Trainee Superhero (Book One), page 7
“Lucky shot,” says Brat.
More targets fly into the air and I hit them all. The mutliblaster shoots exactly where I want it to and soon targets are falling out of the sky by the dozens. It uses a lot of my energy, but I don’t care.
“Fine,” says Small Talk
I have never felt so great from such little encouragement
“Whoop-dee-doo, it’s about time,” drawls Brat, “now let’s see if you are any good with an egg launcher.”
“A what?”
“The egg cannon,” lectures Brat, “is a weapon I developed for hopeless trainees like you. The trigger is in the mouthpiece; just point and bite down twice to shoot.”
Small Talk flicks my helmet open and shoves a piece of rubber into my mouth. I bite down on it twice and the cannon thunks loudly right next to my ear, lobbing an egg shaped grenade forward. It bursts into a bright storm of lights.
“That will disable most things for a few seconds, but the ammo is pretty volatile and since it’s stored on your back-”
“-I can’t turn my back on the enemy?”
“Exactly,” says Brat, sounding mildly impressed that I’d worked that out so quickly.
The egg launcher holds eight charges and has a decent range. It’s easy to use, but not exactly exciting. Small Talk shows me how to fly and fire, then we set down next to a second row of black boxes that contain close combat weapons of all sorts and sizes.
Small Talk hands me a short sword. The blade is bright in his hand, but falls dark as soon as I touch it. Small Talk takes the blade away and passes me an axe, but to no success.
“Lame,” says Brat.
The larger maces are too heavy for me, and I nearly take my own arm off with a morningstar. We work our way through dozens of weapons with no luck. There are over a hundred weapons sitting in the metal crates and but only one or two work for me.
I suck as a superhero.
“Saucer, kid, you are terrible at pretty much everything,” says Brat.
“Quiet,” says Small Talk, and hands me a small knife on a long chain.
I swing it a few times and hit myself in my foot. Small Talk takes it off me pretty quickly after that.
“Let’s do the artificer testing before I die of boredom,” says Brat.
I think I hate Brat, but I’m so tired of failing at weapons testing that I hand the nunchucks I’m trying to Small Talk and start to walk away. He grabs my arm and stops me.
“We are done when I say so.”
He starts handing me more exotic weapons, strange glowing things that rest on my hands but don’t seem to do much more than pulse and use energy. There are green whips with minds of their own and white-hot daggers on long flexible rods. The weapons mostly do what I want them to. I’m particularly fond of a set of giant metal crab claws that bind to my arms and snap open and shut with quicksilver speed.
“So you are good enough with the weird ones. At least that makes you interesting,” says Brat. He sounds even less interested in me before, if that was possible.
“Fine,” says Small Talk and points me to another crate.
There are a couple of big discs in the crate. Small Talk waves at them and they start to float. They look a little like the ones Past Prime is famous for.
“Artificer test,” drones Brat, “this one won’t take long.”
“Can you control the discs?” asks Small Talk.
I think about the discs, trying to control them with my mind. One of them falls out the air and the other bounces into the air and flies off into the distance. Brat laughs unkindly.
“Very few people can artifice,” Small Talk says.
I already knew that, but it doesn’t make me feel less disappointed. Being able to control my own army of golem-warriors would be fun.
“Shield test!” shouts Brat eagerly.
“Go stand there,” orders Small Talk, pointing to a wide metal plate sitting in the sand.
I walk over and stand on the plate, stamping on it a few times. It sounds solid. The plate starts glowing and suddenly I can’t move my feet.
“Uh…”
“Set,” shouts Brat eagerly.
Small Talk walks up to me and gives me the once over, checking my shields and power source. He pats me on the shoulder in a comforting way and closes my visor.
“Are you paying attention to me?” he asks.
“Um… sure… but why can’t I move?”
He walks over to a box, picks up a large handgun and shoots me right between the eyes. My shields stop the bullet, but I still flinch.
“Ouch,” I say reproachfully, although it didn’t really hurt.
“And?” Small Talk asks.
“Fine. Continue,” says Talented Brat.
Small Talk empties the rest of the clip right between my eyes. The bullets ping off my shield without even lowering my shields. I still can’t move, so all I can do is watch as he walks over to a grenade launcher, shoulders it and brings it over.
“Bomb test,” says Brat gleefully.
“Wait… what?” I ask.
