H.E.R.O. - Rise and Fall (10 page)

At 6:45 p.m. we split up and went to our respective homes to clean up.  She still had the smudges and gasoline remnants to clean off, and I wanted to not wear my costume for a night.  I threw it in the wash once I was home.

After a shower, putting on tight jeans and a low-cut belly shirt, and actually putting on jewelry I left to pick her up.  She answered the door in her costume again, although she looked freshly cleaned, and had on perfume and different jewelry.

We took flight to meet everyone at the house the boys in my study group shared....

Chapter 9 - Witches Cauldron

Gravitix's Viewpoint

I headed for a seedy bar that a lot of punk-rock types liked to hang out at.  While not my favorite crowd, I loved some of the bands that played at this place, and Friday night they almost always had a great band.  I'd have brought Nick with me, but just felt kind of cocky, and wanted to see what the evening brought my way.  Worst case if any trouble came I now had the means to crush everyone around me to the ground.  Let troublemakers deal with that.  Part of me hoped someone would indeed try something.

I arrived at the bar pretty early and sat down.  One of the hot waitresses in a skimpy mock witch outfit came over and took my order for food and a drink.

I looked around the dark room.  As usual, a variety of hair colors made their presence shown around the room.  A lot of them wore leather jackets, with a few dressed more in a costume like the waitresses wore. 
Gotta love the people who get into the mentality of the place.

I made the salt shaker weightless and played with it in the air in front of me while sipping my drink.  I glanced around - the room was dimly lit, so it wasn't likely anyone would notice. 
These powers kick so much ass.  If I lived back in medieval times or earlier I'd go to a town, crush a few people and declare myself their leader.  Perhaps crush a few knights to show my power and reign over the area for a lifetime.  I'd have servants and wenches to perform every wish of Lord Gravitix.  Yeah, that's a nice thought.  Ah well, modern society sucks sometimes.

The waitress dropped off another drink - I hadn't even ordered this one.  She said, "This is compliments of the lady over there.  She's hoping you'll join her and her friend."

"Is that your line, or did she actually say that?"

"Oh, she said it."

"Niiiice.  Can you bring my dinner over there when it's done?"

"Sure can."  She winked at me and walked back to the bar.

I pushed the salt shaker back down to the table next to the pepper and picked up my drink. 
Heh, see if someone happens to pick that up in the next hour or so and figure out the freefall thing with it.
  I chuckled and sauntered over to the pair of ladies.

Halfway there I realized that one of them wasn't normal - she wore some kind of face mask.  I stared at it as I approached, trying to figure out what type of character she was trying to portray.  Just before I sat down I noticed that her hands were also covered in the metal.

I looked at the other woman and said, "Hey, thanks for the drink."  Then I noticed her slit eyes, and the sharp point of a fang as she smiled slightly.  She had spiky purple hair. 
Niiice, got a fellow super here ... perhaps two of them.

The purple haired one said, "My pleasure.  Care to join us?"  She waved her hand at one of the open chairs.  Her fingers were extremely long - and then I realized they were big claws. 
Funky.  This will be an interesting evening.

I sat down and smiled at them both.  This close I finally realized that the metal mask wasn't a mask at all - the woman had a face and hands of metal.  I wondered if her entire body was metal.  Then I wondered what I'd have to do to find out.

"So what did I do to deserve the interest of two such interesting ladies?"

Spikey said, "Oh, I'm Sandra - this is Selina."

"I'm Zach.  Sooo....?"

"I saw the salt shaker.  I figured you must be like us."

"So you
are
both supers, then."

She nodded.  "I'm a mutant, Selina is a brick."

"Very, very cool.  They called me a blaster, although I really don't blast much of anything around - I control gravity."

"Reaaallly?  Now
that
sounds interesting.  What can you do with it?"

"Pull objects to me, make them weightless, and cause gravity to increase or decrease in an area around me.  So far at least."

"That's cool.  I'm pretty boring, I have claws, fangs, well, and I can shrink things."

Selina perked up at that.  "Really, you can shrink stuff?"

