HOME. PAST THE abandoned lot piled high with the skeletons of rusted cars, wildflowers winding into empty wheel arches. Past the lofts and studios, the crusty tenement houses with their graffiti-bright walls, the overflowing dumpsters, the thump of bass from a smoke-washed window.
My knee pangs at every step. I relive my words to the Hench agency receptionist, over and over: I’m in. I’m in. I’m in.
Why did I say that? My breath quickens at the thought of ever facing a hero again. That moment, when I knew Cooper could do whatever he wanted, that no one was coming to save me … It was the second-most scared I’ve been in my life.
At least I have the night to talk myself out of this. If I don’t show for tomorrow’s training session, Hench can find someone else.
My building, 26 Sloan Street, is one of those skinny three-story mid-row houses that are somehow even smaller on the inside, like a reverse TARDIS. Still, compared to Shadder Creek—Shit Creek, to locals—the row of crack dens by the sewage works where I had the dubious honor of being born, it’s a palace.
More importantly, it’s home. The first place Hernando made me chilaquiles. The first place I fell asleep feeling safe. Which is why it sucks so much when I punch our door code and step through, only for my foot to land on a fat, official-looking envelope. I lift my shoe and read the return address, then stomp down harder.
Blair Homes. Just what I don’t wanna see.
As the elevator’s out of order (it breaks whenever a Super battle occurs close enough to make the ground shake), I crumple the letter and head for the stairs. We live on the top floor. The ground floor is vacant. Mrs. Adorna, our landlady, only stays here a few months of the year since she started doing up another property on the city’s far side. Which means she’s missed all of Blair Homes’s polite inquiries, asking to buy this lot and convert it to luxury studios. The same sort of polite inquiry as the one I intend to introduce to our garbage can.
The walls of 26 Sloan Street rise up around me, my fortress, the brickwork strengthened by the roots my family have put down over the years. But no walls stand forever, and roots mean as little to a property developer as they do to whichever Super was working through their rage issues on my walk home.
Mrs. Beauvais waves as I pass the second floor. She always leaves her door open when somebody’s in. The Beauvaises are a nice family, Haitian: mom, dad, and two young kids, plus a cousin who hangs around so much he might as well move in. They’ve been in this building a long time—though not as long as Hernando, who jokes he’ll be interred in the foundations. I return the wave, showing her the letter. The smile shrinks off her round face.
“Assholes,” she says, then claps a hand over her mouth, in case her kids heard.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’m putting this where it belongs.”
“You give it here. We got a shredder.”
I fork over the letter before heaving myself up the last echoing flight. My key gums in our lock, but I lean on it until it surrenders, swinging inward to reveal my home.
Sure, our apartment isn’t exactly lush. Two dinky bedrooms stand dead ahead—one for me and Lyssa, the other for Hernando and his wardrobe of work uniforms. We don’t have room to swing a kitten, let alone a full-grown cat. But the damp smell is masked by lingering traces of garlic and onion, and every surface blooms with clutter. The main room is a cheery garden of thrift store ornaments and broken gadgets Hernando swears he can fix. Our apartment should feel cramped, but it doesn’t. Just stuffed to overflowing with family.
Would it be better if our ancient peeling wallpaper was replaced with urban whitewash and quirky light fixtures? What would faux-marble countertops and parquet flooring really improve? If Blair Homes buys us up, they’ll fix the elevator and the drafty duct-tape insulation around the windows. But will they notice what they’re breaking?
Lyssa grunts hello as I relock the door. My baby sister hits thirteen in two-and-a-bit weeks and swears she’ll turn Super (Wind-Type Summoner, to be precise) despite multiple assurances that our family has never seen a single occurrence of the Super gene. She sprawls on the patchwork-quilted sectional, legs poking from her boxer shorts. One is skinny and brown, the other skinnier still and made of plastic and lightweight metal below the knee.
Amputees are a semi-common sight around Sunnylake, thanks to the Villain Council. But it wasn’t a Super who caused the accident that cost Lyssa an eighth of her body mass and me my ability to get in a car without hyperventilating, ribs locking down on my lungs. That one’s all on Mom.
You should forgive the dead, Hernando says. It’s in the Bible. But I’ve never read that, and if the Big Man gives out such crap advice, I don’t plan to.
I return Lyssa’s grunt, dump my lunchbox on the messy kitchenette counter, and start checking the dinner veggies for fur. Saturday means enchilada day—the real kind, since none of us start crying if you dice a jalapeño. I prep everything the way Hernando taught me: browning the cheap death-date beef and onions with the sauce simmering away in the corner of my eye like a cauldron of tomatoey blood.
