literature

Green Defender #5

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Afraid To Touch Part 6


"Geeeeoooffrreeeeyyy..."

My eye twitches as I roll my head to the other side of the desk. "...Five more minutes..."

"GEOFFREY!"

My eyes widen as my head jolts up off the desk, my classmates laughing at me as my teacher stares down at me unapprovingly. Sinking down into my chair, blushing madly, I apologise almost too quietly to be heard and look to my right. I can see them chuckling at me, all four of them: Stan, Lara, Jeremy, Elizabeth. My friends. My team-mates. The League of High School Superheroes. Not that our class could ever know that.

As class goes on, I feel something scratch my neck. Sure enough, it's a note from Elizabeth. Nobody thinks anything of it because, to keep from rousing suspicion, we've been acting like we're dating in public. We all have covers like that to make it seem normal that we hang out all the time so that no one puts 2 and 2 together to figure out who we are.

'Meeting at lunch in comp. lab, DON'T BE LATE.' the note reads. Great, that usually means we're all gonna need excuses for why we can't attend one or more classes in the afternoon. Wonderful.

It isn't too long until lunch, just one more class after this one. Time just seems to breeze right by, and it isn't long until I find myself at the door to the computer lab, Stan waiting there for me.

"Hey man," Stan says to me with that cocky grin of his, "finally show up, did ya?"

...Stan, the only person who really understands what it's like to be me, to be in my position. To have gone through an ordeal that 99 times out of 100 should have resulted in death, only to walk out of it alive and with superpowers I wasn't sure I deserved. Except he did. He saved us that day, the day The Streak, a group of ultra-fast criminals we'd busted a week before, came looking for us in our own school. He had already guessed at our identities, and when they came, he had a place picked out to hide us in case of emergency. To search the whole school, The Streak all came together, like a lightning bolt that sped throughout the whole area. Stan tried to stop them, but they just blew right past him in their combined form. Should've killed him, but just like me and the green voltage, it instead made him a super human, granting him the same speed as The Streak.

"Hey, just because I couldn't get here fast as you doesn't make me slow," I point out, grinning right back at him. "A frigging cheetah is slow compared to you."

Stan just rolls his eyes as he goes to open the door. "Ready?"

I nod, taking a deep breath. "Let's go."

"LET'S GO!" I hear someone yell, and suddenly, I'm not in the hall outside the computer lab anymore. I'm not even a teenager anymore. I'm grown, and in my green and blue tights and green bandana, the Green Defender. I'm instead in a room filled with random gunfire as gangsters try to shoot me down. I look around, and my friends are by my side, only they aren't my teenaged classmates Stan, Elizabeth, Lara, and Jeremy. Now, they are the hyper-fast Outrun, the holy sword bearing team leader, Wishingstar, the motorbike riding archer, Throttle, and the 'Man with Many Arms', Reacher. My team-mates.

"GD, take out the lights!" I hear Wishingstar yell.

I nod, taking aim to the roof as I let loose a blast of green voltage. The electricity goes from one bulb to the next, blowing them all out. As if the mobsters' aim wasn't bad enough, now their line of sight is FAR worse.

"Outrun, go!" Wishingstar calls out, prompting Stan to charge through the room so fast that the gun wielding crazies on the other side of the room are down before I even take full notice that he was the one to do it. "Okay, this room's secure."

"Got calls coming in from the other rooms," Reacher reports, listening to a radio. "Starslip and Maple have the main lobby, and Bard and Hashtag have the roof."

I shake my head, groaning. "Throttle, I thought you were gonna talk to her about that alias? She doesn't sound like a hacker, she sounds like a pot head."

Throttle just shrugs, giving me that 'what could I do' look. I want to say 'Plenty', but I don't even bother. "Okay, Mr. Boss Lady, what next?"

"Salt and Sugar should be on the other side of that steel door," Wishingstar replies, pointing to a large, thick steel door.

"Can't believe we're coming after our own people..." Outrun says sadly.

"They WERE our own people," Throttle notes. "They're wannabe mob bosses now. And with powers like theirs, we can't let them get off the ground."

Wishingstar nods, frowning. "Unfortunately, Throttle is correct. We HAVE to bring them in, now. Reacher, get the door."

Reacher nodded, putting the radio in his belt before walking over to the door. With a groan, Jeremy split his two arms into six muscular ones, reeling back and giving the door a six fisted punch that knocked it off its hinges. Giving his wrists a small flick, Reacher's arms return to his normal pair as he walks through the door, the rest of us following.

My eyes narrow as I see the room has been remodeled to look like a giant classroom. At the far end are the two we're looking for: A girl with blonde hair and sharp edged glasses, wearing a dress like someone of high class, and a cyan haired girl dressed rather casual. The blonde just stares cockily at us as we enter.

"Okay, so you beat my boys," the blonde says in a snooty tone. "Not impressed."

