"But most people in Crashton who know us think we're just pulling stupid pranks," Bella added. "Which, okay, we have been known to do that, too. But normally we're just trying to fix the little things we can without anyone seeing us use our powers."
"And you don't want people to see you because...?" Dean said, trailing off, purposefully, prompting for an answer.
"Because, on occasion, they have called our parents," Jack filled in. "And our parents freak when we use our powers."
"They're worried we might get, like, run out of town or something," Caleb said with an unconcerned shrug.
"I can understand that," Dean said. "Everyone in the Superhero Community honestly believed gamma accidents were dangerous. If you guys had been found using your powers, you could've been locked up."
"Yeah, don't worry, we know," Bella said, sharply. Suddenly changing tone, she said, "Oh, Dean, turn left here."
Dean heeded Bella's quick direction and manoeuvred the large vehicle into the gas station lot.
The station attendant - a lanky, acne-riddled, pale-skinned, red-haired teenager only a little older than them - looked up lazily from reading a magazine. A little name-tag pinned to his dark blue shirt declared "Tenny."
Tenny's green eyes widened in shock the instant they fell on the weirdest vehicle this side of the country.
"What's up with him?" Dean whispered to the friends.
"Oh, they don't get many customers here," Bella replied, waving her hand, dismissively, as she jokingly missed the point of Dean's question.
"Especially at night," Ty added.
"Fill her up, buddy!" Caleb called down, brightly. He was enjoying the joke.
"I'm... uh... just gonna check in with the manager..." the older teenager stuttered, unable to take his eyes off the gaudy hybrid vehicle. "Pete!" he yelled as he ducked into the starkly lit shop.
"We should tip him," Ethan commented.
"Oh, yeah, that reminds me: does anyone have any money for gas?" Dean asked, sounding more than a little sheepish.
Bella looked at him with a deadpan expression. "Seriously? You keep going on and on about how we need to refuel before we take this freak of a boat back to your uncle... and you don't even have cash?"
Dean cringed into his shoulders, guiltily. "I kinda got over-excited about riding the Duck at night... and I sorta... forgot about gas money..."
Jack rolled his eyes, inwardly trying to smother his annoyance. "Okay, everybody: take your shoes off!" he ordered.
Dean observed in utter confusion as the five friends reacted with military-style precision, removing their sneakers, specifically, their left sneakers. He watched on as they carefully lifted the soles and began picking out various forms and amounts of cash.
"I have... eighty-five cents," Caleb announced, counting up the coins that slipped out from under his shoe's sole.
"Score: I had a twenty in here and I totally forgot!" Bella exclaimed, holding up a crumpled up twenty-dollar note for her friends to admire.
"I had ten bucks in here," Ethan said, shaking his shoe furiously, disappointed as only a small coin fell into the palm of his hand.
"What happened to it?" Ty asked his brother.
"The other day, I was out with dad at the hardware store," Ethan explained. "He forgot his wallet and he needed to buy some nuts and bolts."
"Good thing you were with dad: mom hates it when we use our shoe-money," Caleb said.
"So, uh, do you guys have enough for gas?" Dean asked, a little unsure how to feel about the fact that "shoe-money" was clearly a longstanding tradition amongst these friends.
The friends added up their shoe-deposit money. Somewhat triumphantly, Jack proclaimed, "We should have enough to tip ole pimple-face, too."
5
The summer sun rose early over Crashton, impeding on countless lazy efforts to sleep in late. Of course, no one local to the area complained.
Russell "Rust" Swift, however, had only just arrived here in this sometimes lazy beach town, sometimes energetic surf town.
After living the past eighteen years in a dreary city where it seemed cloudy and rainy even on absolutely clear days, waking up at five a.m. to warm sunshine seeping in through the blinds and seagulls squawking outside his apartment's window was a totally alien experience.
Grumpily, Rust rolled out of bed and lifted the blinds, the bright sunlight assaulting his sensitive eyes. Ordinarily, he would have shut them again. Even open blinds were too much contact with the outside world for him. But he had decided things would be different now.
