Clenching my eyes tight, all I can hear is a loud ringing. Trying to fight off the pain, I look up from where I am, but a bright light shines in my face.

“He’s coming around,” I hear someone call out. 

Turning my head to the side, I see a large, portly man standing next to me. Doctor Grandside. He’s the medical and science expert for the Justice Alliance.

“Ay mijo!” my mom lets out a Spanish sigh of relief. “I was so worried.”

“How you feeling, Worm?” Mr. Mimic asks, squeezing my hand.

My eyes flutter, still trying to gather my bearings. Squinting to block out the light, my vision clears, and I see my mom, Mimic, and Doc all standing in a line, peering down on me. “I’m … I’m okay, I think. What happened?”

“You see, this is exactly why I didn’t want him doing this,” Mom snaps at Mimic, piercing him with a cold stare. Mr. Mimic is six-five, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and can imitate up to three superpowers at once. All of that does nothing to stop the apologetic frown he gives her. I’ve caught that look from my mom before, so I know the kind of fear it can instill.

“It was a side shot,” Mimic answers finally. “It came out of the blue. It almost caught Granite off guard, so don’t feel too bad. The Bomb Twins sent out sidewinder rockets, trying to disorient everyone, and one hit the building as you were coming out. Tore a hole through the corner of it.”

“Tore a hole?” I ask, shocked.

Sitting up, I examine all of my appendages. Other than a slight ringing I can still hear, I don’t look like I took any damage. If the explosion had enough force to blast a hole through a building, how’d I even survive? 

Doc steps over to me, placing a small monitor to my temple. “It was a close call, Worm.”

He’s a stout man, in his mid-sixties, that’s been a member for the Justice Alliance for decades. He’s not a founding member, but he joined a few years after it was established. In addition to the leather utility belt he has on, he’s wearing a headband wrapped around his forehead, with three micro-lenses attached to it that fall over his left eye. It’s a standard device he uses when in his labs. It screams ‘evil-genius.’

He is a genius, but he’s not evil. Furthest thing from it. A full, gray beard covering half of his face, he always reminds me of one of those heartwarming grandpas you see in movies. I can’t remember how many Ph.D.’s he has, either seven or eight. When someone’s stumped on a medical condition, an intergalactic alien virus, or can’t figure out how to re-align a transporter that sends Justice Alliance members off-world to different coordinates, he’s the man everyone calls on.

“Luckily, your subconscious must’ve taken control,” Doc continues. “You teleported out of there, and back to headquarters just before the blast radius could cause any major damage. You still took a pretty good lump to the head, though, from the debris.” 

For a split-second, it seems like Doc eyes me carefully, as if he’s looking for something else or expecting me to add to his explanation. Then he returns to a monitor, going over the readings of a machine I’m hooked up to.

Supron, a founding member of the Alliance, steps into the room and says something to Mimic, while my mom continues to tell me why this was all a bad idea. I hear her words, but I’m stuck on what Doc said. I teleported out of the fight.

I cringe, thinking what I must’ve looked like to outside eyes. To every other superhero and sidekick that was out there. Not only did my first mission end in spectacular fashion, but it looks like I ran away from the fight, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire Alliance has second thoughts about bringing me on board as a sidekick. 

I glance over at my mom. “What are you doing here?” Generally speaking, unless someone has life-threatening injuries, civilians aren’t allowed in the medic bay.

“What am I doing here? I saw the whole thing on TV!”

“You what?” I shout, and immediately regret it, grabbing my head in pain. “It was on TV?”

Doc, Supron, and Mimic nod their heads in agreement as if it’s no problem at all. No problem, except now the entire city got their first view of the newest sidekick in the Justice Alliance. Not only did they see him nearly get obliterated, but also teleport away like a little baby. Awesome first mission.

* * *

When I get home, I head straight to my room. I want to forget the entire day, but it makes it harder to do when my mom is complaining to my dad about all of the dangers that come along with being a sidekick. Things like deadly, supervillain threats, disappearing into alternate universes, and space-ray bombs. For the record, there isn’t anything out there called a space-ray bomb. Yes, a few heroes have disappeared into alternate universes, never to be heard from again, but space-ray bombs? No.

