Alex’s instincts took over. Before he realized what he was doing, he was on his stomach, on top of Everlux, his jeans and leather jacket pelted by pieces of glass and debris.
“What just—” Everlux panted under him, his face ruddy and sweaty. He groaned. “Ouch. What just happened?”
“Sorry.” Alex scrambled to his feet, embarrassed. “I just—this was—it was instinctual.”
Everlux sat up and stared at the glass sprayed across the ground. Fire was pouring out of a window a floor above them, the window shattered.
“Your instinct was to shield me from glass? My suit is real silver—I should have protected you!” He spluttered. “Instincts from what?”
“Training,” Alex said. “I—never mind.” He was relieved to see that the building itself hadn’t exploded, just one of the rooms in the studio. What damage had the super villain done to cause this?
He stood up, then offered a hand to help Everlux up.
“Training?” Everlux said, staring at Alex like he was glowing or turning purple. “That was straight-up heroic.”
Alex flushed to his ears, but he pulled Everlux to his feet and turned to stare at the flaming building.
“Gary is still in there!” Someone shouted, and the eyes of the crowd turned to Everlux immediately.
“Gary Nickelson?”
Instead of immediately shooting into the sky and the building, Everlux cocked an eyebrow at the flaming window. “Seriously? Why didn’t he leave? There were alarms. And screams.”
“Everlux—” Alex started.
“Also, he unmasked Vent, so this is karma, basically,” he shrugged. “He’s probably got enough plastic in his face to protect him from burns.”
“Everlux, go!” Alex gestured to the window. “You can fly. He can’t, presumably. And—chapter nine of the Justice Code, section six—a hero does not decide which citizens get to live and die based on quality of character. It’s their job to save as many people as they can. Go!”
Everlux blinked, seeming to come to himself, like he had forgotten that he was in a supersuit. “Oh! Right!” He grimaced, hesitating. “But—how do I—it’s fire!”
Alex huffed and ran to his hover cycle. He was not going to wait for this infant to learn how to walk. He hadn’t used his cycle since training, but he had had no choice but to drive it here—not with Tory’s life in danger.
He ducked into the alley between the buildings and pulled on his black helmet, then jumped on the cycle. The cycle rumbled to life and rose into the air. He flew over the crowd and burst through the flaming window, hoping that he’d been too fast for anyone to see him. He did not want his parents to know he was doing this.
There were small smoldering fires all around him, smoke darkening their orange and flaring light. It looked like there was a huge fire in the corner of the studio, the wall a blackened hole of char billowing smoke. The explosion had started dozens of smaller fires around the room. He hopped off the cycle and skirted around the burning orange and black, his feet crunching broken glass. The ceiling above groaned, and planks of wood and spotlights crashed to the ground around him.
His helmet filtered the smoke as he walked through—hover cycle helmets were built to filter pollution. They weren’t meant for heavy duty situations like this, however, and they certainly weren’t oxygen masks, so the air he was breathing was still thin and uncomfortably hot as he drew in closer.
“Gary!” He called, then squinted at a dark form on the ground. It looked…vaguely human. It was so dark, and his helmet was not exactly enhancing his vision. He ran forward and touched the form, his leather gloves hesitating to turn the soft dark thing over to see what it was. He did it anyway, and it was Gary Nickelson, smeared with ash, sweaty, coughing up a lung, and curling up on the ground.
“Oh. Thank god.” Alex sighed with relief. Gary looked up at him and yelped.
“It’s okay! I’m here to help!” Alex couldn’t imagine what he looked like in the dark—probably some vague shadowy form with a helmet that completely obscured his face. His training had taught him that when rescuing, even if what you thought you were doing was obvious, you always said you were here to help first, no matter what the situation was.
That made Gary relax, and Alex pulled his arm over his shoulder. The man continued to hack, his eyes fluttering, his consciousness fleeting. He was heavy on Alex’s shoulder, too weak to move himself forward, but Alex could handle it, walking him halfway across the large studio.
