too long, though, as a player came up from behind and grabbed the bag.
Jack freed himself and helped his friends, too. He quickly looked around, trying to see where Caleb and the bag were. He saw Caleb, but no bag.
"There!" Bella pointed across the field, to the opposing team's goal. A player was advancing towards it, fast.
Jack jumped into the air and flew, like a bolt of lightning, cutting across the field in under a second. He swooped down and scooped up the duffel bag before the football player could realize.
Jack flew back and was about to drop the duffel bag by his goal when he was suddenly paralyzed. He couldn't move and dropped to the ground like a lead weight.
"Hey! What gives?" Jack demanded, thankful he could still feel and move his head.
He glanced down and saw he was not paralyzed but rather frozen, with ice. The football player who had iced him laughed as he snagged the duffel and bolted for his goal.
Using his enhanced might, Jack broke the ice and stood up. "Well, that was the first time I didn't crash by myself," he muttered.
The High Hero with the duffel bag was feeling pretty satisfied with himself as he ran towards his goal. He shrieked as a Godzilla-like monster stomped in front of him.
He dropped the bag out of sheer terror and stood, stock-still.
The reptilian monster shrunk down and turned into Ethan, who picked up the duffel bag and ran away.
"Wow, the party trick gets better!" Bella marvelled.
Ethan ran past Bella and tossed the bag to her. She caught it, her eyes lighting up with pure surprise.
"Well, okay then, I guess I have the bag," she said to herself as she started running, the only girl on the field, to the goal.
Ty started running alongside her for protection.
"Are you trying to protect me and the bag or are you trying to get me to protect you?" Bella asked as they ran together for the goal.
"Uh... the first one, yeah, definitely the first one," Ty said.
"Sure, whatever," Bella rolled her eyes. She gasped. "Incoming! Dumb jock at nine o' clock!" she exclaimed as a bulky player barrelled towards the pair.
He seized the bag, the force knocking Bella to the ground.
"No one knocks our Bella down," Ty said, determination to protect the girl making him brave.
He ran, fast, until he caught up with the football player that currently had the bag. When he was a few feet behind him, he jumped, as high as he could and, while in midair, shrunk. He fell through the air like a tiny pebble and landed on the football player's thick shoulder pad.
"Excuse me, but how much would you hate it if I ran inside your ear and the danced the hokey-pokey right now?" Ty asked.
"What?" the football player faltered and looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He couldn't see anyone.
Before he began running again, he felt the most unexpected, unpleasant, outrageous tickling sensation in his ear.
He screeched like a little girl and batted at his ear, struggling to get the tickling sensation to stop.
Rust chuckled, sitting on the bleachers with Audrey and watching the commotion unfold below. Ty was clearly in another teenager's ear, Ethan was using his hologram powers to mess with a kid that could turn into rock, Caleb was bouncing away from a flyer, and Jack and Bella seemed to be playing chicken with about four High Heroes.
Rust grinned and said, "Now we're having fun."
14
Ty, being thrown around like a rag doll inside the football player's ear, decided he had done enough. Waiting for an opening, he jumped out the hysterical teenager's ear and returned to his normal size, grabbed the bag and ran for it.
"Hey, Jack, catch!" Ty yelled as he threw the duffel through the air and over the heads of many High Heroes, only to have one of them stretch his elastic arms and snag it right out of the air.
"Terrific," Ty grumbled.
Jack pursued the High Hero now in possession of the bag. As he got closer, the player threw the bag to another player, one with super speed like Jack.
Jack tried to catch up to him, but soon realized they were just running endless circles around each other.
Bella noticed. She ran to the circular blur that was Jack and another football player. She couldn't tell which blur was Jack and which blur was the High Hero, but, either way, she stood in their path.
Jack saw her coming and slowed down, stopping unnoticed by his opponent. The High Hero stopped right in front of Bella, barely a foot away.
"Don't worry, it'll wear off in a minute," Bella informed the High Hero.
"What will?" he asked, confused.
"This," she replied, lifting her hands and lighting them up in front of him, just close enough to dazzle him with a bright, orange glow. She would never harm anyone for long.
He dropped the bag out of sheer surprise, and Jack grabbed it.
