Chapter Seven

  She looked over at me and bit her lip, “Can we talk?”

  I nodded, and she walked into an empty conference room and I followed her in. After a glance, I shut the door.

  We both sat down, and I could tell she felt uncomfortable and awkward.

  “I promise not to take offense.”

  She smiled, “Fine. Does this feel bloody awkward to you? Or is it just me.”

  I nodded slowly, “Yes, it’s completely new. A superhero team has never been formed this way before. There’s no history. Usually a team forms out of friendship, and trust, when two or three heroes fought together and after growing a trust and even a friendship. The way I see it, we have two choices.”

  She tilted her head, “Go on, I promise not to get offended.”

  I smiled at her throwing my own words back at me.

  “We can treat this like a job. Nine to five, keep a professional mien around us at all times. Some teams Gel in training, and that’s how they gain confidence in others watching their backs. The Police have the academy, the FBI Quantico, the military basic training. I think a lot of new hero teams are going to fit that mold, outside of New York, Lonestar, and the other cities who just hired ready-made teams out there. Still, those are the very last ones that will be that way, their replacements will be relative strangers.”

  She nodded, but wrinkled her nose, which was not only adorably cute, but I was also glad to see that option didn’t really appeal to her at all.

  “The second option is,” I waved my hand indicating the building, “to not treat this all like a job at all. I’d like to form friendships with all of you, and stronger ties than mere training and a professional bearing along with discipline, but I also don’t want to be presumptuous. We’d all need to agree to try to get to know each other better. I already know you’ll have my back, I trust that much, and I already admire you.”

  She sighed, “Everyone does.”

  She’d sounded almost depressed about it.

  I laughed, “I wasn’t talking about your power, Alyssa. I was talking about the fact that you put on that ridiculously revealing outfit and go out and save lives in it, because you feel the calling to be a superheroine, and that outfit is the best way to be able to afford to do what we do. Still, that kind of thing still might not work, we’re not guaranteed to be friends. Even if we try to take that route, at the very least we should be able to respect each other as collogues. Although I can’t imagine I’m that annoying.”

  She laughed, and bit her lip, “Did you mean that? About my power I mean.”

  I nodded, “Yes. Power is easy, it was handed to both of us, I admire your ethic. It’s what we do with power that matters, and I don’t think you, me, or the others would disagree with that. Otherwise we wouldn’t be putting up with this government bullshit, just so we could continue saving people.”

  Alyssa chuckled, “True. I would… like that too, I think you’re right. I’m not sure how to act around you yet, but we both need to open up for that to work. It’s a bigger personal risk.”

  I shrugged, “Try being yourself, I’m hard to offend, and I try my best not to be offensive.”

  She nodded, “A friendship risks betrayal, not as much as a romantic relationship, but it’s there.”

  Oh, hell. She must be thinking about her best friend in high school. Or at least, her used to be best friend before the bitch had outed Alyssa to the whole world. Still, at least she was being open about being afraid to be open and show me her true self, which I could reject or betray. If that makes sense.

  “Got it, but we have time, it won’t all happen at once, the point is agreeing where we want it to go and that it’s okay that it’s awkward for the moment. In the meantime, what we can do is patrol together separately. Just be two heroes that happen upon a problem. Obviously, if you run into a supervillain during your patrol, I’d be honor bound to join you for the confrontation. Just like any other time heroes randomly fight together.”

  She laughed, “You’re a bit goofy,” she accused.

  And she had a pretty tinkling laugh, that I hoped to hear often, but I wasn’t going to say that. I was also trying not to get sucked in by her ethereal beauty and obvious vulnerability, but for some guys that was like waving a red flag at bull, and I was one of them. I steeled my heart, it’d be too easy to fall for her, and that would be a huge mistake. I just wanted friendship, and an easy relationship with my team.

  Point was, I didn’t want being a hero to feel like a job. I didn’t want the other heroes to be just co-workers that swapped meaningless words at the water cooler, that’d suck all the fun out of it. As it was, I had no hope of anything better than that for the human employees including our boss, but what we did among the superhero team was ours to decide and forge.

  But I couldn’t do it alone.

  I nodded easily, “I’m a science geek turned enchanter, and I wear an armored suit instead of jewelry, mostly because jewelry is girly, and armored suits are cool. You know I didn’t pop until last year, when the ship lost containment and doubled the amount of meta-energy inside the core of our planet.”

  She bit her lip, “I went at sixteen. You don’t look like a geek, did your body change?”

  I shook my head, “Actually, no, it didn’t. I always looked like this. I might still be a geek, it’s a state of mind.”

  She snorted, but I could tell she was suppressing a grin.

  “Still awkward, but strangely I feel better about it. I hadn’t really put it into words before, and you explained that whole teamwork thing well with the two approaches. No promises, but I think I’d very much want to get to know you better.”

  “How about you, anything change?”

  She shrugged, “My complexion cleared up, but that’s about it, everything else is the same. Of course, with my powerset I can be whatever and whoever I want, but I don’t do that outside of my eyes and hair in my super identity.”

  Well that made sense, she was just about perfect.