I’ll never get it tasting like he does. He claims the secret ingredient’s love, and I lack that tonight.
Jav will clock in at Artie’s on Monday, greeting customers like nothing’s amiss. I’m pissed Matias fired me, but the thought of not spending our summer together hurts more. It’s our last chance, if her Harvard app goes through.
Does that make me selfish? Maybe. All I know is that 1) the thought of not seeing her every day makes me feel like Cooper Hanson punched a hole in my chest. And 2) I can never, ever tell her. Not without ruining our friendship.
Joining Hench sounds like a surefire distraction from queer teen angst. I’m just not sure that’s enough of a reason to dress head to toe in rubber and make nice with literal Supervillains.
The Villain Council gathers the biggest and baddest eggs into one evil basket. We’re talking A- and B-class defectors from the Super Squad: the sort of power that makes surface-to-air missiles look like Nerf guns. The VC bond over tacky aesthetics, an abundance of eyeliner, and one common goal: take over the world.
After that? Far as I can tell, they haven’t figured out much beyond make all Normies kneel. Possibly make all heroes kneel, too (they have this weird obsession with kneeling. Kinda kinky). Still, despite their growing body count, property damage bills, and new chapters in major cities around the globe, the VC hasn’t taken over anything larger than Montana, and that was only for three very miserable days. (Did anyone even notice? I mean … Montana.)
The good guys win and the bad guys lose. That’s the way it is. The way it’s always been. Us Normies don’t get in the middle.
After softening the tortillas, I arrange them at the bottom of the baking dish. I lose myself in it: the warm aroma of braised meat and onions, the tang of Hernando’s secret sauce. After shunting my concoction into the oven, I treat my legs to a much-deserved rest, collapsing beside Lyssa and flicking on the TV.
Local news prioritizes hero activity, so it’s no surprise to find the fireball from earlier topping the headlines. The screen shows a bird’s-eye view of a hollowed-out building. Twisted rebar, crushed concrete. Smoke creeps skyward, a red paper lantern teetering down the street like tumbleweed. Lyssa doesn’t look up, more invested in her latest TikTok compilation.
Two Super Squad members strut across the rubble, one boy and one girl. Dusk looms over the distant mountains, but our heroes shine in their angelic white spandex, all rippling muscles and flexing hair (or is it the other way around?). The villain, caught mid-monologue, waves at the laser he used to magnify his powers and level the place, touting the glories of global domination.
Yawn. I scan the crowd behind him. Sidekicks clear civilians from the area. I spot a few yellow San Fran outfits among the Sunnylake navy. They must’ve been vacationing here before the Super Squad alarm went off. Then you have the henchmen. Their uniform’s different: a formfitting bodysuit in a green so dark it’s almost black, topped off with a sock mask and black goggles. No visible skin.
I pull a face. Can’t be fun, wiggling out of that after a sweaty summer night.
Suddenly—action. The hero tires of the villain’s speech. He conjures a crackling sphere of lightning, siphoning power from overhead wires. The henchmen take aim and fire, launching glowing pulses from their oversize guns.
Can’t they see he’s a Surger? His mojo feeds off heat and electricity.
The hero grins. After absorbing every bolt (none of which looked primed to hit him anyway), he tosses the resultant supercharged orb back into their ranks. Henchmen fly like bowling pins. They topple to the floor, seizing before flopping limp.
I work my fingers into a knot. They’re just unconscious. Right? The Super Squad always brag they keep the city’s fatality count low, but do their statistics include the bad guys?
Another reason not to join that green wall of cannon fodder. I add it to my list.
Today’s villain is a Summoner. Flame-Type, judging by the fluorescent-orange hairdo. Of course, he could be a Surger or a Shaper or even a Water-Type Summoner trying to throw everyone off—but I don’t think villains are capable of that much forward thinking.
“Fools!” he cries. Fire—called it!—spurts from his fingertips. “You will never be a match for the Ferocious Flamer!”
I wince. “The Ferocious Flamer? Scraping the barrel much?”
Lyssa grunts. I take it as agreement.
The hero backpedals, but he can’t outpace the villain in reverse. They trade blows and one-liners. Supers have great stamina—makes it easier to keep wisecracking while you’re having the crap kicked out of you. But all too soon, the villain’s thick fingers fasten around the hero’s throat.
