Super Nobody
Alphas and Omegas: Book One
Copyright Brent Meske, 2013
Third edition, 10/25/2015
License Notes:
This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.
One person in a million goes Active and gets super powers, but not in this town. In this town it's more like one in five.
Once free of schoolyard bullying, 7th grade Michael finds himself surrounded by a cascade of emerging super people, in situations that could get him killed. Or worse. The more he learns, the stranger the town seems. And the more tangled up he gets, the closer he is to uncovering a sinister plot to destroy the entire city.
This book is dedicated to Alfred Siegert and Harold ‘Grampa Honey’ Meske, for being strong, gentle, patient, kind, passionate, good cooks, good fathers, good teachers, good grandfathers, and for giving me life, though it was years and years down the road. I wish they were both here today so I could thank them.
Table of Contents
1- Poink!
2- Super Awkward
3- The New Tune
4- The Lightning Ball
5- Battery
6- The Seventh Power
7- Getaway
8- The Truth About Santa
9- Disassembly
10- War of the Michaels
11- Orientating
12- Keeping the Keys
13- Brain Stew
14- Johanna Lane
15- Poking the Hive
16- Drone
17- To the Mac
18- The In Crowd
19- A Periwinkle World
20- Flight of the Alphas
21- Just Super Enough
About the Author
Note
Also By This Guy
Preview: Super Anybody
Super Nobody
Chapter 1 - Poink!
Michael was in sixth grade when the super-powered avalanche began.
Not many people get to witness a super power activation; super folks are less than one in a million. Even fewer live to tell about it. And Michael was a bystander at not one, not two, but three different super events. Before the super-powered jerks, though, he had to survive the plain old jerks.
One of the biggest problems with being in middle school is how quickly your friends turn on you. Michael knew it well. He didn’t seem to grow quickly enough, because he was always picking up cute little names like chopsticks, beanpole, string bean, twerp, geek, nerd. And others.
The smart kids wouldn’t have anything to do with Michael. He was a magnet for abuse from the bigger kids. As long as the geniuses at the Lincoln Area District Consolidated Elementary Middle School (LADCEMS) stayed away from Michael, all of them would head home at three o’clock with all their teeth, ice-cream free hair, their underwear intact, all parts present and accounted for.
Michael wasn’t nearly as lucky.
Some, like Richie Lewiston and Marc Olenkiewicz suddenly developed muscles, joined sports teams, and realized how much they had never really liked Michael to begin with. Others like Jordie Munsen and Jeff McNulty moved to different schools. Get out of jail free.
The first day of fifth grade ended up with him getting hit in the head with a rubber dodge ball at lunchtime. In the daze that followed, Michael wondered just how quickly his friends could have disappeared. It was like everyone developed invisibility or super speed as soon as the ball made that silly poink sound and the asphalt hit him on the other side of his head. And the oddest thing was that dodge ball was happening a good fifty yards away.
Two kids came over to grab the ball, already laughing. One was a tall, powerfully built seventh grader with a beaky nose and one of those bowl-over-the-head haircuts. As ridiculous as his face looked, nobody looked past the arms much. His name was Trent and he wore shirts two sizes too small.
“Man down! Man down!” the other kid laughed. This one was almost as tall as Trent, but put together from all the wrong parts. He had huge hands and feet, but comically thin arms and legs. His body seemed too small, with his hands swinging down around his knees, and a dopey face that seemed to be ears and not much more. This thing was named Davey Rightman.
“Don’t call that a man,” Trent told him. “Looks more like a popsicle stick with arms and legs.” He grabbed Davey by the face and pushed him away. He staggered, still laughing, as Trent bent down and jerked Michael to his feet. He bent down, quite a ways, and looked Michael in the eyes. Then he brushed some invisible dirt off Michael’s shirt.
Michael was dimly aware that most of the kids on the playground had stopped playing, and a crowd was watching intently. It was sort of eerie the expectant and hushed way they were staring. This had to happen to somebody. Whether they felt guilty about wishing this on him or not, he couldn't see any help coming.
“Unlucky,” Trent said. Michael’s vision was still swimming a bit, and his head was surely the size of a beach ball. It contained that much pain anyhow.
“Cough up,” Davey said. He was finally back next to Trent.
“Huh?” Michael asked at last.
“Trent here helped you up. Brushed the dirt off you. Made you presentable.”
“No way to make you look presentable,” Trent said conversationally.
“Well,” Davey said, “As much as he could. Fee for presentable is ten bucks.”
Michael’s mind whirled in confusion and pain. “Huh?”
“Got us a smart one here,” Trent muttered. “What’s your name kid?”
“Michael,” he said.
“Michael,” Trent said. “You’re in... what... third grade?”
He was dimly aware that they were making fun of him. At last he said, “Fifth.”
They shared a look of surprise, and then Davey burst out into high-pitched laughter. Trent grinned, and Davey took over the interrogation.
“Last name, fifth grade Michael?”
“Washington,” he said.