  I nodded, “I don’t do that either. But then I wear a tin can.”

  She giggled, “You ready to patrol for the first time? I’m too keyed up for a workout, though we should probably do that too, in the morning? Crap, am I being clingy, we don’t have to work out together, or we…” she trailed off as I held my hand up. She was even more nervous than I thought, perhaps that energy she was talking about, being keyed up I mean.

  “I’d love to work out with you in the mornings, and just about everything else when it comes to our… calling. It makes sense to spend as much time together as partners as we can, to help us get to know each other. But if it gets to be too much, just shoo me away.”

  She grinned, “Shoo?”

  I nodded faux wisely, “And I shall do the same. I really don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

  She looked at me dubiously.

  I laughed, “Are you really that bad? Do you fart when you work out or something?”

  She snorted, looked scandalized, and let out a giggle all at the same time. Then she looked mortified and covered her mouth, probably at the giggle-snort, which really wasn’t attractive. Not that I cared.

  “No, nothing like that. Just, if I don’t give you enough space tell me. I’m… excited, I’ve never met a hero like you before.”

  I nodded, and then risked a wink.

  “We’re there, just hard to spot, amongst all the arrogant asses and womanizers.”

  She snickered, “Fine. Let’s go on patrol, but I think I should rescue you, when your patrol runs into something.”

  I grinned, “My hero.”

  She giggled.

  Yeah okay, I probably was a bit goofy, at least my humor, but the laughs were worth it, and it was a good ice breaker.

  We got up, and I activated my quick-change amulet.

  Not to be outdone, she murmured a few phrases in Latin, and transformed in front of me into the White Witch. Her gray storm cloud eyes were impossible to read, but her face more than made up for it, she was very expressive. She wasn’t totally comfortable, but I’d managed to put a few of her fears to rest, and even some of my own.

  The hard part wouldn’t be liking her and making friends, the hard part would be in not liking her too much. She may have been the most powerful meta on the planet, but she was also humble about it. I suspected she felt like she hadn’t earned all the accolades she’d gotten, which had pushed her the other way. Or something. I supposed time would tell, and even if we were friends, women were a mystery, I doubted I’d ever truly understand her. Not completely anyway.

  She said, “I guess we need to stop by Penny’s office, log out on patrol.”

  I nodded, “Good point, this is going to take some getting used to. You also lead. Like the boss said, I know almost nothing about the city, even if I have maps and stuff.”

  She smiled, “Fair enough. I grew up here, Red Siren’s only been here for a year.”

  We left the conference room, and we headed down to Jenna’s office.

  Jenna was as bubbly as usual as she checked us out on patrol, and she gave us ear pieces, so we could communicate in low tones with each other and the office in case we needed help. The earpieces were constantly on, and for the moment that was just between the three of us, me, Alyssa, and Jenna, but we could be patched in from Jenna’s end with other ear pieces if we needed to call in assistance.

  They also came with a charging case, so we could carry it around when we were off duty, and just charge the case at night.

  All of which was both cool… and really put a crimp in my get to know Alyssa better during patrol plan. That was just as well, when we were working, I supposed we should stay focused, we’d have to get to know each other better at meals, workouts, and just hanging out.

  New friendships were awkward enough without our dispatcher hearing us going through the first measures of it. A glance at Alyssa told me she realized the same thing, and to my delight she looked disappointed by it.

  We headed out back, and after she cast a couple of spells for both for shields and flight, we took off into the sky.

  Silver City had the one main strip, but that was hardly the only place to find sin. There were smaller gambling places, a casino or two, and of course other things to be had for an exchange of money. That wasn’t nearly the extent of the city, there were bars and restaurants elsewhere, and of course high-rise buildings and just the normal part of the city. Past that were some suburbs, the airport, and of course the whole thing was surrounded by the Nevada desert.

  We took a slow weaving route through all of it save the suburbs, which was about a hundred and twenty square miles of space. When I say slow, I mean slow enough to get seen and noticed, and then properly gawked at as we flew by. It was shortly obvious to me that the White Witch was one of the headline attractions in the city. I got pointed at as well, but in a who the hell is that flying with our angel kind of way.

  That was a lot of pressure, for a woman that just turned legal.

  She sighed, “Normally during a patrol I’d land at least once, to sign an autograph, or just say hi to a kid to make their day. Especially on a slow day, all the supervillains are probably still sleeping off their hangovers.”

  I think I understood what she meant, we’d just flown over a grade school and the kids out on recess had gone a bit crazy.

  Jenna chimed in, “I’m sure that’ll be fine, but you should wait for Dane to go over approved practices.”

  Right, the press liaison, that wouldn’t be arriving for a couple of days.

  “What’s the hold up on that?”

  Jenna replied, “Red tape. They’re all in Washington in a training seminar, so they know what to tell us. All the locations should be getting their liaisons in two days.”

  I laughed, that made sense, sort of. Government efficiency at its best. I was sure that was a comfort for all the people that wanted to meet us, not.

  White Witch tilted her head, “Did you hear that?”

  I said, “Hear what?”

  She replied, “It’s getting louder, we’ll be there soon.”

