Hero Types

Chapter 20

On the last day of Kit's February vacation, three of the city's finest heroes lost their powers and a building was blown to smithereens, injuring a half dozen people. Kit was nowhere near the incident.
She didn't hear her phone on the table, because there was music playing and there were fireworks going off in her ears, and Mickey tasted like tea (he had invited her over for a 'cuppa' because he was convinced that he was an Englishman at heart even after living most of his life in Brooklyn).
He did break off once and look up. "Did you hear something?"
She shrugged. "I don't know." And she got back to business.
Two months in, and sometimes she actually did do art in his garage, but a lot of the time it was her own excuse to make out with him for an hour. It was always an accident in her head. What's this? I didn't mean to lean forward and catch a whiff of your coffee breath and—oh, dear, we're kissing again. Oh, no, I convinced you to stand behind me and help me weld these tires together and now—oops! You're watching TV? I'll just innocently straddle you till you notice me and—shucks, it happened again!
She was aware of her own denial, and she had no desire to do anything about it.
When Mickey's heart-rate rose—or whatever he had going on in there—he glowed brighter. He said this was actually an embarrassing thing that wasn't supposed to happen, and she didn't admit how much she liked it. It was only when he mentioned fixing it that she mentioned he shouldn't. Because of expenses, as it were. That was the only reason.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, for better leverage obviously, and he nosed her cheek. It was weirdly warm outside and he'd left the garage door open because of it. It helped air out the general chop-shop smell of the place. He'd just showered, which helped with the general chop-shop smell of Mickey.
She nuzzled around his metal ear and found a wire to put between her teeth when he stopped her.
"Ooh—watch that—"
"Sorry." She sat up. He touched his ear and twisted a dial. He flicked it.
"No harm done. Static for a second. Yeah, just...bloody expensive, you know." She wondered if she should apologize again. He lowered his brow. "I have better things that you can bite on."
He pulled her back down and she turned her head.
"Mickey."
"Kitten." He pushed back her bangs.
"Why're you..."
"Ah, yes, the trivia." He let his head fall back, and she flopped down on his chest, through which blue light seeped. "I believe we were interrupted last time."
"Robots."
"Robots, right. Well. Well...that's a good place to start, really. Robots. So, my good old Da was an engineer, of sorts."
"In England."
"Right. My—there it is again." He frowned around the room. They listened, but there was nothing. "Huh." He sat back again. He tapped his ear.
"Sorry."
"Probably just my imagination. Where was I?"
"England."
"England. My mum died when I was...let's see..." he puffed out his cheeks. "Young, anyway. Da took me over to the Americas after that. Not sure why." He crinkled up his nose. "But, you know, I think he owed some people money.
"Clearly, the move didn't get rid of his problems. I've just got these vague memories, these seedy hotels and men in jackets. Da would tell me to stay in the car. And he'd get the shit beat out of him. Sometimes he wouldn't come back for hours.
"He met a girl. Quite quickly, if you ask me, but he had, and I think she was nice. Young. Don't remember her name. Didn't last long. One night we were in the apartment while Da was out—I dunno, probably drinking—and a man knocked on the door. Girl, I think, was a bit of a ditz, and she opened it. He handed her this little box and ran away. I remember it had, uh," he indicated curls with his robotic finger, "red ribbon on it. She opened that too. And, you know—kaboom!" 

He threw his hands up and smiled bitterly, but the pain shone clearly in his eyes. "I was in pain for a second, but after that it's blank for quite a while. Woke up in the back of a dump under the bridge. Cars going over my head, trash everywhere. I was mostly naked, and a lot of me hurt, and half of me looked like this." He tapped his ear. "Well, a lot shittier, but yeah."
"What then?"
"Good old Da shows up, lights a cigarette—you know, the cheap kind––and the rest is history. We lived in the junkyard. Da would fix things up and sell them for bits and pieces, and he was always fixing me up, because I was always breaking down. I was only seven or so, I didn't quite understand what I was yet.
"Through word of mouth I suppose, Da got a job fixing trains. I would go to work with him, and I would watch. I'd watched him before, but after he got the job he started showing me things. In retrospect, I think he knew his days were numbered. Probably the best thing he ever did was try to teach me how to fend for myself. He always smelled like alcohol."
