Heroes Wear Capes

“We’re here to help, and it doesn’t even matter who we are before we put on the masks because when we do put them on, it means we’re here to help, no matter what.”

~ Oliver Storm (White Lightning)

When Xander woke up the first thing he realized was that he wasn’t sore at all. In fact, he felt absolutely great. He felt like he could take on the world with no problem, which wasn’t a usual occurrence for a poor kid with no real talents.

It was then he remembered the events of the night before. He looked down at his bandaged arms. His mom was going to kill him.

He peeked under the bandage on his arm, one of the bigger, nastier wounds, but, to his surprise, found nothing there but a faint scar. Okay, that was weird. He checked under another Band-Aid and the same thing happened. There was nothing there, not even a scar.

Xander freaked, ripping off all the Band-Aids and bandages he had put on his body the night before. There were no healing wounds and not even any scars from the splintered wood and the broken glass except for the one scar where the biggest gash had been, but it was so faint that he could’ve been imagining it. Somehow the events from the night before hadn’t happened.

But, that didn’t make sense. Why else would he have put the bandages on? It wasn’t like he was trying to dress up for Halloween as a mummy. Xander picked up one of the white wrappings and saw a faint red stain on the inside. It proved that there had been an injury where the bandage had been at one point, but somehow the injury was gone.

How long had he been asleep?

And then Xander remembered the warehouse. He recalled the man in the suit with the vial of blood describing his product to Paul Rossi. It was something that he had reverse engineered from the blood sample, but Xander couldn’t remember what the product did. He had been too busy at the time freaking out over the situation, and there was no way he was going to remember what that man was saying, especially considering that he can’t even remember what his teachers say in class twenty minutes after they say it.

But, one thing was certain. Xander had been hurt before, but now he was fine. No, more than fine. Xander was great. What kind of drug had Paul Rossi been buying? If it was good enough to heal patients and make them feel invincible, then why was it not available in every hospital? With this thing, even cancer would be cured, Xander was sure.

There was one place he could think of to go. Either Paul or Trevor Rossi had to know what it was that they were buying. They knew what was going on with him. They could help.

Xander walked into the kitchen and saw his mom drinking coffee by the counter. She had a late night, but she was always able to stop the sleepiness with some good old-fashioned coffee, as potent as it was amazing. Katy Mendez wouldn’t let anything as small as only a few hours of sleep a night stop her.

“Hey, slugger. How’d you sleep? You didn’t even wake up when I came home.”

Yeah, it would’ve been hard for him to not crash when his body felt like it weighed a thousand tons because of the adrenaline rush last night. He had a feeling only a natural disaster could’ve awoken him.

“I slept well. How was work?”

His mom groaned and put her elbows on the counter. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! The two bikers came back.”

“The ones with the big beards and naked women tattoos?” Xander asked.

Katy nodded exuberantly, “Yeah, and don’t even get me started on the smell. It was atrocious. For some reason those two can’t get it through their heads that Super Burger is a family friendly place.”

Xander shrugged. “Technically you could say those to bikers were family friendly. What if they have their own kids? We don’t know what their personal lives are like.”

Xander’s mom smiled at her son, “I know I’ve raised you right, boy.” And then she messed up his hair with her hand affectionately.

“Mom!”

She laughed. “I can’t help it, you’re just growing up too fast.”

Xander’s mom was younger than most parents, only in her mid-thirties. At times it seemed like the two were more roommates than family, especially considering his mom looked much younger than her years. They didn’t talk about dad though.

Katy Mendez pouted at her son and turned up the news.

“. . . and we have yet to get word on Mr. Rossi’s condition at this time. We are told that he has been out of surgery for a couple of hours now and it is undetermined if or when he will wake up. We are told that the police are investigating the exact circumstances in which the head of a multimillion dollar company was attacked, but early reports suggest this was more than just a mugging.”

Katy frowned, but it seemed hard, forced. “Aren’t you friends with his son?”

Xander paled. He had heard a shot last night. It was a terrifying thing to know that the shot he heard had harmed Paul Rossi, almost killed him. He was secretly glad it hadn’t hit Trevor though. Trevor did not deserve to hurt last night. I wasn’t his fault that his father was involved in dangerous activities.

“Yeah,” Xander found his voice, “I wonder how he’s doing.”

“You should go visit him.” Katy urged. “You should see if Trevor’s doing alright.”

Xander was flabbergasted. Usually his mom hated when he went out places on a weekend day. “Are you sure?”

