Beneath the Surface Part 1

"I think maybe we should stop and think and try to figure out exactly how we got here."

"Good idea, Tuck."

"I don't know, I kind of like being lost in the dark down here with Vince. Put out that light, Cindy."

"Shut up, Leia."

"I'm just saying!" said Leia Zurconi defensively.

"I want to get out of here as fast as possible. The smell is starting to make me sick," said Cindy sparkler.

"It made me sick when we got here. I'm used to it by now," said Leia matter-of-factly.

"How could you possibly get used to this disgusting odor?" asked Cindy. Her words were harsh and impatient. They had been down here for at least two hours and she was getting sick of it. The air was rotten with the smell of everything gross. But that was to be expected from being in a sewer.

"Stop fighting, please," Vince Mansfield cut in.

"She started it," said Cindy with a scowl.

The reek of decade old urine and feces was eating away at their noses. It was reinforced by the uncanny scent of some large, dead animal. It had given them all headaches since they first got lost. The subterranean tunnels were pitch black except for the little bit of light shed by Cindy's little creations. Balls of pure light that floated around the four of them, like giant fireflies, or stars the size of baseballs.

Cindy's power was to create light. That was why she was called Stargirl. She was one of the older members of the Super Hero Alliance. Vince, better known to the public as Adrenaline, was not much older. He was one of the top members of the SHA, not just because of his super speed, but because of his knowledge. He was a genius in the subject of criminal catching. Nobody had managed to outsmart him yet, until this guy.

They walked in silence through the tunnels, but it was far from quiet. Their footsteps echoed off the walls and rusty pipes above them. The brown river running beside them was at a constant babble, but it did not cover up the squeaks from the rats. Their squeaks were everywhere, but the rats themselves were almost invisible to them. Occasionally Cindy's light would fall onto a pair of beady yellow eyes, but then they would dart off in a different direction.

Cindy looked around as she walked. Beyond the light, she could see nothing. Beside her, Vince stared straight ahead. Leia stayed behind them. Her eyes were fixed on her hands. Tiny sparks of electricity danced from the fingertips of her black gloves. She controlled electricity, to a mild extent. Though she could cause a pretty good sized shock, she could get nowhere near the full force of a lightning bolt. That was why she was called Yellow Jacket. She did not electrify, she stung like a bee.

"How far do you think we've gone?" asked Leia.

"A couple of miles, probably," Vince replied. His gaze remained locked ahead. He had been assigned as the leader of this mission. Granted, he was naturally anti-social, but being put in charge made him even more so. It was strictly business with him. That's what made him a good leader. That was why the council liked him so much.

Leia sighed loudly. The sound of her exhale echoed through the underground tunnel. "We're gonna be down here forever." She looked down at her side, at the small communication device on her belt. She flipped a switch on the side. A light on the side blinked red for a moment before she shut it off.

"The radios aren't working either."

"They wouldn't, underground," said Tucker. His voice was light and childlike. He was relatively young, but a good crime fighter. His powers made him ideal for this sort of mission. He was flexible beyond belief and he could hide well. But those were not his actual superpowers. He had two: he could teleport short distances, and he could stick to walls like a spider. Stealth missions were his specialty. They called him Lurker, because he lurked in the shadows.

Tucker was the shyest member of the SHA. He had friends, but kept to himself. Whenever anyone saw him around headquarters, he was in his uniform (uniform was the official term, but they were actually more like costumes.) His was black. He wore a purple belt around his waist, with matching gloves and boots. His chest did not bear the SHA shield insignia. His mask was a full head hood, with tinted frames over his eyes. It was a joke around headquarters that nobody has ever seen his face. But the truth was, nobody had.

"I want to get out of here," said Leia. She drew out the words out and here, turning her statement into a whiny complaint.

"For crying out loud, Leia!" cried Cindy. "Five minutes ago you were swooning over Vince like a schoolgirl you see on the news. Oh, turn the light off Cindy!" she mocked. "Now you're complaining like a prissy rich girl in the woods. Make up your mind."

Leia wrinkled her nose and flapped her lips like a fish behind Cindy's back.

"We're coming to a corner," said Vince. They stopped. The river of human waste and water and toilet paper and who knew what other treasures branched off to the left. The ledge they walked along followed beside it. In front of them the river carried on in its direction in addition to the new branch.