She didn't point out that Mickey always had beer in his fridge. This seemed to dawn on him at the same time.
"Anyway," he sighed, "the men followed us over. One day we were walking back to the apartment and they pulled us down an alley. They held me and I watched my Da die. I just remember there being teeth all over the ground. They broke off my foot and left me there. I crawled over to his body and...took the hundred dollars he had in his pocket, and a business card. I left him there; I saw a note about him in a newspaper the next day.
"I ended up with a working family in a one-room apartment. I slept on the floor like the other three little boys.
"I hadn't known what I was until then, but I figured it out pretty quick. The mother called me Little Garbage Boy. The other kids, they used to tinker with my screws while I slept, and when I woke up my arm would fall apart. They were scared of me. I was a little walking Frankenstein monster.
"The eldest's name was Julien. I worked in his car shop to pay my rent. That was the first time I'd ever really worked with machines. I was good at it,  I liked it. I was half one anyway. I'd been walking around with a towel-stuffed shoe duct-taped to my leg for a few months, and while I was there I figured out how to replace it. Then I wondered if I could replace anything else, because I'd grown and looked more like a lopsided creature than ever.
"So I fixed myself up. I fixed my leg so I could walk without a limp, and I fixed my hand so I could write. I was born right handed, but I still write better with my left. I learned things about machines, about myself. Once I collapsed, and when they brought me to the cheapest professional they knew, who was an ex-doctor with a crack addiction, he found out that the metal bits weren't just on the outside."
She'd put her ear on his chest. His voice didn't vibrate in his ribcage like other peoples's. She had her cheek on the glowing place where his heart would have been, and now she frowned.
"Wait...you mean..."
He tapped his head. "Everything. Pieces of my brain. I can't replace those. I got really sick a few years ago, I had to build a few organs as best I could and hire someone to operate on me."
"Stop."
"Sorry. Anyway.
"While I was at the shop, I was tracking down the men who'd killed my father. That card in his pocket led to people who knew things. I learned how to make them talk."
She shivered.
"I'd figured out that my talent with machines was abnormal by then. I'd been cast out for being what I was. I was scared. I'd go out on the weekends and hunt down these men, but I was scared of a bunch of children.
"I could...talk to them. The machines. Not people, so much. But I'd put my hand on them and I could understand them. They just made sense, they worked like me. Kind of a family, in a sense. In my line of work, I met a lot of people. Mind you, I didn't like a lot of them. But they did offer me money. I broke down less frequently, but I was still growing, and I needed new parts. I needed a house. So I took the jobs. I never asked what the big picture was. I preferred not to know. I'd do my bit and get the hell out of there.
"I guess that was when I really became a villain. I never liked hurting people. Not usually, at least. I didn't like it, but I didn't mind either, and I suppose that's the distinction between the good and the bad. Anyway, I was a much better burglar than a torturer, and I let them know that. Thieving's really not so bad, once you get used to it.
"Now, let's see...I met you...four years ago, wasn't it?"
"Yeah." She'd been a freshman. "You looked like a rat."
"Wow. Going right in there, aren't we?"
"You got better."
"Laugh it up there, lovey. But...yeah. I had been living on the job for about a year at that point. I'd established a reputation, and they'd give me a place to sleep while I was working for them. I was close to finding the mob boss who'd been responsible for my father's death.
"We were in that department store after dark, and I was there to steal the diamond collection or something, and that was I think my first encounter with heroes.
"I'd heard about you guys. From the more experienced individuals I'd had the pleasure of servicing, usually accompanied by expressive curse words. But I'd never been high-profile enough to run into, much less fight, some of you.
"I had cracked the code on the safe when Jersey socked me in the face. I fired a gun, and there was this wall of light, and that was you."
"That was my first mission," Kit said.
"You were so young. So was I, but you were, like, thirteen."
"Fifteen."
"Jersey changed a lot, didn't he?"
"He was new then, too." Most people lost a lot of their enthusiasm for the job after a few hard years. She thought maybe Lucas was the exception.
"Lucas was cool and he didn't send me to prison, and I left with the understanding that I didn't necessarily always have to be the bad guy. Heroes pay too."
