The girl wiped a few tears from her eyes and trembled as she agreed.
Jason took a breath and told her he would help her get home. "What"s your name anyway?"
"Emily Miller."
"Okay, Emily, where do you live?"
She kept close to him the entire walk to her apartment, they chatted quietly, and they parted after she briefly thanked him once more and slipped into her building. Jason started off for the hotel he and Audrey stayed at while they finalized their move into their next home. He needed a change of clothes and an excuse for leaving work so abruptly. More importantly, how is Audrey going to react when I tell her about this? How will she take it when I tell her I"ve thought up a name too? Ilion...another name for the city of Troy. Why"d that come to mind? He cracked a wry smile and chuckled to himself. She"s going to die when she hears the whole story though. And my guess is I won"t be able to leave once I see her and she hears about all of this. I wonder what tale I"ll have to tell to get out of the rest of the day of work...
11:15 AM.
Both.e.l.l, Washington "We"ve gotta try flying," Coop said with a grin.
"No one can fly Coop," Ian reminded him.
The trio, Coop, Wally, and Ian, all sat in Coop and Wally"s apartment. They watched a special on the known super heroes throughout the world while they waited for their pizzas to arrive (an odd lunch routine Coop and Wally adopted since their graduation). Coop and Wally had an old flat screen plasma television on their wall that had a darkened bar on the right side of the screen, which was the result of the boys neglect to shut the appliance off before they headed off to bed on one too many occasions. The program they watched showcased most of the heroes around the world, though the three young men seemed to agree that many of the heroes were laughing matters and hardly anything else.
Coop sat in an armchair while Ian and Wally occupied the couch.
"Watch, one day there"ll be a guy who can fly and you"re gonna regret it," Coop told him.
"Regret what?"
"Not being the first hero to fly."
"Okay guys," Wally stopped them. "Here"s a better topic of conversation: which of these heroes is your favorite?"
Coop looked at the screen and saw a towering man in skin-tight athletic garbs. "Who"s that fruit cup again?"
"The Human t.i.tan," Ian reminded him. "He"s supposed to be the strongest person alive."
"Yeah right. That jerk"s supposed to be the strongest man alive? Ian"s gotta be able to pummel that guy in a fight any day out of the week." Coop looked at the Human t.i.tan again, shook his head, and muttered, "His costume"s so ugly."
"Well my favorite"s that guy out of j.a.pan, Hanzo," Wally told them. "I like the thought of a ninja protecting part of j.a.pan, it"s just cool."
Coop laughed, "Ninja"s aren"t real, they"re like werewolves or aliens or honest politicians; people make them up."
Wally shook his head told him that ninjitsu was a real martial art.
"Well Hanzo really looks more like a samurai anyway," Ian commented. "And weren"t you the one who tends to tell the story about how you saw a shining orange ball of light when you were heading into Seattle a few years ago? On your way to comicon?"
"The ball of light you swore wasn"t the sun?" Wally chimed in.
"Yeah well..." Coop quickly realized he"d incriminated himself and changed the subject, "I like Balloonman."
"Who?"
"Balloonman. The guy who can make himself fatter and thinner at will."
Wally rolled his eyes and clarified, "That"s Doctor Diet you moron."
"You honestly believe that guy has a doctorate in anything?" Coop asked him.
Someone knocked on the door and shouted, "Pizza time!" Coop yelled for him to come on in. The man walked in and tossed the boxes on their counter before he told the trio the total for their three medium pizzas and two orders of breadsticks. He saw that they had a program related to the uprising super heroes and muttered, "Bunch of idiots."
"You don"t like them?" Wally asked as he got off the couch and paid the man.
"Not at all. Y"see I believe that they"re staging some of their so called heroic rescues," he told them.
"What are you talking about?" Coop asked as he sat up in his recliner.
"Take this guy, the Human t.i.tan. He"s saved the same woman three times since his big debut with that Captain Density, who might I add has saved the same group of four people four times since his debut."
"So you think that some of these people are making themselves out to be heroes and are only in it for the media attention?" Ian questioned him, as Wally handed him his supreme pizza.
"What am I speaking Mandarin or something? Yes! They"re phonies," he took a slice of Coop"s Canadian bacon and sausage pizza, which Coop didn"t seem to mind or notice. "Let me just say that one of these day some hero"s gonna get shot and maybe then we"ll have some of these idiots off the streets."
"You don"t think there"s even one out there that"s genuinely trying to help people?" Wally asked as he ate a slice of his cheese pizza.
"I don"t know, maybe. But I"m still waiting for the day when we"ve got a hero with a real costume, a real name, and maybe a real superpower." He checked the time on their digital clock and realized that he was running late and left them there.
None of them said a word for nearly a minute, but Coop broke the silence when he realized that the delivery guy didn"t bring them their beverages.
"He might be right you know," Wally said.
"Ya think? I ain"t got a drink in my hand," Coop complained.
"Not you, he was right. Someone"s going to get killed and then there"ll be trouble."
"You know Ian, these idiots could really use someone like you to show them that it"s not a joke and that they could get hurt, maybe even killed," Coop added.
"And how would I do that?" Ian asked while he retrieved a piece of his own pizza. "All I could do is stop petty theft and maybe, maybe at the most stop a hostage situation, a.s.suming one ever happened and I heard about it and managed to get to the place in time to help. They don"t need me."