Clumsily, Rust navigated through the seaside apartment his temporary assistant (a young, easily excited but doggedly determined Hero College graduate named Audrey Jones) had arranged for him. He still hadn't learnt the layout by heart. Meaning, in the morning when he wasn't even fully awake yet, he couldn't rely on a mental map of his surroundings.
Skirting around a few packed boxes and rearranged furniture, Rust made it to the apartment's small kitchen.
Before he could proceed in preparing breakfast, his cell phone began ringing. Muttering to himself, he picked up the little device, examining the caller ID before pressing the answer button.
"Jones, hey, I was just thinking about you," Rust greeted with an edge of sarcasm as he scooted around yet another box.
"Just thought I'd check in on you," Audrey said. "Did you find the apartment?"
"Yes," Rust replied, rolling his eyes. He held the phone between his shoulder and ear as he searched through the freshly stocked cupboards. "I can actually read maps. I know it's not one of my superpowers, but I get by."
"Ha-ha," Audrey mock laughed. "Did you check in alright?"
"Yeah, used my real name and everything," Rust quipped, picking through the grocery items Audrey obviously stocked.
"I got groceries," she said, unwittingly confirming Rust's silent speculation. "You should have everything you'll need for the next three days, after that, you'll have to restock."
"You do realize I survived eighteen years without an assistant doing my grocery shopping, right?" Dissatisfied with what he found in the cupboards, Rust resorted to sifting through the supplies he himself snuck into the packing boxes.
"I've seen what you eat. Marshmallow infested cereal and fake barbeque flavoured chips are not supposed to be a regular part of a grown man's diet."
"You are so right," Rust falsely agreed as he opened one of the cardboard boxes, sifting through crumpled-up newspapers until he found a cereal box with bright, gaudy cartoons depicting the contents printed on the box. "I have seen the error of my ways. Thank you."
"Don't play dumb, I know you -"
"Yeah, uh... I gotta go, Jones," Rust glibly interrupted, something that never failed to grind Audrey's nerves. "I've already poured the milk and the nutritionally-rich cereal is getting soggy."
Audrey sighed. Rust could've sworn she rolled her eyes, too. He could just picture her exasperated expression. If he had to be honest, then he might admit he's going to miss annoying her. Once summer ended, he'd start his new career as a Hero High teacher, and he had no idea what Audrey would do then.
"Fine," she conceded. "I'll catch up later. Please remember to unpack those boxes."
"Don't worry. They will get unpacked."
"This year?"
"Uh... this decade. Definitely. Maybe..."
With a curt laugh, Audrey bid the legendary hero goodbye and hung up.
Rust set the phone down on an empty patch of kitchen counter and made his way through the apartment to the balcony that overlooked Crashton's popular boardwalk and public beach.
He sat down at the small table, savouring the fresh, warm, summery morning and shamelessly eating his "marshmallow infested" cereal.
It was a day unlike any Rust had experienced in too long a time.
His enhanced senses amplified the scene: the crisp-clear sounds of waves crashing down below, little kids squealing with delight as they tried to outrun the ebb and flow, their small feet making sof
t slapping noises on the damp sand; up above, the sight of a sky so vibrantly and impossibly blue; and the air so clean, fresh and laced with sea-salt.
This is not the kind of day you spend alone in your apartment. No. This is the kind of day you spend out in the sun, in the surf, surrounded by strangers and friends.
As Rust finished off the last of the cereal Jones so unequivocally disapproved of, he resolved that that was just what he would do: he'd call up those crazy kids Urban Danger made him responsible for training (and maybe even invite Audrey herself), and spend this day like any Crashton local in their right mind would...
~~~
The friends returned to their respective homes around midnight, after seeing Dean off. It didn't matter how hard they tried, though: none of them got much sleep after their exhilarating escapade and mind-boggling discovery.
But, despite their lack of recuperating sleep, the teens met up in the retro-styled diner Bella's parents owned to continue their well-intentioned plotting.
The adrenalin from the night before hadn't had the time to wear off.
