Lady Aegis: Origins of Supers: Book Two Read online

  “No one is going anywhere, until we get what we came for. Sit down, all of you, or the principal dies.”

  I rolled my eyes, part of that was the fear talking and pure bravado, especially since I didn’t have powers yet. But the whole taking schoolkids hostage for a payoff never worked out. He was a dead man glowing and flying if my mother got here before the other heroes.

  The rest of the students were taking it rather well. I could see Susan moving around low on the ground, healing the ones that had been hurt. She was in her junior year, and had no defensive or offensive abilities, but she could heal in seconds.

  My hand moved to my watchphone, and I hit the alert button. Just in case Prisma was sleeping and didn’t notice my high school auditorium’s roof had blown up. Of course, the chipper A.I. never really slept but I figured the sooner someone got there the better. I’d never actually met her in person, she was in my mother’s supervillain lair, though I had talked to her on a number of occasions by video call. She looked to be my age, a year older perhaps, her creator going for just legal. She was five foot seven, a lithe woman with light brown hair and doe eyes, and she was extremely cute. Of course, she was also a hologram.

  There were two more supervillains hovering over the school, but I couldn’t make out much more than their silhouettes. The room was dark, and the sun was bright through the hole in the roof making them hard to make out. I just knew it was two more men, and neither of them were glowing so probably had brawler type powers.

  My heart slammed into my chest, and Janna’s scared look hit me hard. I knew she was worried more about me than herself.

  Every member of the second generation quickened at the end of puberty, but stressors were still a factor in that. Otherwise, the fact I quickened on that day and in that moment were just too wildly coincidental. Regardless, I felt a flush of heat go through my body, an energy filled me, and I started to glow with a light golden light, about four shades lighter than my dark golden hair. It was a warm nimbus, partially translucent.

  Janna whispered, “Holy shit.”

  Yeah, she could say that again, a golden nimbus? Where the hell had that come from? I also felt like the most selfish bitch on the planet in that moment, because my principal was being held by the throat, all my classmates were in danger, but I was worrying about the fact my power wasn’t like my mother’s power at all. Oh, my mother could glow with a warm golden nimbus, but only if she wanted to.

  Of course, I also had no idea what I could do, not really, so I did nothing. There were other supers there too, most of the senior class, more than half the junior class, and a smattering of others in the freshman and sophomore classes who’d finished puberty by fourteen. None of us did anything, not at first. We weren’t trained on how to deal with hostage situations, most of the ones with powers probably couldn’t take an attack from the three supervillains anyway. Untrained heroes got people killed, that’d been pounded into our heads for all our schooling. It took more than a sense of responsibility, integrity, discipline, and good intentions to be a good superhero, it took training.

  If it all went to shit, we wouldn’t have a choice, but in a relatively stable situation we weren’t supposed to do anything. Self-defense, preservation of life, those were the exceptions.

  I tried to stop the glow, focused on the idea. My mother had told me how her power worked enough times for me to have an idea where to start. Even if it wasn’t the same, it had to be similar, didn’t it? It didn’t work, and that destroyed my confidence, though a small part of me suspected even then it didn’t work out of self-preservation. It’d be like trying to lower a shield while you were being shot at, the subconscious and instincts wouldn’t let that happen.

  In short, it was hardly the time to be experimenting with what I could do, and after I failed that first time I was frozen in doubt.

  Janna gave me an odd look, as my watch said, “Just stay calm, teams are on the way,” in Prisma’s chipper voice.

  The only thing I was sure of was I had flight, since my wish to be anywhere but there had caused me to float up off the seat slightly. I’d had to grab the arms of the chair and pull myself back down.

  Janna hissed, “Who was that?”

  I said, “Family A.I.”

  It was an outrageous statement, only the filthy rich and super teams had a dedicated A.I., though normal people did have access to A.I.s on a rental basis, or as a service. Point was, I wasn’t rich enough for that statement, but I couldn’t have told her it was my mother’s super team A.I. either.

  At the same time, saying that was true, if not the complete truth, which was far more palatable to me than lying outright to my best friend in this world.

  Both our heads snapped back to the front as the principal said, “You won’t get away with this. You’ll be lucky if you even see your death coming. Taking hostages was a mistake.”

  He chuckled coldly, “Death’s Mistress? That bitch is overrated, no one has tested her in years and our powers grow stronger over time. Sonic powers do nothing to me, and we have a way to detect her, air super. If she comes, I’ll kill you and the rest of the staff,” he waved at the side of the stage where most of the teachers sat frozen, “before I start in on the kids. She won’t risk it.”

  Only about half the teaching staff were supers, and none of them had powers strong enough to face the three supervillains.

  Oh, he was so wrong about my mother not risking it too, but I held my tongue. Being a superhero was risk, and my mother had more tricks than one. My mother’s invisibility was perfect, between her bending light and containing her sound, and the tech in her super suit that prevented thermal vision, radar, lidar, or other scanning technologies from seeing her.

