H.E.R.O. - Horde (5 page)

Zonk was close enough to hear.  He made a sound as if he was cold and said, "Ugh.  Dolls are creepy."

I said, "A lot of people think clowns are creepy, Zonk."

"What?!  Clowns are cool."

"No, seriously.  A lot of people are afraid of them."

"But clowns can do this...."  He waved his hand through the air and several colorful balloons made of bright little particles were in his hand.  He bumped them up into the air where they turned into small fireworks.

"That's more of a magician thing, actually...."

"You're a grumpy gus, Black Tiger."

I chuckled.

Rayna glanced at the officers standing nearby, stepped up very close to me and whispered, "What if these are aliens?"

I shook my head, "Not actual ones.  The clothes and wallets matching the rough look of the guys ruins that idea.  However, we can't rule them out as the
cause
of the change."

"We need to find the blue guys from the Selestor starship."

I nodded.  I took a small metal-lined glass vial from a pouch and stopped over by the H.E.R.O. uniformed bricks as they loaded up the horde guys into the super paddy wagons.

I said, "Excuse me officer, I need some evidence."

He nodded and stepped to the side.  I popped my claws, cut one of them and collected a blood sample, and then sealed it.

I nodded at the officer, "Thanks, man."

He asked, "Any idea what these are?"

I replied, "Only suspicions, and we don't want to spread rumors until we know more.  They're extremely strong, by the way - not nearly what a normal brick is, but be aware."

"Got it."

I heard Agent Carrigan say, "Don't do it, Zonk."

He replied, "What?"

"You were going to jump in front of the paddy wagon as it left, and you know it."

"I wouldn't do that...."

"You did it last time."

"Did I?"

"Yeah.  It's bad enough that we get complaints from the city bus drivers and garbage truck drivers about you jumping in front of them to get run over."

"Yeah, but it makes people laugh."

"It freaks out the drivers."

"Oh, come on, it's not like they can't see me nearby - I stand out like a splash of color in a drab street."

"Still, you could damage the vehicles."

"I get squished when they run me over, it doesn't hurt them."

"There's still a bump."

"Like the city streets don't have bumps?"

She sighed.  "You just won't listen, will you?"

"I listened just now!"

"But you still aren't going to change."

"I change all the time!  My shorts, that is."

"Oh, god....  Fine, shoo.  Off with you."

"All righty then.  Night everyone, Rayna, new guys!"

His eyes kept flicking over toward the paddy wagon as the driver began pulling away.  He dove down the street a short distance ahead of it.  The driver hit the brakes, but not in time - the large tires of the vehicle ran him over.  The driver pulled to a stop just afterward.

Sure enough, Zonk's torso was mostly flattened by the heavy vehicle, leaving odd tire impressions in his body.  He just started sitting up when the driver backed up over him, shifted gear and drove off down the road.

He was right - the officers and small crowd nearby did laugh at it.  He grinned and waved at them, colorful particles following his hand movement through the air.  His torso was only beginning to regain its normal shape when he jogged a dozen steps and leaped up at a nearby building.  He didn't appear to be the natural distance jumper that Spartan was, but he had no problem leaping up five stories.

I walked back over by Rayna and Spartan.

I said, "Let us know if you find anything out - or find our blue friends.  Perhaps this will give us a clue."  I held up the small vial.

Rayna nodded.  "Be good, guys."

I grinned, "I'll think about it."

Spartan said, "And I'll do it.  You too, Rayna."

He put his giant hand on her shoulder and pulled her into a gentle hug.  He held her against him as he gently leaped back and up on top of The Lady's Web.  I thought he was a sucker for the ladies.

I flicked my wrists to relax my hands and force the claws to shift back into their finger form.  Then I walked over to my motorcycle, climbed on and drove back to the parking lot we'd been in.  Once there I sent a text to Spartan mentioning where I was at, figuring that we'd continue our watch for the night.

Chapter 3 - Robot

Greg Paffen's Viewpoint

Wednesday morning, and I'd just returned from my fifth trip to a junkyard in the city.  My name was Greg Paffen.  I'd been a normal guy up until just over a week ago - then the meteor shower struck.

I'd been watching a science fiction movie when it hit, pain went through my entire body, and I'd woken up lying on the floor.  The change was immediately apparent - I was in far better shape after the change, all my body fat was gone and I'd gained muscle.

At first I thought I'd become a superhero, like the people in the newspaper and on TV.  No cool powers showed up, though.  I hoped for something like the ability to blast fire or lightning, or maybe move objects with my mind ... but nothing came up.

After spending the following Sunday and Monday trying to make stuff happen I gave up and went back to working on the robotic exoskeleton I'd been working on for a movie house.  I did specialty robotics for a living - mostly hydraulics based systems used in special effects films.  Metrocity was pushing for more movies to be made here, so my work had grown from small toys to human sized and larger robot-like skeletons that could move and look natural.

The particular exoskeleton I'd been working on was meant to have a person standing inside it, while being able to actually walk around as though it were made for combat.  I'd made some brackets for some fake weaponry other guys were working on; they'd given me the specs for the connectors and brackets.  The rest of the machine was all mine.  It had working actuators and worked to walk around in already.

I'd hopped in to take a test walk around the old warehouse, turned on the power, grabbed the controls and felt my body ... expand.  The entire machine was an extension of me.  It took a few minutes to sort out the sensation, but when I decided to try walking the unit around it simply moved, even without me using the controls.

I even felt through the legs, feet and three-pronged fingers of the unit.  It didn't make sense, because there weren't any sensors on the fingers or feet that could pass information to me, but I felt it all.  The entire machine had become part of me.