It was a straight run from there.
The five teens were positioned so perfectly on the field, they could get the bag to their goal with no trouble.
As the football players scrambled to catch up and grab the bag, Jack threw it to Bella.
A ring of High Heroes surrounded Bella. She lit up, brighter than she had ever lit up before, and stunned them all.
She then threw the duffel to Ethan.
A player ran forward, meaning to tackle Ethan, who turned into a hologram, causing the player to tackle thin air.
He threw it to Caleb.
Caleb bounced a little closer to the goal and threw it to Ty, who was right next to the goal.
Ty nearly dropped it and lost the game but he recovered and sprinted the last few feet, throwing the duffel bag on the grass by the goal.
"Oh, yes, that's right: I'm amazing!" Ty chanted, breaking out in a badly choreographed victory dance.
The other team was defeated, but they still had their captain shake hands with Jack. "Good game," the captain said.
"You guys put up a good fight," Jack said, good-naturedly.
Four football players rushed up to Bella and picked her up, carrying her on their shoulders like the champion.
"Okay, you guys can put me down now... hey, come on, I beat you, put me down and lose like real men!" Bella cried with a smile on her face.
The players set her down. They towered above her. "That was amazing," one of them told her.
"Yeah," one of his friends agreed. "You guys were totally out-numbered."
"All I want to know," Ty said as he joined Bella. "Is: what is inside that bag?"
Rust picked the duffel the bag up off the ground and unzipped it, unceremoniously revealing the contents.
"Dirty socks, are you kidding me?" Caleb exclaimed. He calmed down in an instant and shrugged. "I guess that's why it was so light."
"We risked our lives for laundry?" Ty seemed slightly hysterical. "I CRAWLED INSIDE A JOCK'S EAR FOR LAUNDRY?!"
A muscular, tall High Hero towered menacingly over Ty. "So you're the guy..."
Ty laughed, sounding strangled. "About that..." and before he could say another word, he started running across the field, the football player chasing after him.
"Not all victories are glorious," Rust told the kids.
"So... is that the deep, philosophical lesson to be learnt from all this?" Ethan asked.
"Nah, not really," Rust admitted. "But you guys did use your powers, you did work together and you won! So I think we can go home satisfied with ourselves."
As the High Heroes and their coach left, the kids retrieved Ty (who had managed to hide up a tree) and everyone went their separate ways, Audrey smiled at Rust.
"Good job," she commended, giving him a pat on the back. She had noticed a small smile creep onto Rust's face during the exercise and realized that it was still there.
She was pretty sure that was the first time he had genuinely smiled since he was shot with the tranquilizer.
"You're enjoying this now, aren't you?" she probed.
Rust tried to wipe the smile off his fa
ce. He failed. "What on Earth gives you that idea?"
"You like those kids," she told him as they watched the five teenagers messing with one another and walk off to the car park.
"I don't like anyone," Rust said and left.
Audrey shook her head and sighed to herself. He did like those kids: his very stating the opposite only confirmed it.
Maybe it wasn't completely impossible to change Rust Swift...
15
Training with Rust for the next two weeks became easier and enjoyable. He still pushed the kids to their limits, but once they were there, he stopped.
He also focussed more on training them as a team. He had to hand it to Mr Danger: choosing kids that already knew each other was a fantastic idea. There were no trust issues whatsoever.
When Rust told Bella to jump off the Hero High building to be caught by her boys, she just closed her eyes and tipped forward without a second thought, a look of complete faith on her face as she fell.
They cooperated perfectly, too.
When Rust set them off on a search and rescue mission, they worked together, listening to Jack's orders and using each other's strengths to find the buried puppet behind the school gym.
And they looked out for each other. This was proven whenever they had to run. One of the boys always picked Bella up (much to her irritation) and carried her with them as they ran. Sometimes they carried her like a bride, other times they carried her like a rag doll, slung over their shoulder.
"You know I can run, too, right?" Bella questioned as Caleb set her down after flinging her over his shoulder and running across the gym as the team was chased by a toy monster truck. She fixed up her ruffled clothing and redid her messy ponytail. "I appreciate you guys looking out for me, but I hate being man-handled! Honestly..."