He doesn’t see the heroine, sprinting in from stage left. Her jump gains more elevation than the best Normie gymnast (reminding us all why, after the sudden mutation of the Super gene at the end of WW2, powerless people stopped competing at the Olympics). At the peak of her parabola, she sweeps her arms up and over like a swimmer doing the butterfly.
Six snowflake prongs crackle into existence, haloing her head, so cold they steam. Frozen oxygen. Shaper, then. She can mess with the state of substances, converting solid to liquid, liquid to gas.
She points at the Flamer. Her javelins dart forward. A fireball intercepts, ice bursting on contact. Shards pepper them both. The Shaper heroine shakes them off, landing lithe as a lynx, crouched on the Flamer’s broad back.
A clench of her fist. The air melts. It drenches the Flamer, hissing with hideous cold. The Flamer bites back a scream. He pits his powers against hers, fire vaporizing the liquid off his bare arms …
All in all, just another Saturday. I’m about to turn the TV off when—wham! A turquoise bolt blasts the heroine from her perch.
I only realize my ass is half off the couch when I scoot forward and wind up squatting. A henchman shot a hero? No fucking way.
The heroine rolls to a halt against a pile of rubble. She doesn’t get up again.
The camera whips around, focusing on the henchmen. One outstretched gun glows.
I don’t get a good look. The sidekicks stampede into the henchmen, and the camera returns to the central conflict, hero versus villain. It takes about ten seconds for the steaming, snarling Flamer to reinstate his grip on the Surger hero’s throat.
“Pathetic!” he bellows. “Is this the best Sunnylake has to offer?”
Did he bring his own mic? Or are people with operatic lung capacity just drawn to evil? We may never know. I crane my neck at the screen like that’ll help me see around the corner, to where the henchmen and the sidekicks fight.
“Hardly!” booms a new voice. Seriously—where do these guys take their projection classes? “Let’s be real, though. You’re not exactly A-class yourself.”
A new hero mounts the debris. His white spandex glows against the drifting dust. He’s a junior—only one star on his chest. Must’ve been helping the sidekicks shepherd pedestrians to safety.
Or, muses a cynical voice in the back of my head, he was waiting for the right moment to swoop in and save the day.
His mask covers his upper face and hair. I’m sure fangirls can tell who he is by his jawline, but I’m too busy following the skirmish between sidekicks and henchmen to care.
The camera crews resist me. They insist on a slow, exalting pan up the junior hero’s body. His quadriceps taper into the trim cut of his waist, with a bulge between them that rivals a medieval codpiece. He probably doesn’t even have to stuff it with a sock. They say the Super gene enhances every part of the anatomy.
“Kneel!” shouts the Flamer, shaking his captive hero. “Unless you want your compatriot to perish!”
The new kid smirks. “Sorry. I don’t put out on the first battle.”
It’s cheesy, but that line will still bounce around Tumblr until another hero spouts something snappier. There’ll be gifsets and shippy nemeses fic (which I totally don’t read, if anyone asks. Ignore my browser history).
Our hero raises his hands, palms up like he’s praying. Wind plucks him into the air. That catches Lyssa’s attention. She drops her phone on her lap and leans forward, eyes shiny.
The villain’s face reddens like a burn scar. “You’re a Wind-Type Summoner! You blow on a fire, it gets stronger!”
“Or,” says the hero, “it goes out.”
I don’t care about the remainder of the battle. I just scan the background for my henchman as the hero blasts the Flamer with a jet-stream-force gust, extinguishing his flickering handful. No luck. Fleeing the sidekicks, the henchmen meld into a black-and-green sea.
The Flamer skids over smashed concrete, rolling to a halt. He snarls at the hero, struggling to stand—then shakes his head and lumbers onto the street. The henchmen pile into the rear of a waiting semi, hooking the laser in its trailer to the tow bar. Soon as the Flamer heaves himself aboard, off they vroom.
The sidekicks don’t chase. Re-engaging endangers civilian life—that’s the official line. Like we aren’t in danger every minute of every day.
For now, the battle’s over. Nothing more to see. With that in mind, I level the remote, intending to switch to something more interesting. Before I can punch the button, the junior hero strikes a victorious pose and rips off his mask.
The remote clatters to the floor.
“Riles?” Lyssa nudges me with her foot. “You having a stroke?”
Might as well be. My throat zips up tight from my belly to the base of my tongue. Because there, shrunk down to fit on our secondhand flat-screen, stands Cooper Hanson. Beaming, scrubbed free of bean slime. King of the whole fucking world.