"Alright, so we're all in agreement here, right?" Jack said, speaking in a low voice so as not to invite eavesdroppers as the five friends huddled together in a booth.
Caleb nodded, eagerly following his friend's train of thought. "Floating jellyfish and an underwater airlock are definitely things that need to get checked out," he said.
"I wonder who could be behind this," Bella pitched in, excitement lacing her tone and expression. "Do you think it's some crazy mad scientist? A weird little faction of the government? A supervillain?"
"Whatever is going on, I don't think we're exactly qualified to deal with it," Ethan pointed out. He approached this entire topic with more seriousness than his brothers and friends did.
Jack waved his friend's concern away. "Don't worry: if it starts getting serious, we'll definitely call someone."
"Jellyfish floating above water isn't serious enough for you?"
Jack held up his hands, defensively. "I'm not saying it's not serious. It's totally serious. I just... don't think we need to jump to conclusions yet."
"The jellyfish weren't aggressive," Bella chimed in, instinctively and defensively continuing Jack's thought process. "We don't know who's behind this, but maybe they're completely innocent."
"Sure, because anyone who builds an underwater lair and messes with nature is 'completely innocent,'" Ty said, sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
"There's only one way to find out what's really going on here," Jack said. He consciously lowered his voice and leaned forward. He continued speaking only once his friends followed his direction and leaned in closer to hear him. "We need to go back down there, back to that weird airlock thing, and we need to get inside."
"And the award for 'Bad Idea of the Day' goes to..." Ty said, flipping his hands in a presentation manner towards Jack.
"Are we gonna bring Dean along?" Caleb asked, ignoring his brother's cynicism.
"We don't need the Duck," Bella said. "We know where we're going, and that airlock wasn't far off shore."
"Also, Animal-Boy couldn't communicate with the jellyfish, remember?" Ty pointed out.
"I just feel kinda bad not inviting him along," Caleb admitted. "He sorta feels like a part of the tea-"
"Hold that thought," Jack interjected as his cell phone began ringing. Fishing the phone out his pocket, he quickly answered the call. "Oh, hey, Rust. What's up?"
"He could probably help, too," Caleb whispered to his brothers and Bella as Jack conversed with their mentor. "I mean, he did stop, like, twenty alien invasions back in the day."
"It was not twenty, and this is not an alien invasion," Ethan said.
"Well, what do you call it, then?"
"I don't know! But, jellyfish are not aliens."
"We have not ruled out that possibility," Bella pointed out.
Jack covered his phone's speaker and looked over to his friends with a clear expression of distress. "Rust wants to hang out on the beach. What should I tell him?"
"That we're hunting floating jellyfish and infiltrating a secret underwater lair," Bella quipped.
"This is serious!" Jack stressed. "I don't think we should let him in on this... not yet, anyway."
"Just tell him we've got plans," she rectified, turning serious in a split-second. "It's vague but it's not a lie."
Jack, with obvious relief, returned to his phone conversation, relaying the sensible explanation to his mentor. He ended the call pleasantly and turned back to his friends. "He's kinda disappointed. I told him we'd all meet up later."
"Before then, we're going to go trespassing on underwater property," Ty said.
"Breakfast first!" Bella said, quickly.
"Okay: first, we have breakfast, and then we go trespassing," Jack agreed.
6
"Are you sure this is the spot you went diving last night?" Ty asked, softly bobbing up and down as waves pulsed beneath his surfboard.
"Positive," Jack replied, pushing himself up into a sitting position on his own board.
"How can you tell? Everything looks so different from last night," Bella said, sitting on her board, idly swinging her legs in the water.
"Because Ethan said this was the place," Jack answered, jerking his thumb in the direction of his sandy-haired friend as he paddled towards them.
No further questions needed to be asked. It was a well-known fact amongst the friends that Ethan Black's memory was infallible.
Nevertheless, it didn't feel like the right place. With the Duck, in the dark of night, it seemed as if they were miles from the shore. Now, heading out to sea on their boards, stopping at the precise location Ethan specified, the teens realized that they hadn't strayed as far from the public beach as they originally imagined.