  I listened carefully, turning up the gain on my sound pickups. My suit was airtight, both vision and hearing were functions of enchantment. That made it fairly easy to both zoom in vision, or to use the enchantment as a rifle mike of sorts.

  “You mean those guys calling us sell-outs, government stooges, and cowardly betrayers?”

  The White Witch smirked over at me, “Yes, that.”

  “Nope,” I teased.

  She giggled.

  I sighed, as we got closer. They weren’t just normal citizens.

  “Be alert, our new admirers are supers. Probably all those heroes that got kicked yesterday, or you know, some of them.”

  They came into view on a fairly typical city street, there was a Deli and corner store, donut shop, and other places along the street. The traffic was light, but there was some of that. Still, it seemed an odd place for a demonstration, there were no government buildings around that I could see, and it wasn’t anywhere near the strip where they might expect the press to show up.

  There were about thirty of them, and my shoulder blades started to itch as the rest of them of came into range.

  “This doesn’t feel right, why here?”

  I zoomed in, and I took some pictures of their faces from two blocks away. The enchantment was connected to my cell phone, which is how Rose was getting on the net I imagined. If they were peaceful, I wouldn’t share the pictures, but if things went south it would be handy to have.

  White Witch replied, “They’d know my patrol route, we’ve been out here for about an hour. Long enough for word to spread, and for them to coordinate and get in our path.”

  “Yeah. A lot of heroes are angry since the government took away their right to hero work, and fame.”

  I left off the part about fast hot women and cash, which was probably the real reason they were pissed. An out of work hero would lose all their branding contracts, and it’s hard to pick up groupies if wearing a suit and mask is illegal outside of the city’s official super team. They’d have to get real jobs, or something.

  On the other hand, the whole sellout outcry was bullshit, they’d all been there too, and were just angry they didn’t get the job. It was the government they were mad at, not us, but I supposed we were the easily visible thing to hate.

  I dodged to the side and a fireball flew past, then I got hit with a blast of lightning, that coruscated brightly around my suit’s shields. Crap, this wasn’t good, there were thirty of them. No one else fired as we slowed and approached even more warily, none of them were in super suits, just plain clothes. Several normal humans were running for cover.

  “Traitors to the cause! Get them!” one of them screamed.

  I said, “Jenna, we might need backup.”

  I dodged another fire blast, the following lightning blast as well, but got hit by some kind of sonic attack. It looked like the first two shots were just to get the bystanders off the street, at least these assholes were still heroes to that extent.

  Then one of them blew up a car, maybe not.

  White Witch said, “Make that definitely.”

  About two thirds of them rose up into the air with nasty grins. All of them were A-class, four of the twenty being energy, the ten left on the ground were B-class.

  “Traitors to the cause,” one said, “Let’s see if they can work for the backstabbing government from the hospital.”

  Oh, hell no.

  Then all hell broke loose. Not just up in the sky. On the ground the ten B-class ex heroes started to destroy the street. Parked cars were smashed, windows broken, store robberies, and all kinds of mischief.

  Not that there was anything we could do about it, I was tough, but I’d never taken on twenty A-class supers before. We had no choice but to ignore the B-class havoc below, and to protect our own lives from the attacking A-classes. I felt like a target in a video game, as I flew around randomly trying to avoid being attacked. Ironically, it was the chaos that kept me from being overwhelmed, it was impossible for more than three of the ex-heroes to come at me at one time, without getting in each other’s way.

  White Witch just hovered in one place, and completely ignored everything hitting her shields as she casted her spell.

  I dodged one coming straight at me, only to be slammed into from above. My suite and I rocketed at the ground, but my enchantments stabilized me right before I hit. I rotated so I faced up, and I raised my gauntlet. I fired off my rail gun, and one of the ex-heroes was slammed about twenty feet up in the sky. I checked the reading, and then fired two more times and followed up with a cuff spell.

  Which may have been the wrong thing to do, because all the others roared in rage as their buddy fell for the ground with his legs stuck together and his wrists stuck together behind his back.

  One of the others caught him, and then rocketed out of the fight. I tried to catch him before he could go far, but I was intercepted and slammed into the ground by a huge guy with short hair wearing jeans and a t-shirt, not to mention a manic grin.

  He reached down for my helmet, and I let him have it with my electrical attack. It stunned him long enough for me to jet out from underneath him, only to be kicked in the side as I tried to gain altitude. I went flying to the side, and then I was slammed down by another ex-hero, and my armor dug into the concrete and sent a plume of dust up.

  To add insult to injury, I was blasted by fire, lightning, and that sonic attack again. My shields drained my meta-energy to keep me safe, and my inertial dampening and flight systems were already working overtime to counter physical blows.

  At that point I was getting a bit worried, what the hell kind of spell was she casting anyway? Granted, it’d only been about twenty seconds since the fight started.

  I gave her a quick glance, she hadn’t moved an inch, even as several of the ex-heroes were pummeling her shields. On the good side, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about my partner anytime soon, nothing could touch her, and she still had a nuclear reactor’s worth of energy inside of her.

  One of them tried to stomp my helmet, and I grabbed his foot, kicked up, and used my flight systems to flip me.