The boys immediately started apologizing. To show she meant the complaint to be taken as a joke, she laughed.
"Thanks," she said to Caleb.
Rust sat on the bleachers and watched as the kids laughed together. Maybe Audrey was right; maybe he was beginning to like this band of goofy, uncoordinated but, at times, endearing teenagers.
As he sat in silence, transfixed by their playful antics, he found his mind remembering the very memories he had managed to bury deep within his mind years ago.
In his mind's eye, he saw his brothers and his sister.
Before he knew it, the scene before him melted into a movie from two decades ago. Rust had taken it upon himself to train himself and his siblings into true superheroes.
He could see the old stadium he, his brothers and sister snuck into to train.
He lost himself as he watched an overconfident eighteen-year-old Jason, running circles around the old stadium, moving so fast, he became a blur. He called for Rust to race him.
Sixteen-year-old William, who loved to mess with his siblings, could manipulate gravity. He floated far above his family, reading a comic book, disinterested in Rust's training methods.
The youngest of the Swift kids, fifteen-year-old, Carla, balanced expertly on an old snowboard as she created a stream of hard, colourful light from her hands and rode it like an icy slope.
"Faster, Jason!" a nineteen-year-old Rust called as he shot ahead of his younger brother.
Jason, determined to beat his brother, lowered his head and struggled to increase his speed. He managed to get fast enough to run alongside Rust. Neither brother could overtake the other: they had long ago realized their maximum speeds were the same.
They were running, egging each other on in the classic brotherly fashion, until Jason hit a wall.
Sprawled like an uncoordinated gymnast on the worn concrete, Jason looked up and blinked, dazed.
Will groaned and rubbed his head, sprawled out in a similar fashion across the arena.
"I'd say watch where you're going," Will said. "Because... come on, how could you not see me? I was floating!"
"Will, that was stupid," Jason chided his younger brother. He offered his brother a hand up.
Rust slowed down, laughing.
A swirl of solid, yellow light spun around the three brothers. Carla slid along the curving light path she had created and jumped off, landing on the ground with her snowboard. As soon as she was off the path of light, the light disappeared.
Rust still saw their smiles, he still heard their laughs, and he still felt their joy.
He could still see them. Blue-eyed, brown-haired, overconfident and competitive Jason, leaner than Rust, he looked like an Olympian runner.
Mischievous little Will with his black hair and grey eyes, he looked so similar to Rust, only shorter.
Determined but always fun loving, Carla was the baby of the family. With her long, dark hair and long-lashed eyes, she truly was beautiful: all the girls envied her and all the boys chased after her. Of course, Rust, Jason and Will always chased them away.
"Rust."
"Hey, Rust."
"Yo, Rust! Are you sleeping with your eyes open?"
The memory of his brothers and sister dissolved and Rust was back in the gym, facing the kids that reminded him, painfully, of his former team.
Rust rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, I'm awake," he said. As he drifted off for a trip down memory lane, the kids had joined him on the bleachers. "What do you want?"
"Well, Ethan heard some kids talking by the lockers," Caleb began. "They were talking about some kind of school dance this weekend. Is there really a school dance this weekend?"
"It's not a dance," Rust clarified. "I mean, yes, there will be music, punch and everyone is expected to dress formally, but it's more of a... welcome ceremony, let's call it."
"Who are we welcoming?" Bella asked.
Audrey, who had just entered the gym, caught onto the conversation and decided to join. "The new Global Director, Urban Danger," she said, excitedly. "He's visiting Summer Valley Hero High and we're giving him a welcome he won't forget!"
As Audrey went on to explain formal dress, chaperones and refreshments, Rust managed to excuse himself, quietly. He left the gym, unnoticed.
The kids were starting to remind him of his late team. The happy memories those smiling, determined kids brought back left Rust in pain.
He had lost everything.
He didn't want to remember that.
16
Audrey was smiling and dancing down the corridor of the motel Rust was staying in.
It was working. It was actually working.
The kids were making break-throughs, Rust was training them properly and it was only a matter of time before the villainous teacher was uncovered.
