The City That Heroes Built Read online

  Many believe that trade names and aliases for supras was influenced by the call signs of Naval Aviators, but it is more likely that heroes were influenced by comic books.

  Wiki Entry: New Powers

  The New Powers were a teenaged gero group based in Santa Maria. They were founded by Valor and first became active in late 2014. The team disbanded in 2017 following the deaths of several members.

  Valor was well over six feet tall, super strong, and could fly. Many thought of him as a younger version of Sentinel. His had an all-American look and was well known for his bravery in combat, always leading the charge. In times of crisis, like the Great Quake, he could rally people, get them working, helping. He had a strong presence. He wore silver, with black boots and gloves, and a black mask. From time to time, and before putting the team together, he would operate on his own.

  Apparition could disperse her molecules, become a sort of living cloud to pass through objects and distract opponents. No known offensive power. Team player. She was never active outside of the New Powers. Her death in 2017 was a catalyst for the end of the team. Real name Elizabeth Harrow.

  Screamingo was best known for his shrieking sound when flying. He's been heard over a mile away. When the New Powers were in a fight, the shriek would trend on social media. His flight seemed to provide him with a force field or similar protection. When unable to collide with an enemy, Screamingo fought hand-to-hand. His preferred method was collision, which did not seem to hurt him. Presumed dead after a collision with Firefly of the Guard.

  Thirteen was likely a mentalist. She took no visible action in combat. Could fly. Wore black clothes as her costume. When she left the New Powers to join the Guard, she changed her name to Lady Thirteen. Missing since the Guard ceased being active.

  Rebel was a martial artist. Could run about 40 mph. Wore a red costume with red Converse. Presumed to have died in an explosion similar to the one that killed Valor.

  Sloppy Toaster. Free Fry Zone, Singe Element, Helmet Fire redirect here. Changed his name continuously. Heavily involved in Social Media, active on Twitter. When a follower asked about his name, he said all the good names for pyrokinetics were taken, so he would take all the bad names. Presumed dead. His social media accounts remain unused since the death of Apparition.

  Virtuoso was a jack-of-all-trades: sniper, kung fu master, paramedic, driver. The most flexible member of the New Powers. Least likely to be seen in a fight. She may have had a sort of mission specific support role for each encounter, it seemed. She wore purple. Unseen since the disbanding of the team. Presumed alive. Inactive.

  The New Powers formed in 2014. They regularly battled against Sunshine Bunch. They are perhaps best known for working with the Guard to stop the Midas and his Titans in February 2015.

  The end of the New Powers happened in 2017. Apparition died fighting the Sunshine Bunch. Valor flew her to a hospital, and the New Powers followed. Later, that day Valor attacked Lady Thirteen. Her new teammates on The Guard protected her. The day after that a series of bombs exploded simultaneously in a pair of apartments. One of those belonged to Valor, the other was rented under an alias and the individual in the apartment wasn't identified. Presumed to be Rebel. A few days later, Valor was killed by a group of villains for hire called The Haunting. The remaining heroes in the group ceased activity.

  June 1, 2021

  I woke up to all hell breaking loose in the forum. Someone outed Skyborne and the Santa Maria Leader published his true identity as Mathew Weall. Skyborne was a young African-American hero who began working with his partner Slowburn in early 2018. Skyborne was the level-headed part of the partnership, and pretty well loved. He worked with Free Force for a while, but they didn't keep up the pace that he and Slowburn did. They seemed to be involved in some activity nearly every day for a stretch, clashing with supra and non-supra criminals. In the course of their heroics, they were responsible for a good deal of collateral damage.

  Just a month ago, the Santa Maria Leader received information that revealed to them the true identity of Skyborne. In their pursuit of this feature piece on the life of a super hero behind the mask, they ambushed his mother, asking what she thought of her son being a vigilante. They dug up some of the records regarding his father who'd had a major stroke and was mostly paralyzed, even looked into some of the finances of the family, where occasionally large sums of cash would be turned up with no records of where they came from. The Leader's reporter painted a portrait of Weall as a thrill-seeking vigilante whose lust for violence and action caused his family to suffer. The reporter even had his records from a brief stay in the military before he had dropped out of boot camp.

  This naturally spun up the forum, and conversations went every direction: the accuracy of the article and the revelations, the impact this would have on the safety of the reporter and editors, and of course, who among us had delivered the information.

  I had a message from Jen when I logged on: I need to talk to you.

  Not the message I was hoping for, to be honest. I replied, Okay.

  Someone else had accused Nigel in the forum, along with accusing him of being racist, along with a whole series of old posts Nigel made over the years badmouthing Skyborne. Things exploded in Internet drama, posts were deleted, threats made, accounts suspended and people banned. That was before I logged on, which was really just to read Jen's posts from the last couple of days, something I do not consider to be stalker behavior, but merely curiosity.

  I contributed to the conversations by posted Internet drama memes, and pictures of wide-eyed emojis eating popcorn. Jen messaged me: You busy?

