Tommy's Ultra-Important Keychain

Chapter 6: The truth is heavy

The shop was colder than usual. After a sweltering month of nothing but humidity and suffering, Tommy could finally say he had a use for his hoodie. The main heat wave ended a week prior, and consequently, so did his bad luck.

He didn't encounter a single heroic battle, his bus was always on time, his customers at Ender-Ice were friendly, and Ranboo had stopped giving him mini heart attacks during his shifts. Tommy was smart enough to know his streak wouldn't last, but it was nice to pretend for once.

Since his near-death experience, about a week had passed. The city's major villains had gone completely silent, leaving even the heroes baffled. Tommy knew he didn't have anything to do with their disappearance, but with each new broadcast about it, he felt more guilty.

A week ago, he had woken up in the staff lounge of Ender-Ice with nothing but a note to explain what happened. It read:

Tommy,

We brought you here because we don't know where you live. Your coworker left a voicemail on your phone, but he wasn't here when we showed up, so we just left you. We're going to give you space to think about our proposition. If you need us, you'll find us.

The note wasn't signed, but he knew who wrote it. Once he was fully awake, he took in as much information as he could handle. He held the identities of some of the most dangerous villains in the city, which should've prompted him to immediately call the cops.

Instead, he spent thirty minutes staring at the checkered floor of Ender-Ice hating himself. Not because he'd recklessly touched multiple magic items, or almost died in an explosion, not even because he was now on the radar of several mass murderers. No, that wasn't what got him.

It was the fact that he had ordered Icarus' nuggets right in front of him and then made the villain in question kneel on the ground. The thought alone made him groan with embarrassment. Why had he been allowed to do that? Why wasn't he dead?

After bashing his head against a table a few times, he got to work opening the shop and preparing for customers. Like the note said, Ranboo left a voicemail for him. It just said that he was busy helping his parents with something and couldn't come into work in time to supervise Tommy's shift.

That night, when he got home, he found out that Mecha and Blink had another notable appearance. The heroes were usually kept busy by villains, but they were free to take on other opponents with the recent break. The vigilantes found themselves engaged in a battle with a smaller hero.

Alien was one of the only heroes that covered his face entirely with a mask. Most super-powered people just had some sort of cloth over their eyes or mouth, but not this guy. The purple fabric was thin, easy to breathe through, and it had green decorative eyes designed on the face.

The rest of his costume was fairly low-effort; a purple hoodie, shorts, and sneakers. Tommy never understood why licensed heroes didn't put more effort into the way they looked. They had the perks of organizations backing them, but no! They just let the villains look better on the battlefield!

The news anchor had practically no information on how the two vigilantes had stumbled across a hero, but Tommy figured they were probably ambushed on patrol. It wasn't uncommon to see vigilantes getting into fights with the authorities, given the fact that they were technically going against the law by acting like unlicensed heroes.

If a vigilante got licensed with an organization, their track record of illegal activities always seemed to mysteriously disappear. Alien had probably started as a vigilante, but he was now known as one of the youngest heroes to ever be licensed.

The internet didn't have much information on him, but that was because he wasn't big on interviews. They did know a couple of cool facts, like how his powers came from a power-enhancing magic item. That meant that his birth power, super jump, was made better by his item.