“What do you think?” Darkwing asked his teammates after the video file finished playing.
Together they’d just watched footage of the unknown kid fighting the monster that had taken the combined efforts of nearly half an hour to put down.
Not that taking an interest in young talents was the norm for them, but still.
You don’t run into a creature that can grind the Immortal’s granite bones into dust every day.
And you even more rarely run into unknown loners who can fight such a creature.
Actually, that had only happened once before in the team’s history.
“What’s there to think about?” The Immortal grumbled.
“Half my bones are broken, not to mention everything else.
And he’s fine.”
Despite his stated injuries, the sixteenth president stood firmly on his own two feet.
But the aftermath was visible on his face, bruised from the monster’s tentacle grip, and his thinning beard.
“He almost lifted that thing out of the water,” Holly, better known as War Woman, confirmed.
She’d preserved her beauty in the fight but now sported a splint on her left leg and her armor was pretty torn up.
“The kid’s got talent,” Martian Man agreed.
But his words clearly implied an unspoken “but.”
“He’s kind of strange.
Suspicious,” the youngest member of the team, Green Ghost, continued.
“He reminds me of someone,” Holly said thoughtfully, studying the kid’s face on the freeze-frame.
Everyone fell silent.
Darkwing switched the video to satellite data showing the location of one of the three team members not present with the others at the base.
“They flew off together,” Martian Man stated the obvious.
“The kid wants a costume,” the Immortal grinned through his pain and missing teeth.
“So we’ll meet again soon.
If that’s all, I need to wet my whistle.”
At that moment, Aquarus burst out of the underwater grotto with a splash and collapsed on the floor in a crumpled pile of flesh.
“Aquarus!” Holly cried out in alarm.
“What happened to you?”
“I’m fine…” The fish-man stood up, leaning on Martian Man’s friendly shoulder.
“But we lost him.
I’m sorry.”
“What?” The Immortal instantly boiled over.
“It was unconscious.
How could you?”
“It ate my people,” the king of the underwater world said grimly.
“I didn’t have the strength.
I barely escaped.”
“Don’t blame yourself, my friend,” Darkwing said, cutting off the Immortal.
“It’s our fault.
We should have dragged that thing onto land and made sure it was dead.”
“Damn.
We need to activate the backup systems.
Who knows where that thing will show up next.” Holly limped toward the drone control system.
“The sea will watch too,” Aquarus said with determination.
“We won’t let a repeat of today’s mistake happen.”
The heroes exchanged determined but grim looks.
What terrible timing.
First Black Samson with his mysterious ailment, a Guardian, possibly former, who’d almost completely lost his former strength.
Now this creature that had beaten up everyone else.
“Shit,” the Immortal hissed through his broken teeth.
“Half the team is out of commission.
If something serious happens…”
“We’re not alone, my friend,” Darkwing consoled his colleague.
“Fortunately, Earth has Omni-Man.
We can always count on him.”
“Yeah, let’s hope for Omni-Man,” the Immortal said with a grim chuckle.
*
*
*
Three thousand dollars.
That’s a very good price for a costume that can withstand the conditions of outer space.
But for a high school kid like me, getting that kind of money wasn’t easy.
It’s not something you can save from an allowance or beg from your parents.
But I wasn’t too worried.
I might not have official income, but I could still profit from my abilities.
I didn’t even need to rob anyone.
Though a minor law violation and tax evasion, that’s probably the worst crime in America, I’d still have to commit just to avoid drawing attention.
But that would have to wait until next week.
Yeah, Mom sentenced me to house arrest for fighting.
It was stupid, honestly.
I’d covered the wounds on my back, forearms, and legs.
But my palms and knuckles were a different story.
Wearing gloves indoors would have immediately raised Mom’s suspicions.
So I just tried not to let her see my hands.
But in the morning, when I tried to skip breakfast and leave the house, she noticed something was wrong.
I already had a story ready about a fight with older kids.
For credibility, I got William to back me up.
According to the story, I’d been hanging out with him.
William, sensing an adventure, happily confirmed that I’d “kicked those idiots’ asses.” It seemed to work.
Mom believed the fight story.
But I forgot what she was like.
I ended up getting a lecture about how proving you’re right with your fists is unacceptable, no matter the circumstances.
When I tried to argue and remind her that her husband does exactly that for a living…
In short, arguing with a parent when you’re a kid, especially winning the argument and using logic to point out their hypocrisy, is a bad idea.
You’re still the one at fault.
Not for aggression, but for disrespecting your elders and, funniest of all, for being rude.
Not to mention you shouldn’t point out to your mother that blaming your own child for being rude is really blaming yourself.
But the stupidest part: by grounding me for a few days, Mom didn’t think to forbid me from hanging out with William.
And he, as a reward for his help, demanded I tell and show him everything.
“Cool!” William breathed in awe, seeing my rather ugly scars.
“Hey, no touching!” I pulled away when he reached for me.
“Go grope your own girlfriend.”
It was a bit awkward undressing in front of a future gay guy.
Especially since in my past life, he’d admitted he’d always had a thing for me.
“If I had one,” William said glumly.
He was already trying to hit on girls in our class.
Not very successfully.
So the topic was painful for him, though not as much as in college.
His failed attempts to get a girlfriend practically drove William crazy back then.
Maybe that’s why he switched teams.
Who knows?
“What are they like?” The guy finally shook off his gloom.
“The Guardians.
You saw them in person.
What were they like?”
“Only Red Rush,” I shrugged.
