Chapter 1
I stood with Jeremy and the rest of the theatre kids outside of Mr. Reyes’s classroom. It was the day after winter break and we were waiting for him to announce the spring musical. He’d promised it was something written in the last century and not written by him, so everyone was excited.
“Alright everyone,” Mr. Reyes said, holding a large poster in his arms. “I have an announcement! The spring show will be…” he paused for dramatic effect after hanging the poster on the wall. “... Brooklynite!”
A couple people groaned. Christine gasped.
“I was born to play Astrolass! She’s the coolest superhero ever!” She squealed, making Chloe roll her eyes.
“Well, I think the Legion of Victory is a little full of themselves. A whole musical about them tearing down a wall they built,” Chloe said.
Christine looked shocked.
“The musical is about what led to the Brooklyn city walls falling, not about them falling. Besides the Legion does so much to protect everyone in and around New York, the least they deserve is a musical!”
“Ze Legion of Victory? What’s zat?” Madeline asked, adopting a horrible french accent.
Madeline had transferred to Middleborough High during our sophomore year and had told everyone she was from France. The problem was that I’d been going to the same church as her since we were very little. So we both knew she wasn’t French.
I entertained her delusions in exchange that she didn’t talk to me at school and that she shared a rumor whenever I needed her to. It had worked out for both of us, until recently.
“The Legion of Victory is a group of superheroes. They were the only superheroes in the world for a while, so I’m surprised you didn’t hear about them in France,” I said.
Her eyes widened.
“Nah Michael,” Jake said, jumping into the conversation, “be sensitive to cultural differences. The Legion’s made up of a couple of people. There’s Kid Comet: he’s super-fast, used to be a messenger. Blue Nixie, she controls water through a magic whistle or something, she used to be a marine biologist. There’s El Fuego, he sets things on fire, former line cook. Captain Clear is invisible duh. but I couldn’t tell you what he used to do before the asteroid.
“And then there’s Astroman and his daughter… and her boyfriend. Astroman founded the legion, but he died a little while before the legion tore down the walls. Astrolass has the same powers that Astroman did. Flight and superstrength. Astrolass’s boyfriend, Astrolad, uses a super-suit to pretend he can fly, but he doesn’t actually have powers.”
Madeline feigned confusion.
“What is zis asteroid?” she asked.
“The Gowanus asteroid. It gave the legion their powers,” Jake said.
“You’re not even telling her the full story,” Christine said, “Besides the people Jake mentioned, there’s a couple others that are important to understand the Legion and the musical. Avenging Angelo was a member of the Legion that went rogue and became Venge. He had the power to look into the future and see empty parking spots. He felt like the others thought finding parking spots was a bad power, and when the others didn’t let him have a position of power in the group, he quit and became Venge. He then tried to recreate the Gowanus effect to give him and a group of students superpowers so that they could destroy Brooklyn. Trey - Astrolad - stopped him with help from the Legion.
“Oh! Also, for the past few years, there’s been another superhero fighting with the legion. He goes by Nix, which is the masculine form of Nixie, so everyone thinks he’s just Blue Nixie’s son. He can also control water, so there’s actual evidence, not just add speculation on my part. Nothing’s been confirmed by the legion, though.”
I could confirm that Nix was Blue Nixie’s son. I’d been fighting with Legion under the Alias of Nix for three years now. I was adopted by my real moms as a baby, but once I realized I could control water, it wasn’t hard to figure out who my birth mother was. And, once I realized that Blue Nixie and El Fuego had been an “Item” for the past 17 years, it wasn’t hard to figure out who my birth dad was either.
But, nobody besides the Legion and my moms knew who Nix was. So if it was confirmed that I was Blue Nixie’s child, my identity would be narrowed down to maybe a hundred people. I guess Christine would just have to keep wondering.
Jeremy and Christine signed up for the first two slots on next Thursday and everyone else signed up behind them. The fall play never generated that much interest, but the Musical was full of Choir kids who can’t act and Theatre kids who can’t sing.
“You gonna sign up, Michael?” Rich asked, handing the pen to the person behind him in line.
“Do I look like I sing?” I gestured to myself.
“You sing in church choir all the time,” Madeline said, miraculously losing her accent.
“Wouldn’t you know,” I said.
She grabbed Jake and ran towards the student parking lot before I could expose her.
“Anyway. You don’t look like you play instruments, but you do,” Rich said.
“Yeah, and I have to teach other people who ‘play instruments’ how to play their instruments for the musical. So I’m going to be too busy to play a part.”
Jeremy hugged Christine and started walking over to me and Rich.
“Looks like I got to go. Bye,” I said.
Jeremy was finally ungrounded from the SQUIPcident and was gonna actually spend time with me. Instead of forcing me to spend time with people I don’t like just so I could talk to him, he was gonna play video games.
But the universe hated me. I should have known there was no way we’d hang out.
Everyone’s phone dinged with an emergency alert.
“Breaking News” the alert read, “super-villain known as Fever Storm attacking Brooklyn Bridge. Legion of Victory nowhere to be found!”
The Legion worked with the police on every day except for Thurday, which Astrolass had negotiated as a day off. The only time the Legion worked on Fridays was when there was a super attack, but even then they only did it if the police couldn’t stop it.
