Wow. I finish the update, and someone posts wanting me to update. Anyway...
Chapter Two: Quest
The big guy is still smiling as hovers us up out of the wreckage, cape dancing like a horse charging across the planes.
Okay, what am I, gay?
I half expected my hand to shatter when I took his, not out of nerves or anything, but just because of the sheer strenght. I should know better though, I’ve teamed up with people possessing well over class one hundred strenght before. If he wanted to rip my hand off, I could probably do it myself and it wouldn’t be half as painful. But he just holds us steady.
Which brings up an interesting point; he’s holding me, and I’m holding Gwen. Why not carry both of us? Does he…trust me or something?
Because if so, this marks one of the first hero meets hero situations where I didn’t waste half an hour getting my ass handed to me by the other guy. As for the making an idiot out of myself part…
Absently I notice my belt light is still on. Its only after I see it shining on the crowd below that I actually hear them. Maybe I’m in shock or something. Must be, because it takes me a couple of seconds to realise their cheering. Chanting even. For me? Wow, sure are a hell of a lot of them. But my name isn’t…
Oh right.
Metropolis. Him. Of course.
Then something familiar.
“You menace! I
knew you’d follow me here! Couldn’t stand it, eh? Wanted to take me out huh? Tried to take us all out at once? I knew I had you running scared! Believe
me you haven’t seen anything like the full power of the press yet! You just wait! You’re web spewing ass
will be on my wall!”
That’s Jonah. Eyes always on the balls. So he can bust mine. Superman keeps smiling down at me, not in condescension, but in amused curiosity. I think.
“You get that a lot?”
Okay, yeah, he’s amusingly curious. Time to make up for that “Swell” abomination.
“Actually, no. He just never got his fan club membership badge. I told him it got lost in the mail, but what are you gonna do, right?”
Its not my best one liner, but he laughs and from my other arm I hear a giggle. Gwen’s smiling at me to.
We finally come in for a landing just next to some ambulances. There are a couple scattered around here and there down the street. Or what’s left of it. Ock and the Terminator groupie must have had a good time. At least none of the wreckages on fire.
He sets me down and I turn my attention back to Gwen. I’m zoning out a little here. I’ve flown with other heroes before but this guy isn’t just
any hero.
“You okay sweetie?”
She nods, a grin wider than the Holland tunnel on her face. And it’s aimed at me, not just the big guy. That’s…sort of new. Mostly me teaming up with one of the big guns, not to name names (Captain America), pushes me from Friendly Neighbourhood co star to Town In The Middle Of Nowhere sidekick. The crowd, mostly entire news teams from the ceremony, surge forward. The big guy gives me a look that says
You know how it goes and steps in front of me and Gwen raising his hands, that same smile on his face.
He probably dosen’t know I gave him a look back that said
Actually, no.
I spot Lois holding her own in the storm. Her eyes knife from the big guy, to the wrecked street and then to me. Looking back feels like looking into a sun. He says a few words I can‘t make out (because I don‘t have super hearing), and suddenly the mob is backing up. Including Jonah. Lois has this look on her face, a sort of smile meets boredom, as if this is par for the course. Nice. I would have just run for it. Because there’s crime to fight. Not because I’d be scared or anything. Oh no. Definitely not.
He’s looking at me again, so I decide to get all business like.
“So what happened to Doc Ock and the Iron Man wannabe? They get away?”
I don’t think he heard me almost wet myself. Which reminds me, I haven’t been to the bathroom since we left the hotel. I’m going to be able to write on all the snow in Antarctica when this is over.
“Not exactly. I can track them down easily enough. Their not exactly subtle. But I had to make sure everyone was okay, they really tore up things around here. I’m glad you were on the scene, you really slowed things down.”
He probably could have stopped an earthquake in China, a nuke in Russia, cured world hunger and have been back in plenty of time to take down those two psychos, but if Aunt May taught me anything, it was how to take a compliment. I get so few as it is.
I keep my hand steady as I switch off my belt light. Last thing my reputation needs is me grabbing my crotch with one hand and holding a eight year old girl in the other. In front of a crowd mostly made up of reporters. Speaking of said mass, Gwen’s father bursts out towards us like a salmon out of a stream. I hold Gwen out, and he grabs her as if he were clinging to a life preserver in an ocean. Which he kind of is. Looking at him now…there’s a bit of George Stacy in him, even though the features are decades younger.
“She’s okay, just a little…”
“Thank you Superman, thank you so much! God bless you!”
Yeah, I’m getting that Captain America team up feeling.
At least my hands are free. Gwen waves to me over her dad’s shoulder, not the big guy, me. I return it and whatever part of me decided to be petty dies down. She’s safe. I’ve got the most forward of all back up to help take on Ock and Metallo. And I do not have God knows how much wreckage crushing down on me anymore. All in all, not bad.
This vacation is shaping up when you think about it.
I check my web shooters while I’m at it. I caught that rarest of things, a lucky break. Neither of them damaged in the fall, and I’m still running at around full capacity. I’m getting the feeling I’m going to be using a lot of this stuff up tonight.
“I didn’t know you operated out side of New York.”
I shrug, trying to keep my shoulders from falling off with nervious shaking.
“One day, I’m going look around there and realise all I’ve done with my life is spray silvery goo all over everything. I might as well get out and spray silvery goo over stuff somewhere else.”
He laughs, a sound from Christmas and thanksgiving and your birthday. Superman laughed at my joke.
I am
so rubbing Johnny’s face in this.
He motions to my webshooters as I slide an extra cartage in.
“Your abilities…there mechanical?”
“Nope. I can barley stop the clock blinking on my VCR.”
Okay, could I have picked a joke that’s more dated? Even I, the anti Donald Trump, have a DVD player.
He smiles, no laughing but smiles. It vanishes a second after my Spider sense buzz saws it’s way through my skull, which with the headache I didn’t fully appreciate until now is not fun. A giant angry orange jellyfish erupts between the canyons of Metropolis, the hellfire light shrinking away and thinning into smoke. They really aren’t that subtle.
He turns to me, cape shifting in the wind like an eager tiger.
“Shall we?”
I hesitate, and yet kind of don’t. My thoughts are slow. I’m going to go kick ass with a legend. The legend.
What the hell. My response is instant.
“That would be super.”
And away we go.