H.E.R.O. - Rise and Fall (3 page)

"Hold up a minute."  I walked into the room's bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.  I hadn't imagined anything - my skin was still a chrome metallic color and texture.  It even sounded metallic when I tapped my fingers against my arm.  My eyes appeared normal, although set against the metal eyelids and face they looked odd, almost alien.  My eyes were green, and my hair a very dark brown.  It hung straight and to my shoulders.  I'd grown to about 6' tall, and my muscles now bulged like I was a pro woman athlete - not quite like a bodybuilder, but more than I liked.  I didn't appear to have any body fat apart from my chest.  Those barely moved when touched either.

I stood up and walked with her out of the building.  My feet made a metallic clicking sound as they touched the ground.  Psystar was really short next to me.

I asked her, "How tall are you?"

"I'm 5'3", why do you ask?"

"Hmm, I think I grew.  I used to be 5'9" and didn't feel this tall."

"You probably did grow.  I'd say you are about 6' tall now.  My friend Spartan grew a few inches when he changed into a brick."

Once outside she asked, "You ready?"

"Yes.  What do I need to do?"

"Just let me hold you, I'll do the work.  Oh, and please don’t hug me tight, you’re too strong to do that, let me hold you."

She stepped up against me and wrapped her arm around my waist.  It was odd being this close to another woman, especially with her practically putting her face against my chest.  I put my left arm around her and lightly held her left shoulder for something to do.

She seemed to just step up into the air and we began floating up.  She did this a few times and we sped up somewhat as we glided upwards.

"You ready for the speed?"

"Sure."

She jabbed her knee into the air and we shot up at high speed.  I grabbed onto her shoulder for support and heard and odd crunching noise.  She made an odd gurgling sound and her face was tight with pain.

"Oh, my.  I apologize."

She grunted, "It's okay, ugh.  You're really strong."

I bit my lip as she altered direction and flew toward my house.  I tried to hold her as little as possible out of fear I'd hurt her again.  I noticed that her shoulder turned purple as we flew.

The flight was exceptional.  I didn't feel any wind at all, although my hair blew back slightly, so there must have been at least some.  Had I not been worried about hurting Psystar I'd have enjoyed the flight a lot more.

She stepped down a few times and we slowed our descent speed.  The landing was more gentle than I expected.

When we were on the ground she stepped back, I saw the tears in her eyes and the way she stood to avoid moving the shoulder.

I grimaced, "Can I do anything?"

"No, I'll heal.  All of us supers heal very fast.  You're just luckier than most, you won't get hurt plus you heal up fast.  Double bonus."

"Nice to know.  Do I need to worry about any more kidnappers running around?"

"No, I don't believe so.  We captured their telepath too, so they can't control anyone else."

"Good, good.  Would you like anything while you are here?  I’m sorry about the shoulder."

"No, I need to get to the University in time for class, though.  Be safe, okay?"

"You too, Psystar."

"Have a good one, Chrome."

I opened my mouth to refute the name, but realized it fit.

"Thanks for the flight; it was really interesting seeing the city from above."

"My pleasure."  She stepped up to me and hugged me with her good arm, stepped back and flew up into the sky.

I waved to her and watched her fly away.  Her golden hair shined in the morning light, creating a beautiful effect.  If she had white wings she'd have looked a lot like an angel.

I turned and walked up to the house, found the spare key and opened the door.  I turned the handle a few extra times, just feeling the difference of my metal hand against the knob versus what I remembered from before.  My hand had a very poor grip now, it tended to slid around the knob, and I dented the handle slightly when I grabbed it even a little hard.

I grit my teeth and walked in.  On the carpet floors of the house I heard the floor creak far more than I ever had from anyone else walking on it.  Apparently I weighed a lot more now as well.  I thought I'd find out and stepped on my scale.  The plastic snapped and the pointer went off the high end.  I sighed.

I glanced around the house, but really didn't expect Sam, my husband, home early in the morning.  He would be off to work.