“Michael Washington, fifth grade. Put your hands in your pockets.”
Michael could do that. He did.
“Pull out what’s in there,” Davey said.
“What? No!” he said. Understanding had hit him like a dodge ball. Poink!
Trent just stared at him for a few moments. Then he straightened, shrugged, and turned to walk off.
“Kid thinks he’s a superhero or something. Heh. Alphas material you ain’t, kid. I were you, I’d find a good funeral home,” Davey said before he, too walked off. Everybody was still staring at him, like those red dots from scopes in the video games.
It was done. Nuclear Launch Detected.
School that day didn’t matter. It was only the first day and none of the teachers were saying anything important. There wasn’t going to be any homework. The laws of karma and public elementary school required this. No reason not to dwell on his death. This he did, at length. Would he be able to scream? He doubted it.
He was walking home in a massive group of other kids, varying grades and an array of heights, when he realized he was surrounded by a bunch of taller, meaner looking kids. Davey was one of these.
He smiled, which made his head seem all teeth instead of all ears. “Let’s head across Wilson, kiddo.” With that, a pair of hands grabbed him and began hauling him across the busy street, away from the kids all walking home.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey!”
Davey’s fist looped around in a wide arc and walloped him in the stomach. All the air left him, and what was worse, no more air was coming in. He couldn’t make himself breathe
. He was floating in space, eyes bugging out, choking on nothing.
Gradually, through the pain and the fear, Michael realized Trent was in front of him, and that huge hand was on Michael's jaw. He was being carefully inspected.
“You didn’t hit him in the face.”
“Course not,” Davey said, from far away.
“Good.” He turned his attention on Michael. “You’re gonna bring me ten bucks,” he said. “Right?”
Michael nodded miserably. When he tried to close his eyes and block out the sight of Trent’s gorilla face above him, the seventh grader slapped him lightly.
“Eyes on me. And tomorrow, at lunch, you come bring it to the dodge ball court. Give it to me front of everybody. You got me?” Trent's little posse was laughing. Other kids were gawking as they walked slowly by. He was reminded of heading up north one year to visit some relatives, seeing a semi truck on its side and another car crumpled up nearby, with police milling everywhere. Traffic had just about stopped in both directions. Only now he was the wrecked car.
Michael’s face burned with humiliation and shame. Mostly it was fear. A couple of light slaps brought him back face to face with Trent.
“Answer me.”
“Yeah,” he gasped at last. His ability to breathe was returning.
“You tell any teachers or parents or whatever, I’ll know,” Trent said, and grabbed a handful of skin, pinching him and causing him to gasp in agony.
Michael nodded miserably. He understood.
“Now, there you go. Two yeses in a row. That wasn’t so hard.” He pulled Michael to his feet and slugged him in the exact same place Davey had hit him. He felt his shoes leave the ground, and then he was on his side, his face on the grass and the rest of him on the sidewalk. He was a fish out of water.
“Never tell me no again, got it?” Trent said over his shoulder.
Michael spent most of his fifth grade year doing two things: delivering papers so he could make Trent's weekly payments, and saving up for a bike to take him back home faster. Most days he could rocket out of school, be on his bike, and be near his house before Trent and Davey and the other jerks could even ask where he was.
His paper route actually turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise. He had to deliver a paper to the library every day, which wasn't really cool since it was well out of the way and he had to cross a really busy street. It was cool, however, once he stopped to ask for the library's money and the woman behind the counter gave him a free e-reader.
She wasn't the type of librarian he had seen in a pair of movies, the ones who were steel-haired hags with gold chains attached to their spectacles (these ones were so old they didn't even use the right word: glasses) and flower print dresses with doilies attached. This librarian was a blonde-haired goddess who left the top two blouse buttons undone and who had to chide several men every day for asking her go up the ladders to get some books they really didn't need. Her name was Lily, he knew it by the nametag: I'M HERE TO HELP!!! MY NAME IS Lily.
He had noticed a pair of kids clicking on a huge digital music player, and sneered at them just as Lily gave him the money in a little envelope, just like always.
“You shouldn't get down on them just for wanting to read,” Lily said.
“Huh?” he asked. “Read?”
“Sure,” Lily said. “E-readers.”
Oh yeah, his grandfather had a tablet at home and was always scrolling on the thing, reading the news and whatnot.
“But it's not a tablet. No touch screen or holographic display or anything.”
“They're the old versions,” Lily explained. And he drifted off into her blue-gray eyes while she explained about the buttons and the long battery life, even though they were over thirty years old. A ton had been donated to the library when the tablets got more popular.
“You want to try one out?” she asked.
“But...I don't have any money.”
“They're free. I'll just need your home phone so if you don't return it, I can come and get you in the night.” She winked and smiled. Some sleeping part of Michael stirred. He didn't understand it yet, and wouldn't for another few years. By then, of course, Lily would be dead and everything would be out of control.
But nobody knew the future, nobody Michael knew, and he would be able to see her and talk to her every time he finished a book. He just told her what to write down on the paperwork, and she handed him a white square thing with a leather case.