"Which way should we go?" asked Cindy. She waved her hand, the tiny balls of light rose up and spread out to give them a better view. It was dimmer, but they could see farther. It was the same in every direction. Pipes above. Rusty, moldy ledges that led off nowhere. A brown river of sludge giving off its stomach wrenching aroma.

Leia raised her eyebrows. "Do you really want to cross crap creek?"

Vince's mouth curved upward in a smile. It was not quite a chuckle. Almost. Not quite.

"I think we should sit and try to think of what to do," said Tucker.

"I don't want to sit on that gross floor," said Leia.

Cindy rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers. The floating balls of light drifted back to them. Four of them grew into four clouds of sizzling plasma. They hovered down behind the four of them and they sat.

"This is actually pretty comfortable," said Tucker, leaning back slightly. The back rose up and conformed to him like a beanbag chair.

The remaining balls of light came to rest in the middle of their circle and merged together into one. It grew into a large white, fizzing fire. A white sphere of light spread over the immediate area. They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the fire, staring at each other, staring at the rusty, moldy walls of the underground tunnels they rested in.

"Does anyone remember how we got here?" asked Cindy.

"When we first jumped down here we saw that man run straight and turn right, so we followed him," Vince started. "He kept going, then turned right again. That's when the rats got us. I remember hearing his footsteps heading straight, I think, but they were echoing and it was hard to tell."

"Those rats were disgusting," muttered Leia. She clenched her body, and shivered unconsciously. Tiny sparks danced from her neck and her arms as she did. She was the one who did most of the work fighting off the rats. She zapped them until they retreated. Cindy had helped, showering them with sparkles. Vince tried to help by kicking them away, but it did not help much. Tucker knew that he could do no good, and jumped onto the wall to stay out of their way.

"After that, we went straight for a while," said Cindy. "We passed a hole, and kept going, but we couldn't find anything, so we went down. Then we were in that big pipe."

Tucker nodded, though in the dim light nobody would have been able to see him if they were even looking at him at all.

"That led to the huge drain pipe and into that pump room. We went down because we thought we saw somebody, and then we ended up in this maze with the river."

Cindy stared into the fire. It twinkled, like the tip of a sparkler at a fourth of July party. She was getting tired of the sewers. It was supposed to be a routine mission: catching a deadly killer. Now they were stuck in the stinky world beneath the streets.

"We went straight for a while, then took our first right," she said.

"No, it was the second right," Leia interrupted.

Cindy looked at her. "How would you know? You haven't been paying attention, you've just been following the rest of us!"

"I have too been paying attention!" shouted Leia. "You treat me like a child. Yes, I am one of the youngest members of the SHA. Yes, I do complain sometimes. But I'm not a baby. Crawling in the sewer may be unpleasant, but I really don't mind doing things like this on missions. If I did, I wouldn't have joined the SHA in the first place!"

Cindy's grip around her mask tightened. She had taken it off long ago and had been carrying it for a while. Every time Leia further angered her, she squeezed it tighter. At this point the eye holes had probably doubled in size from all the squeezing.

"Maybe if you would be a little more productive, I wouldn't treat you like a child," said Cindy. Her jaw was clenched. She was trying to contain herself. Leia had done nothing but babble and complain since they arrived. She changed her mind about things faster than a toddler changed its mind about toys. It was frustrating.

"Who do you think fended off all those rats?" shouted Leia. Her voice bounced off the pipes and walls.

"I did!" Cindy returned. Her voice was loud and angry. It was starting to come out. She was getting ready to scream.

"Bull-"

"Stop fighting," commanded Vince.

He did not yell, but he spoke loudly. His tone was commanding and powerful. They stopped and returned their gazes to the light. Leia felt satisfied. Cindy did nothing but nag her, and she had just been yelled at by Vince. So what if he told her off, too? Cindy was probably as red as a cherry now.

"It would help if you would just be a pinch more mature about this," said Cindy after a moment of hesitation.

Leia looked at her. Her eyes were turned toward the light. Her face was dim, but the entire back of her head had vanished into darkness. "Can I ask you something, Stargirl?"