I spent some time going through my closet.  Most clothes no longer fit - not a huge deal, I made a lot of my own clothes; I'd just sew some new ones.  As I pulled my favorite oversized shirt over my head I tore it as I caught my thumb in the fabric.  Normally it would have given enough resistance to know to stop, but I didn't even feel it until it gave a tearing sound and was shredded.  I took my time with the rest of the clothes to make sure I didn't damage anything else.

It did feel good to wear normal clothes again though.  It was odd that the girls no longer bounced, or barely moved for that matter.  I was shapely, but just seemed so ... hard.  I knocked my knuckles on my own skin a few times to hear the metal ring.

I decided to spend the next few hours working.  I made custom jewelry on special order for people out of my home.  It was a good business, and I much enjoyed the creative aspect of it.

Unfortunately, when I sat down the chair snapped in half and dumped me on the floor.  The wooden board under the carpeting cracked as my butt struck it as well. 
Great, I can't use plastic office chairs any more?
  When I grabbed a chair from another room I snapped the arm rest as I grabbed the chair.  It stayed together when I put my butt in it, though.

I picked up my finishing tools and the ring I'd been working on.  I realized I'd squished the ring between my fingers.  I hadn't even tried to put pressure on it.

I cried, "Nooo!"  Then an odd sound from my right hand made me realize I'd snapped my tool.  I tried to work with numerous pieces of metal, but my fingers just wouldn't work right.  I constantly bent the metal out of shape, and snapped several more tools.  I didn't have the sensitive touch I used to have, and my metal fingers were far more slippery as well.  After an hour I'd caused so much damage that I gave up.

I decided to try to make a new shirt then.  Something had to go right for me.  I went through my materials, running my fingers over them to pick out something soft.  Sadly, I apparently lost that sense of touch as well.  Rough wool felt as soft as silk or velvet to me.  Had I not known what each fabric was I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart via touch at all.  My day was just getting worse.

I picked out what looked like a soft cotton fabric anyway, carefully cut it out, and was pleased that things were getting back on track.  When I went to switch the thread I snapped off the metal rod.  A rage filled me, anger at myself, at supers, at life for treating me so unfairly.  I swatted at the sewing machine and it launched at the wall like a cannonball.

It knocked a hole right through the outside wall of the house and continued flying through the air.  A moment later I heard a very loud crash from across the street as the machine continued into the neighbor's house.  I banged my hand against my head out of frustration and shook my head.

I screamed and kicked the sewing table.  It flew across the room and smashed against the wall.  A shelving unit with supplies fell over with a loud crash and supplies flew all over the room.  I screamed again.

Chapter 3 – A Great Day

Gravitix’s Viewpoint

The hospital room had gotten boring by Friday morning, when the nurse finally stopped in and said I was being released.  I still thought about the strange situation that happened last Saturday afternoon.  I and some friends had all been hanging out in the mall food court watching the ladies and the news about the meteor shower about to hit.

I remember the sound of fireworks from the sky as meteor fragments exploded.  My recollection went fuzzy around that time, however.  My insides felt like they had lit on fire, and then it felt like my body tried to rip itself apart from the center.  It was an odd and nasty sensation.

I dimly recall standing up and screaming.  My arms were flung out to my sides from the odd tugging sensation my entire body felt from all over.

Something hit me and I felt this great … wave … of force, energy or who knows what came out of my entire body.  It was like all that pulling force had been flung away from me in an explosion.

The next thing I knew I’d woken in the hospital on Wednesday.  A pretty lady who could light her hands on fire came to see me.  She introduced herself as a super – although not someone in the H.E.R.O. program. 

She described how supers were classified – they thought I was a blaster or a psychic – and walked me through how to be cautious and responsible with my powers.  She was clear on the concept that a super could have a normal job and be part of society just like everyone else.

I thought she was crazy. 
Why would I want to be normal if I have super powers?

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I could pull objects to me – either everything nearby or a single object if I focused on it.

