The Superhero's Origin (The Superhero's Son Book 5) (18 page)

“Fat chance,” I said. “Who are you? Identify yourself or else.”

“Who am I?” said the water man. “I don’t remember my real name, but my friends always called me Drop.”

“Drop?” I said. “Never heard of you.”

“No surprise there,” said Drop, “given how most people haven’t. But I suppose that you have heard of my friends, haven’t you?”

I exchanged puzzled looks with Blizzard. “Friends? Who are you talking about? Are you part of some famous supervillain team or something?”

“We’re not ‘supervillains,’” said Drop. “We’re just men and women seeking to get the revenge we want on the man who ruined our lives.”

I gasped. “Are you one of the Test Subjects from Project Neo?”

Drop nodded. “Yes. Back in those days, I was known as Test Subject Zero Zero Four. And, as you can so clearly see, I am made entirely of water.”

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Are you after me?”

“What? No,” said Drop, shaking his head. “I was searching for your grandfather, Matthew Jason. Some of our friends here in NYC claimed that they saw him, so I came looking.”

“Grandfather is here in the city?” I said. “Where is he?”

Drop smirked. “Why should I tell
you
that? So you can save him? Please. I’m not that dumb.”

“If you tell us where he is, we won’t beat you and have you thrown into jail,” I said. “Or at least we’ll get the government to give you a lighter sentence than you’d normally receive.”

“Liars,” said Drop. He raised his fists. “I probably should not fight either of you, seeing as you two are not my target, but since I doubt you will leave me alone to search for Matthew in peace, I will crush you both and then resume my search.”

Drop fired two massive water balls at us. I grabbed Blizzard and flew both of us straight into the air just in time to avoid the water balls, which splashed onto the street and splattered everywhere. We rose above Drop, who looked up and followed us as we flew higher and higher into the air.

Once we were high enough, Blizzard thrust her hands down at Drop and sent icicles flying at him. But Drop just formed holes in his body that allowed the icicles to harmlessly pass through his form and shatter against the street behind him. Then he retaliated by shooting some water darts at us.

I turned in midair, allowing the water darts to fly harmlessly past us, and then landed on top of a nearby building, where I let go of Blizzard.

“Blizzard, I want you to stay up here and try to freeze Drop while I distract him,” I said to her. “Because he’s made out of water, I think that will be the best way to deal with him.”

“Sure,” said Blizzard, nodding. “I’ll do my best.”

I nodded in return and then flew back over the side of the building. Drop was still standing where he had been a moment ago, but when he spotted me, he thrust out his hand toward me. His arm suddenly elongated, flying through the air toward me until it slammed into me.

But instead of sending me flying, the water fist enveloped me, immediately cutting off my air. I gasped in pain, but before I could react, Drop slammed his fist—with me still inside it—down onto the street. The water exploded around me, allowing air to fill my lungs again, but the impact of the crash still jarred my senses, leaving me momentarily stunned.

Then I felt the street around me turning wet and I looked down and saw Drop’s water forming around me. He was obviously trying to hold me down so I couldn’t escape, but I quickly jumped to my feet and ran away just as two jaws made out of water rose from the liquid and slammed shut around where I had been lying just moments before.

Skidding to a halt across the slick concrete, I glanced at the top of the nearby building and saw Blizzard, her hands glowing, as she focused on Drop. Drop, thankfully, did not seem to notice her. He sloshed toward me, an angry scowl on his face, as he sent water everywhere. I didn’t see any ice forming on him yet, but since Blizzard look pretty focused, it was only a matter of time before she managed to freeze him.

So I activated my super speed and raced straight toward him. Drop actually stopped in surprise, which allowed me to easily run through him.

Or I would have, if his body hadn’t suddenly become like rubber. Somehow, his body became too solid for me to break through and I was sent flying backwards. I crashed into the side of another building, though thankfully not enough to smash through it or cause me any real pain, although it did temporarily daze me.

“What was that?” said Drop. He put his hands on his hips. “Did you seriously think I was about to let you run through my body like that? I’m not an idiot.”