“There you go,” she said. “In two weeks, the Hardy Boys and the Hobbit are going to delete themselves and the reader will call me to tell me where it is. So just bring it back in if you don't like it.”
He loved the Hobbit, didn’t really care for the mysteries. He was back in four days for a long chat about how good it was, and the first of Lily's recommendations, a late twentieth century masterpiece called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And Harry didn't take no guff from no Slytherin.
He plowed through old stuff and new, from Don’t Tell My Dad I’m A Supervillain to Watership Down, where the rabbits banded together to fight the bullies. There were Fablehaven tales, where the kids had to spend their time in a magical reserve for faeries and satyrs and dragons and stuff. Five in that series. He devoured page after page on his little e-reader, clicking the thing furiously at night after his parents told him it was lights out. He went through Percy Jackson, (five books there), and His Dark Materials. Three long books. There were four kids who went through their uncle's wardrobe and came out in a place that was always winter. Seven books. Michael was unstoppable. The librarian would just smile knowingly whenever he walked in, to talk over what happened, plug in his e-reader and get something else loaded up.
“What is it today?” he'd ask, and she’d say, “First you have to tell me your favorite part.”
And of course, he would. Any book was light years from Trent and Davey. Until midnight, after, clicking and clicking.
This was how fifth grade went.
In June, one of his former friends stopped him in the hall. Billy and a whole ton of others had given up on him after that poink.
“Hey Michael,” he said. His face was already flaming scarlet, and he was looking around to see if anybody noticed him talking to the class head case.
“Yeah?”
“Trent's going over to Patterson for eighth grade. Just thought you should know.”
Michael was confused at first. He'd grown so used to paying Trent his money every week (and later twice a week) that it was just a fact of life. He never thought about Trent anymore, or the gut punches Trent threw in just for the fun of it, or the way none of the other kids looked at him. He was already far away.
The last day of school hit, and so did Trent. Michael was enjoying the exploits of a kid who was supposed to be a Warrior but who had a Wizard stone in his chest when he found himself on the ground. He dimly heard the poink! Of the rubber ball smashing into his face, and he dimly felt the tears. It was his nose.
“Oh man, that's my bad. My bad.” but that voice didn't sound apologetic. Through the stars flashing around his vision, Michael saw Trent and Davey hover into view.
“Michael Washington!” Trent said. “Would you look at this. Lucky for me I had a chance to come talk to you before he finished out.”
“Lucky!” Davey giggled. He almost sounded like a girl. “Lucky!”
“Listen bud, I got to thank you for all the money. But I'm leaving today, so you're gonna have to give me another twenty. Nothing personal you know, just a leaving fee. Little...what did old man Schektor say that word was? Ah...memorabilia. That's it.”
“A parting gift!” Davey was in hysterics. Michael realized they were standing just next to his fallen e-reader. He couldn't see it well enough. Was it broken?
“But listen bud, I'm leaving Davey here to watch out for you next year. He got held back, see. You just keep up with the payments, and Davey's gonna see they get to me. Got it? Got it? Hey, Washington, you listening to me? Wha
t the...oh, this?”
He stooped down and picked up the e-reader.
“What is this...the Warrior Heir. Think you're some sort of warrior, is that it?”
Davey doubled over, and Michael felt that unnatural silence flow over the playground, just like on the first day.
“Don't...don't do anything...that's not mine.”
“It sure isn’t,” Trent told him. “Anything you have belongs to me.”
And he threw the e-reader down onto the pavement. Just the sound of it sent red waves of anger shooting down into his guts. Then Trent lifted his size ten way up high, and when Michael reached for it, stomped both the e-reader and Michael's hand.
He felt the glass crack under his palm, and the shards started digging in. As Trent ground his heel down, the bones started to creak and crack. The pain was explosive.
Then he was on his feet, and he felt Narnia and Foo and Middle Earth all coursing up his arm, which was swinging up to meet Trent's beaky nose. His bloody hand cracked against Trent's face. He snarled like the golden monkey daemon and only wished he had the Subtle Knife so he could sent Trent to another dimension.
The big seventh grader fell back, shielding his face, yelling out.
“This kid is crazy! Geddimoffme!”
“You see my blood here! It's like battery acid!” Punch after punch fell down, he had battle axes for hands, just like Oin and Gloin and Thorin. If he couldn't put on a ring and be invisible, then he was going to smash his way through the problem. Dimly, he heard screams, but they were screams of triumph. The other kids were cheering him on. Or maybe just screaming.
“What would Percy Jackson do, you son of a—” He would have liked to finish the thought, but strong hands grabbed him around the arms and yanked him up off the ground. He knew the arms were a teacher's, just by the smell of aftershave.
Silence had fallen. He wasn't a member of the Alphas, with people cheering him on all over the world. In those few seconds, Michael had gone from pitied target to shunned, crazy outcast.
Chapter 2 - Super Awkward