"But you're in here, too."
"Not for long," Wepaynar said. "After I set this, I'm leaving. They asked me for this much so I shall give them this much."
Testing the waters seemed to work, now Jack decided to dive. "I've heard about you. You were a great hero. Your inventions saved so many lives. Why did you train villains?"
Wepaynar raised an eyebrow. "Who are you?" he asked, enquiringly.
"Jack," the teenager replied, simply.
"Well, Jack, let me tell you a little fact. You have to train people to do good. That's why they have places like this," Wepaynar spread his arms out and gestured to the building around them, "because good people, heroes, need to be trained, taught and educated. Evil isn't the same. You simply have to point the corrupt in the right (or, should I say, wrong) direction and they will go all out for it. I never trained those youths. I simply pointed them in a direction and they carried on from there."
"Why would you do that?" Jack questioned.
Wepaynar took a deep breath as he adjusted a miniature bolt on the master bomb. "Well, young Jack, there's quite a story behind that one. If I were a villain, I would never tell you it." Wepaynar looked Jack straight in the eye. "But I'm not a villain. I am, and have always been, a hero. I have standards, I have principles, and I use my abilities to protect humanity. I simply disagree with the superhero community on one matter.
"Gamma accidents," Wepaynar spat with all the malice of years and years of bottled hatred. Jack didn't even blink, knowing he may give himself away if he so much as breathed deeply. "The superhero community had it right for so long: gamma accidents are always evil. They're even worse than some villains because they are destructive and deceptive. G-4 is the shining example of that. They lifted the ban and made a name for gamma accidents, everyone started to think, 'Hey, maybe we were wrong.' I knew better, and the day G-4 turned against the city they claimed to protect, I felt justified in never trusting those criminals.
"I petitioned for gamma accidents to be banned again, so you can thank me for the past eighteen years when Hero High and the superhero community were free of the potential threats. Then Samuel Danger passed away and his incompetent fool of a son stepped in. I knew he'd pull something like this. Allowing gamma accidents to train with the rest of our future heroes? Have you ever heard of something so... so abhorrent?"
Wepaynar looked at Jack, expecting a reply. Jack scrambled to figure out an appropriate reply. He opened his mouth, ready just to wing it, when Wepaynar continued.
"Leaves you speechless, doesn't it?" Wepaynar continued, unknowingly saving Jack. "That's why I'm doing this. Actually, the teenagers came up with it. They said something about showing their disdain for authority and asked me for supplies. I agreed because this is for revenge."
Jack frowned. "How is it your revenge?" he asked.
Wepaynar continued tinkering with the master bomb. "When this place is destroyed, it will prove to the superhero community how they've betrayed me."
"And kill those heroes of tomorrow you were talking about?" Jack retorted. "Gamma accidents never hurt you."
"That's where you're wrong. The biggest blow came to me when my own daughter fell in love with a filthy, good-for-nothing gamma accident," Wepaynar explained, truly cut to the heart. "I tried everything to stop my little girl from marrying that jerk but she defied me, blinded by love. That rotten crook turned my girl against me. She ran away from home and married him, convinced I was wrong."
Jack looked the man up and down. He was truly saddened by the perceived betrayal. And, over the years, that hurt had turned into bitterness, and now, cruelty.
"What if I said I know gamma accidents?" Jack said. "And I know that you're wrong?"
Wepaynar raised an eyebrow. "I'd say, you weren't alive two decades ago when G-4 levelled a huge city. You weren't there to take them down before they could destroy the whole country or to deal with the aftermath. And you were not the man who had to watch as his daughter fell in love with a scheming gamma accident...
"I'd say you never met John Painter."
31
Students in the cafeteria looked defeated and hopeless. They took up seats at bare cafeteria tables and waited. Waited for what, they weren't sure, and, glancing at the straight-faced rebels forming an ominous ring around the vast cafeteria, no one wanted to think about it too deeply.
Years and years of training and education to be heroes, and here they were: sitting ducks. No fight, no try, no "Let's band together and take down the rebels." Instead, shoulders sagged and eyes dropped to the floor.
The Gamma Accidents and Dean observed the depressing scene from their table, watching as the "Future Heroes of Tomorrow" wallowed, quietly, in their misery.