Cindy turned to her in surprise. It was regulation that they refer to each other by the superhero names when on duty, but that rule was rarely followed unless they were in public.

"What?" she asked with a slight sigh.

"How did you get your powers?"

Cindy blinked. Coming from Leia, it was a curious question, given that they were arguing only a few minutes before. "I don't know for sure, but I have a really really good idea."

"I'd like to hear the story," said Vince. "We have nothing else to do to pass the time."

Cindy looked around at their faces. They all stared at her. She shrugged. "Okay. Do any of you remember Ray Lynn's Meteor?"

"I've heard about it, but I was too young to remember it," said Leia. Vince and Tucker simply nodded.

"I remember it. It came around when I was fourteen. Hard to believe it was so long ago.

When I was younger I was a real tomboy. Don't get me wrong, I liked clothes and boys and makeup, but I loved to go exploring. My house was a big log house with a long driveway just outside of a small town called Old Stone in Delaware. My house was surrounded by woods. I would go back there when I woke up and wouldn't come back until eleven at night. It was really fun at night. It was hard to see and the woods were spooky. It gave you a kind of rush. There were streams back there, huge rocks, I even found a cave. I loved it.

For a month before the meteor came it was a huge deal for the entire country, but Old Stone was even more hyped up about it because it was passing just overhead. I remember on the news people saying that it would burn in the atmosphere, that it would break apart. It would have been too small to do any damage, but it was not recommended that anyone approach any debris from the meteor because of radiation.

The week before, the entire town was in a frenzy. The meteor was all anyone talked about. I chatted about it with my friends. The adults talked about it in the small coffee shop in town. Old Stone set up a small carnival to celebrate it; there were rides, games, food, tractor pulls and horse races, and the baseball tournament that my brother played in. His team took third place. The night that the meteor was passing they were going to shut everything down and turn off all of the lights in town so that we could see it.

I was with my friend Sasha at the carnival the night it was passing over. We had each been given ten dollars by our mothers and sent on our way. It was already dark when we were walking past some of the food vendors. The smell was wonderful, and as we passed one, Sasha stopped dead in her tracks.

She goes, 'I'm hungry.'

I took one whiff and I said, 'So am I.'

So we pooled our money and went on an eating binge. We got pizza, funnel cake, soda and milkshakes, a corn dog, and a pretzel. We topped it all off with a couple of hot fudge sundaes. We had a couple of dollars left, so we each got a candy apple and then grabbed some cotton candy to eat as we walked."

"Holy that," said Leia, pointing to babbling brown river beside them. Vince laughed out loud. Vince laughing was a rare occurrence. He had to admit, Leia was slightly annoying, but she was funny.

Cindy smiled. "Yeah."

When we finished the cotton candy, we were almost out of money, so we went to find our moms. While we were looking, we passed this ride called The Tornado. I tell you, it looked pretty fun at the time. So I went on it. We were in cars that went around this big spiral thing, and as they went, the cars themselves spun. It was okay, but when I got off, the ground was where the sky should have been, and my stomach felt like it had worms crawling in it. Sasha took me over to a spot of grass, and all of that food-the pizza with everything, the funnel cake, the ice cream, all of it-came right back up. It was a huge mess.

When I was done I sat down and Sasha ran off to find my mom. She brought her back and they cleaned me up and my mom sent me home. I was kind of sad because I was going to miss the rides and wouldn't be able to watch the meteor with my friends and family, but I really didn't feel well. So I got home, and was home by myself, and started watching TV. I watched a movie, and when it got over, I noticed that it was almost time for the meteor to pass. I turned off all the lights in the house and went out on the porch.

The sky was crystal clear. I could see every star in the universe. It was beautiful. I could see the meteor coming from miles off. At first it looked like a star, or a satellite. Then it got closer and closer and closer. It got bigger and bigger. It was flying right toward Old Stone. A large, glowing sphere with a long orange tail behind it. And I could see it breaking apart. I saw it breaking apart. I saw the debris falling from it, breaking off its head and melting away into nothing. It got closer and closer. It was unimaginably gorgeous. I didn't notice until it was gone how wide I was smiling. It looked like a firework, only twenty times as large. It was large, beautiful, and going to pass directly over my house.