Katy scoffed. “What kind of mom would I be if I kept you from a grieving friend?”

Xander couldn’t believe his luck. Not only had his friend been spared from a bullet, but he now knew exactly where to find Paul Rossi, who could tell him what it was he was really buying from the former associated of the dreaded villain, X.

“Thanks, mom.”

“No problem, honey.” Katy replied, reaching for her coffee.

It happened as if in slow motion. He saw her hand push the coffee cup off the table, and he saw the coffee spilling out of it in droplets, tiny details that he shouldn’t be able to spot in what should’ve taken only less than a second, but what felt like it stretched out for a minute with him. And, then, as soon as it had happened, the sensation left. Time sped up again and the cup crashed to the floor.

“Oh!”

Xander was in too much shock at the strange event to even have an exclamation.

“That was my favorite coffee cup! Not to mention a fine brew of coffee.” She sighed, “I guess not every day can be a good one.”

Xander knelt down to help his mother clean up the pieces of her cup. As he was wiping up the brown liquid on the floor, he cut his hand on a sharp piece of the cup. He cursed out in pain, of course he cut himself, though it probably wasn’t worse than a papercut.

“Honey! Look at that!” Katy exclaimed, holding her son’s hand. “Let’s get that cut under the water before it gets infected.”

But when she put it under the water and dabbed his hand with a cloth, there was no wound, only what looked like a faint scar.

“That’s weird,” His mom pointed out, feeling his hand. “I could’ve sworn you got cut.”

Xander shrugged. “Maybe it was just a prick and I thought it was worse than it was.”

His mom nodded. “Yeah, maybe that’s what happened.”

Only Xander knew it wasn’t what had happened, because the cloth she had used to dab his hand had a red stain from the hand which had been bleeding only seconds before. In fact, when he looked closer at his hand he saw the scar where the cut had been slowly disappearing until the skin was smooth again, like nothing had ever happened to it.

Katy shook her head and smiled, shaking off the weird experience. “Well, I’m going to get another coffee going. Do you want anything?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll just be heading over to the hospital like you said.”

Katy nodded, a bit distracted. “I hope you have a safe trip. Tell Trevor I hope his father gets better soon, for his sake.”

“I will!” Xander yelled as he headed out the door.

As soon as it was closed, Xander was able to freak out. It was no illusion, he had been seriously injured last night and he had healed. He cut his hand today and it healed way faster than any human injury should.

What was going on?

Not to mention the weird way he saw the coffee cup fall. It was like the world stopped for a moment and slowed down.

Xander grabbed for his bike, but, to his surprise, it was shaking uncontrollably. He pulled his hand away, but realized it hadn’t been the bike, but his hand that was shaking like that. In fact, his hand was vibrating so fast that it seemed to blur.

Xander was seriously freaked out now. What had been in the crates at the warehouse? Was it some healing medicine with weird side effects or something? What the hell was Rossi Corp mixed up with?

He backed up from his apartment building, but the world blurred and suddenly he was yards in front of the infrastructure in only a second. There was no way anyone could move that fast. Had he blacked out for a few seconds while he walked away? The only other explanation was that somehow Xander had become inhumanly fast.

And then Xander remembered that he lived in a world of superheroes. Awesome people who could fly higher than a commercial airplane, who could lift entire buildings on their backs with no help, who could shoot lasers hotter than the sun out of their eyes, who could shoot impossible shots with only a bow and arrow, who could shoot fire out of their hands without a match, who could create thunderstorms in the middle of the desert, who could move objects with only a single thought.

People who could run faster than the speed of sound.

There was no way, and yet it was totally plausible.

Xander chose a spot in the distance, the other side of the apartment complex, which had to be at least 50 yards away. If he really was fast, he would be there in less than a second. If he was just imagining it all, he would just be embarrassing himself in the middle of an empty parking lot.

With one long stare at his spot on the other side, Xander bolted. And, man did he bolt. He saw the world around him move as if it was in slow motion, the leaves falling off the trees were stationary and the squirrels jumping from branch to branch were mid-leap. Xander reached his destination and the world went back to normal. But this time he knew it wasn’t the world that was going strange, it was him. He was moving so fast that everything around him looked slower.

Xander was a super. And, he wasn’t just any super, he was a fast one.

The most famous supersonic super was aptly named Sonic. Her real name was Arabella Jones and she was one of the most famous superheroes in the world. She was a part of the superhero group called the League of Legends, and their identities were public knowledge, but not because they wanted them to be. They were outed to the public half a decade ago by a jealous schoolmate of Arabella’s who was married to a reporter. It wasn’t really public knowledge how exactly she got her powers, but that’s how it was with most supers. They didn’t like any part of their private lift being turned into public knowledge. Besides, who knew what parts of a heroes’ past a villain could use against them?