“He found me after the fight and introduced me to a costume maker.”
“War Woman!” William’s eyes lit up.
“Is she as hot as she looks on TV?
I’d totally…”
“She’s a lesbian,” I stunned him.
“Damn.
What a letdown,” William said dejectedly.
“Such a loss for the whole world.”
“Tell me about it,” I agreed, holding back laughter.
After that, we argued for a long time about the costume design I’d ordered from the master, whose identity I naturally didn’t reveal to William.
He called my design tasteless and couldn’t understand why the hell I’d come up with it.
But I was adamant.
“God, Mark.
Have you come up with a name yet?”
“Who cares?
It’s just temporary.
I’ll make myself another costume later.
When I deal with the…
government issue.”
“Very optimistic.” You haven’t even heard what I’m going to call myself.
*
*
*
But finally the punishment ended, and I could get back to my plans.
Luckily for me, Omni-Man had a ton of work right now.
Black Samson had almost completely dropped out and only occasionally appeared at minor incidents, showing pitiful remnants of his former strength.
Of the remaining Guardians, only Red Rush and Darkwing came out of the Ave Maria fight unscathed.
And they’re good, but they can’t replace the whole team.
The other day, Darkwing almost got his ass kicked by the Mauler Twins when he tried to take them on alone, while Red Rush was dealing with the Lizard League.
So Omni-Man, for the next month at least, until War Woman, Aquarus, and the Immortal recover from their injuries, would have to fully live up to his loud nickname. This story is hosted at g.com.
I only benefited from this situation.
Thanks to Dad’s busy schedule, I was able to go deep-sea diving the same day Mom let me out of house arrest.
Yes, I decided to use my abilities to try my hand as a treasure-hunting diver.
Over the past few months, I’d stumbled upon several shipwreck sites.
But having no urgent need for money or desire to explain my finds and attract attention, I’d left them untouched.
Besides, it was during one of those wreck inspections that the fish people’s scouts first spotted me and gave chase.
I concluded they were guarding the area, warding off enterprising supers who wanted to plunder treasures without permission.
In this world, there are quite a few ways to find and salvage valuable sunken cargo.
The simplest and most effective is to make a deal with the underwater people.
But it’s only simple at first glance.
Even surface countries manage to argue for decades over which nation owns ships that sank in a neighbor’s waters.
Like the *Frau Maria*, which the Finns kept from being raised until 2018, claiming that after a hundred years in their waters, it belonged to them by Finnish law.
The underwater people are simpler.
They consider everything that falls to the seabed to be theirs.
Even if it’s completely useless to them, they won’t give it away for free.
So every joint expedition has to be negotiated through Aquarus.
And he’s a peculiar guy.
He wants action, not diplomacy, politics, and all that.
Which is expected when the strongest representative of his people is chosen as their supreme ruler.
So thanks to Aquarus’s laziness and the difficulties of international politics, there was plenty of valuable cargo on the seabed.
I went down after one such treasure.
Sure, it would have been more fun to raise something valuable and culturally significant from the *Titanic* or the *Frau Maria*.
But I wasn’t here for fun.
I was here for money.
So my choice fell on a sunken schooner that I couldn’t identify through online searches.
That meant I could hope no one else knew about it.
It was too far from shore and too deep to be an easy target for divers.
And a couple hundredweight of gold in its hold wouldn’t cover the cost of an expedition to raise it.
For me, such an expedition cost only ninety bucks.
That’s how much a professional flashlight capable of withstanding a four-hundred-meter dive cost me.
At first, everything went smoothly.
I descended to the ship, which hadn’t gone anywhere since my last visit, found my gold, and started filling a Walmart bag with it.
Then I heard an indignant gurgle behind me.
Son of a bitch.
Turning toward the sound, I saw a blue-skinned creature in the cone of my flashlight, shaking a spear in the water menacingly.
Judging by the very human breasts with swollen, and the painted lips on a fishy face, it was female.
What a beauty.
Time to leave.
Clutching my loot to my chest, I shot off in the opposite direction from the scout, straight through the hull of the half-sunken schooner.
Another fish-man tried to block my path.
I ran into him headfirst, not seeing him in the darkness.
Damn you, you fucking Murlocs.
Pushing the slimy, scaly body away from me, I broke free and raced away from the ship.
Angry gurgles and spear shots followed me.
Some kind of energy weapon that could boil the water and leave a slight burn on my skin.
Of course, I could easily avoid all the shots or just accelerate so fast the Murlocs would only swallow bubbles from my wake.
But the Walmart plastic bag wasn’t very durable or heat-resistant.
The first time I tried to swerve at speed, it almost tore.
So I had to take a shot on my back and then spend several more minutes outrunning the pursuit.
Damn Murlocs.
Persistent.
As if it was their gold.
***
The second part of my plan was to sell the loot through underworld contacts.
I had two options.
First: find Titan and try to sell the gold through him.
Several problems.
First, Titan is currently small potatoes and simply can’t offer a decent price.
Second, Titan is a lying shit.
Last time, he used me, telling me a sob story about his daughter to escape and take his boss’s place.
I don’t trust him.
Second option: the boss himself, Machine Head.
That guy with the calculator for a head.
He’s also a crook, but he’s driven by logic and pragmatism.
His mechanical brain can calculate probabilities and almost predict other people’s actions.
I’d rather bet on him than on Titan.
Besides, thanks to that incident with Titan, I knew Machine Head’s hideout.
That’s where I headed, after changing into dry clothes and hiding my face behind a black medical mask and black sunglasses.