It had been breaking apart. When it was about three miles away, another chunk broke off. It came down at an angle, running just under the meteor for a while until gravity started to get it and it started to descend more. It was heading toward the trees behind my house, the woods that I loved to explore. It went down, down, down, until it was lost in the tree tops. Then I heard it hit. It was loud, like a clap of thunder, but it was fuller. And it was close. Really close.

I watched the meteor pass over the house. The people in town must have loved it, because once it was gone I could hear lots of clapping and cheering. I went in and watched I little more TV, but all I could think about was that one piece falling in my woods. My tomboy self wanted to go see it. I knew I shouldn't, but I wanted to so much. I knew about the radiation warning. I knew it was dark, that my parents would worry, but I wanted it. I was just about to go and get it, when my parents came home. We stayed up and talked for a while, about the meteor. I didn't tell them about the chunk that broke off. After a little while we all went to bed."

There was a loud squeal as a tiny object darted out from the shadows. It stopped in front of Leia, its long, wormlike tail wiggling, its pulsating yellow eyes staring at her.

"Ew!" screamed Leia. "Rat! Rat! Rat!"

She pointed her index finger at the large, furry critter. A small bolt of lightning shot from her finger and hit it in the chest. It jumped into the air and turned to scurry away. Leia traced its path with her finger. Three more lightning bolts jumped from her glove, the last of which hit its tail. It twitched and scurried faster, escaping from her attacks and disappearing into the shadows.

"I hate rats," said Leia.

"They're just little rodents," said Vince. "It's not going to hurt you. You took care of it with one shock."

Leia nodded. "Anyway, finish your story, Cindy?"

"Well," Cindy began, "I couldn't sleep at all that night.

I just wanted to see it so badly. At first I thought I could wait until morning, but I thought that by then the authorities would have collected it. So I waited until I was sure that everyone was asleep and I snuck out. I climbed out my window onto the porch roof, climbed down, and ran across my backyard and into the trees. The woods seemed different. It was the dead of the night, but the forest looked lighter. It could have been the starlight, but it didn't feel like it was the starlight.

I knew the woods like the back of my hand. Even if it had been completely dark, I wouldn't have had a problem navigating them. I finally found the crater about half a mile into it, about a hundred yards beyond the stream. The hole was about two feet wide and one foot deep, and right in the center was a shimmering blue rock. I could feel something strange the second I picked it up. It wasn't a physical feeling, though. I can't explain it, it was just a feeling. A feeling of energy. The thing just had this wonderful aura to it. I couldn't put it down.

I picked it up and carried it back to my house, and hid it in a shoe box under my bed. I didn't sleep because I kept getting up to touch it and feel its energy. The next day the authorities did come by, but they couldn't find anything. The next week I got like no sleep because I kept checking on the blue rock. But I wasn't tired. It was like it energized me. I loved that thing. I no longer played in the woods. From that point on, I spent my spare time in my room just playing with my rock. Every second I wasn't with it, I thought about in that shoe box under my bed."

She paused. She stared into the fire. She was lost, no longer telling a story, but simply reliving her life. She could never describe the sensation she got from that rock. That feeling that it was a battery, and it was feeding her power.

"I was so much happier and energetic after that. When I moved out at eighteen, I put the rock on display. I touched it and played with it daily. The constant exposure probably sped up the process. That energy and happiness was always there, and I was always getting stronger. I felt amazing. It wasn't like I had energy, it was like I was energy. At the peak, I felt high. For three days I got increasingly higher. I was higher than a kite. Holy that (she pointed to the sludge beside them) it was incredible. Each day it got more and more. I felt like something was wrong, but it was so incredible.

One day I woke up and I was just gone. I felt like nothing. I felt like I was nothing more than light, like I was part of the air. You know you when you're sick, how you feel like you are completely disconnected with everything? That's similar to how I felt. And then I made the light. I didn't have to concentrate, I didn't have to think about it. It was like breathing. I just made it. And I made it again. For three days I was like that, for three days I made the light. Some part of me knew that something wasn't right, but I didn't care. Then finally I went to the doctor. I told him I had been high, that I was hallucinating the ability to create light.

