Chum

Flying is faster than walking in basically all situations, unless you fly extremely slowly. With another person in tow, Gale flies basically at walking speed, but with the bonus that we’re not impeded by traffic and can go over rooftops. High in the sky, I can see everything with my blood sense… well, I can see a lot. That being said, on Gale’s advice, I keep my eyes shut, because I opened them for a second and being this high made me want to start screaming.

It’s not like we’re very far from the disturbance, which is good, because my blood sense has a limited range anyway – only a block or two. But cutting corners gets us there faster, and means we can look from high up without being seen. The Walgreens I smell the disturbance in has big, wide windows out front, and, more obviously, several people yelling and two cars outside that have been embedded into the concrete of the street. “Nobody’s been shot, but someone’s bleeding from the nose,” I tell Gale, while she lowers us to the awnings overhanging the windows. “A girl, I think.”

“Probably a supe. Cars don’t do that,” Gale says, holding onto the awning, using her wind to keep it from buckling under us. She’s right – cars typically don’t slide into the ground in the real world where we live, unless you’ve got someone that can make them do that. “I’m gonna peek over.”

“Roger,” I say, feeling a little twitch of excitement mixed in with the anxiety. Obviously, freaking out a little that I’m running into an actual superhuman crime in progress, and that it’s my job to do something about it. Also obviously, kind of stoked about it in a weird way. I’ll get to do something meaningful and then people will praise me for doing a good job, which is really what it’s all about. That, and saving people. Gale leans over the side of the awning, wind keeping her hijab and headscarf from falling down with gravity, while she peeks into the building.

“No gun, no knife, but you’re right about the nosebleed. A couple of the product racks are sunk into the ground,” Gale describes for me, while I keep one hand on the awning and the other on her back to yank her up. “Big guy with a bad costume holding a girl hostage. Cashier’s feet are stuck in the floor, too. Cashier’s counting out bills. Everyone else is on the ground, either kneeling or sitting or lying down.”

“Bad in quality?” I ask.

“Yeah, it’s a brown paper bag with eye holes cut out of it. I’m gonna try and get the hostage out of his hands, do you think you can draw his attention?”

I swallow hard. “Put me in, Coach.”

She pulls back from the awning and grabs her radio transmitter from her belt, bringing it up to her mouth and clicking the knob on the side twice. “Dispatch, this is callsign Gale of the Delaware Valley Defenders, supe robbery in progress, 2nd and West Girard. Hostage involved, no visible weapons. Perp’s power sinks people into ground. Requesting police presence and an ambulance.”

She catches me staring at her and smiles, holding the transmitter (transceiver?) out of her face. “You get used to it.”

There’s a crackle on the other end, followed by the voice of an older-sounding man. “10-4 Gale, received. We’ve got a robbery in progress at 2nd and West Girard, caution advised due to sinking power. EMS en route. Can any units respond? Gale, let us know what you need.”

Gale keeps one hand on the awning and uses the other to hold the transmitter to her face, her fingertips twitching as she slowly lowers me down from our perch. My heart pumps so hard in my chest it feels like it’s about to explode. “10-4, Dispatch. Request units for area cordon and street evacuation.” I hear above me as my feet land on the ground, cleats making contact with sidewalk concrete, hiding me behind a pillar of brick between the windows and the front doors.

“10-4, Gale, copy that. Requesting any available units for area cordon and street evac.” I hear from above me. Gale clips her radio equipment to her belt and somersaults off the awning, gently floating down to earth right behind me, crouched down and hidden. There’s more radio chatter from a responding unit, and in the very distance, I hear the distinct peaks of a police siren going off, but I tune it out, focused on the nosebleed and the man in the store.

I take a step forward and immediately trigger the automatic doors.

All eyes turn to me, including the man who’s now very clearly in my line of sight. I stand up straight and choke back bile, taking two more steps forward. “In for a penny, in for a pound, in for a penny, in for a pound.” I mumble to myself, trying to look tall and imposing while Gale follows up behind me, looking mortified, but hiding against the wall nonetheless.

“You! You better fuckin’ stop moving right now or I’ll bury you to your tits. Don’t take another step closer!” The man shouts as soon as I enter past the sliding doors. They close behind me, and then open again. “Hands where I can see them, goody-two shoes!”