"Yeah, watch this."  Sandra picked up a flyer at the table and it shrank down to postage stamp size.  She opened a belt pouch at her side and pulled out a bunch of tiny items.  They included a few cars, some backpacks, metal marbles, guns, miniature swords, and a variety of other items.

I asked, "What are these?"

"Miniature items.  I keep them shrunk until I need them."

"Whoa, you've got cars in your pocket?"

"Yeah.  These are pretty cool too - they are wrecking balls shrunk down to marble size."

"What good are those?"

"You ever throw a wrecking ball at someone as hard as you can a marble?"

"Oooh, no.  That sounds wicked."

Selina said, "Have you had to do that?"

Sandra thought a moment and said, "I prepared to get my friends out, remember?  I'm not dumb; there'll be gates and such in the way."

I asked, "Get your friends out of where?"

"Well, my friends are mutants as well.  However, the 'man' doesn't like mutants very much, so they kidnapped a bunch of my friends and threw them in prison so they couldn't scare the populace.  I barely got away."

"Damn, that sucks.  What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to bust them out.  I'm tired of people dissing on me because of my race.  Well, me and my friends.  I'm not going to let them rot in a jail because they are mutants, that's bull."

"Cool.  Ballsy too."

"Oh?  You want in?  Well, assuming you can actually use your powers."

"Hmm.  What would be in it for me?  I mean, wouldn't that make me a criminal?"

Sandra said, "After you use your powers once or twice and 'normal' people get hurt - how long do you think it'll be before they decide you ought to be locked away ... and throw away the key?"

"Nah, they wouldn't do that, look how many supers are out there."

"Yeah, and look how many aren't.  Let me ask you this - how many mutants have you heard of?  People who look like me."

"Well ... err ... I can't think of any, actually."

"Right, they've been rounding us up for years.  I don't know where they put all of us, but I need to get my friends out before they get shipped off to some hidden facility somewhere."

I said, "So what can you do, Selina?"

"I break shit.  I don't know how strong I actually am, but I fought another brick this morning, she could barely hurt me, and when I held her down she seemed pretty weak to me."

"Is your body actually metal?"

"My skin is for sure.  Inside my mouth isn't, so I don't know if any metal runs through my body."

"Do your fingernails still grow?"

"I have no idea.  I've only been awake for a day since my change."

"You said you got into a fight, what did they hit you with?"

"Kicks and punches, she knocked me through the walls of the house."

"Hmm, hard to base anything off that."

Sandra said, "Well, we're at a bar, let's play a bar game.  Just for the heck of it we see what we can do."

I said, "Which one are you thinking of?"

"Let's start with quarters."

"Okay.  You in, Selina?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea?"

"Oh, come on."

"Fine, I'll try."

Sandra ordered a set of ten shots for the first game.

The purple haired mutant said, "If anyone misses, they have to drink a shot.  If everyone misses then we skip that round?"

I nodded.  Selina shrugged and said, "Fine."

The game seemed heavily rigged in favor of Sandra as we played.  She was so dexterous, even with her claws, that she made every bounce.  I made half of them.  Poor Selina didn't land a single bounce of the quarter in the cup.  She did bounce quarters across the table with frightening power a few times.  Half of the quarters she held she bent out of shape just by holding them.

Sandra caught most of the misfired quarters, but a few struck her.  She rubbed the area with the base of her palm a few times and noted that it smarted.  Selina snorted and said she deserved it for picking a game that was easy for the mutant, but hard for the brick.

The band - Harvest Moon - came in midway through the game, set up and began playing.  They had an interesting mix of techno, punk and strange songs made to cater to the supernatural theme of the bar.  I'd seen them once before and liked them.

Sandra ordered another batch of shots and offered to play a dice game to take dexterity out of the game.  We all agreed, and this time it was pretty even at four for Sandra, and three each for me and Selina.  By this time Selina decided that we should no longer call her by her real name, and that her new name was Chrome, since this metal monster was now who she was.

By this point I was feeling pretty good, and Chrome seemed a lot more relaxed, although she was very angry about all the problems she was having, as well as a generally bad attitude about the government taking people away.