The grenade hits me right on the chin. It doesn’t hurt, but the lights are bright enough to blind me. My shields don’t even drop below 99%, so it seems I’ve got nothing to worry about from old fashioned projectile weapons. Unfortunately for me, Small Talk has access to a whole arsenal of more dangerous guns. He picks up a laser cannon and aims it at me from only a few feet away. He shoots, and the burst of light curves into my chest and disappears when it hits my shield. Small Talk re-aims the cannon and fires again. This one curves into my leg. I can feel the warmth on my skin, but my shields are still 97%. Small Talk walks right up to me, places the cannon against my chest and pulls the trigger. The blast ripples across my shields but doesn’t even knock me over.
“Try the plasma cannon,” suggests Brat.
Don’t try the plasma cannon! Don’t try the-
Small Talk picks up a plasma cannon and levels it at me. The first blast arches and hits my head; the second engulfs my leg and burns the sand at my feet into a single glowing crystal. Small Talk hits me with the third blast. It stings a little. Shields at 95%.
“Stop trying to kill me!” I shout.
Small Talk picks up a large axe with a glowing blade and bangs it against my head. It bounces with a thud-thud-thud that doesn’t hurt. He tries again with a two-handed sword that takes 1% off my shields every time it hits me. He smashes a heavy mace against my knee, but I barely feel it. He pulls out a pair of plasma gloves and slams them against my head. That hurts, but not badly. My shields start rising as soon as he leaves me alone.
“Decent shields,” says Talented Brat thoughtfully, “time for some bigger guns.”
A mechanical nightmare walks out from behind the rocks. It looks a little like a triclops, but it has seven arms and a small cockpit in the head. Each of the seven arms ends in a very large and unique weapon. They don’t look battle-ready, but have open panels and are connected by loose power cords.
“There’s some kind of monster out here,” I shout.
“Yep… and who do you think is driving it?” says Brat, “Now shush. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me.”
He shoots me with each of the weapons individually, and then in pairs. The attacks lower my shields to about 80%, but no more. Brat tries the arms in sets of three, but my shields hold up.
“Give it everything,” orders Small Talk.
Brat giggles, levels all the cannons at me and lets loose. It’s a dazzling display of light and my shields are sizzling and popping. They hold, but is it getting warmer in my suit? The guns blast me down to 60% shields, and then stop.
“Time to get the really big guns,” says Talented Brat.
A second walker emerges from behind the rocks. It’s a simple thing, just a cannon on legs. It ambles clumsily over to me and aims its barrel at my chest. Then it and Brat open fire together. My shields light up; the dial on my arm drops to 56%...48%...30%...uh oh.
“30%!” I scream, but all I can hear is a crackle of white noise.
Something hard hits me, and I fall to one knee.
Thousands of little blue discs burst from my helmet and form a round shield in front of me. The shield absorbs the worst of the attack, the discs popping and reforming as the round shield slowly shrinks away beneath the array of weapons focused on me. More blue discs appear and form a dome around me. Nothing is getting through, and my regular shields start to recharge.
“Ha!” I say, “I have superpowers. Finally!”
My little blue guardians all burst together and a laser blast lifts me off my feet and throws me through the air. I hit the ground and slide through rocks. A shrill beep-beep rings in my ears.
“You should be at 10%,” explains Brat.
He sounds mildly impressed. I check my arm; he’s right, I still have 10% of my shields left. The ground around me is burnt and battered. Some of the rocks are glowing red, and others have melted into pools of lava. A shadow of undamaged ground stretches out behind me. I fall forwards but roll over so that I’m face up. I may be dying again, but at least I’m looking at the blue, blue sky. Small Talk leans over me, eclipsing my view.
“Good,” he says, “this one is tough.”
Maybe I’ll be a superhero after all.
Back Story One
I was the first superhero.
The saucers had been attacking the Earth for well over a year by then, and it seemed like there was nothing we could do to stop them ripping the world apart.
People started making desperate decisions. The captain of a US destroyer caught in the path of a small saucer emptied his arsenal of missiles and brought it down. We don’t know why he succeeded where so many others had failed, but that was the beginning. The technology found in the downed saucer was used to build two very different experimental weapons.
The first was a suit built of stolen technology and a mishmash of fighter jet equipment. The U.N. could only find eight people who had the ability to interface with the saucer’s technology. The suit gave each of us incredible and unique powers, so we called it the superhero suit and hoped it would keep us alive.
The second weapon was a bomb. We weren’t even sure that it could pierce the saucer’s shields.
One temperamental suit, and one bomb that might not work. They were crude and ungainly things to carry the Earth’s future, but they were all we had.
