#26130
Part One
“Hi. I’m home,” I said as the door closed behind me. Outside,
in the driveway, the engine of Eggie’s Volkswagen Bug stammered to life,
alerting me to her departure. I peeked out the narrow pane of glass beside the
front door and watched her drive away. “Hmm. I wonder where she goes when she
isn’t with me.”
Being an android, built to closely match the appearance and personality
of Mrs. Doubtfire, my so-called Electric Grandmother only chaperoned me when
BADGE sent me on assignment. As a probationary field agent for the organization,
they kept me well monitored in the field due to my young age. Liability and all
for a youngster who still had several grades to complete before graduating or
being considered an actual adult.
“We’re in the kitchen, honey,” Mom called out to me from deeper
in the house. “Welcome home. Come join us.”
I’d just returned home after the impromptu League Wars 12
weary but happy. The league I had been a part of, The Star Force: Junior League,
had earned a silver medal due to our solid efforts. Every member of our team
did their best, myself included. I’d pushed hard in my last match, defeating an
opponent I thought I couldn’t, finally realizing that it was one specific
emotion, fear, that held me back from being my best. Being home, I knew I
needed to take a few days to mull over what had happened, to get my head
wrapped around a lesson my special trainer, Midgardsormr, had tried to impart
on me.
“Hey, Kitt’n,” Dad said as I walked into the kitchen. A
simple breakfast was on the table, likely due to the massive quantities of food
provided to us at the WMD: Black Order celebration the evening before. If it
could be cooked, grilled, baked, or bar-b-qued, it was on one of the many buffet
tables. “How does it feel to be home again?”
“It’s always good, don’tcha know.” I wrapped my arms around
his neck as he sat at the small kitchen table, his tablet in hand with the
Sentinel News page displayed. I kissed his cheek, smushing my lips messily
against his clean-shaven cheek while making noisy, slobbery kissy sounds like
he used to do to me when I let him tuck me in for bed. “Did they say much about
league wars?”
“Strangely, no,” he said as he turned the tablet face down
and set it on the table. He only did that when he didn’t want to talk about
what he was reading. “Chaz Hamilton was up there announcing several of the
matches. He must not have had time to report on it. No mention of your
outstanding performance or anything other than a list of who won each division.”
I grabbed at his device, snatching it away from him to read
the review for myself. “I wasn’t that great, Dad. I’m no Ms. Fae or
Midgardsormer… yet. I just want to see if—”
“Honey, don’t—” Dad started as I flipped over the tablet and
saw the bold print headline.
World Corps – “Where are my children?” Parents Demand to
Know
The rumor aboard the Stellar Arena was that the league wars
was called to keep Morphon-imbued heroes from being questioned by the servants
of the World Corps. Anyone with powers granted by the strange element Legion
introduced years ago worried about the new weapons this group employed, as they
were said to be based on technology from the evil regime that existed in North
Onnotangu a few years ago. A weapon that could atomize anyone with a Morphonic
energy matrix.
Anyone like me, essentially. Me, my teammates and friends,
other heroes, and some average, everyday people like my parents. While they
never developed any powers of their own, my parents, like many, many others,
were slightly altered by the Morphon particle.
Dad gently took the
tablet out of my hands. “You have to trust that Director Nova knows what he is
doing. He called all the leagues up to that space station to keep you safe.
They are aware of the situation and won’t let anything bad happen.
“You know I’m not a fan of thise ‘League Wars” things, dear,”
Mom said as she came over to the table and sat next to my father, drying her
hands with a checkered black-and-white towel. “But I was honestly relieved when
you went up there and got away from these World Corp inquisitions. It was good
to know you were safe from all that foolishness going on around here.”
Technically, I likely should have told my mother about the excursions
I made with Starmaster to several of the World Corps interview locations as we
captured images of dozens of the pseudo-heroes providing protection for the World
Corps mercenaries who carried the despicable ‘hero killing’ weapons. Being a
minor and all, Director Nova would not have approved me going the mission, but
if the World Corps were going to be stopped, all of us heroes knew we needed to
act, not hide.
“These people from World Corps are bad news,” I said. “All
we at BADGE are doing is trying to stop the bad guys. They are trying to make
us look like we ARE the bad guys.”
“Don’t worry about what’s going on out there. The people
with the power to handle it will fix it, I’m sure. You’re home now,” Mom said
as she twisted the towel and playfully snapped it at me. “You need to go wash
your hands and have your breakfast.”
I grinned as I scooted out of the kitchen, dodging her
attack. The worry was still there, despite her telling me to release it, but my
thoughts moved to more ordinary, mundane matters. It was good to be home.
MM-MM-MM-MM-MM
A few days later…
It was good to be home, but only for a very short period of
time. Director Nova summoned the heroes once more into space, isolating them
from the problems on the planet below after the World Corps began to escalate.
The mercenaries and their augmented pseudo-hero guardians headed directly to
multiple league headquarters to interrogate heroes in a poorly disguised
attempt to capture, imprison, or bait the world’s heroes.
I found myself once again looking out of a port window at
the large, beautiful planet the space station orbited. “Why are they doing this
to us? It’s just not fair.”
“When has life ever been fair?” Astra asked as she sat
opposite me at the table. Her life so far had been a testament to the cruelness
of existence. Only a few years older than me, she had been born a boy,
kidnapped by aliens, and while granted superpowers, had been genetically
altered into a female body. While all this went on, she had been declared dead
back at her home and once she returned, her parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t,
accept what had happened and she essentially lost her family as well. “Fair is
never assured. It often isn’t even attempted anymore. Most people want more in
exchange for what they give, not to break even.”
“And to get more, someone else has to get less,” I said. “Is
that what you’re getting at? For one person or group to win, someone else has
to lose.”
“Unless you’re Krystal Fae and can make things out of thin
air, yeah, pretty much,” Astra said as she took a sip from the straw in her glass.
The noise of her slurping the last dredge of her milkshake drew the attention
of several of the tables around us.
Astra and my eyes met. We both began to giggle under the
pressure of their stares. “Let’s go find Doug. He and Catalyst were going to work
on some upgrades to Doug’s robotic body, weren’t they?”
The dirty glasses on our table lifted into the air and
floated over to a recycling bin, courtesy of Astra’s telekinetic powers. One nice
benefit of being aboard a space station with other superpowered individuals was
that using our powers wasn’t frowned on at all. Well, within reason. Wyldfyre
performing a Hawaiian fire-dance/strip-tease for tips in one of the airlocks
got him locked up for a couple of days.
Heroes using their powers wasn’t the issue though. It was
the boredom of people with powers being trapped on a spacestation compounded by
the uncertainty of what was going on back home on Earth. Working with BADGE had
taught us how to fight when the time came to stop evil, not how to hide and let
others, like Ben Talos with the UN, fight for us.
“Yeah,” Astra said. “They’re in one of the computer labs.
Let’s go.”
As we headed out of the room, each of our BADGE communicators
signaled an incoming message. Not only ours, but the comm units for everyone
around us. Some chirped, some rang with catchy tunes, others buzzed as the
vibrated, but all together at once, they told everyone the same message.
Something big was about to happen.
to be continued...
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