  I'm searching the internet for dramatic internet memes.

  Is that a no?

  Well, it's a yes, I am busy, but I'm not busy with anything important.

  I'm coming over.

  Okay.

  She came over, rattled.

  “I think Nigel sold out Skyborne,” she said.

  “Because he's a racist?”

  “Because he runs the site and Matt was on it.”

  “Matt, Matthew Weall, Skyborne? That Matt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We're friends sort of. Look, I know a lot of people on that site and people always talk to me because I'm a girl. I know, like, everyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, Matt and I were messaging all the time, and Nigel mentioned it one time, like I'm not sure if he was guessing that we were messaging, or he'd been reading the messages. He was sort of creeping on me at the time, it was weird, anyway, he could have been reading Matt's messages and found something out.”

  “Did you know he was Skyborne?”

  “Not until this morning.”

  “Seems rather careless to put out any kind of identifying information on a site run by people who collect information on supras.”

  “Yeah, but it could have been a lot of little snippets that you wouldn't think anything of one at a time. The guy that runs the site, though, he would be able to put two and two together.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “You seem overly alarmed.”

  “I traded a lot of private messages with people on there. If Nigel has access to all of those no big deal, but everyone else's messages? What about other stuff, like IP addresses? Matt logged on from my Wi-Fi before, what if that goes out? What if the info on the rest of us goes out, and some supra decides to stomp on us just out of paranoia, or even because sometimes people make pretty good deductions. Remember when Amy8cats predicted the Big Blue Meanie's next bank robbery? A ton of us could be in danger.”

  “I'm not sure if that's paranoia or not. Should I close my account?” I asked.

  “I already did,” she said. “I mean, I closed yours. And mine, and everyone else's. I had a program ready to go for a while, I archived everything this morning, and then wiped the whole forum. It's probably still happening right now, actually. I sent it when I was walking out of my apartment.”

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sp; “Nigel is going to be pissed,” I said.

  “He's not going to know. I figured I'd tell you in case you needed any old posts or anything. Also, because I'd be cutting you off from everyone on there, so I have the emails their accounts are linked to, and IP histories.”

  “So Nigel had all of that stuff, too?”

  “Yeah. We'll see how good his anti-virus protection is. I had to go after his whole hard drive.”

  “That's a hell of a thing to do if you're wrong.”

  “He's a creepy douchebag, anyway.”

  “I guess,” I said. I interrupted the awkward pause that followed with, “Beer?”

  “It's just going to get warm,” Jen said.

  About an hour later I got her a cold beer. She tapped her bottle against mine.

  “To supras with secrets,” she said.

  “To supras with secrets.”

  “I think we need to get Mike in on this.”

  “By “this” you mean…”

  “Not this,” she pointed back and forth between her and me. “This,” she made circles with finger in the air. “The whole Nigel thing.”

  “Yeah, he's pretty cool, I wouldn't want to leave him hanging.”

  “Plus, he knows a lot of stuff. Way more than he posts about.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, you can tell. He phrases things carefully when people are way off on some crazy theory. And he's deleted a couple of crazy rants, when he does go off.”

  She fired off some texts while I picked up.

  “He said he's going to lie low for a while, until this Nigel situation blows over.”

  “Makes sense if he's connected like you think.”

  “It's kind of sexy watching you clean,” she said. “Very adult.”

  “I'm 24,” I said.

  “Do you know how many 24 year olds aren't adults?”

  “I haven't given it much thought.”

  “So listen, I think we should keep doing this.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Not this, me and you this. Well also that, but I meant the collecting. I think we could solve some things. I don't know, crimes, or at least find the people who do the crimes, or maybe just give the information to people who can use it.”

  “I'm pretty sure the cops already do this.”

  “Their databases are garbage.”

  “You know that how?”

  “The police can't collect on private citizens, so they just have a bunch of reports. The Feds might have something better but they've got a problem with the Supras they have working for them. Some of them buy into the government always being right, others are happy to make sure the government follows the law, too. It was all in that book about the Guardian Angels, by Sentinel's ex-wife, Dinner is in the Oven. Anyway, they mostly let supras deal with supras and worry about the things they can handle.”

  “So who would you want to give the information to?”

  “I thought we might be able to hook up with a group of heroes.”

  “Free Force?”

  “Maybe. Maybe we can look in to it.”

  “We just have to be careful.”

  “Of course,” Jen said. “This any good by the way?” She held up my copy of Sofer's 11th Commandment.

  “Yeah, it's a little dry in the middle. I just skim the science stuff for the commentary. I've read it a couple of times. It gets my imagination going, you know?”

  “I've never read it,” she said. “Read about it, I've just got a short attention span.”

  “Supposedly he had 12th Commandment on the way,” I said.

  “Is he even still alive?”

  We both went online to check, but found nothing recent.

  “Got to assume he's still at George Washington,” I said.

  “Might be nice if he finished his book.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to get something to eat?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but let's avoid the pizza place, I've got anti-Nigel paranoia.”

