omega-level Metahuman. If you were not capable of saving yourself, might as well find that out now.”

  “But, but—” I didn’t know what to say. I was madder than a wet hornet. If Amazing Man had not been so much bigger and older than I and a Hero to boot, I might have taken a swipe at him. He had scared me to death. Nearly literally.

  Amazing Man stood up straight. “Let’s fly back to where we left the potatoes,” he said. “I’m no expert, but I’m guessing leaving them out in this hot sun is not good for them.” He soundlessly rose into the air. His cape flapped a bit in the breeze. He looked down at me. “You coming, or are you going to stay here and sulk?” Honestly, I wanted to stay and sulk, but I hardly could say that. It would make me seem like a petulant child. Besides, he had a point about the potatoes. Being scorched by the sun would ruin them. I triggered my powers, rising to join Amazing Man in the air. It was easier to do it now. Practice makes perfect.

  Amazing Man and I flew back to the potato field. The buckets full of potatoes needed to go into Dad’s storage building. That cinder block building was on top of the hill, directly behind our mobile home. Since the full buckets were so heavy, I normally could carry only one bucket at a time up the steep hill. By myself, it would have taken me several trips to haul all the buckets up to the storage shed.

  Amazing Man and I did it in one trip. He toted multiple buckets in each hand as if they were full of feathers instead of heavy potatoes. I floated the remaining four buckets in front of me using my powers as I walked. Using my powers was beginning to feel natural. If I could not figure out what else to do with my life, I could always rent my services out as a human forklift.

  I arranged the buckets in the storage shed using my powers, putting the potatoes which would be sold in the back and the ones that would be either given away or fed to my uncle’s pigs in the front. Amazing Man watched me do all this. Thanks to my powers, it did not take long. Amazing Man clapped his hands together once I was through.

  “Well, now that that’s finished, let’s go,” he said.

  “Go?” I asked, puzzled. “Go where?”

  Amazing Man looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.

  “Go where?” he repeated incredulously, obviously puzzled himself. “Go teach you how to be a Hero, of course.” Frown lines sprouted between his eyes. He craned his neck down and looked at me in the face more closely. “Are you quite sure your brain works all right?”

  CHAPTER 8

  “But I don’t want to be a Hero,” I protested.

  Amazing Man still seemed puzzled by my reaction. “What does what you want have to do with anythin
g?”

  “Since I’m the one who would have to learn to be a Hero, what I want has everything to do with it.” I resisted the urge to stomp my foot. I could not believe I was talking to a living legend this way, but frankly I was still annoyed at him for throwing me into what had felt like orbit and letting me almost break my neck.

  “Don’t you understand that people like you—people like us—have a responsibility to the wider world? You should use your powers to help other people. To do that, you need to be trained. If you don’t, you’re letting your once in a generation powers go to waste. With great—”

  “If you say ‘with great power comes great responsibility,’ I think I’ll throw up. That’s the biggest superhero cliché ever.” I shook my head, thinking of what had happened with John Shockey and the Three Horsemen. “The last time I stuck my neck out to help somebody, I got abandoned by that somebody, suspended from school, and threatened with a lawsuit. You’re going to have to find someone else stupid enough to help protect people. I’ve got my hands full helping myself.”

  “Does your father have guns?” Amazing Man asked.

  “What?” I was confused by the abrupt change in subject. Did Amazing Man think he could make me be a Hero by threatening me with one of Dad’s guns? “Yes. A few.”

  “Living out in the country as you all do, I would’ve been shocked if he did not. Does he know how to use them?”

  “Of course. It would be silly to have guns around and not know how to use them. I know how to use them too. Dad taught me when I was little. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s the same thing with you and your powers. Your powers are a loaded gun. You need to know how to use them, even if you have no intention of ever using them again once you learn. To learn to use them responsibly you have to become a licensed Hero. A responsible gun owner does not want to ever shoot someone, but he has to know how to do it. If he doesn’t know how to use his gun appropriately, he’s a danger to himself and everyone around him. The same is true of you. You have to learn to use your powers not only for your own safety, but for the safety of the rest of us. You are an Omega-level Meta. Letting you walk around untrained is like letting a toddler walk around with a loaded gun with the safety off.” I thought of the Three Horsemen and how I had tossed them around and hurt them without even meaning to. I shook my head, trying to clear the thought from it.

  “A gun is only dangerous if you pull the trigger,” I said. “Yeah, it was pretty cool pulling up all these potatoes with my powers and learning to fly, but I have no intention of using my powers in the future. I’m not dangerous to myself or to anyone else.”

  “Your mere existence poses a danger. Aside from you, there are only three known living Omegas. One is a Hero. Another is a supervillain and in a federal penitentiary. The third is in a self-induced coma and has been for over half a century. If I could find out that you are an Omega, others will as well. You can’t keep something that big a secret. To continue with my gun analogy, you and the other Omegas are the only loaded guns in existence. One such gun, being a licensed Hero, is on the side of the good guys. The other two are out of the commission. That leaves you. Do you really think the people who crave power—and there are lots of them—will leave the sole remaining gun in the world alone? No. They are either going to try to use it for their own purposes or destroy it so no one else can. That’s why Avatar was murdered a few months ago—someone wanted him out of the picture, to keep him from thwarting their plans. If they try to do the same thing to you, you have to be ready to defend yourself and the people you care about.”