Then I did it. But it wasn't a hallucination. It was actual real light, as real as the light from the sun. I started staying away from the rock for a little while. I got back to a normal state of mind, but my powers were still there. I finally got rid of the rock, and I waited for a long time for my powers to disappear, but they never did. So I went to the SHA. They taught me how to use them, they gave me the name Stargirl, sent me on missions, and gave me this cool costume."

"Yeah, that is a pretty cool costume," said Leia, staring at her in envy. Leia's own costume was simply yellow spandex with black accessories and a raccoon mask. Stargirl's was an optical illusion. Her suit was a full body suit, with a full head mask. While wearing it, it covered everything except her eyes. It was sparkly, and bent the light around her. It made her look as if she were made of glass, and inside of her was a piece of space itself, complete with galaxies and stars.

"So it all came from Ray Lynn's Meteor?" Leia confirmed.

Cindy nodded. She was still lost in that nostalgia. It had been such a long journey. She was twenty when she joined the SHA, the average age of joining. That had been years ago. Since then she had seen members come and go, seen the weirdest powers imaginable, had fought the most ridiculous villains and the most dangerous. She had engaged in hand to hand combat with Rampage, the most psychotic and dangerous woman the world had ever known. She had moved through the ranks, and was now not much lower than the Council itself.

The Council of Four was the head of the SHA and was generally considered to be the greatest superheroes in the world. Typhoon was from China, he was from a long line of mystics and had the ability to turn his body into sand. Gravitar's power was his intelligence. He was incredibly smart, which was how he managed to invent his gravity belt. Amazon was the woman of the four, with super strength and the ability to fly. It was she that defeated Rampage. The leader was Powerman. With super strength, speed, the ability to fly, and the ability to control fire, he was the most famous (fakest) superhero of all. He was everyone's favorite guy in public. Behind the scenes, he was a tremendous jerk and nobody in the SHA could stand him.

"That was a good story," said Tucker.

"What about you, Tuck?" asked Vince. "Nobody knows much about you. How did you get your powers?"

Tucker turned his head down. "I don't want to talk about it," he said quietly. His voice was timid. It sounded almost hurt.

Vince looked at him. "Are you okay?"

Tucker looked up and into Vince's eyes. His own were covered by his mask, but Tucker knew that Vince could feel the eye contact. He glanced around at Leia and Cindy.

"It wasn't a very good experience and I don't want to talk about it. Please respect that."

Cindy smiled. "Okay, we understand."

Leia reached to him and patted his shoulder gently. "We're your friends, Tuck."

Tucker looked at her. "I know. Thank you." He was smiling. The others could not see his smile, but they could hear it in his voice.

"So," said Vince. "What about you, Leia? How did you become Yellow Jacket?"

Leia stared at him. Her face was suddenly sober. It was a deep, piercing leer, one of complete seriousness. There eyes met and she stared.

"Getting my powers was the single most painful moment of my life. I don't want to think about it."

Vince smiled a fatherly smile. He was older than all of them, especially Leia. He felt fatherly. He understood, and he wanted to make her feel comfortable. "Okay then, I guess the only one left to tell their story is me."

They all looked at him. He exchanged their looks, smiling at each one before turning his gaze to the fire made of light.

"I was a rebel in my teen years. I never did anything really bad, but I was quite a rebel. I would sneak out at night, I got hammered once or twice and got dropped off on my parents' doorstep. I would get grounded, and the next night I would go do it again. Once in a while my friends would get a hold of a doobie and we would get stoned together. I would sneak into R rated movies and into the drive-in. I had lots and lots of sex, sometimes unprotected. One time my parents pissed me off so I stole a couple hundred dollars from their stash, jacked their car-I was underage at the time-drove to the bad side of town, picked up a hooker, and did as much disgusting stuff as I could on their bed."

He paused and looked around. The shocked looks across their faces made him grin. Cindy's eyebrows were almost to her hairline, and Leia's chin was on the floor.

"You did that?" asked Leia in astonishment.

Vince chuckled. "Yeah, I did that."

"Why?"

"My parents were weird. My mom was almost a hippie. She was a sex therapist. My dad looked like Jeff Goldblum. You know those big cans of whey protein and muscle building powder they have in vitamin stores and pharmacies? He was a scientist that worked on developing new powders like that. And that actually has a lot to do with my powers.