A crushing blow cracked against Alex’s back. He crumpled, wheezing from the impact. Gary grunted and whimpered in pain beside him. A wooden plank had fallen on top of them—long and heavy, its sharp edges jamming into Alex’s side. Alex gasped for air, but so little oxygen was coming, he couldn’t find the strength to push the plank off.
Alex strained, then slid back into a heap on the ground, stuck. He grimaced. Of course this would happen.
The plank suddenly shriveled around him. Alex blinked as the deadly burden collapsed into piles of sawdust across his shoulders. He barely registered the weightlessness of his shoulders before Everlux was in front of him tugging him to his feet, his face smeared with ash and sweat.
“Oh my—Everlux?” Alex blinked.
“Al,” he sounded incredibly relieved. “You dumbass, charging into a burning building.”
Everlux tugged him and Gary away from the sawdust piles before they could catch on fire.
Alex finally got his bearings, though he was still coughing and gasping for air, and charged forward, dragging them to his hover cycle. He hopped on, and Everlux started to place Gary in the seat in front of him.
“Wait. Can you carry him?” Alex asked.
“Yes...?” Everlux blinked. “I can take him to the ambulance.”
“Do that,” he said. “No one can see me.”
“Oh. Right,” he said. “Okay.”
He scooped Gary up and flew him out the window, to the ambulance below. Alex drove the hover cycle through the window, relieved and lightheaded as he broke into the relatively cooler, sharper Arizona air and gasped for oxygen. He landed in the alley again and tugged off his helmet, then slid to the ground, leaning against the building.
A few moments later, Everlux was in front of him, and he was so pissed that he was spluttering.
“Alex. You asshole. You charged into—I can’t believe you—I’m so—do you have any idea how worried I was? I felt my soul leave my body." He coughed, hard, like his lungs were rebelling after all of the fire and smoke.
“You followed me in,” Alex said. “Without a helmet or anything. That’s way more stupid.”
“No!” Everlux shook his head. “That’s not the same! Of course I would follow you in. Obviously, I would follow you in.”
“How is that different?”
He looked like he wanted to reply with something, but he pursed his lips and glared instead, his eyes blazing like the flames inside the studio.
“How did you know it was me?” Alex asked. “You’ve never seen me on a cycle, and I flew fast.”
Everlux coughed. “I…I don’t know. I just…had a feeling.” He scowled. “That doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t have just gone in.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have had to if the hero on site wasn’t a coward!” Alex spat.
Everlux winced and shrank back, and Alex immediately felt bad. Coward wasn’t the right word.
After all, he had still run in after Alex. He had saved Alex and Gary’s lives. That was not the act of a coward.
He was actually just poorly trained. Instead of fleeing or fighting when his adrenaline kicked in, he froze, because he was little more than a civilian with a supersuit and powers. He was just a social hero who had probably not paid attention during training because he hadn’t cared.
Well, in that case, he had no business being here when a real hero should be. Alex’s parents wouldn’t have trusted the situation to him if they had known. Why was Everlux even here if he didn’t want to be?
“Sorry,” Alex said. “You still saved my life. That wasn’t fair.”
Everlux shrugged. “It’s fine. I guess I deserve that. You’re right. If I had been faster, you wouldn’t have been forced to act.”
He coughed again. Alex cringed.
“Go see a healer. You probably inhaled too much smoke.”
“Fine. I will. But first…” He leaned back on the brick wall. “Wild Blossom.”
Alex nodded. “Did I hear that right? Did she...did she cause this?”
Everlux was quiet for a moment before he said, “She had the same eyes as Vent. That…blue, fractured starburst. It went away after I captured her.”
Ice crept from Alex’s fingers to his core. He shivered, despite the heat. What was this?
“She attacked the entire studio. Golden Blade and Revamp tried to reason with her. I tried to talk to her. She wouldn’t even respond. She flooded the place with plants.”
He sighed, his blue hair, damp with sweat, falling limp over his face, soot smeared across his face and arms. He looked so disheveled, in a way he never did in advertisements, posts, or interviews.