  My blood curdled at his words. Destroy me? Yikes! Amazing Man was trying to frighten me. It was working.

  “You’re just trying to scare me into doing what you want me to do,” I accused him. “No one cares about me. I’m just a—” I hesitated, almost calling myself a kid. Seventeen was hardly a kid, though I often still felt like one. “I’m just a nobody who lives on a farm.”

  “If no one cares about you, why am I standing in the hot sun sweating my balls off arguing with you?” Amazing Man’s lips tightened grimly. “Yes I am trying to scare you. You should be scared. It’s a big scary world out there with a lot of big scary people. They’re not going to just sit around twiddling their thumbs while you’re down here digging potatoes with your head up your ass.”

  “The fact that it’s a big scary world is why I have no interest in becoming a Hero. Avatar was a Hero. Look what happened to him.” I paused. In his own way, Amazing Man was as much of a bully as the Three Horsemen were. He was trying to push me around. “Am I correct in believing you can’t force someone be a Hero?”

  Amazing Man sighed. “Of course not. If someone trains to become a Hero, it has to be something he undertakes voluntarily.”

  “Well I’m not volunteering. I know what it’s like to be a Hero. I watch the news. I follow your adventures. Heroes get hurt and killed all the time. Being a Hero is like painting a big fat bull’s-eye on your chest and inviting the world to take potshots. You’ll have to find some other patsy because you’re barking up the wrong tree here. I’m not going to become a Hero and I’m not going to start training to become one.” I folded my arms, feeling stubborn, my mind made up. “And you can’t make me.” I immediately regretted my last words. I realized how childish they made me sound. I meant them though. Yes, I wanted to do more with my life than continue the family tradition and become a farmer. That did not mean I wanted to become a Hero. There were far safer and less scary things I could do with my life. I would do one of them. Mom had already died far sooner than she should have. I had no interest in following in her footsteps by undertaking something that was liable to get me killed.

  Amazing Man examined my face carefully. I did not flinch away from his gaze. After a while, he sighed.

  “Your mind is made up then?” It was as much of a statement as it was a question.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. Amazing Man shook his head.

  “I hope you change your mind before it’s too late. If you do, get into touch with me again. Just call the Heroes’ Guild National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Tell them your name and that you want to talk to me. Those of us on the Executive Committee of the Guild rotate running Hero Academy, and this year I’m in charge of it. I’ll see that you’re enrolled in the Academy so you can begin the training process.”

  “I won’t be getting in touch with you,” I said, feeling more sure of myself now that it was clear Amazing Man was going to leave me alone. “I’m not going to change my mind about becoming a Hero. I’m not going to use my powers. I won’t need to.”

  As I soon discovered, it turned out that I was wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  CHAPTER 9

  I soared high in the sky, feeling as free as a bird. There were no birds awake this time of night, though. Well owls, maybe.

  It was close to midnight, almost a week after Amazing Man had paid me a visit. With each passing day, the fact I had met him seemed like a dream, like it had not been real. The fact I now knew how to fly was real enough, though. Even though I knew it was illegal to do so, I had gone flying every night since I had met Amazing Man. Flying was fun. It gave me a feeling of freedom, a feeling of there being no limits, that I had never felt before. I always did it at night so I would not be spotted. I also waiting until Dad went to bed before I did it. He went to bed early, usually around 9 p.m., so waiting until he was asleep before I left the house to go flying was not hard to do. He would not have approved of me illegally using my powers. Honestly, I felt a little guilty about doing it, especially since I had insisted to Amazing Man that I would not. But, it seemed like a victimless crime. Who was I hurting? It was not as though I was using my powers to rob banks or something. I was just using them to go for joyrides. Uh, joy-flies.

  I had learned more about my powers in the nights I had spent flying. I had discovered that the force field I formed around myself while flying to avoid hitting debris did not allo
w air in. I found that out the first night I went flying. After flying over a large stretch of countryside high up in the sky, I had felt faint. I had nearly passed out and plummeted to the ground before it occurred to me what the issue was. The incident had taught me that Amazing Man was right about one thing: using my powers without being properly trained was dangerous. I had then figured out how to make my force field permeable enough to allow enough air in to let me breathe, but still have it solid enough to repel anything that might hurt me. I was quite proud I had figured that out all on my own. Who needed some dumb Hero Academy when you had good old common sense and trial and error?

  It was a beautiful cloudless night. The moon was full and bright, making it easy for me to see. A sea of stars twinkled down at me. I was tempted to fly up as high as I could to see them even more clearly. Caution stopped me. How high up could I go before there was not enough oxygen to breathe? Also, if I rose high enough, would the world keep spinning independently of me, putting me in the middle of Europe when I came back down from my stargazing session? I didn’t know. Maybe they were stupid questions. Since I didn’t know, better safe than sorry. I felt like my science classes should have addressed issues like that at some point. Then again, my teachers probably never thought one of their students would be able to one day fly around like a Learjet without the Learjet. Maybe they addressed issues like that at Hero Academy. Risking my neck to train to become a Hero did not seem worth it to satisfy my idle curiosity.

  There was a slight chill in the air, especially as high up as I was, so I had on a light sweater in addition to my jeans and tee shirt. I was miles away from the house, but I was up high enough to make out the two utility lights that shone over Dad’s storage building. Out here in the country, there was not much in the way of artificial lights. I used the two lights to keep my bearings and to not get lost by flying too far from the house.