I was about fifteen, early summer a couple of years before Ray Lynn's Meteor, as a matter of fact. It was June, a Tuesday night two weeks before school ended. I wanted to go to a party and my parents wouldn't let me. So I went to bed, waited until they were asleep, and snuck out. It was some senior's graduation party. I drank a little beer and started getting tipsy. I got a blow job from a senior girl, and slept with a girl two years younger than me. And she was a virgin at the time.

I stumbled home the next morning, got ready for school, and went there smashed. Absolutely smashed. I passed out in class. The nurse called my parents while I was gone and they came to pick me up. When I came to, they gave me a lecture. A long lecture. I started swearing, they started yelling, I started yelling, so I walked out, slammed the door, and left.

As I was walking away I heard my mom yell, 'If you don't get back here now, you'll be grounded from everything.'

I ignored her. I went to one of my friend's houses, where I slept off the hangover. Then we left and snuck into the adult theater to watch porn. It was rather stupid, but I remembered it because of it's funny name. Pussy Baba and the Forty Dicks, it was called. When we got out, we were bored so I went home. Walked right passed my parents and into my room.

And everything was gone. Everything except my bed. I went downstairs and we started fighting again. I wanted my stuff. They didn't yell, though. They were very calm. My fury did nothing to them, and that made me angrier. I stormed upstairs and locked myself in my room. I sat on my bed for hours. My parents called me for dinner. But I just sat there. I was furious. I couldn't understand how they could dare do that to me. I wanted to get back at them so badly. I didn't just want to fight. I wanted to destroy something. So I did.

I waited until my parents went outside to watch the sunset. They always did that, like I said, they were weird. I went down into the basement where my dad's lab was. I took one of his golf clubs, and I smashed. I smashed beakers, I smashed equipment. I ripped up papers. I threw glass against the wall. I destroyed. I took out every bit of anger I had. I ripped down his blackboard, and pushed over his table with all of his equipment on it.

In the middle of my fit, I must have mixed two solutions or something. When I was done, I took his golf club and bent it over my knee. His clubs were highly expensive, designer clubs, and I wanted to deal one last blow. When I turned around, the entire basement was green. It was full of a thick, shamrock colored fog. It smelled like a mix of fruit and rotting meat. I took one whiff of it and felt the most terrible feeling I have ever felt. Instantly I felt like my mind had become unattached from my body. At the same time it felt like there were bugs inside of my body, crawling around each individual muscle fiber. My stomach burned and I thought I had to throw up. Everything from my chest to my eyes felt compressed and hot. I thought I was going to die.

I ran out of the room. At least, I tried to run out of the room. I could hardly move at all. It was like I was in slow motion, but the rest of the world was in fast forward. I stumbled toward the door and pushed it open with all my might. The door itself weighed a thousand pounds to me, but when I pushed it, it swung open like nothing. The gas started to dissipate into the rest of the basement. I tried to take a deep breath before it filled up the entire downstairs, but I couldn't breathe. I could breathe, but my lungs would not take in any of the oxygen.

And then I was falling. I fell for hours before I finally hit the ground. I laid there for a minute as the green gas filled the rest of the cellar. My head was pounding. My face felt swollen and hot. I had to get out, but I could not bring myself to get up. In my mind I was running toward the stairs, bolting up them and out of the house, calling the fire department. But I was still there on the floor. And the worst part was that I could see the stairs only a few feet away. It was like when you have a bad dream. When you know something bad is happening to you, and you know you should run or duck or something, but you just can't do it no matter how simple it is. That was what it was like for me."

Vince stopped to look around at the others' faces. Tucker's was unreadable behind his mask, but Vince knew he was staring at him. Cindy was doing the same. Staring, staring, staring with horror and terror. Staring at a man was completely different beneath the surface from what they thought. They were superheroes. They knew pain, and they knew how absolutely awful it must have been.

Leia's eyes were wide, and her hand was clasped over her mouth. She looked horrified as well, but not like the other two did. She was staring like somebody watching a murder in a horror movie, not like somebody feeling the same horror in their mind. Maybe it was Leia's youth and inexperience as a superhero. But her eyes did not say so. Her eyes said something else, but he did not know exactly what.

"Well, what happened?" said Leia impatiently. Cindy and Tucker just stared.