“I don’t know what it is, but Golden Blade and Revamp think that she’s under some kind of power.” He looked back up at Alex. “What do we do?”
Alex blinked. “You’re asking me? I’m not a hero.”
“Neither am I,” he said plainly. “But here we are, saving TV show hosts from burning buildings.”
Alex squinted at him and gestured to his suit.
His crooked grin finally came out to play, in all of its infuriating glory. “I’m a social hero, Alex. All surface, no substance.”
Alex snorted. Well, at least he was self-aware.
“We should just let the professionals handle it. We could barely handle a basic fire rescue.”
Everlux shook his head. “Have you seen these guys try to handle things? They’re going to reclassify Wild Blossom as a villain, prematurely out her identity like they did with Vent, and then drop it. I just spoke with Diane Burns and the responders—they wouldn’t listen to me. No one is listening to me when I tell them that there’s something going on. And I know Golden Blade and Revamp care, but they’re above-the-belt members of the paragon guild. I don’t know how far they’ll take their support for Wild Blossom. What if they lose their jobs?”
Alex felt like he was living in some kind of opposite dimension. This was a dimension where Everlux wasn’t just a sell-out with a lot of cash and a pretty smile. He was making a lot of sense.
“We have nothing to lose if we investigate Wild Blossom and Vent and try to help them.”
“Our lives,” Alex said dryly. “You seem to forget that I don’t have powers.”
Everlux raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re the one who forgets you don’t have powers. Besides, you seem to handle yourself just fine.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m not allowed to be.”
“Okay, cool. Have you not seen the Gray American Batman and Robin movies?”
Alex scowled. This was an argument he’d silently had with himself for the last year. Of course he’d seen those movies—they killed him. He wanted so badly to be a hero, and some rich white guy in a movie just went out and did it. Alex trained for almost his entire life, and he was still told no because he hadn’t been born with powers.
“I don’t want to be a vigilante, Everlux. I care about the Justice Code. Don’t go above your means,” he quoted at the other boy.
“You’ve proven twice that this is perfectly within your means.”
“I don’t have powers! People without powers can’t be heroes! Section eight of the Just—”
“What has following the Justice Code done for you?” Everlux folded his arms. “If you had followed it, Gary Nickelson would have died. You know what—Tory would have died. But they didn’t, because you thought for yourself. Besides, that thing makes you miserable.”
Alex’s mouth snapped shut. He found himself remembering how he had justified drinking at the party. The same logic seemed to apply here, except that what Everlux was asking him to do was certainly more noble. At least, it seemed noble.
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to be a vigilante.” Were powerless vigilantes a thing?
“I think vigilantes are hot,” Everlux said unhelpfully.
“If my parents found out, I would get super grounded.”
“Is super-grounding different from powerless grounding?”
“Sweet breezes.” He held his breath for a count of ten. He was with a very famous person who he could not punch without becoming a media sensation.
The thing was—Everlux had a point. No one was going to look further into this. Vent’s life was already ruined by having his name revealed, and they were just going to do the same to Wild Blossom.
What bothered him even more was that Tory had somehow been involved in both of these attacks, two days in a row. Diane Burns was the most powerful person in the city—the top dog. She certainly had enemies, and going after her son was just the sort of thing an enemy would do.
He released his breath just as Everlux started humming the Batman theme song.
“Okay. Fine. You know what?”
Everlux looked up at him expectantly. “What?”
He looked like a puppy, and it was making Alex feel things that were completely unacceptable.
“We’re going to do this. I’m…I’m going to be busy this week.” He felt dread pinch his gut as he thought about going to school after all of this. “Can we meet on the roof of the Wingstate Apartments on Monday at six?” His leg bobbed with anxiety. Was he really doing this?
Everlux’s eyes narrowed at him. “Why?”
“For...hero patrol.”
“Oh.” He blinked, and then his jaw dropped. “I knew i—”
“Shut up. You don’t know anything.”
Everlux grinned triumphantly, like he’d gotten some kind of achievement. It was excruciatingly dashing, but also kind of giddy and dorky. “Alrighty, Batman. I’ll see you then.”
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