"Well we don"t have someone here in Seattle, so why don"t you help out here?" Coop asked.
"I"ve told you guys that I"m still moving to London on the twentieth, which would make it difficult for me to be a super hero here in Seattle."
"What? That mean"s we"ve only got a week to..." he stopped himself. "Uh, why...why don"t we go camping up at Lake Chelan this weekend?"
Ian looked at him and asked what he was up to.
Wally interceded for Coop, "We just wanted one final hurrah before you moved."
"I thought you two were going to a concert this weekend."
"We sold the tickets for..."
"Our rent," Wally filled in. "We forgot to pay it, again."
Ian looked at Wally and then back at Coop, and asked, "What"s going on?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me."
Coop finally sighed and admitted, "I wanted to go camping to get you to fight a bear...Sort of as a final test for your training."
Ian rolled his eyes and told him he wasn"t going to fight a bear. "That"s just stupid Coop."
"Either way, we really should go camping," Wally told him. "It would at the very least get our minds off of this useless c.r.a.p," he said as he flicked the television off. "I think we could all use a break."
Ian still felt that something was amiss, but agreed nonetheless. "So what did you guys really do with the money from those tickets?"
2:00 PM.
Kenmore, Washington Mizuno"s cla.s.s remained the same for Nick; he held hands with his girlfriend, exchanged pleasant chitchat with her when allowed, he ignored Mizuno"s lecture altogether (as Mizuno a.s.sured him he would pa.s.s him one way or another), and Nick did his best to recall the day"s previous training sessions to better prepare himself for the afternoon"s impending exercises. Amy asked him midway through cla.s.s if he wanted to have dinner with her, which Nick wanted to if for no other reason than to have an escape from his evening with Mizuno or one of his other members and their ruthless training regime.
"I can"t Amy," he apologized. "I"ve got to work late tonight."
"You"re always working Nick," she frowned. "We never do anything anymore."
Nick knew it was true. He hadn"t seen any of his friends since Ian"s party and hadn"t even so much as called Drake more than one time to tell him he transferred to Inglemoor High School.
Cla.s.s ended and once he finished packing his bag Nick walked with Amy toward the parking lot and mentioned that he hated his schedule as well.
Amy quietly followed after him. "What do you even do Nick?"
"What?"
"What do you do? Where do you work?"
He never thought up a cover and Mizuno never gave him one either. "I work in a warehouse at an office supplies department store in Lynnwood," he told her.
"Do you even like working there?"
His thumb twitched. "No, not really," he admitted.
"Then why bother working somewhere you don"t even like if it"s invading your personal life so much?"
He stopped her and tried to explain, "It pays well and I need the money."
"For what?"
Nick looked away from her for a second and told her it was for his brother. "I"m using the money I make to hire a..." he searched for an appropriate word to describe Mizuno, "A private investigator to find the person who killed him."
Amy stared at him and slowly asked if it was all for revenge.
"No," Nick shook his head, "I don"t want revenge; all I want is for whoever killed him to go to prison, or at least to account for what they did."
"What good would that do Nick?"
He rubbed his eyes and muttered that it was the right thing to do. "Criminals need to be punished, don"t they?"
"Yes, but it isn"t worth obsessing over."
"I"m not obsessed."
"Yes you are," she told him. Amy looked him in the eye and told him it was why they hardly ever saw each other anymore.
"I see you every day," Nick told her.
"At school," she said. "But we don"t ever go anywhere, we don"t talk or see each other outside of cla.s.s and I want to see you Nick." She took his hand, smiled, and told him she wanted to be with him. "But as things are now we"re hardly more than friends; the way we are we"re not moving forward Nick, and I"d like to get to know you."
Nick wasn"t looking at her. He didn"t feel that he could and it didn"t help that his ride was early and waiting for him. "Amy, I-I want to be with you too, but..." he wasn"t sure what to tell her. "I can"t give up on him."
"Why not?"
"He was my brother," Nick told her as he tried valiantly to retain his composure, "I can"t just let this go." He let go of her hand and walked out toward his ride as he apologized.
Amy only stood there and watched him leave.
5:25 PM.
Both.e.l.l, Washington Drake spent the afternoon overlooking the transfer of power at Winchester Enterprises, which not only bored him out of his skull, but consumed his entire day. He didn"t have the slightest clue as to what he needed to do or even could do for the company. In the end Drake simply left the board of directors as they were, gave the position of Chief Executive Officer to Jonathan Vane, retained the ownership of the company, and primarily just shifted some of the others around within the company to fill positions and gaps. He himself had more than enough money to live off of for the rest of his life, which naturally meant he didn"t need very much involvement (or any at all) in his father"s company.
There was one aspect of the company Drake did want to investigate, which involved the prototypal drug Regenesis that his father and the charlatan spoke of in the security feed Drake saw of his father"s death. He knew there was little hope in searching on his own, so as an added measure he promoted his good friend Sho Kazeke to an upper management position to a.s.sist Drake in researching the drug.
Sho hardly believed it when he received the promotion, but Drake simply told him he would need his help if he wanted to figure out the truth behind the drug.
"" Drake told Sho in j.a.panese over the phone, """" Sho asked.
"" Drake told him, """
"
"
""
"" Drake stopped him, "" Drake checked the time and told him he needed to be going. ""