And she could see the extraordinary changes in Rust. Though he was still closed with certain subjects and at times kept all conversations away from personal experiences, he was beginning to open up. He was starting to care about something more than broken suspensions, flat batteries or combustion engines. Even if he never said it, Audrey saw he cared about Jack, Ethan, Ty, Caleb and Bella.
Audrey saw Rust smile for the first time, two weeks ago, and he hadn't stopped smiling since.
"Faster, Jack!" "Higher, Caleb!" and "Brighter, Bella!" were the only things Rust said to the teenagers during those weeks of intense training. Now he was actually talking to them: exchanging jokes with Caleb, talking physics with Ethan, discussing escape routes with Ty, explaining strategies with Jack and telling Bella about his sister.
The kids had grown closer to Rust, too. Sometimes, the kids brought their homework into the gym after school and none of them hesitated to ask Rust for help on superhero history, which he readily gave.
At the "welcoming ceremony" on Saturday, Urban Danger was going to be so proud of the team, even if they hadn't found the traitorous teacher.
The door to Rust's temporary apartment was open. Audrey briefly knocked on the door before letting herself in, concluding that if Rust didn't want company then he would have shut the door.
"Rust?" Audrey called as she entered the small apartment. "Won't stay forever, I ju
st want to know if you already have a suit for Saturday, which I presume you don't, or if I should hire... what are you doing?"
Rust, a backpack filled with the few possessions he could call his own slung over his shoulder, stepped out the bathroom.
Audrey frowned. "Where are you going? Hiking?"
"I'm leaving," Rust told her, blatantly.
Audrey blinked, temporarily stunned. "I'm... sorry? What do you mean you're leaving? You're not done-"
"I am done," Rust said, resolutely. "Urban just said I had to train the kids, and they're as ready as they'll ever be. I'm no longer needed."
He brushed past Audrey, heading for the door. Audrey sighed, irritably, and teleported in front of him, blocking the doorway, startling him.
"So that's your power," Rust said, eyes wide.
"You can't leave," Audrey told him. "These kids still need you-"
"I put you down as more of a mind controller, honestly."
"They were just starting to warm up to you and you were-"
"Or maybe a melter. I could easily picture you melting into a puddle of-"
"Forget my power!" Audrey said, sternly. She felt like screaming. "Why are you leaving?"
Rust sighed. "It's time for me to move on."
"Where will you even go? Please tell me you're not leaving this just to go back to that crummy excuse for a neighbourhood."
Rust shrugged. "I don't know where I'll go," he admitted. "I think I'm just going to drive until I find the end of the road."
He gently pushed Audrey aside and started walking down the hall. He didn't turn around.
Audrey realized this was the one time her words wouldn't change anything. She had to change tactic. "Hey!" she called and teleported in front of him again. "Leave if you want to," she said, softening her tone. There was no way she would sway him this time around. "But, before you do, just... go to the gym at Hero High, just one last time."
"It won't change my mind," Rust warned her.
"I don't care and I don't want it to change your mind. But it's a great place to think. Just go, please."
Rust sighed. "Alright. I need to pick up a few things, anyway."
Audrey watched him as he continued walking. She couldn't talk her way through this one, it seemed. There was nothing on the planet that could change Rust's mind or make him stay...
But that wasn't what Audrey had in mind...
Out of all the training sessions over the past month, Jack still hadn't learnt how to land without crashing.
He snuck into the gym, late at night, determined to crash as many times as needed until he could land perfectly.
He waited until after Darren the janitor had left before he snuck in, turning on only a few lights, careful not to alert anyone.
The sound of his sneakers squeaking on the wood felt like it was ten times louder than before. Taking a deep breath, he launched off the ground, into the air, and in one flash of a movement, he was brushing the ceiling.
He flew around the inside perimeter of the gym building a number of times, psyching himself up to attempt a landing.
Eventually, he decided just to do it. Hovering for a second, he swooped low and dropped to the ground. In theory, it should have worked. But he crashed, hopelessly, into the bleachers.
He shook himself off like a wet dog and flew up, determined to try again.
In his mind's eye, he replayed videos of his dad and other flying superheroes. How many nights had he spent replaying those old videos over and over? He lost count.
He knew how to do it. He just couldn't do