A/N: Yes, I did edit this to tie in better with this story's sequal, Call of the Hero: Dreams. Nothing major...but read carefully and you may pick up on some things.
Chapter 5: Thoughts of Future Past
By the time Azaiah had gotten home his sleepiness had gone away, and a gentle snow had started to fall all around them, though even with the cold it wasn’t enough to stick to the roads making it so it wasn’t too hard to drive though. He did enjoy the look of the new fallen snow, the shine it had against the light of the street lights, the fact that a few of them seemed to stick to every person walking, and he loved throwing snowballs at people, especially when he could make them fall out of the sky without anyone knowing what was going on, not that he’d ever do that of course.
Getting out of the car, the cold of the winter night made him shiver, and caused him to walk quite quickly to the apartment glad that he’d be able to be someplace warm. That was assuming the furnace hadn’t blown up or anything, which he would think would be a pretty safe assumption, but strange things did tend to happen all around him.
After getting inside, he noticed something strange about the apartment. Looking at his watch, he saw it was already 7 at night, but there weren’t any lights on; it just seemed like the middle of the night without anyone being awake. “Mom?” he called. He took a quick glance outside and saw her car in the parking lot down below, so she was here, or at least should be.
He went further into the house and he heard his dad enter the house a few seconds after him. “Was Mom going somewhere?” Azaiah asked after giving a quick scan of the various room.
“Not that I know of.”
It wasn’t weird for his mom to go out and do things, not like she had a real big social life with her just moving here, but it was possible. Still, there was something about this he didn’t like, something that set him on edge. Maybe it was just because of everything that had happened so far today, making him question everything and suspicious of anything and everything that seemed to be off. “I’ll give her a call,” Seth said.
Azaiah nodded, surprised he didn’t think of such a simple solution earlier, the fact was that they all had their phones, and that way they could communicate. No reason to jump to conclusions based off just a little bit of paranoia, after all, it wasn’t like they were part of a novel where the smallest things had the biggest of impacts. After a brief conversation, Seth hung up the phone saying, “She’s going out with Julie tonight. Said something about tickets to something on Broadway.”
Azaiah let out a sigh of relief and then went to his room while his dad went to the couch. “I’ll order pizza in a bit if you want.”
“Sounds good.”
Once he got to his room, Azaiah brought up his laptop, seeing that everything was perfectly as it should be before it was thrown through a window. He knew that some people hated Microsoft, and had that big fancy word for throwing things out windows which could also be referred to as removing windows from a computer. The author then realized he missed a great opportunity for a pun back in chapter two. Oh well, all’s well that ends with more words.
Getting connected to the internet he looked through his email, seeing if there wasn’t anything that wasn’t trying to get him to spend money or download a virus. Really, if they were going to try to convince him he could get a free Xbox, they could at least spell his name right, and know that Play Station did not have a q in it.
He then checked some news headlines, hoping to come across someone talking about those guys he fought last night. He wondered if he really should have just let that girl be stuck there like that, if someone found her, then she could be in trouble, however, after a quick can from the local headlines discovering the most exciting thing of the night was a bar catching on fire after an incident involving cheese, popcorn, power metal music, and someone with way too much alcohol in their system. That did make him smile a bit, at least after reading that no one was hurt, making him think about a certain story a certain person told him.
He heard the doorbell ring, and closed the laptop before heading downstairs. He then saw that the person delivering the pizza was someone he knew, and someone who just happened to have a bruise on his chin as if someone had giving him a powerful upper cut the night before. “What are you doing here?” Azaiah asked while his dad paid the guy.
“What do you mean … oh wait, I know you.”
“Yeah you do,” Azaiah said with a crack of his knuckles.
“What’s going on here Azaiah?” his dad asked.
“He was harassing some girl last night so I saved her.”
“Some girl, you obviously have no idea who that truly was. She’s one of the greatest criminal leaders of the city, we thought we’d finally found her and were going to take her in, but you had to interfere.”
“Wait…what?”
“The name’s undercover agent Francis,” the delivery boy said.
“Azaiah, we have some talking to do,” his dad said
“That would explain it then,” Azaiah said looking away, wondering just why they’d be after her like that when she was armed. “Why were you going after her with a knife then, couldn’t you have just used a gun to force her to cooperate?” Azaiah asked.
“Do you really think that would have worked, we wanted to have our cover be a couple of thugs, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, to avoid any of her allies from finding out.”