This attack didn’t seem like a huge issue, just some fire. The police and firefighters would handle it, but the Legion would probably arrive anyway.
Before I could turn to Jeremy and apologize for having to go, he spoke.
“I can’t hang out today, my dad is gonna want me home. Sorry Mikey,” He said.
That was fucking bullshit.
“It’s cool, I’ll catch you later,” I said as I pulled up my headphones and walked away.
At least now I could help the Legion. I ran home and changed into my super suit before calling Kid Comet.
Kid Comet was useful in battle, sure, but he was most useful whenever anyone wanted to get somewhere fast. He was a pretty fun guy, so in the one or two seconds he took to get someone, he’d always make me laugh. Plus, he was Rich’s third cousin or something, so he knew all the Goranski gossip. It pissed Rich off to no end when I asked him about his older brother’s second girlfriend of the month.
The rest of the Legion was still no show by the time Kid Comet and I got there, but we weren’t alone.
The police had evacuated the bridge, so no civilians could be on it. But 7 superheroes stood there fighting Fever Storm.
They weren’t very good. Water would be incredibly beneficial for this situation, but none of them could control it, so they were fighting fire with more fire.
Literally. The shortest member of the group was facing off with Fever Storm and both were sending fire everywhere.
Another hero was creating “bubbles” or forcefield to stop the fire from spreading and keeping the others from being burned. A third was sending electricity towards the villain.
The other four weren’t using their powers much and were mostly just in the way.
Kid Comet and I stood there watching for a little while before he turned to me.
“This is just sad to watch. You should put an end to it,” He said.
He was right, these guys were clearly new superheroes and probably had had zero formal training.
“Alright, but snap a couple pictures of these guys for me?” I asked, handing him my phone.
It was my job to track down new heroes and villains for the Legion. Trey and Astrolass liked keeping tabs on people.
“You got it!”
I summoned the water from the East River to douse the entire bridge and all the heroes standing on it. At the same time, Kid Comet had grabbed Fever Storm, subdued him somehow, and put him in handcuffs next to a police officer.
The seven soaking wet superheroes turned to me in confusion. They didn’t seem like they’d be trouble, but I could imagine that the police would want to arrest them.
“Get out of here,” I said.
The superheroes scrambled to get off the bridge. Kid comet came rushing back over.
“Any clue who those guys are,” I asked.
“Nope, but I got close up pictures of them. Their masks don’t cover most of their face, so I’ll bet with some digging you’ll find out who they are.”
I nodded. This probably wasn’t the first time they used their powers, so I might be able to narrow them down to a town or neighborhood. If I figured out the identities of the heroes with bad masks, I’d be able to find the others.
The reason why I was in charge of finding out identities was that I had done all of the steps needed to find someone, backward to hide my own identity. Plus, if someone broke into Legion headquarters, then they’d have access to all these other superheroes’ identities if another member did it, but since I do it at home, there’s no evidence just lying around.
Hunting amateur superheroes was a depressing way to a Thursday night, but since Jeremy had bailed, I had nothing else to do.
I took my previous project off the bulletin board in my room and started hanging print outs of the pictures Kid Comet had taken. Sure, I could have laid out all my evidence virtually, but the bulletin board fit my aesthetic more.
After pinning up everything I got from the bridge, I started googling for stories about these superheroes. I got a few hits on a group near Wakefield New Jersey, but they didn’t have the right powers. I was on the fourth page of google and about to give up and automate the search when I finally found something worthwhile.
“7 young heroes stop cash register thief in Middleburgh New Jersey.”
The article included videos of the heroes using their powers, as well as several photos taken by spectators. The attempted robbery was in some preppy boutique on the rich side of town, where Jake, Chloe, and Madeline lived, which is why I hadn’t heard of it.
The article was from last Sunday and the next related article was from five minutes ago, meaning that this group had only been fighting for less than a week. If they’d only been working together for that long, then their display on the bridge was more impressive.
The article said the heroes were young based on their voices and the fact that one of them had on a Middleborough High spirt bracelet, so these guys clearly went to my school. Which meant all I had to do was watch and see who acted suspiciously tomorrow. But first, I had to give them a reason to act suspiciously.
Me: OMG! Hey Madeline!
Mads: I hate you Mike.
Mads: What do you want. I’m not in a good mood right now.
Madeline was annoying and rude, but she was my friend on some level. She was the only thing that made Sunday classes bearable, so I did care beyond using her to spread gossip,
Me: Whats wrong :(
Mads: Jake bailed on our date. Based off his snap map he was with Chloe and Rich :(
Me: You can do better than him anyway. He can be a total jerk sometimes.
Mads: Yah, ur right. What did you need?
Me: Did you hear about these new superheroes? They fought Fever Storm on the bridge today and they totally go to our School.
I sent her the link to the article I found and separately sent her the picture of the one hero wearing a spirit band.
Mads: HOLY FUCK
Mads: That’s exciting
Mads: It’s on my story
Mads: Sometimes you’re useful
Me: Im always useful
Me: ;)
Mads: I still hate you.
I sent her a :P back and decided to call it a night. I wasn’t going to be able to track these guys down until tomorrow anyway.