We only had a week to practice in the suit. There were two of us who were best. I was one, and the other was an older Japanese man, a good friend and a fine leader. He was better than me, in my estimation, but I was younger and I think my superiors valued that. I was also alone in the world, having lost my parents and siblings two years before. That probably played a part, too. They knew I wanted to kill saucers.
Whatever the reasons, I was chosen to carry the bomb.
The most powerful people in the world gathered to see me off. It was strange to see such unity; I could still remember the wars and arguments that had dominated the world before the saucers had arrived.
I was introduced to a lot of people, a sea of faces awash with hope and fear. The only one I remember was Marshal Smith’s young son. I had heard that the boy had taken a lot of interest in the superhero suits, but so had everyone. I remember him because he was the only calm face I met, and he had intense eyes that seemed to pierce right into my soul.
He was shorter than I expected; a lot of people were dismissive of him because of his stature, but I thought he had more fire in his heart than most.
“I believe in you,” he said, “you’ve got this. Set?”
I didn’t want to let him down.
They filmed me in my suit. It was a live transmission to all parts of the world still capable of receiving it. Think about that: the whole world, every person, was depending on me. I could only think of my dead family, and how surprised they would have been to see their rebellious daughter saluted by the president. I was given flowers and medals and then I was loaded into a modified stealth bomber.
It was a relief to be away, really.
I was in the bomber for an hour. I sat in silence with the bomb across my knees and the whole world resting on my shoulders. I was set.
It wasn’t a graceful exit; the bomber was hit hard before it reached the saucer. The pilots only managed to keep it together long enough for me to escape before they spiraled out of control. The crew died, but their courage meant I survived. I dropped through the clouds and right onto the biggest saucer I have ever seen.
It was big, too big for the bomb.
I could see helicopters in the distance. They would be watching me, radioing my progress to the world. We knew that many of the helicopters would be destroyed, but their loss was considered acceptable. The world was burning, and the U.N. was of the opinion that my success would give people the hope they so badly needed.
And if I failed? If I failed, the world was lost. It no longer mattered if people knew that.
That’s how desperate we had become.
I don’t know how I made it through the saucer’s defenses. I shouldn’t have, but perhaps Earth was overdue some luck. I was in a bad way when I landed, but I could still move. I crawled along the saucer’s hull, a trail of blood marking my path, until I found what I could only pray was a weak spot. The saucer’s creatures found me there, so I planted the bomb and then used the last of my strength to draw them away.
My vision was blurry by then, but I saw the saucer explode into plumes of glorious flame behind me. I whooped with pleasure, and the whole world celebrated with me. My victory was the world’s victory.
But my luck ran out as a piece of the exploding saucer caught me in the chest and threw me through the air. It didn’t matter; I had seen the job through.
Now I’m falling through the sky towards the ocean below, and there is no one to save me.
I hope those who follow me work in teams. I hope they have better shields, better weapons, better training. I hope that some of them survive their first mission.
I know they will.
I was The First superhero, but I won’t be the last.
Next time in ‘Trainee Superhero’…
Superheroes die, strange new aliens appear, Tenchi makes a re-appearance and the Cerberus Brawlers go fishing with a rocket-powered harpoon gun!
If you are enjoying this series, please tell your friends about it or tell the whole world by leaving a review… it would really make my day! You can also email me at c.h.aalberry (at) gmail.com and let me know what you think of my work. If you send me the name and a short back story for an original superhero serving with the Cerberus Brawlers, I’ll try to include it in the next part I write.
About the Author
C.H. Aalberry wasn’t allowed to buy or even read comic books until he turned sixteen. He still did, of course, because comics are great. He has also written a few books you might like:
‘The Origami Dragon And Other Tales’, a collection of thirteen sci-fi and fantasy short stories.
‘200 Shorter Stories’ a collection of punchy (very) short stories in every genre.
‘Zo And The Impossible Gardens’ for younger readers and lovers of sci-fi mysteries.
‘Wish: An Epic Adventure of Magic and Mayhem!’ for younger readers and lovers of Fantasy
Table of Contents
Lesson One: Get Used To Dying
Lesson Two: No One Cares What You Think
Lesson Three: Don’t Get Distracted
Lesson Four: The More You Sweat In Training, The Less You Bleed In Battle
Lesson Five Lesson Five: You Are Terrible At (Almost) Everything
Backstory One
Next Time In ‘Trainee Superhero’
About The Author
C. H. Aalberry, Trainee Superhero (Book One)
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