Supers with super speed also had faster healing because not only were their muscles fast, but so were their bodily functions. Xander’s metabolism was probably working extremely fast as well.

(Looked like he would never have a problem with being fat.)

Xander laughed hysterically. It was insane. He was an actual super. He was a super, just like the ones he had worshipped ever since he was a little kid and saw Captain Fantastic defeat Doctor Destruction on the television.

He looked over at his bike, which sat right by his door, chained to the bars on their windows. He wouldn’t really need it anymore.

Xander pulled up the directions to the Kingdom City General Hospital on his phone and started running. The world zoomed by in a blur. As he ran past, loose papers went flying and leaves were lifted up by the wind. He felt like he was flying. At one point he had to check and make sure he wasn’t flying – that was how awesome running at that speed felt.

He stopped running when he reached the hospital, and, seeing as he was not used to stopping that fast, fell to the ground in a heap. A smoking heap.

Xander yelped as he tried to brush off whatever was smoking. Fire and Xander hadn’t fared well together since he was little and he almost burned the entire apartment complex down while trying to reheat a piece of pizza in the oven.

He soon discovered that the soles of his shoes were almost burnt through. The friction between his shoes and the pavement while he was running must’ve heated the soles of his shoes up until they melted away. It was such a shame considering they were his favorite pair of converse.

In the future, if Xander was going to use this ability, he would have to fund a solution to the shoes.

Thankfully the holes were only on the bottoms of his feet and they’d stopped smoking – for now. That meant no one in the hospital would be the wiser of his burnt out shoes.

Xander picked himself off of the ground and headed to the front doors of the hospital. It was then when he realized the giant flaw in his plan to possibly talk to Paul Rossi. He had never been inside Kingdom City General and he had no idea how to navigate the place. Hell, he didn’t even know where he would have to start looking for the multimillionaire. The news didn’t exactly say what room he was staying in, and it didn’t seem like one of Xander’s new powers was being able to find people, so he had no way to reach Paul Rossi.

(Isn’t it funny how people never stop to think about the possible curveballs in their plans until after they reach them?)

Xander sighed and sat down in one of the sofa chairs in the lobby. So there went that plan.

Technically he could use his super speed to run through and check every room in the building, but that came with its own complications. If Xander’s shoes almost completely melted with the trip to the hospital, how much more would they decay with a run around every hall in this place? Not to mention the nurses would eventually notice the speeding wind that kept racing by them. Who knows how much chaos he could cause by accidently blowing some really important papers out the window?

Right when Xander was content with giving up and going home, ruining his favorite converse for nothing, he overhead a conversation between a doctor and a woman in an expensive suit.

“. . . yes, and Mr. Rossi will need continued treatments for a couple of days. We’re still waiting on a new shipment of the drug.”

“Fine,” The woman responded, “Let’s see you try and give this information to his son. He won’t be any happier than I am. If Paul Rossi dies on your watch, that kid will be the sole heir of Rossi Corp, and it’ll be hard to convince the board of a merger with a new inexperienced CEO in the reigns. Not to mention that kid will have to go on with the knowledge that his father was murdered and there was nothing the hospital could do about saving him because they ran out of a simple medicine.”

Xander sat up. The short blond woman in the suit was now familiar to him. How many times had he heard Trevor rant about how awful the CEO of Carlton Laboratories was? It was Lacey Carlton, the head of the rival corporation to Rossi Corp. What was she doing checking up on how her nemesis was doing?

Xander had no way of knowing whether or not the two would lead him to Paul Rossi, but they were the only lead he had, and he wasn’t going to waste the trip to the hospital if he could find out anything about what happened last night, about what Paul was trying to buy.

As the two traveled away, Xander followed them down the halls of the hospital. He made sure not to look suspicious to the nurses as he ducked behind doors and tables. He didn’t want the two to realize they had a shadow. If they did they could call security and get him removed from the place before he found out any real information.

And then they stopped at a waiting room. Inside Xander saw Trevor and a couple of his constant bodyguards, plus many more men in suits. They were all there for Paul, there was no doubt about that.

Down the hall, there was one room with a bodyguard standing outside of it. There was no doubt in Xander’s mind that was where Paul Rossi was. Now all he had to do was find a way inside. Easy, right?