I noticed that Sandra seemed hell bent on bashing the government and the H.E.R.O. organization, although I didn't much care either way.  She sounded like a wild one to hang out with and that was something I was hoping for.  Finally a way to get out of my boring life.

We continued cheering the band, but by midnight decided that we should leave.  Chrome had broken three glasses in the last hour alone, and we didn't want a scene at a place we liked.

We left the Witches Cauldron; I realized that even Sandra got more angry at the government the more she drank.  Chrome couldn't walk a straight line as we headed down the street.

When we passed a street that was under construction, Chrome began ranting about how traffic sucked wherever they tore up the streets, and how the city just did it to screw with people because they left them tore up for weeks without even working on them.

Finally she headed toward one of the machines.  I looked at Sandra, and then put my arm on Chrome's upper arm.  She didn't even notice and I was jerked forward just from her forward arm motion.

I said, "How much can you lift again, Chrome?"

She replied, "I have no damn idea.  I'm about to find out."

I stood back and watched her.  I looked at Sandra, "Is there anything we can do?"

Sandra said, "Not to stop her, I'm not about to use my claws on her, and shrinking her will just piss her off."

"Why would your claws help, she's got metal armor."

Sandra laughed darkly, "My claws will go through that.  Natural mutant weaponry - our swords, claws, hooks, and so on - will all go through a brick's armor almost like it wasn't there."

"Holy crap, really?"

"Yeah.  We aren't the strongest, or the most powerful with general powers, but we heal the fastest, tend to be the most dexterous, and have the most dangerous weapons, barring a brick's punch or kick, I suppose."

"Nice."

About then Chrome reached a vehicle made to smash down and break concrete and blacktop.  Chrome flipped it on its side using only one hand.  Then she grabbed it from underneath, picked it up and tossed it into the building next to the street.  It went through the outer wall of the building with a resounding crash, leaving the outer concrete wall of the building with a gaping hole in it.  Dust floated out of the building.

I said, "Oh, shit.  I think someone's going to show up from that."

She next walked over to a smaller bulldozer - still a large machine – picked it up far too easily, stumbled off to the side.  Apparently the drinks had affected her coordination, but not her strength - and lobbed it into the same building.  She screamed in rage at the machine.

With the only two construction vehicles now gone, she looked about for a moment at the empty street, and then stomped over to the parking lot of the building she’d put under siege.

Once near the center of the parking lot, she stomped down hard on the blacktop parking lot.  A massive crack split the blacktop.  The extremely loud stomp caused echoes to bounce between the buildings for a moment.

Sandra whistled in amazement, “She’s stronger than Kralgon.”

I said, “Huh?”

She looked at me, “Oh … nothing, just mumbling.”

Sandra looked off to the right, grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the alley between two buildings.  I looked at her.

“What’s the matter?”  I stared off down the street where she was looking and saw a Jeep driving down toward us. 

The vehicle circumnavigated the construction signs and drove quickly right up by us.  A huge guy in a suit that reminded me of some kind of armor I’d see in a video game hopped out.  He wore a helmet with a black visor on the front.  Gatecrasher.

I saw Chrome’s teeth flash in the light of the nearby street lamp as she snarled at him. 
Oh, man, she’s so mad and drunk she doesn’t care about a H.E.R.O.?

Sandra and I watched from behind Gatecrasher as he approached Chrome.

Gatecrasher called out to her, "Chrome, put your hands on your head and give yourself up.  You still have a chance to minimize the impact this will have on you."

Chrome said, "Oh, look.  Something else I can break!  Maybe I'll break you, and then your car just by sitting my fat ass on it!"

I whispered, "I don't think she has a fat ass."

Sandra whispered in reply, "She doesn't, but she's speaking of her weight now, not butt size."

Gatecrasher continued, "Come on now, Chrome.  Two fights with me in two days isn't going to look good on your record."

Chrome slurred, "What are you talking about, I've never even seen your spacesuit covered butt before?  You just want a reason to lock me up and throw away the key!  Can't have shiny Chrome walking free and being all dangerous to the public, can we?"