For my first outing as a superhero, this is going spectacularly. I’m half joking to myself to avoid screaming, and half serious, because as long as he’s focused on me, he’s not focused on that girl he’s holding hostage. He’s got a sort of a pathetic look to him, a slouch, a wifebeater, grease-stained hands and clammy, pale skin and black sweatpants. He doesn’t even look like he dressed up for the occasion outside of the literal brown paper bag mask. I raise my hands up above my head. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

“What was that?” he shouts back, squeezing the girl he’s got in a headlock hard enough that her face turns pink and purple. “I don’t need this shit! It’s their store policy to just let me get what I want so nobody gets hurt. You’re not a cop! Get out of here, bitch! Or I’ll break this lady’s neck, I swear I will.”

“I said ‘I don’t think you want to do that’!” I shout, louder, more confidently. I take a step forward and immediately regret it as he chokes up on her neck. I glance around, left and right – the cashier is shakily trying to shove bills into a plastic bag, while all of the other customers, or at least the four I can see, have all been sunken into the ground. “I’ve got earthquake powers that get stronger the more ground I can touch. If you pull me down I’m just going to bring the roof down on you.”

I do not consider myself to be someone who is ‘good at lying’. However, I am good at speaking with a flat, even tone, sometimes, and you really only get one, maybe two major opportunities to lie about your powers before people start catching on. He turns to face me, waves a hand towards the cashier, and clenches his fist. The cashier, a meek looking teen I’d guess is probably 16, with dyed, neon hair, lets out a pained squeak as they’re wrenched down another inch in the dirt. “This entire store is my hostage, you crazy bitch. You try to fuck with me, I’ll suffocate all you sons of bitches!”

“Do you think I care? Do I look like some sort of law-abiding citizen to you? I’m just here to beat up nerds in shitty costumes who think they’re better than everyone else,” I say, baring my teeth, taking two more steps forward. He takes a step back, squeezes his hand, and yanks it downward, shoving two of the customers down to their thighs. It happens too fast for me to even see it in detail, with the floor just seeming to melt away under them like it’s becoming liquid for a fraction of a second. “I told you, I’m going to bring the ceiling down on you. I don’t care about property damage, but I don’t want to cop a murder charge, so if you let go of the girl I promise I’ll only give you a mild concussion instead of a really bad one.”

I curl my hands up into claws, like I’m about to do something with them. I take another step forward.

“Psycho! Psycho bitch! You better stay away!” He shouts, waving his free hand around, trying to do something to stop me. He fully believes my bluff, because I take another step forward unimpeded even though I’m sure he could’ve put me throat-deep in the ground by now. Instead, everything around me is getting sunken – the self-check-out kiosk, the stacks of summer clearance deals, and the aisles.

“You ready?” I ask him, glancing backwards towards Gale. She looks at me and nods. “Duck!”

I yank my hand down, swiping the air, while our ranting, raving villain-of-the-weekend throws both hands over his head to protect from a nonexistent earthquake. Immediately, the hostage girl throws herself to the ground, curling up in a ball, and a loud burst of wind whips a can of Monster at 60 miles an hour into the man’s stomach. Then another into his ribcage, followed by the rest of the canned drinks by the checkout in a burst of aluminum and taurine. Obviously, expecting me to bring the ceiling down on him left him woefully unprepared for being attacked by wild, sideways soda cans, especially not one of them smashing against the corner of the open fridge section, popping open, and then spraying Coca-Cola all over his eyes and brown paper bag mask.

Gale hurls herself forward while the man is reeling, using her skull to slam into him and tackle him to the ground while I work on getting all the hostages out of here. “Everyone, out if you can! We’ve got an ambulance and police on the way. I’ll pull you out if you need it.” I bark, bending down to help the primary hostage off the ground. I dust off her shoulders. “You’ve just got a nosebleed, I can smell it. Nothing else major, you’re not bleeding inside. Might have some neck bruises. I recommend ibuprofen.”

Within moments, Gale has the guy thoroughly zip tied, arms behind his back, fingers forced straight and tied together to stop him from doing anything funny with them. She keeps him suspended off the ground with her wind, and given the fact that he’s busy groaning in pain and not burying all of us down to our foreheads, I think he’s probably “subdued” for the time being. I go around helping everyone else out of the ground, which, thankfully, is not completely solid, but more the texture of an exceptionally thick mud, or maybe a thick jelly, like peanut butter. They come up dry, with no wet cement or dirt sticking to their clothes, and either look at me like they’re terrified before fleeing or give me an extremely quiet “Thank you”, which feels gratifying.