The big kicker came when I realized I was changing the gravity of objects.  The amount of gravity an object was subject to appeared to be in my control.  I made objects hover in the air – they seemed to stay there for perhaps an hour after I stopped concentrating on them.  Even better, I was able to make myself weightless as well – I could hover.

I held back on too much of that; I really didn’t want the hospital staff to have any information on my abilities.  By early morning on Friday I was tired of sitting around in my room waiting to be released.

I called my friend Nick to pick me up.  We both worked in the computer department at a manufacturing company, and I knew my boss would let him out mid morning.  It didn’t take him long to come get me, and he drove us to my place to drop me off.

When we got back to my apartment I said, “Nick, can you keep a secret?”

“Sure.  Wait, don’t tell me you are dying.”

“No, this is something good, not bad.”

I picked up a pillow, concentrated on it for a few seconds and let go.  It hovered in the air where I let go of it.  I tapped it on the side after a moment and it floated horizontally across the room, bumped into the far wall and stayed there.

Nick stared at the pillow for a moment, looked back at me, and then walked over to the pillow.

He said, “This isn’t a con, is it?”

“No, it’s real.”

He grabbed the pillow and smashed it in his hands a few times; it looked like he was trying to find something inside it.

“Bub, there’s nothing in it, it’s a normal pillow.  Well, not so normal right now, but it
was
normal.”

He gently tossed the pillow and it flew in a straight line slightly upward across the room, bumped into a wall and rebounded out into the air a short distance.”

“This is awesome.”

“I agree.  Now watch this.”  I held my hand out toward the pillow, and it flew directly back to my hand where I grabbed it.

“So … you can make stuff weightless?  Or are you a telekinetic?”

“Weightless, how do I describe this….  I ‘imbue’ the pillow with resistance to gravity, and it just floats, as if in space.”

“Okay, how did you get it back to you?”

“I think I’m causing some kind of local gravity effect between myself and the pillow.”

“Why doesn’t it affect anything else?”

“No idea.  Want to help me go test this out?”

“Hell yeah.  Where to?”

“Let me grab some soda and munchies and we’ll head to the quarry up on the north side.  It’s not in use right now, so we can try with different rock sizes.”

“Good idea.  I’ve got my tablet in the car if we need to do any web research.”

“Awesome.”  I quickly changed clothes, collected the food items and we left the apartment.  In a half hour we arrived at the quarry.  No vehicles were in sight as we pulled up.  We were in luck.  Nick drove in closer to the giant pit and pulled off to the side.

After we got out and found a softball sized rock, I said, “Okay, I know I’ve got the ability to pull items to me, now let’s see if I can push something away.”

“Doesn’t gravity always pull?”

“To my knowledge it does.  It’s worth trying.”

He shrugged, “Go for it.”

I held up a rock, made it weightless so it floated in front of me, and concentrated on throwing it.  Nothing occurred.  It took some playing around to figure out that I could change the direction of gravity on a rock and touch it to something like a tree limb and it would stay there.  The power of the pull against the tree appeared to be configurable as well.  When I imbued it with a slight amount of gravity effect, the rock wouldn’t return to the tree if pulled away very far.  But after I increased the effect some more, it acted a lot like a strong magnet both to my hand as well as to the tree limb, and ‘fell’ over to the branch rather quickly.

Throwing weightless rocks was interesting for a while, but since the rocks appeared to move in a straight line slightly upward it got boring watching them fly off into the distance.  I wondered if they would end up crashing down into the city again at some point.

The same effect worked for throwing rocks directly up.  They simply kept the speed they had when leaving our hand and moved upward until we couldn’t see them anymore.

Nick asked, “Can you remove the weightless effect now?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated, but didn’t appear to have any tie to objects I had made weightless.

“No.  I can’t sense them or ‘feel’ them in any way or form.”

“I wonder how long they’ll fly for?”

“It seemed like stuff stayed floating for about an hour after I stopped concentrating on them.”

“So how fast of a fastball do you think I can throw upward?  Thirty miles an hour?”