I pushed myself off the building and shook my head. I glanced over the top of Drop’s head and saw Blizzard nod at me once. “No, but it was a good distraction, wasn’t it?”

Drop looked at me in confusion. “What?”

Ice started forming around Drop’s legs. Drop looked down in shock for a moment, but in seconds, he was completely frozen over from head to toe. As a result, his face was frozen (literally) in that same shocked expression, which made him look silly, but at least he wasn’t a threat anymore.

Then Blizzard created a long ice slide with her powers and slid down from the top of the building to the alleyway. Once she reached the bottom, she ran over to me and said, “Thanks for distracting him.”

“No problem,” I said. “But it was really you who deserves the praise. You took him down just like that. If you hadn’t frozen him, I probably wouldn’t have been able to beat him.”

“Let’s say it was a team effort,” said Blizzard. She looked up at the sky. “But I guess that means that we won’t need the others’ help, will we? We should probably call the team and let them know that we defeated Drop all on our own.”

“Right,” I said. “After we make sure the police can cart him off to prison, then we can even resume our date.”

I reached for my suit-up watch, intending to send a message to Carl telling him to tell the rest of the team to stay put, but then I noticed something odd about Drop’s frozen form: The surface of his body was starting to drip.

At first, I just thought that maybe the exposure to the sun was just making it melt a little, because it was a pretty hot and bright day. But then I noticed that it was melting far more quickly than it should have in this weather, almost like someone was shining a concentrated beam of heat directly onto its surface.

“Um, Blizzard?” I said, staring at Drop uncertainly. “What’s going on?”

But Blizzard looked too shocked to respond. She was staring at Drop as if she did not believe her eyes; in fact, she even rubbed her eyes and looked at him again, probably to make sure that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

Before our startled eyes, Drop’s frozen form melted faster and faster, with chunks of ice outright falling off his body and crashing onto the streets. In seconds, Drop was totally unfrozen, but his body no longer looked nearly as calm as before. His skin—if you could call it that—was literally bubbling, even boiling, and he gave off an intense heat, like water boiling on a stove top, except ten times worse. Steam rose off his body, which made him look even scarier than usual.

“What an annoying power you have,” said Drop. His voice sounded like boiling water, which made it hard to understand his words. “Of course, as a being made of water, I should have seen this coming, but it was still inconvenient and I have the right to complain about it anyway.”

“How did you melt your own body?” said Blizzard in shock. “You said you have water powers, not fire powers.”

“Water has a temperature, just like anything else,” said Drop. He smiled. “Because I can control water, that means I can also control the water’s temperature. So I can make it as hot or as cold as I like, though I have to avoid getting too hot, otherwise I risk steaming away my whole body. Though I doubt that will be a problem now; I will end this battle so quickly that I will be able to return to my normal temperature soon enough.”

Without warning, Drop thrust his hands at us. Two steaming jets of hot water soared toward us so fast that I could barely even follow them. I just reacted instinctively, shoving Blizzard out of the way and ducking just as the water jets shot over us and struck the wall behind us, hitting it so hard that they actually tore apart the brick and stone used to make it.

“Nice instincts,” said Drop, his voice becoming more and more distorted through his boiling mouth as he lowered his hands. “But not nice enough.”

Drop suddenly ran at me. As he ran, he turned into a huge wave of hot, boiling water. I immediately grabbed Blizzard and launched us both into the sky just as the wave came down on the street, sending scalding water splashing toward us, though we only got a few drops on our feet.

That is, until a hand made of water shot out of the wave and wrapped around my ankle. Hot! It felt like I had stuck my foot in a furnace. Though my costume kept my skin from getting scalded, I still felt the heat through the material and it was so hot that I almost dropped Blizzard, but I managed to escape it by increasing my speed and flying away from it toward the other end of the alley, tearing my foot out of the boiling hand.

Landing on the ground, I winced at my burned foot, while Blizzard said, “Bolt, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, gingerly resting my burned foot on the ground. “It’s nothing serious. My suit protected me, but damn it that water hurts.”

“You should get help,” Blizzard insisted. “I don’t think you’ll be able to hurt him like this.”