  But a super that could feel and control the air could sense her if she flew in and give a warning. They would feel a blank spot in the air for one, and they’d sense the movement of the air itself. It wouldn’t be so easy outside, with breezes, but in a room with four walls if not a ceiling, the air currents were predictable and stable, and it’d be a different story. In short, they wouldn’t detect her, but they’d detect her passage, indirect evidence of her presence.

  The supervillains were energy, air, and something else.

  I was also dying to know what I could do, and I wanted to tell Prisma to submit an application to the superhero course on my behalf. I’d filled it out and taken the online tests months ago, but I’d had to wait for my powers to come in to finish it up and submit it.

  How messed up was that? To be fair, my heart was still hammering, and my mind was all over the place. I wanted to help. I wanted to protect others. I wanted to live up to and be like my mother, even back then at my shallowest there was no thoughts of self-aggrandizement for the influence and authority I’d have as a superheroine, but in that moment doing anything would’ve been foolish and gotten people killed. For all I knew my powers wouldn’t be suited for this situation at all, and I’d still need to figure them out even if they were.

  Random selfish thoughts weren’t so surprising in a situation like that, but I still felt guilty for having them. Still, it was my ambition, to do my part.

  Powers weren’t hard to figure out or use, but it took some trial and error in the beginning. A small amount of focus and concentration was enough, but I was too scared to try anything. I was afraid I'd get someone killed. Which really, was the right thing.

  The principal said, “If you could take a sixty-ton hit to the head too, I’d believe you. Maybe if you run now, you’ll make it.”

  “She won’t get close enough to deliver it.”

  A lot of things happened at once after that and my mind struggled to take it all in. I did realize in hindsight, much later, that my mother had already been there for a while, outside, and was studying the situation. Quite likely listening to the principal and the supervillain argue and getting their capabilities while she’d made a plan. Listening through my watch, as no doubt Prisma was routing it through her comms gear.

&nb
sp; Problem was, the supervillain hadn’t actually said he couldn’t take the hit, he’d just implied it’d never get that far.

  First, the two supervillains above us just died. My mother didn’t fool around with hostage takers, or when the deaths of innocents were on the line, it wasn’t just on my behalf. Ninety nine percent of supervillains went to jail, but the ones that took pleasure in killing others usually didn’t make it. I thought my mother was morally right, but the idea of taking a life was still freaky to me.

  At the exact same time she killed them with a sonic attack she appeared in her all black super suit. She was wielding a yellow three-foot-long metal pole filled with concrete, like the ones outside the main doors of the school to prevent a vehicle from smashing into the front doors. In fact, I’d bet money it was one of those, specifically.

  How no one ever noticed our identical golden hair and blue eyes was beyond me, or the fact my mother only sort of looked like me in her Belladonna and dark midnight black hair was a mystery. To be fair, the eye mask did hide her cheekbones, so it was possible that was enough to not make the connection, but our generous mouths and petite noses, were very similar.

  She was an extremely fast flier, and she could as the principal suggested hit with sixty tons of force. That was less of an amazing thing than fifteen years ago. Most heroes with strength and toughness could only lift about twenty tons, a third of what my mother could, but there were others out there now that could match it though it was still rare.

  Point being, it was a split second later when she was swinging that down like an axe stroke, right at the energy supervillain’s head.

  He dropped the principal as he put his arm over his head, and his white aura strengthened as the steel and cement pole which probably weighed a quarter ton, slammed into his arm with sixty tons of force. Except, it never quite made contact. The end of the pole broke off and slammed into the stage making a little crater, even as the middle of the pole was just disintegrated by that white energy. She wound up holding nothing but a short metal pole.

  Yeah, it was why she used metal poles, instead of punching them, better the pole than her fist and arm.

  He growled as he waved his hand, “You’re going to regret that, bitch.”

  My mother not one to hesitate when a plan goes wrong screamed, “Run!” and flashed a powerful light in his eyes to blind him.

  Everyone got up and ran for the exit, though some few that could fly grabbed a friend or two and left by way of the roof.

  The supervillain was pissed, and my mother was out of options. She couldn’t punch him, she couldn’t use her sonics on him, and he was already blinded. He couldn’t see, but that didn’t stop him from lashing out with his power violently.

  My mother dodged out of the way and took flight, then went to grab something else to hit him with from the corner of the room. Likely one of those metal crossbeams.

  Regardless, the supervillain wasn’t done, and even if he couldn’t see he knew where all the teachers had been sitting. He held out his arm in their direction and the glow built up even more powerfully than his first attack, which had already been strong enough to blow out half the wall in the back of the auditorium when it’d missed my mother. I figured there’d be nothing left of the teaching staff when he finally released it, as the glowing white power grew blinding in its intensity.

  Janna grabbed my arm, “Come on, he’s going to blow,” she said so fast I could hardly make it out, then she tried to pick me up and drag me out with her superspeed. Except, we didn’t go anywhere. My power kept me glued to that spot. I didn’t know what I could do, but I couldn’t turn away from it. It was stupid, really. No, it was really stupid, because my power should’ve been like my mother’s, and she was extremely vulnerable to energy of any kind. It was why she’d had to dodge.

  “Wynn!” Janna yelled with anger and fear for me on her face.