After walking around and trying some arm motions, I realized that I had even more range of motion than expected.  Not only could I move the actuators, but I could move the joints that I hadn't even connected any actuators or other mechanisms to yet.  I'd found that I could lift about twelve hundred pounds with my own body the last few days, but this metal frame allowed me to lift far more.

I'd spent the prior week's Tuesday playing with that exoskeleton.  After I got out of the unit, I found that I could do the same thing with my small toy robots in the house.  When I held one, I could feel through it and make the parts all move as I wished, even when they had no parts to do so.

Last Wednesday was the great discovery - while playing with a toy robot I somehow shifted my entire point of view to be from that robot.  I had even turned around and looked at my own body - which had promptly slumped down against the table.  After a few minutes of freaking out I figured out how to touch my body and shift back into it.  After some paranoia - and making sure everything worked right on my own body - I played with the toy robot again until I was able to shift into it again.

I spent a while wandering around my own apartment as a toy robot.  I was much stronger than I expected as a toy as well - it wasn't hard to leap several times my own body length, for example.  I'd grabbed the camera and taken some photos in a mirror as the robot just for humor and posted them to my social website.  My friends thought it was just a clever thing to have a toy take such pictures - they had no idea the robot really did do it on its own.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday playing around as the various robots in my house.  Even those without engines or mechanized joints were controllable.  It made no sense, but somehow it worked.  Then I found I could attach other robot parts to a robot and cause them to reshape and attach to the current robot I was 'in.'  It was great, because it allowed me to take the bigger ones that had solid hands and add some fine-control limbs to the body, as well as a tentacle from another toy.

While the little ones were fun, I realized that my big unit would be a lot better if I could add even more heavy duty steel to it.  I needed to visit a junkyard.

I'd spent the last Friday through Tuesday bringing the big robot in my large transport van I used to bring the units to the movie sets to landfills.  I couldn't drive while standing in the enclosed back of the truck, and the first time ended up walking back to my body - which had been lying on the floor, picking up my own body and carrying it into the back of the truck, and then shifting back into my own body.

I'd been to most of the junkyards in town numerous times in the past while searching for parts that would look interesting on robots.  I went to the first one, had a conversation with the owner, and meandered until I found some good parts.  Being able to lift over half a ton on my own became very useful as I brought some heavy beams and other parts from old construction machinery and who knows what else back to the truck.

At one point, I realized that with the right parts, I could make an even larger and more powerful robot than the one in my truck, but the parts were too large and heavy.  I'd gone back to my truck, shifted into the machine and walked out to pick up more parts.  It was far stronger than my own body, and I quickly grabbed enough parts to make something a good fifteen feet tall - perhaps something like a mecha.

It was fun at times wandering around, touching a piece of equipment, and moving the joints and such.  I took to carrying a tiny robot in each pocket so I could easily take one over and get into the hard to reach parts of the later junkyards to find items that were buried out of sight.  I found several great parts that would make some extremely strong arm and leg supports for a larger mecha, as well as a cage structure for the chest.  I figured I'd either make a spot for my own body to be in or perhaps to hold something else if I wandered around just as a mecha.

I was finally back in my warehouse.  I organized the various parts I'd collected into type - larger items that would work best with the large mecha I planned to build, those that would enhance my current oversized exoskeleton, and smaller stuff for any number of possible small robots.

I stared at my exoskeleton for a while. 
I could actually
be
the machine for a movie.  It would allow for a lot more movement than anything done to date, barring CGI.  Nevertheless, this would be real items moving.  True physics coming into play.  Man, I could be a movie star ... of sorts.  Everyone in Hollywood would want me for the unusual combos I could make.  Oh, this is going to be great!

I looked over at the larger parts. 

I said, "You guys get to become the world's first true mecha.  You'll be a prototype so I can get funding for some really awesome custom parts."

I spent the day dismantling some of the parts to fit them into the large mecha, and by the evening had a roughly fifteen foot tall robot standing in my warehouse.  Rather than use my machinery to custom modify each beam and part to fit together I used my new power to reshape the parts and cause them to join together.

After stomping around the warehouse in my first test walk of the new supermachine I decided that I'd go out for the evening and celebrate.  I called up my friend Aimee.  She was always fun to go out with....

Chapter 4 - Brighter Day

Diva's Viewpoint

After getting hurt yet again on Monday night when the small alien plane shot me with the laser shooters, I ended up moping around the house on Tuesday.

On the one hand, when I'd woken up in the morning my left thigh and right shoulder felt normal again when I moved them.  It was strange that they had only hurt when I moved them, but the pain had been intense on Monday night.

I supposed I would have been more interested in seeing the alien space plane like the others had been were I not so injured.  I'd also been kind of bummed out that Black Tiger didn't fly home with me.  I decided not to hold it against him, however - he'd wanted to make sure that Psystar got home safely.

If I thought I was in pain, that poor girl kept knocking herself out while doing her mind thingie.  I liked her, even though she failed at having good fashion sense.  But she was extremely pretty, in a cute way, and she liked me.  It felt really good to have a friend.

I knew a fair number of people in town, but most were either in the fashion scene, or trying to get into it like I was, and were more interested in using others than in actually being friends.  Some threw killer parties, though - far more interesting than the one Psystar's study buddies threw last Friday night just to get her lushed up.

The thought reminded me of Trevin, the guy that had some kind of mind power over Psystar.  He could make her do what he wanted when she was close.  That didn't make me happy.  Granted, I hadn't seen him do anything explicitly bad, but he'd been heading down a path of making her do more and more, and I was positive last Friday would have turned into something far different if I'd allowed her to remain.

I'd felt good enough after fighting the alien pirates and then resting for a bit while the others explored the ship to give everyone hugs before leaving.  Sure, my leg still hurt horribly when I moved it, but seeing the faces on the guys when I went up to hug them - after almost all of my costume had been destroyed - was priceless.  I wished I had a video of it.