Who would be brazen enough to build an underwater hideout so close to shore? was the unspoken, obvious question on everyone's mind. It only intensified the feeling of mystery surrounding the strange goings-on.
"Okay, who's going down?" Caleb asked, excitedly, leaning forward and causing the nose of his board to dip.
"You have to go," Bella said to Jack. "You can hold your breath for, like, a bazillion hours."
"Yeah, but I think it would be better if two of us go down," Jack countered. "Safety in numbers. We have no clue what could be going on down there."
"Why didn't we hire scuba gear again?" Ty asked with an "I told you so" lilt in his voice.
"Maybe because we're broke?" Bella answered Ty with a sarcastic sing-song tone.
"We don't need scuba gear: it's probably not as deep down as you're thinking," Jack reasoned.
"Again: that's no problem for you..." Bella said, abruptly halting her sentence and gesturing to Ethan.
"But the rest of us need to breathe once in a while," he picked up on her cue and finished for her. With a small nod to the side, she confirmed he had done so sufficiently.
"Um, guys?" Caleb attempted to pitch into the exchange. No one noticed and continued to speak above him.
"If we're quick, we can probably get down there and into whatever that place is before anyone needs to take a breath," Jack continued.
"How do we know it's an airlock that leads to a place with air? What if it just leads to more water?" Bella countered.
"I have an idea," Caleb piped up, fearlessly raising his voice to grab attention.
Typically, no one took much note of Caleb's ideas as they had a tendency to be the results of his wild and impossible imagination. But Jack, Bella and his brothers recognized that, at times, carefree, excitable Caleb managed to determine the ultimate solution to the problem at hand.
The others turned their attention to Caleb.
"Why don't we send Jack down with Ty shrunken in some kind of water-tight container? Then, as soon as they get inside the airlock (if it does lead to a place with actual air), Jack can let Ty out, Ty can grow back to normal size, and he won't have to hold his breath at all," Caleb explained.
/>
"Oh, no: I am not letting you guys stick me in a lunch box again," Ty protested, as soon as his brother had finished. "Don't think I forgot what happened in fifth grade."
"Come on, Ty: that was almost seven years ago," Bella said, flippantly waving her friend's concern away.
"You have to let that go, dude," Jack agreed.
Ty frowned, grumpily, but eventually gave in. Sighing, rolling his eyes and sagging his shoulders, dramatically, he said, "Fine. But, this time, we're not locking me in and forgetting the code. Got it?"
~~~
Once Ty agreed to Caleb's proposed plan of action, Jack sped off to obtain an appropriate container to transport his friend.
Within a minute of zooming off, he returned to his friends, holding an empty, plastic water bottle.
"This should do," he proclaimed, twisting off the cap and holding it out for Ty.
With an unenthusiastic rolling of the eyes, Ty grabbed the proffered receptacle, placed it on its side in front of him on the board and began shrinking.
Deliberately, he shrank slowly, trying to make it as obvious as possible that he did not like this idea.
Once small enough, he climbed through the bottle's neck and waited for Jack to screw the lid back on. "Let's get this over with," Ty mumbled at a volume only audible to Jack.
"I'm gonna have to get to work on waterproof walkie talkies," Ethan commented as Jack tumbled into the water, tightly clutching the water bottle containing his miniature friend.
~~~
Jack pierced the water and dove down, conscious of the important plastic bottle he held in his grasp.
Swimming through the clear, clean water, Jack kept his eyes peeled for the structure the jellyfish unwittingly led him to the night before.
With sunlight filtering through the transparent water, the entire scene seemed to transform. In the dead of night, with nothing but a few glowing jellyfish and some handy hardlight spheres, Jack hadn't seen further than the nose on his face. Now, he could see for what seemed like miles.
But, for all the visibility the daylight afforded him, he couldn't see the glass structure his glowing little escorts guided him to the night before.
Jack figured, in broad daylight, it would be easier to locate the man-made structure. The water was absolutely clear: a few stray fish here and there, seaweed growing in patches along the sandy sea bed, but no conspicuous airlock.