  My eyes flickered to the teachers who were all running for cover on that far right corner of the room, by the stage. They were all about to die, even if my mother killed him with the next blow somehow, because he couldn’t see it coming to build up his shield enough to disintegrate the metal, it wouldn’t be until he released that pulse.

  You could almost say I was focused on not letting that happen, on protecting my teachers, and the rest of the students who were still trying to get through the doors. My mind wasn’t exactly specifically focused on how, just on the end result of protection. I wanted to both stop him, and protect the others, all at the same time. Apparently, even that somewhat diffuse focus was enough for my power to react.

  My soft nimbus of gold brightened as beams of light left my shield. Thin, and concentrated. They moved at the speed of light, and when they hit everyone the end of the thin streams sort of dispersed and wrapped everyone in the room in glowing gold light. Individually. The solid gold lines of light were still there, like they were powering the shields I’d put around everyone.

  Projective shields, the rarest kind. My mother couldn’t do that… or could she? I knew she could turn other’s invisible, from a distance. Not the same of course, but slightly similar.

  The strange thing was that it couldn’t have been just light. Because the lines bent, like extension cords with lots of slack in them. A golden glowing extension cord. They bent around anyone or anything in the way, that was between me and my targets, including the large crowd of five hundred students by the front door.

  Including my mother, who didn’t even hesitate at starting to glow gold as she picked up a large steel cross support. Damn, I really wanted to be like her when I grew up. Note to mom, don’t you dare rub this in or get insufferable when you read this account.

  Okay, back to it.

  Perhaps the strands were simply part of the shield. I wasn’t sure, and it was all happening in a split second of time.

  I was also terrified, for one brief second, because as I’d said earlier, my mother had no ability at all to block energy. What if it didn’t work? I couldn’t even look at the supervillain anymore, because his forearm and fist were glowing so brightly it was blinding, and it was still getting brighter.

  Then he released it. I was, as I said, focused on protecting my fellow students and the teachers, but I was also focused on stopping him. The world kind of went crazy, as the stage below him turned into splinters. The expanding explosion of energy wasn’t targeted at all, like I’d thought it would be, and expanded out from his fist like a spherical energy wave.

  The rubble from the ceiling, the stage, the auditorium seating, the rest of the roof, the walls, even the floor itself was completely disintegrated far into the cement floors underneath the tile, as the energy rolled out powerfully.

  When it hit my shield, or shields, I felt… warm, energized, but not stressed. It was like he was knocking on the door of my power, politely, despite the absolute destruction happening around everyone, not a person in the auditorium came to harm.

  Even my mother froze at that, and stared at me in disbelief, the hundreds of solid glowing golden lines that were the width of fishing line and extending from me kind of removed any doubt who was responsible.

  The supervillain managed to say, “No way,” before he got what was coming to him. Of course, his true language was a bit more colorful, and he was very angry, but let’s keep it PG, shall we? I don’t want to get grounded after my mother reads this.

  I’d mentioned more than once already I’d been partially focused on stopping him, and it was also the moment when I found out I not only had projective shielding, but they were also reactive shields. Call it protection with a bite, counterattack. All the energy that the shields had absorbed routed to me and shot out in a blinding white column of energy that slammed into his legs.

  He screamed in pain as his legs were disintegrated just past the thighs. He’d live, and his legs would grow back in a week or two, but for the moment he was in total agony. I could’ve killed him I suppose, but my subconscious must’ve known I wasn’t ready for that.<
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  A couple of cuffs teleported in right next to the moaning supervillain who was out of it with agonizing pain, and my mother after making sure she was still glowing gold put them on him fearlessly, despite his white aura.

  Honestly, I was really impressed. It was my power and I wasn’t sure I’d have been that confident in it yet. As soon as the cuffs were on, his energy aura blinked out. They wouldn’t halt his regeneration or the health aspects of our powers, but everything else was suppressed. Don’t ask me how that worked, because I have no idea.

  I took a deep breath, then concentrated and focused on turning it off, and not only did the projections go away, my own golden glow went away. That kind of verified my earlier thoughts, I was unable to shut it off the first time I'd tried because I’d been in danger. Our powers were controllable but were also in part autonomic, like breathing.

  My mother waved in thanks, as if I was just some teenager she didn’t know, threw the supervillain over her shoulder, and they both disappeared as they flew toward the sky.

  Janna said, “Holy shit. That was awesome.”

  I nodded in agreement. My heart was still hammering but it was slowing slightly, and I was filled with pride, a sense of strength and invincibility, and I fought really hard not to get carried away in that feeling. But… it was a hell of a rush.

  I really needed to send in that application, and to figure out what my powers were.

  Chapter Two

  It was a couple of hours later. It took forever to get out of there. I didn’t do anything wrong, but I wasn’t a superhero and had been involved, and I’d just quickened, so they were questioning me from both ends.

  Of course, my mother had come to pick me up, and we were heading toward the testing center. I’d wanted to fly there but she’d just snorted at me, which I didn’t really blame her for. We weren’t supposed to mess around until we’d fully figured our powers out.