"Stop."
He grinned, exhaled, and thought a moment. "About a month after that I found the man responsible for my father's death. I posed as a plumber, and I handed him the card and shot him in the head when he met my eyes. Believe it or not...he was the only person I've ever killed, directly at least.
"And..." he sighed," that pretty much brings us up to date. I bought the garage right after that with the money I took from his estate and with what I'd been saving up. Adopted Fitz from a shelter. Decided to fix cars and be a thief on the side, made enough to update myself to my present condition. Got an offer a few months ago to work a job, ended up running into this cute girl I hadn't seen in a long time...you know that was why I came back, right?"
"Isn't Lucas paying you?"
"He was," he said, "but I...well, not anymore. He thinks he's turned me around."
"He tends to see the good sides of people."
"All right, shut up."
She slung her hand over the side of the couch and rubbed Fitz's head. He lowered his hand, and Fitz woke up and sneezed on it. "So what's your story?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where'd you get your glowing, you know..." He flung out his hand and made a noise. Her shields were actually silent. She hesitated. "Come on. Kitten!" He shook her shoulder. "You can't do this to me. I just spilled my entire life's story to you—"
"Shh." She sat up. She frowned. "I heard it."
"Isn't that your phone?"
"Shit."
She jumped off the couch and slipped on Fitz. She scrambled to get off the ground and whipped her phone out of her bag.
"Hello?"
"Kit—" There was a tremendous crack, and then Lucas's voice, breathy and pained. "We've got him."
"You've got—him?! The guy?!"
"Yes, the—" There were shouts in the background. "The football stadium, he's fucking tearing it to—"
The line went dead.
She swallowed and turned around. Mickey had buckled his metal mask over his head and was jingling his keys in his hand.
"Where're we going?"
Years of trial and error had taught Kit never to travel without a mask. Even when she was spending the afternoon at her boyfriend's house and—well, he wasn't quite her boyfriend. He couldn't be.
...Was he?
She tied her hair back and fastened the strip of cloth around her face, and she eyed him. Mickey didn't have an alter ego. Most of his stunts were so undercover no one but those involved most deeply in the world of the villains and heroes of New York would ever know who he was.
She told him where to go while she tied her sneakers on. He jerked around a corner and she was thrown against the door.
Lucas never hung up. Lucas never swore. She had convinced herself that he had accidentally pressed the button and not had time to dial her again. Everyone was going to be okay.
Her being late wouldn't affect anything.
They got caught in traffic. It wasn't hard to see why. Not a mile away, a plume of smoke was visible over the stadium.
She couldn't believe that she hadn't heard her phone. How had she not heard her phone?! It was all her fault. Whatever happened would be completely her fault.
"Fuck this," Mickey growled after a tense fifteen minutes stuck at a standstill. He wrenched the wheel to the right and sent them rocking over the sidewalk. He parked directly in the side of a mailbox and removed his keys.
"What about your car?" she asked, crawling out his side. He shrugged, watching the smoke in the distance.
"No one wants to steal this piece of shit."
Unlike Lucas, Mickey really liked to cuss.
They sprinted down the sidewalk. Most people were too distracted by their phones or the other people screaming at them or the smoke in the air to notice the two masked individuals running past. Kit wondered if they could be mistaken for terrorists, but no one looked up.
People were screaming and pushing in a mob around the base of the stadium, trying to escape. She lost Mickey in the crowd and shouldered her way through the bodies. She wondered why she was never able to do that till she put on her mask.
It was hard to breath past all the hair and the coats. She shoved people openly, knowing that her mission was urgent and would ultimately save them. She wasn't especially tall, and she disappeared easily.
She tripped into open space and looked around. Smoke billowed out from the stadium doors. She stood on her toes and squinted. Mickey stumbled into view.
"I fucking hate running," he panted, strapping his mask back on. "Hate it. Come on."
A touch to her back, and then she glanced at the screaming citizens one more time before leading the way into the haze. Mickey snatched up the back of her jacket, and she could just see his glow if she looked back. She held out her hands and felt around. There was light at the other end of the tunnel, and she bolted onto the field.
