Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

2: There's No I In Hero

Solomon left her in the living room and disappeared down the hallway. She’d once made the mistake of sitting on the couch. A loose spring had sliced a hole in the thigh of her suit and left her needing a tetanus shot. So instead she stood and eyed the mementos scattered through the room.

A floppy, wide-brimmed hemp hat had pride of place, mounted on the wall above the grated fireplace. One side of the hat was blackened and melted. Beneath it hung a small hatchet with a wooden handle, the blade chipped and nicked in a dozen places. A trio of front pages from old copies of the New Zealand Herald had been framed and fixed to the wall alongside, each showing the triumphant Wardens at the site of some crisis or other.

Solomon had been one of the first generation Wardens, along with Battle Jack and Drillman. Ever since the bomb hit, New Zealand had always had more than its fair share of metas, so supergroups were always springing up. The Wardens modelled themselves after the groups springing up across America and Europe, but with a greater focus on integration with regular law enforcement.

One of the newspaper clippings on the wall had a photo of Solomon looking bruised but smiling anyway, with a pair of giant black insects dead at his feet. NAGASAKI HORRORS CRUSHED, the headline proclaimed. That had been the group’s biggest fight, and it had taken place before Niobe’s time. The Wardens and the Māori crime-fighting group Te Taua had shipped out for Japan to push back the monsters. All those heroes—Grim, Madame Z, Battle Jack—they’d saved the world. And Solomon too, of course, but she didn’t know his real name then. To her and the rest of the world, he was simply the Carpenter.

No one had predicted what the atomic bomb at Nagasaki might do to the fabric of our universe. When the black mantis-like creatures came crawling into our dimension seven years later, destroying everything in their path, there were a few red faces. It scared the hell out of Auckland and Warsaw. If a nuke could do that in Japan, it could do it anywhere. The rebuilding of old Auckland halted, and the construction of a new city a dozen miles south began in earnest. But Niobe and the other heroes remained in the Old City. Those were proud days. The heroes waited there, ready in case the Horrors returned. They waited for years. Until the world changed, and no one trusted superheroes to protect them anymore.

“He’s going out, I suppose?” a woman’s voice came from the doorway.

Niobe turned away from the old superhero memorabilia to find Kate watching her from just inside the doorway. Solomon’s wife clung to beauty even in her forties. Despite the late hour, her blonde bombshell hairstyle was perfect. She had her arms crossed over her nightgown, with a small silver cross around her neck. The look she gave Niobe was the one she’d come to expect, a kind of cold disapproval.

Christ. Niobe had just wriggled out of one argument. She sure as hell didn’t want to wind up in another.

“Yes,” Niobe said. With her goggles in place, Kate wouldn’t be able to see her eyes, and she was glad for that. Most people would be creeped out if they saw that Niobe’s eyes were charcoal black all the way across, but Kate wasn’t most people. The woman had a gaze that could crack rocks, even if she wasn’t a meta.

The silence stretched between them. Niobe could never work out if Kate disliked her because she put Solomon in dangerous situations, or because she thought Niobe was shagging him. She didn’t suppose it would help to tell her she found him about as attractive as she found any man. Kate probably wouldn’t be any happier to know her husband was running around with a lesbian. It had taken Solomon long enough to come to grips with that himself. He was old-fashioned that way.

Kate opened her mouth to speak, and it didn’t look like it was going to be pleasant. But by some miracle, Solomon chose that moment to come back into the room. “Oh, there you are, dear,” he said to Kate. He must have sensed something, because his back stiffened. He glanced at Niobe, then back to his wife.

Kate turned her icy stare on her husband. Niobe recognised that look. It was the same one Gabby gave her during their argument an hour ago. Kate’s lips twisted as she studied his new attire. He’d exchanged the pyjamas for full costume, and Niobe wondered if he was as grateful for his mask as she was for hers.

The Carpenter’s outfit was all forest greens and autumn reds. A new hat—sleeker and more modern than the tattered one on the wall—sat low across his eyes. A brown half-mask left his mouth uncovered, and a cloak hung over his left shoulder, stretching down to his elbow. Poking out the bottom was the handle of his hatchet, hanging from a loop in his belt.

The costume still fit well. For some reason, it was the only thing she saw him in that ever seemed to suit him. Anyone else would look ridiculous in something so damn rustic.

Too bad his appearance did nothing to improve the mood in the room. It was lucky Kate’s looks couldn’t kill. More than one person had lost limbs from their superpowered spouse’s misdirected eye beams.

“I’ll get the car warmed up,” Niobe said. She shoved her hands in her coat pockets and squeezed past the couple, while Solomon did his best to look anywhere but his wife.

Superpowered combat and interdimensional alien attacks she could handle. But there was no way in hell she was putting herself into the middle of a marital spat. She’d had enough of that already.

~~~

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