A lazy Saturday at the Institute. What’s a group of superpowered teens to do? How about a game of all-powers baseball? Continue reading
With mortal danger starring them in the face, Eddie, Phineas and Maya, along with Lucy and Alvin seem to be at the mercy of a fake FBI agent with high tech weaponry. The key words here at ‘seem to’. Never count out the students of the Liedecker Academy, they might just surprise you in the conclusion os the January Heatwave arc! Continue reading
Alvin folded his arms and scowled at the two boys. “So I’ve been hearing something about Kaine and Akagi forming some kind of powered posse to find Miss Blumberg here.”
Any other time, Phineas would snicker at the term ‘powered posse’, but now was not the time, even he knew better than to laugh at the stern security chief. “Well see, what had happened was…”
“Save it. I know enough.” Alvin cut him off. “It I had a say in it, your asses would be mine; I’m talking a couple dozen laps with no powers allowed, then one, two hundred push-ups same deal, followed by you choice of KP or scrubbing down the common rooms in the dorms. In fact, I’m going to strongly suggest all three to Ms. Brant once this is all over.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous what you did is?”
“We were using the buddy system. And Ed’s good luck.” Phineas knew that wasn’t the thing to say even as he was saying it.
Alvin only glared harder. “Once you graduate, I really don’t care if you kill yourself. But right now, while you’re at this school, you’re my responsibility and every time you … Continue reading
Alvin checked his service weapon; an air pistol that delivered either taser or sonic ‘screamer’ rounds, both definitively proven to be the best when it came to less-lethal engagements with descendants. It was there for the very simple fact that anyone going after powered kids would probably use powered hirelings to do so.
He unsnapped the band securing it in his shoulder holster, but did not draw it. If the noise really was the youth in question, he needed to look as non-threatening as possible.
Treading softly, he approached. The dumpster. “Hello?” No answer. “My name is T. Alvin Warren. I’m the head of security at the Liedecker Institute. I’m here to help.” Still no answer. But he did see a wisp of smoke come from just around the corner of the garbage receptacle. That was never a good sign.
“Listen; I know you’re scared. I’ve heard all about the men after you. I know they’re fakes. If you come out, we can get you somewhere safe and get to the bottom of this.”
A soft sound, possibly a whimper, possibly a scoff, it was hard to tell. “N-no, sir.”
Alvin raised an eyebrow. That was a new one. A … Continue reading
In the interest of doing good business; the Mayfield Chamber of Commerce made it excessively easy for anyone who wanted to know anything about their city. Free information kiosks were on every bus and commuter pod as well as in every mall and included at every major attraction.
With a few taps of the screen, a person could find pretty much any store in the city (who paid the yearly fee for inclusion in the database), ordered by customer ratings, size, or distance from the kiosk. There were also segments on tourist attractions, apartment listings, and even an expansive trivia section.
It was the trivia section that told Maya, in no uncertain terms, that Mayfield’s design itself was working against her plans of finding safe shelter.
Apartments were packed into skyscrapers, with precious few smaller scale tenements that could become derelict and open to squatters. The underground was all new and fully operational; no lost or forgotten sections to hide in. Mayfield was also home to the central headquarters to Lending Hand, Inc; a non-profit specializing in providing clean, safe shelter for the homeless.
It was a godsend to most, but it was also the first place they’d look for … Continue reading
Between Dayspring College, Emerald University and UVA’s Mayfield campus, Mayfield was safely and comfortably withing the bounds of being a ‘college town’. This meant, among other things, that local businesses evolved slightly different approaches to priorities than they would in other places.
Delivery service was suddenly much more important, as were late hours and discounts for students. A relaxed, casual atmosphere helped, and being within walking distance of a campus was the crown jewel.
Not having the kind of money it took to rent floorspace in a prime location, Midnight Black’s owner, Lucy Black, had missed out on that crown jewel. Instead, she’d settled for being in a nice, visible spot on the edge of the Devonhurst business district. At time, she hadn’t paid any mind to the fact that she was three blocks down from the mothballed property that John T. Liedecker intended to become a school for psionics before he was spectacularly underbid by the Psionics Training and Application Academy.