"I woke up in a hospital three days later. I called for a nurse, and she sent in my parents, who were both crying. They said they loved me and I said I loved them and that I was sorry. Dad said they were just glad I was alive, but I was still grounded. I rolled my eyes and said okay. We talked for a couple of minutes. Turned out my father was working on a metabolism booster that had gotten mixed with something and turned into the gas I inhaled. The gas started seeping into the living room, so my parents ran and called the fire department who came and pulled me out.

The doctor came in and made them leave so I could sleep. But I couldn't sleep, I was completely restless. I could not sleep at all. I was awake all day and most of the night. When I finally did sleep, it was for about three hours. Sleeping pills had no affect on me. From that point on, I've never had a natural sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time.

They started to run tests, but they didn't need to them to tell that something was wrong right away. I was always hungry. I ate and ate and ate. I could eat a three course meal and be completely stuffed, and then do it again about an hour later. But I wasn't gaining any weight at all. The tests showed that my metabolism was off the chart. It was a record. The doctor congratulated my father on his success. Other than that, I was completely fine after the three day coma and I went home in less than a week. They called me the miracle case."

"That's amazing," said Leia.

"My attitude toward my parents started to dwindle. I still went out and partied, but something happened. Nothing had any affect on me anymore. An orgasm was simply a pleasant muscle spasm, like a massage, it was not something I craved. Alcohol and drugs completely lost their affect. One time I drank ten beers and smoked an ounce of pot and I didn't feel so much as my pupils dilate. I stopped doing stuff simply because it just wasn't fun anymore.

At the end of the school year, the test for gym was the mile. You had to run a mile around the track and see how fast you could do it. Normally I didn't put any thought into it, but I was feeling really energetic that day, so I jogged it. Then I ran it. Then I sprinted it. I went around it twice and then I went faster. I went around two more times. I ran the entire mile in about four minutes without breaking a sweat.

Later that evening I went back to school with my stopwatch so I could run the track again. I started at the same speed I had run at earlier and ran a single lap in twenty seconds, and it was absolutely nothing. So I went faster. I ran another whole mile in two minutes, and I went faster. And then I went faster. It was completely effortless. I was running entire miles in only seconds, and it was like nothing. So I went faster. The trees were starting to blur. The lines on the track were starting to blur. I didn't know exactly how fast I was going, but I counted about three miles every two seconds. You would think at that speed you would run off the track, but I was still perfectly aware of my surroundings.

Then my feet started to hurt, so I stopped. And I stopped on a dime. It went against all laws of physics. There was no inertia, no affect from the momentum. I just stopped dead. My feet were hurting because the soles were gone from my shoes. I had run the rubber right off.

The next year in school I joined the cross country team and became a state champion. Then I joined wrestling, and made it to state competition. Then I joined track, and our school went from the worst in the league to undefeated. It was through those sports that I truly learned discipline. I started to love and respect my parents. I started to realize why my behavior had been so bad. I got morals and honor. I graduated high school on honor roll and was considered one of the greatest athletes in the state.

I went on to run track in college. After I graduated, I could have been an Olympic Runner, but I joined the SHA instead. I said it was because I wanted to help people and because I wanted to put my gift to the best use possible. That was mostly true, but I think deep down it was because I wanted to make up for all the terrible things I did. I paid attention, I learned quickly, went on missions, gained experience, and here I am now."

He looked around again. Tucker was still staring, but he was more animated and relaxed now. Cindy's face was plastered with a huge grin.

"I'm glad you learned the error of your ways."

Vince chortled happily. "Who knows, if things had happened just I little differently, I could be in the Shpenn right now."

Shpenn was the superheroes' nickname for the SHA Special Penitentiary. It was for the supervillains, the bad guys with powers of their own. Those that could not be held by a normal prison. It was high tech and state of the art. It changed every time a new prisoner was admitted to accomodate for their powers. It was in direct contact with SHA headquarters at all time, and was located only a few miles outside of Van Ivory, the city in eastern Georgia where the SHA was based.

A loud clang echoed through the tunnel from deeper in the sewer. The group's heads shot in the direction of the noise. They stared and listened. The bang silenced the whole tunnel except for the water.