Azaiah wondered if she could be connected to whatever Angie was telling him about. “Do you know anything about Cicada?”
The delivery boy looked at him with a very puzzled look on his face. That made Azaiah wonder. “I issue code 18 penguin, potato. How do you respond to this?”
“What kind of gibberish is that?”
“You’re not a real cop.” Azaiah said crossing his arms. “A real one would know how to respond to that.”
“Damn it!” the fake cop yelled, however before Azaiah could see what was going on, he brought a gun out and pointed it at Azaiah’s dad. “But it doesn’t matter, you lose anyway.”
Azaiah uncrossed his arms and knew that this would require a bit more than just going in there and kicking their butts. “Hold on, don’t do anything rash here,” Seth said with a bit of nervousness, though not nearly as much as this gunman would have thought for having a gun pointed at him.
“What’s going on here?” all three of them turned to the hallway to see Azaiah’s mom standing there, her arms crossed and a bit of a smirk across her face.
“The queen of Sheeba, what an honor it is!” the gunman said before bowing down before her and dropping his gun.
This caused Azaiah to start bursting out in laughter. Of course, that was one way to end a situation without any violence, cause someone to lose their memory, or at least rewrite it in such a way that no one would think the person had any sense left. Maybe that’s what happened to those scientists, too much science that corrupted their minds.
“Nice work Mom,” Azaiah said.
“Keep an eye on him, I’ll go call the cops. And tell the pizza company their driver is about to be arrested.”
…
After a conversation with the police, a promise that next time they ordered, they’d get free pizza, and Iris having a bit fun with that guy’s memory and learning a few things about the syndicate they were a part of, the family sat down to enjoy a nice, slightly cold, pizza dinner
“So does he still think you’re the Queen of Shiba?” Azaiah asked after the police ending up leaving.
“Sadly no, I reset his memory back to how it was before I got here before and the cops took him away. It would be very hard to convict him if they thought he was insane.” How true that was, insane people always seemed to find their way back to the streets and that normally ended with even more people being hurt.
“So what made him pull a gun on you anyway?” Iris asked, and that caused Azaiah to tense up a bit.
“Yes, I was wondering that too. He seemed like he knew you.”
“You weren’t at that basketball party at Matt’s church last night, were you?” his mom then added.
“Well, I did start off there. But it ended around midnight, and I decided to fly around the city a bit, and decided I might want to see if I could help anyone, like you always said we should help those who need it, and I found this girl who was being attacked by that pizza boy and a couple others so I stepped in to save her. It just so happened she also had a gun, and didn’t really take kindly to me saving her. You’d think people would be more grateful.”
“What did we tell you about interfering with police business?”
“Okay, just because that one time it ended with a car parked upside down in the mayor’s mansion’s bathroom, does not mean I’m always irresponsible. That wasn’t even here, the New York police haven’t complained about me helping; they’re so stretched that they can’t do much as it is.” Azaiah knew he couldn’t win, while there were times where he messed up, and caused more harm then he saved, that didn’t mean he was always like that. In fact most times, he ended up helping someone who really needed it, or at the very least, didn’t get in the way of law enforcement. Though he really wished he could get the codes right on his police scanner and didn’t end up flying off to bring things like drunk people dancing naked on fire hydrants. Some things he really didn’t need to see.
“You know the rules Azaiah. You don’t see me going out and fighting crime every night. When the time comes, that’s when your powers will be needed. You still have a lot to learn before then.”
“Come on, I’ve mastered my powers of gravity and time. None of those criminals can fight me.”
“I’m not talking about your powers Azaiah. That’s only part of what you need to be a hero.”
He sighed again, turning to head back toward his room. “I promise, I won’t sneak out.” He didn’t want another lecture, didn’t want to hear about maturity or wisdom or all those other things. It was crazy, he’d be treated like a lap rat one moment told that he was humanities savior and the first in a long list of scientific miracles, and then the next be yelled at the next for wanting to actually do some good with his gifts beyond just getting a paper published that only two people on earth could make sense of.
“It’s hard to trust you when you don’t listen so many other times.”
“What do you want from me?” Azaiah said turning around and yelling.
“Not to do something stupid,” his mom said, now standing up with her arms crossed. “You’re a kid, enjoy that, and don’t try to be a hero at every chance you see.”