  “I was going to ask if I could stay over.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  We had carne asada fries and talked about music. She stayed over. I woke up to her trying to calm me.

  “What! What?” I was sitting upright.

  “You were having a nightmare,” Jen said.

  “God damn,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You're shaking.”

  “I'll be okay.” But I couldn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling until I couldn't, then I made coffee.

  I did some thinking. Jen slept. I felt like going for a run. I hate exercise, but I felt like I needed it. Jen woke up as I was tying my shoes.

  “I'm just going for a run,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  I don't run very often, but that morning I felt like I couldn't stop. I ran the awful feeling out of me. Jen was up when I got back.

  “Good run?”

  “Yeah,” I showered, dressed, planned.

  “I've got an idea,” I told Jen. “I've got a guy who owes me a favor. I feel like he might be pretty well connected. I think we could maybe approach him about working together, maybe help him out, maybe get some favors.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He told me his name is Fiver, but I think he might be a former hero.” I poured a cup of coffee.

  “I'm listening.”

  I didn't know if I should trust her, but I did anyway.

  “He needed a favor from me. I drove him to a house in the suburbs, then he sent me in to tell some people that I heard what happened to their son and I'd make it okay. Which I took to mean that Fiver was going to sort it. So I did some digging. I think the son is a kid whose body was stolen, and I'm pretty sure that the kid was Screamingo.”

  “That was your New Powers rabbit hole.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure the dead kid is Screamingo. That doesn't means Fiver is anyone, though.”

  “How'd you meet him?”

  “He was looking for the lady downstairs.”

  “Who is the lady downstairs?”

  “Bodyguard named Calliope.”

  “Wait, the ex-Guardian Angel?” Jen said. “I didn't know she was around.”

  “She's pretty low-key now,” I said. “Bodyguard for the stars.”

  “But you know her? Must be pretty hot. Pull up her bio.” She came over to me in the kitchen. I opened my laptop.

  There wasn't a lot on her, but she appeared in the Supra-wiki.

  “Search her with Fiver,” Jen suggested.

  “Nothing.”

  “Look for her clients. Images.”

  First one was a picture of Calliope and Fiver. “That's him.”

  The caption identified him as Edison Quinn, 2020 World Series of Poker Champion. We went to his page.

  “This dude seems shady,” Jen said. “Wins half a million one day, loses a million the next. Looks hung over in most of his pictures. You think he's one of the New Powers?”

  “I thought he was. I'm less confident now.”

  “Why'd he ask you for help?”

  “He was looking for Calliope. She wasn't in. I was. He just sort of talked me into it. I thought I was just giving him a ride, then we got to the place, I just went along with it. I don't know.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I think we should offer to help him gather information. I'm assuming that he's working on finding out who took Sceamingo's body. I think we can probably help out. Put the kid to rest.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I mean, you figure it's LEGION, right?”

  “Now that you said it, I do.”

  I should have thought of it, but I hadn't looked that far back. LEGION was active for a time, filling their ranks with their reanimated enemies. None seemed to stay around for long. The zombie supras ended up getting destroyed in battles with heroes after a time. Bloody Rose was the exception.

  “LEGION hasn't done anything in years.”
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br />   “Maybe not, but Lady in Black is always around.” Anti-hero Magazine was an online magazine that focused on the non-hero Supras. The Lady in Black didn't wear much when she wore black, so she was a regular on their webpage.

  “If we help Fiver find the Lady in Black, he's going to die,” I said. “If he's Rebel, even if he's not. LEGION crushed the Guardian Angels.”

  “What if we got a team together?” Jen asked. “I mean, we know where Skyborne is. Add Slowburn. They know Free Force.”

  “I'm thinking Skyborne is hiding out. Maybe we can talk to him, but he's not going to contact Free Force for us with all the attention he has now. Anyway, how are we even going to find LEGION?”

  “Got to figure they're going to be looking for another dead Supra to resurrect. We make a database and figure out the likely striking places. Jump them in a cemetery. I mean, we don't jump, we just sort out the ambush for everyone else.”

  “Yeah.”

  I started to think. Jen waited for the fairly long process to work itself out.

  “Uh, wait, what?” I asked. “I'm not ready to pick a fight with LEGION, or any other villain. I'm not a supra. I'm just a guy.”

  “We're not picking a fight with anyone. We're just going to offer to help someone else get into a fight.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me think about it.”

  The Skyborne saga intensified that afternoon. In their crime-fighting debut, Slowburn and Skyborne broke up a riot caused by Blameshift. Ten people were injured in the melee that ensued, three critically. Several of the citizens forced into rioting by Blameshift's subtle control hired lawyers and were pursuing legal actions against the two young superheroes for the injuries they caused. Now that he had been identified, Matthew Weall's bank accounts were frozen. A source somewhere said that Weall's parents were going to be arrested for aiding and abetting. Analysts on the news said it was unlikely.

  “Shit,” Jen said as we read the news. “The cops are going to get his phone records and know that we texted.”