Imagine her surprise when, as the result of the PTAA folding amid allegations of kidnapping and abuse, the formerly dead campus next door was suddenly reanimated as the John T. Liedecker Institute; not just as a high school … Continue reading
The main lobby had been transformed over the course of the day into an impressive stand in for a ball room or concert hall.
There were rows of tables along the walls, illuminated by strings of red, green and white lights as well as hanging lanterns that threw out snowflake patterns. In one corner, a small stage had been set up where a local cover band, Miracle Six, was taking requests, and off to the side, an impressive spread was being catered the owner of a nearby cafe that had become a popular hangout for the LI students and staff.
Everyone’s miniature trees served as living decorations, placed as centerpieces on the tables, or on makeshift pedestals along the edges of the room. Voting slips had appeared under everyone’s doors that morning so they could vote for the best one.
Central to everything was the ‘official’ tree, the enormous white pine donated by none other than Vincent Liedecker himself. It stood in the middle of the room with plastic bins altered by Kura to look like gift boxes beneath it. Those contained dozens of ornaments and garlands, plus multiple types of tinsel, all provided so the party-goers could all have … Continue reading
Martin Han cycled lazily through preview panels for various TV shows on his computer screen. There didn’t seem to be anything new that was interesting, or anything interesting he hadn’t seen before. Even the sports channel was failing him; covering basketball, football and hockey when he was a baseball and soccer fan.
He had homework to do, but it was before dinner, so seeking entertainment took priority. He also had friends; two out of only five other male members of the Junior class. But he’d see them soon at dinner, so it felt like a waste to try and find them now.
As he passed an old episode of Live Metal, he could swear he heard sleigh bells. Sleigh bells and giggling. Momentarily, he flipped back to see if he’d skipped over a Christmas special or something. He was wondering if it was off of some commercial when someone knocked on his door.
There was no one else in the room, so he answered it himself. He’d been partly expecting his friends, dropping by to collect him for a trek out into town for dinner. Instead, he found Kura Akagi wearing an antler hat and a red nose, Tammy Kaine … Continue reading
“Tesla-girl!”
Tammy Kaine, in the interest of concealing her heroic identity as The Irrepressible Spark and thus her connection to her brother’s status as Alloy of the Descendants, had settled on the codename Tesla after many days scouring thesauri and online encyclopedias and lamenting the lack of really cool and original names related to electricity.
Almost immediately, her best friend had co-opted it into ‘Tesla-girl’ in order to better match her own newly minted code ‘Omni-girl.’.
Her new, measurably less cool codename was the first thing she heard upon getting out of her brother’s car after Thanksgiving vacation and the only warning she had before catching one hundred and twenty-two pounds of Japanese hyperactivity full in the chest.
Kura Akagi’s favorite greeting involved getting up a good head of steam on foot and then gliding into an unsuspecting object of platonic affection like a happy freight train. She gave Tammy a huge hug as her weight added to the bags the other girl was carrying bore them both to the ground.
She landed on top and bounced up almost instantly with a smile and a hand extended to help her friend to her feet. No apology offered, none asked. Kura … Continue reading
White arcs of electricity danced across the prone man’s body. With each arc, he grew smaller and more cascades of rubble from the shipping containers he rested on came tumbling down to fill the void left by his shrinking. Smaller and smaller he became until he disappeared amid the wreckage.
His scream faded to silence by the maudlin soundtrack, a young man in his teens fought free of his mother’s grasp and ran full out into the heart of the still settling rubble. Miraculously, he found a path clear enough that he only had to stumble over fallen debris until he was at the center of the destruction.
The man, his father lay there bleeding and gasping, the green ichor of a titanic arachnid staining the left side of his body.
His son slid to a stop and knelt beside him as the music cut out and the noise of wind and sirens and flames returned. “Father! No. No. No. No. No. Don’t move, father, we’ll get help. You aren’t hurt that bad!”
“Poisoned…” The man breathed. With great effort, he reached up and patted the boy on the side of his face and up to the crown of his … Continue reading