He wasn’t just a kid though, he knew that, he’d been told that as long as he could remember. Yes, he knew that this wasn’t just something he could use carelessly, ever since he came to this century those 13 years ago, his parents had been insistent on keeping his gifts a secret, not to let the media know about it. That’s why when he did go out, he wore a mask and some tacky clothes he wouldn’t be caught dead with otherwise. There were millions of people in NY City, so there was no way they’d connect it to being him. And many of his powers he could use without anyone noticing, simply concentrating his mind, occasionally using his hands to point at the object he wanted to effect to get a lock around it, but no way to know that it was really him doing it.
“All right,” he said, deciding this wasn’t a fight worth having. That was normally the best way to go about it, just give up, apologize, whatever, his family would be happy, and pushing further wouldn’t do any good.
He went to his room, looking up at the ceiling, wondering if there would be anything good to try fighting against out there, any bad guys on the run that needed stopped, or just another normal night in New York City. When he first moved here, he was glad, he knew how crazy the city was, how there was always something going on, and always crime to be stopped. But of course, his parents views hadn’t changed any.
He felt his phone vibrate and got a text from one of his friends. Opening it, he saw it was just something simple, DJ’s birthday party tomorrow at the Rock, you in?
That could be fun, better than being in his room all day told he couldn’t do anything. Sure, what time
2
K
That would give him some fun at least. Better than nothing at least. After all those boring meetings with the scientists, Saturday was basically wasted, so he was glad to at least have one day to do what he wanted without having his whole weekend ruled by the government.
The clock told him it was only ten, so he went back to his laptop for a few minutes, though that soon turned into a few hours as he found things on YouTube, which lead to some strange Wikipedia searches, and a few episodes of anime that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to watch earlier. Not as much fun as being out there fighting crime himself, but seeing some of these heroes fight certainly gave him some ideas. Now if only he could figure out a way to eat fire without it burning his mouth. That was the thing about anime though, it was meant to be enjoyed, not scientifically analyzed. True, some of them tried to be believable, but others found it even more fun to just throw logic out the window and do the impossible because they could, and that made for a good story. Getting sleepy, though he really wanted to see if Al ever got his body back, he decided to put the laptop away and go to bed. Though he wondered what his parents would be madder about, him being sleepy during church because he’d stayed up too late watching anime, or that he stayed up too late fighting crime. He chuckled a bit as he changed into his pajamas thinking about it. However, as he did so, he heard the sound like a rock hitting his window.
“What is this, some kind of old romantic novel?” he asked, putting his pants on before walking over to the window and seeing what he could see. Being on the third story made it hard to see what was going on down there, but he did see someone looking up there. Deciding he would be nice and answer it, he fought with the locks on the window for a few minutes, trying to get it to come back to how it was earlier, it really seemed excessive how they made the window so hard to open, and it wasn’t even like the window was the main line of defense to the secrecy of their secret meetings, that would require a whole different list of steps to unlock. After struggling for a few minutes, he finally managed to open it. “Hello?” he called out to below.
“Wait, you’re not Bruce.” This caused Azaiah to want to face palm. After all that work…
“No, no I’m not.”
“Is that apartment 2B?”
“No, this isn’t 2B, it’s C4.”
“So not 2B.”
“Nope.”
“I guess I answered the question of 2B or not 2B wrong then.”
Azaiah nodded, knowing that this question dated back to the 17th century, or at least that’s what he thought it was. Though that happened to not be as long as the legend of certain swords, but he really hoped that said certain sword wouldn’t end up showing up in this story.
“Good night and good luck,” Azaiah said with a wave before going to close his window, it was quite cold out there, and he really wasn’t dressed for such weather.
“Wait.”
“What is it?” he said with a roll of his eyes that he was pretty sure she couldn’t see.
“You’re kind of cute too, why don’t you come down here with me.”
That could only end badly. He looked down and saw she had a stuffed unicorn with her as well. True, she seemed kind of cute with the little light he could see her with, however if someone was going around throwing rocks at windows at 1 in the morning, and got the wrong apartment, but still wanted to hang out with the guy she found…well there were about 73 ways that would be wrong, 74 if this was in Russia. And he really thought that sleeping would serve him better then coming up with more ways to get in trouble, he could find those well enough on his own. He couldn’t help but laughing thinking that maybe he’d dream about her and how they’d be such a great couple.