She coughed and spun around. A portion of the bleachers were on fire. There was a shout from above. A woman in a red suit landed, tucked, and rolled. She leapt to her feet and blinked at them. Kit held up her hands, and Mickey's arm morphed.
"Are you with Lucas?"
"Yeah?"
"We're on the same side," the woman said. She pointed up at the announcer's booth. There was a human-sized hole in the glass. "They're up there."
She took off. Kit glanced at Mickey. He unbuttoned his coat and shrugged it off, maybe for mobility, probably because running made him sweaty.
"Right behind you."
She took the stairs two at a time.
Crash!
The glass rained down from the announcer's booth. Kit threw herself behind a row of seats and kept her head down. Glass rang like tiny holiday bells as it hit the cement and skittered down the steps. She shook pieces out of her hair and sprinted toward the box.
The door was jammed. She threw herself against it, to no avail. Someone tapped her shoulder. She stepped aside, and Mickey rammed his shoulder into it. It didn't budge. He winced and rubbed his arm.
"I literally just tried—"
"Yeah, but I've got, what, a hundred pounds on you?" He kicked it. "Damn. That thing's not moving."
There was a shout from inside. She was thrown against the wall.
"Stand back." The woman in the red suit braced her hands on the wood. Cracks began to form. They backed away.
Shwick!
The door splintered. Shards of wood flew everywhere. Kit threw herself to the ground. She heard Mickey grunt and caught a glimpse of blood, but then the booth was open and the Raider in all his gas-masked glory had his giant hand locked around the throat of the woman in red.
She leapt to her feet and ran at him.
He spun at the last second and she crashed into the table. Pens and paper flew everywhere, and she fell to the ground. She rubbed her eyes and her blood ran cold.
"Lucas!"
She crawled under the table and shook him. He was out cold. At least, she hoped he was. There was no sign of blood. She hit his face and he didn't react.
Another man was on the ground, also in red. There was blood on his face. The Raider had the woman pressed into the wall while she struggled against his grip. The man got to his knees and wrapped his hand around the villain's leg. White steam billowed from his hand.
The Raider dropped the woman and staggered into the wall. Mickey ducked under the table and tapped her head.
"You all right?"
"Can you get Lucas out of here?"
Lucas was taller than Mickey, and it took him a minute to hoist him up. He ducked a minute later, when the man in red went sailing across the room, trailing green smoke. The Raider knelt by the barely conscious woman and clutched her head.
There was a blast of blue light. The ceiling collapsed. Kit threw up a shield over the four of them. Debris rained down, chunks of wood bouncing off her golden light and dust gathering on the surface.
She dropped it when it was silent. She coughed and squinted through the settling ash.
The Raider was gone.
She rushed forward and knelt beside the woman. She felt under her chin and counted seconds. She was alive.
"Hey. Hey." She shook her. She didn't react. Kit sat back and put her head in her hands.
She heard Mickey kneeling behind her and she ignored him. Sirens sounded in the distance. She could smell the burning bleachers through the musk of singed wood.
"Hey."
She shook her head.
"Listen. We should get going—"
"I should have been here." She wiped her eyes. He sighed and removed his mask. He spun it in his hands.
"All right, don't give me this hero shit."
"It's my—"
"You're a human being," he snapped. He closed his eyes and fixed his tone. "You're just a person. If you blame yourself for this, I swear I'm going to..." he couldn't think of anything.
"I should have been here."
"What would you've done?"
"Stopped him? I don't know. I could've..." She was choking up. She looked away and blinked hard. He petted her back, but she stood up. She wiped her eyes. "Yeah. We should get out of here."
He watched her from the floor. She went over and checked on Lucas and the other man. She got a shock when she touched him, which came as some sort of a relief. But it could still have only been a residual charge. She got her arms under his torso and looked up. "Can you help me?"
Mickey hadn't moved. "Kit, this isn't your fault."
"It—" It was no use arguing with him. "Fine. Yeah, sure. Whatever. Help me."
He gave a frustrated little growl and helped her bring the three unconscious heroes into the stadium. She called Jersey while they were sitting on the bleachers, and just as she pressed call he and Mardie ran onto the field.
They carried the fallen heroes out just before the stadium collapsed into flames and the place was surrounded by sirens.