Gale and I stay in the store once it’s cleared out, keeping the guy held six feet off the ground. “That was ballsy,” she says, visibly straining to keep him held up.

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t really a compliment, more of an observation,” she teases, straightening her back a little and curling her fingers to keep our villain held aloft. “We’re really lucky he didn’t have a gun and was just relying on his powers. And also that he was stupid.”

“I can hear you!” he shouts. “And I’m going to sue the shit out of you!”

“Good luck with that,” Gale replies, gently spinning him around in circles in the air. “We’re going to keep you right here until the police arrive. Then, if you want to sue me, you can talk to our lawyer about it.”

“We have a lawyer?” I ask.

“Yeah. Oh! You should radio the police and tell them that we have the perp apprehended,” Gale reminds me. I’ve got free hands, so I reach down and do just that, grabbing my transmitter, clicking the side-knob two ways the right way, and bringing it to my face.

I click the little button trigger thing that turns it on, and start speaking. “Um, this is callsign Bloodhound with the Delaware Valley Defenders, I’m with Gale. We have the criminal apprehended. Over.”

I wait for a response. Gale stops spinning the man in the air as he thrashes and squirms against his restraints. “It’s Mudslide! Not ‘the criminal’! If you’re gonna play superhero you better treat me with respect, bitch!”

“You come up with that just now, Landslide?” Gale asks, nearly tipping him upside down. His soaked, sugar-sticky paper bag clings to his face, but even through that I can see the scowl, the lack of response, and I know she’s probably right.

I pull the transmitter back to my face. “Uh, Dispatch? Do you copy?” I ask, before letting go of the little trigger button. I try clicking the dial four notches in the other direction, in case I spun it the wrong way, and repeat my prior message. “This is callsign Bloodhound with the Delaware Valley Defenders, with Gale. We have the earlier criminal mentioned apprehended. Over.”

Gale looks at me, eyebrow raised. “Anything?”

I look back at the radio and clip it back to my waistband. “Nothing. Should we just wait outside?” I ask, looking around past the aisles, slowly pushing themselves back up out of the ground as it re-solidifies under them.

Gale looks at the windows, squinting her eyes, with the brights of the Walgreens interior lights making it hard to see outside. “Yeah. Hmm. Let’s just go outside.”

“Something wrong?” I ask, while Mudslide squirms and wriggles in mid-air. I take a couple of steps backwards, and then spin on my heel towards the automatic doors, which open to accept me. My heart sinks like a stone. “Actually, don’t answer that.”

“Huh?” Gale asks, nearly dropping Mudslide as she skids on a thin cushion of air over to my side. When she sees what I see, her face blanches.

Automatic doors, yes. Rows, and rows, and rows of them, shooting out into the distance, like someone took the entryway into the Walgreens and copy-pasted it dozens of times until they couldn’t see the end anymore. I can hear the noises of them opening up in the distance, and the noises of heavy footsteps behind me, and I spin around to face the more pressing of the two.

“Oh, cool! You guys took care of him. Yeah, I was busy taking a shit. Would’ve helped, but I was a little indisposed,” comes a voice from between the aisles. My eyes widen as I try to look for the other edge of the Walgreens, where I’d normally be able to see the makeup aisle, or the pharmacy, or something, only to be greeted with acres and acres of more aisles. Someone took the store and stretched it out. “You said there was police on the way? Cool, that gives me, what, ten, fifteen minutes for experiments? You don’t mind, right?”

Gale puts her hands up in fists, causing Mudslide to float vertically behind her, head up, feet down. I try to mirror her, getting into my best approximation of a boxing stance, while a figure in a heavy black cloak and some sort of heavily modified white motorcycle helmet steps out from the aisles. Their voice is rippling, distorted from some sort of voice changer or modulator, and their boots look like the kinds that the kids who shop at Hot Topic at my school would wear. “Hey, hey, hey, there’s no law against using powers. It’s my constitutional right. Don’t beat me up, super-cops, I’m just here to test these puppies out,” they say, raising their hands in front of their chest.

“Yeah? And what do they call you – goth twit?” Gale asks, furrowing her brow. “Great cape name.”

“Is that really a thing that matters to you guys? Okay. Well,” they start, clapping their hands together. “I’m the new kid on the block. They call me ‘Safeguard’. I’m going to bring the ceiling down on you now, alright?”