She had made peace with it until today. After finally getting her to sign my forms before my training started, she’d make a comment here or there, but she was good. She knows this is what I’ve always wanted to do, ever since I could crawl. It was entirely the opposite for my father. He loves that I’m a sidekick. His go-to line to my mom, whenever the argument came up over the summer was, “I was out in the streets at his age, up to no good. At least he’s with superheroes.”

Putting on my headphones, I block out the rest of her frustrated complaints to my father and check my phone. I might as well surf the net, stalk Jasmin’s InstaPic page, and hopefully forget about this day. If only it was that simple.

The first thing I find on my phone is a text message from Pete.

Pete: U okay?

Pete: …

Pete: Where r u?

Yeah, I’m fine, Pete. Just had to go off on my first mission with Mr. Mimic and fight the horrible Bomb Twins, who nearly killed me. But they didn’t because I teleported out of harm’s way and out of the fight entirely, ending up in the medic bay at Justice Alliance headquarters.

Yeah, that’d be great.

Me: I’m ok. I tripped and hit my head. Had to leave early. Tell you more tomorrow.

The guilt builds inside not being able to tell him the truth. At least today, though, the small consolation is that he doesn’t know what an epic failure my first outing was.

Opening an app, I start to scroll when I see an overhead picture of the fight taking place. It’s a King City Newsfeed. There’s an explosion in the image, with a couple of superheroes flying down below. It looks completely normal, like any other superhero battle that might be reported. However, the headline is anything but and makes my skin crawl.

“Bomb Twins attack bank. One sidekick unaccounted for. Follow for updates!”

Perfect. Just. Freaking. Perfect.

Maybe I can just catch the updates from Justice Alliance debriefing notes. The Alliance runs its own encrypted app, listing pertinent news for different areas or cities. Scrolling through the first one, I finally find something that isn’t about me.

JA Info Alert: The JA is being asked by local authors to assist in a missing person of one Professor Dean MaCall.

Cool. Maybe I’ll catch a break over the weekend and be able to wipe my slate clean with Mimic. Scrolling some more, I’m almost at ease when I’m hit in the face.

JA Check Point: All mentoring superheroes, please be advised: Review regulations of mission protocols with sidekicks. Due to a possible injury, we’re also requiring all sidekicks to review the safety protocols for Priority Level Red missions.

Wonderful.

Come on, InstaPic, don’t fail me now. If nothing else, I can at least see what Jasmin was up to today. 

Nope. I can’t.

The first image the app opens up to is a video. Someone was filming the Bomb Twins fiasco, and you can’t make me out, but you can definitely see someone running out of the lobby of a building. An explosion hits the building and the runner—me—is gone.

“Dude, where’d he go?” a voiceover for the video asks. “Did he just get blown up?”

“I don’t know,” another voice answers. “I don’t see any arms or legs. Maybe he hightailed it out of there.”

I check the stats of the video. Over a million views and it was only posted three hours ago.

My sidekicking life is over.

All everyone is going to be talking about is how the new sidekick ran away from the fight. And let’s not even mention the other sidekicks I fight alongside.

Mr. Mimic is my mentor, but whereas some cities usually only have one superhero to protect it—and a sidekick if they choose to mentor one—King City has three. Mr. Mimic, Supron, and Ms. Majestic. All three of them are the most famous superheroes in the world, and they’re all founding members of the Justice Alliance.

Ms. Majestic’s sidekick is her niece from their home-world, Melissa Caspian, whose code name is Mighty Miss. Supron’s sidekick is Hydro and is a major pain. He’s constantly nagging me about protocols and acting like he’s so much better than me. When I get back to headquarters for training, I know he’s going to let me have it. I spent my whole childhood wishing upon thousands of stars for superpowers. Now that I finally have them, I never thought in a million years my first mission would end up like this.