Cindy waved her hand. There was a small pop as a ball of light appeared in front of her and floated toward the noise.

"Tucker," Vince whispered. "Please go see what that was."

"Sure." There was a small puff of air and he was gone. Another, more distant whomping sound and he was farther down the tunnel, near the ball of light. He glanced around in every direction the best he could. Cindy's light floated around to give him a better view, but there was nothing. He disappeared again, and a moment later teleported back beside the group. "Nothing."

"That was an awfully fishy clang," said Cindy.

Vince stared down the tunnel, his eyes locked, his ears trained. There was something fishy about it, but there was nothing down there they could see. If there was nothing there, then they could do nothing. He knew from experience that sitting there waiting for something to happen was stupid. It was great to be aware, but to be on edge was welcoming disaster.

"It was nothing," said Vince. He did not exactly believe it, but he did not want the others to be uptight.

"But," Cindy began.

Vince cut her off. "Rats. Water. We're in a sewer, there are thousands of things down here that could have made that sound. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," said Cindy uneasily.

Tucker glanced at Leia. Her eyes were plastered to her feet. Her face was completely expressionless. She looked dead where she sat. "What's the matter, Leia?"

Vince and Cindy glanced at her.

"What's wrong?" asked Vince. His voice was hard. He was still in awareness mode.

"You went through so much pain when you got your powers," said Leia. Her voice was empty. She sounded like a ghost. "You weren't afraid to tell it all." She raised her eyes and they met his. "Getting my powers was the most painful experience of my life. It happened when I was 16, about four years ago. There is an entire chunk missing from my memory of that age because of my accident. Weeks and months have been completely erased from my mind. I don't remember anything about the days before or after the accident. But I remember the accident itself perfectly.

I grew up in New Hampshire, just outside of the White Mountains. I don't know if you know, but the whether up there is terrible." She stared at her hands. Tiny sparks danced between her fingers.

"It was night. And it was raining. Hard. I was running through a meadow. I think I was running from something, but I don't know what. I was running barefoot through the mud. It felt disgusting, but I was too terrified to care. My clothes were ripped to shreds and I was covered in mud. I was running across this field, and there was something behind me. I was afraid, I was so afraid that I was crying, but you couldn't tell. You couldn't tell the difference between tears, sweat, and rain.

There was a hill in front of me and I started running up it. The rain was so thick it looked like a waterfall up ahead. There was lightning. Lots of lightning. I could hardly see two feet in front of me because of the rain, but I remember a bolt of lightning so bright it made the entire valley crystal clear. And there was thunder so loud that it sounded like a bomb exploding. And I was so afraid. I sprinted up the hill as fast as I could. My foot hit a patch of mud and I slipped. My leg twisted in an awkward direction and I forced myself to fall so that it wouldn't break.

But I was so scared. I forced myself up and started running again, through the mud, through the rain. And there was more thunder. Oh the thunder. And more lightning. It jumped from cloud to cloud. It jumped from the clouds to ground, and from the ground back to the clouds. It scared the living hell out of me, but I was more scared of whatever was chasing me. So I kept going up the hill.

Then I got to the top. I looked out, but I couldn't see anything. I turned and I looked back to see if whatever was after me was still there. Then I felt it. I felt my body get lighter for some reason. My skin felt like it had some kind of force field around it. Then the hair my arms and the back of my neck got prickly, and the hair on my head started to float. It felt like static, and I knew exactly what it was. I was the highest point on the top of a hill in the middle of a thunderstorm. I knew I had to get down."

She raised her head and looked around at the others. "The thought was barely in my head when the lightning hit me. It only took a nanosecond to hit me, but it felt like a thousand years. In a way, it still feels like it's going on.

All I could see was one bright light. I mean, bright. Staring into the sun doesn't even compare to how bright this was. It was torture for the eyes. And it was hot, so incredibly hot. It wasn't just the heat on the surface. It was like my bones were on fire. I could feel it moving through my body. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like a vibration, but it wasn't. In that one instant, there was nothing else. There was no fear of that thing. There were no thoughts in me, no feelings, nothing. There was only pain. Only that sheer pain.

Beneath the Surface Part 2  (13+) Four superheroes discuss their pasts while searching for a villain. #1163236 by LightningandIce