“Neither will you,” I said in annoyance. “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s boiling hot. He’ll probably melt you if he touches you.”

“I’m just concerned about your health is all,” said Blizzard in annoyance. “But fine. If you don’t care about that, then do what you want, even if it gets you hurt.”

“Are you guilt-tripping me now?” I said in disbelief. “Really, Blizzard? In the middle of a battle, of all places? This is really—”

All of a sudden, I was interrupted by the sound of rushing water. Blizzard and I looked over to the other end of the alley to see Drop—still in his wave form—rushing down toward us, his boiling water leaving steam everywhere it touched. Blizzard raised her hands and created a huge ice barrier between us and Drop, but he just plowed through it like it was nothing. And it was too late for me to fly us out of the way, particularly when the pain in my foot flared and distracted me.

But right before the wave of boiling water could wash over us, it abruptly came to a stop, like time had frozen around it. Blizzard and I just stared at the wave, holding our breaths, not sure if this was part of some kind of fake out technique from Drop or if there was another reason he had come to a stop like this.

Then the boiling wave started to slowly draw back into itself. Actually, it started out slow, but soon sped up, until within seconds Drop was back in his humanoid form again, but this time, he didn’t look so confident. He clutched his head and started screaming, screaming so loudly that both Blizzard and I jumped.

But Drop didn’t fight us. He just staggered backwards, screaming and thrashing about, which made him look absolutely crazy. I still wasn’t sure if Drop had just lost his mind for some reason or if this was all part of some elaborate tactic to get us to drop our defenses right before he killed us.

Blizzard must have been thinking the same thing as me, because she said, “Um … Bolt, do you know what he’s doing?”

“No,” I said. “This isn’t my fault. Maybe he’s lost his marbles.”

“He’s perfectly sane,” said a voice behind us, causing us to look over our shoulders to see who was speaking. “But he’s just suffering a very bad headache at the moment.”

The owner of the voice was a tall man who appeared to be in his early forties, with jet black hair and an old-fashioned suit that had a G-Men patch on its shoulder. His hands were in his pockets, which made him look pretty casual and relaxed, but I was still surprised to see him, given that I hadn’t expected this guy, of all people, to show up here.

“Cadmus Smith?” I said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s Cadmus Smith?” said Blizzard. “Leader of th G-Men? I’ve never met him before.”

Cadmus merely nodded at Blizzard. “It is nice to meet you, Blizzard, real name Emily Ricker, from Tucson, Arizona, if I recall correctly.”

“How do you know my real name and where I’m from?” said Blizzard defensively.

Cadmus tapped his forehead. “Telepathy. Which is also, coincidentally, how I am harming Drop.”

I looked back at Drop, who was still screaming and clutching his head in pain. “You mean you’re doing that?”

“Yes,” said Cadmus. “All I am doing is applying telepathic pressure to his mind, similar to what I have heard Barnabas Sagan could do before he was left comatose.”

“But I don’t understand why you’re here,” I said. “I didn’t even know you were in New York.”

“The G-Men have become involved in this whole Test Subject fiasco,” said Cadmus. “After those three you and Mecha Knight defeated were arrested and put into Ultimate Max, I decided to get involved in tracking down and locking them up, seeing as they are escapees from a top secret government program. Hence why I came to New York; my sources indicate that Matthew Jason is somewhere in this city, which means that the Test Subjects are here as well. I found you almost by coincidence; I was just traveling nearby, heard the sounds of fighting, and came to investigate. It is a good thing that I did.”

I was going to ask why Cadmus had personally chosen to get involved, given that he usually worked through one of the other G-Men, when Drop screamed again, causing us to look at him.

Drop’s skin was still boiling and he still looked like he was in pain, but now he looked absolutely enraged. He removed his hands from his head and pointed a shaking finger at Cadmus, growling, “Cadmus Smith … never expected to see
you
again …”

“Long time, no see, Drop,” said Cadmus, his tone not changed despite the fact that Drop was several times taller—and scarier—than him. “I see you haven’t changed much since Project Neo. Tell me, have you been hiding in a pond somewhere all this time or were you hiding in a water park instead?”