"We need to get these kids outta here," Bella said in a hushed tone as she huddled like a football team with Ty, Ethan and Dean. "Because, obviously, their training did not encourage improvising. Got any ideas?"
"There is an impenetrable, dense, unbreakable metal shield securing this building," Ty said. "We can't get out."
"No, but we can get out of this cafeteria," Bella continued. "I doubt reinforcements will ever find their way to us, but there are at least a hundred students still on the side of good. Together, I think we can stop Wepaynar and his gang of rebels."
"That's the thing," Ty pointed out. "They aren't a gang. They're an ARMY! There have to be at least four hundred of them."
For once, Ty was not exaggerating.
"Look, Bella's got the right idea," Dean agreed. "By escaping the cafeteria, it will prove we have the upper hand. Hero Training 101, once you've demoralized your enemy, he's easier to take down. Isn't that worth a shot?"
Ty begrudgingly nodded his agreement.
"So... any ideas?" Ethan prompted.
No one said anything, waiting for someone else to come up with the brilliant suggestions.
"Okay, what about this?" Bella said and proceeded to explain her plan. "It's a stretch for all of us, but I think we can do it."
Silence fell in the partially lit, half-destroyed gym. A light flickered and sparked, attempting to light up but only managing a small flash; the smell of smoke and concrete mingled with perfume and the strange aroma hung in the air. The only sound was that coming from Wepaynar's tinkering on the master bomb.
"Did you say John Painter?" Jack eventually asked, his puzzle-solving mind kicking into overdrive and his sense of danger detecting something colossal.
Wepaynar nodded. "John Painter: the low-down creep got in my daughter's head and convinced her gamma accidents weren't so bad. He fooled the world into believing he was some great kind of hero but in fact, he was just a scheming rat. Even after the ban came down on gammas again, he shamelessly (and stupidly) kept pretending to be a superhero," he explained with raw hatred.
With a churning feeling inside, Jack suddenly recalled where he had heard the name 'Wepaynar' before. "Is your daughter's name... Alison, by any chance?"
At the mention of his little girl's name, Wepaynar dropped the master bomb and fumbled to catch it before it hit the ground, snagging it just in time. He turned and looked the teenager up and down with a mightily quizzical look. "What did you say your name was again, boy?" Wepaynar questioned, raising an eyebrow and considering the teenager with extreme suspicion.
"Jack Painter, the son of John and Alison Painter."
For at least two minutes, the senior history teacher and the young hereditary hero stood as if paused in time, staring at one other, waiting for the information to hit home.
When the realization eventually dawned on them, they jumped backwards, as if they had given each other a staggering electrical shock.
"You're my grandfather?" Jack said.
"John had a son?" Wepaynar said. He narrowed his electric blue eyes. "Figures, you look just like him."
"You're my grandfather," Jack repeated as pieces of the puzzle fell into place, despite his willing them not to.
"You sure are as dumb as John," Wepaynar sneered. Suddenly his
eyes widened as he realized something else. "Alison had a son?"
"And a daughter," Jack glibly added. "But you wouldn't know that because you've been so busy hating someone who gave you no reason to hate him. My dad was not some kind of villain. He only ever saved people... unlike you."
Once a renowned hero, now about to blow up a school full of future heroes, Wepaynar had let his prejudice fester and consume him to the point it had driven him to utter madness.
Jack knew his father was nothing like how Wepaynar (John's father-in-law) had described him. Jack had inherited his powers from his dad and still remembered the afternoons he would come home and take Jack to an old scrap yard where he would teach him the tricks of being a superhero.
So many times, Jack saw his father in headlines, on the television, in the newspapers, always saving the day. Never, of course, did those reports actually show his father, because John was never in it for the glory.
When his dad died, seven years ago, the world lost one of its greatest protectors.
Now it was up to Jack to step up and, just as his father would have approved, protect the people he loved and save the day.
Bella was really good at strategizing, Dean observed as they put her plan into action. Even if she said she hated taking over Jack's mission control role, she was good at it.
She couldn't have had a more challenging situation to work with. With rebels surrounding the cafeteria, their eyes watching the prisoners like hawks, it was impossible