I look her in the eye, looking sad, disappointed, and concerned all at once. "...Salt, you have no idea how much trouble you're in. Really. You need to stop this now and turn yourselves in." Salt just scoffs at me, so instead I turn to the cyan haired girl. "Sugar, please tell her!"

Sugar just shakes her head sadly. "I'm sorry, but we're not going back. We're going to take control of crime, prevent the worst of it from happening from the inside."

I can feel my heart break as my pupil says this to me. "...You'll fail...Please, don't do this."

Salt harumphs hard. "Enough talk. If you want to bring us in, you'll have to force us, and we won't go quietly!"

Without another word, Salt waves her hand, a few tables flying off the floor and sailing at us. We immediately get our game faces on as Wishingstar draws her namesake, the sword left by an Arch Angel, and easily slashes through the desk that flies at her. Meanwhile, I let loose the blasts of green lightning at the remaining desks, burning them to cinders. Looking ahead, I see Outrun charge across the room, but suddenly Sugar holds a hand up, shifting the wood of the tables and stretching it trip him up. Throttle tries her luck shooting the tables down with arrows, but is eventually overcome and knocked out of the room, her crossbow sent sliding in the opposite direction.

"That's enough!" Reacher growls as he stretches his arms out to roughly half the length of the room, knocking the desks back.

Smirking, Salt leaps up into the air, hanging in midair, her eyes glowing icy blue as she fires beams at Reacher, freezing his arms completely. Before Reacher can even react, Sugar suddenly morphs the metal legs of the desks into a giant steel rod that smashes straight through the frozen arms, sending Reacher to the ground screaming.

"REACHER!!!" I yell out, sending out a wave of voltage that knocks all flying objects back to sender long enough for me to slide across the floor to Reacher's side.

Ahead, I can hear Salt groaning as she gets to her feet. "Alright, now I'm through playing around!"

"SO AM I!" I hear Throttle yell from behind me as I look back to her, holding a pistol that had belonged to one of the gangsters we took down out in the hall.

"Throttle, DON'T-!" I start to yell, but it's too late. I see her pull the trigger, I hear the bang go off, and the world seems to go in slow motion.

Salt sees it coming. She knows she needs to grab something with her telekinesis to intercept the bullet. So in her haste, she just grabs the closest liftable object and floats it in front of her...and thus we are all treated to the horrific image of Sugar being sent flying ahead of her, the bullet sailing into her chest.

"SUGAR!!!" every last person in the room screams out. I watch as Salt's eyes widen in shock, tears immediately welling in her eyes, as Sugar falls to the floor. I watch as Salt soon joins her, falling on her behind, curling up against the wall and crying at what she's done. I watch as Outrun runs to Sugar, trying to get her to hold on somehow. I watch as Wishingstar punches out Throttle, screaming for her to tell her what the hell is wrong with her. I watch as Reacher's arms regenerate into their natural form, sobbing at what he's seen.

And through it all, I feel the world spinning. I feel my mind racing, trying to keep up with what just happened, and even though the world is still moving in slow motion, it's still too much all at once, and I watch the floor race up to meet me.

"NO!!!" I scream out, panting hard. It suddenly occurs to me that I am no longer in the makeshift classroom. Instead, I'm in a room better resembling a jail cell of sorts, chained to the wall.

A nightmare, I realise. My memory returns to me as I recall what happened: The truck, Haphephobia, the spray can. He must have drugged me, taken me to where I am now. I look to myself. My suit seems to be in good enough condition, but my utility belt is gone, and with it all of my gadgets. I punch the wall behind me, and I suddenly feel the stone of the wall hit my bare skin, followed by a short electrical surge.

MY GLOVES. My gloves are gone. Haphephobia has taken my gloves, and now there's no protection for anything from my touch. Now, anything I touch will get a full blown burst of green voltage, and there's nothing I can do to control it. NOTHING.

I shake my head hard, trying to control myself. Have to escape. I bring the fingertips of my right hand to a single link of the chain keeping that hand pinned to the wall. It sends a single short burst of voltage through the link, blowing it apart and freeing my hand. I then punch the chain holding my left hand to the wall, freeing myself completely.

"Oh, up I see," I hear a voice say over a speaker outside the cell bars of this jail cell. "You seemed a bit flaily while you were sleeping. Sorry about that, I hear the gas can also cause nightmares and hallucinations about the person's recent past."

My eyes narrow. Haphephobia. He's playing games with me.

"I thought I'd see if you'd like to join in a little social experiment," Haphephobia goes on. "You see, I know all about you, Green Defender. I knew that if I set up shop in any one place specifically, one of you 'superheroes' would show up, so I did some research on all the known ones here in this country."

I look for a weakness in the cell bars as Haphephobia keeps going on, seemingly in love with his own voice. "Some interesting info on you all, but you...you fascinate me most of all. You could have the most powerful ability of all, but you don't use it, instead hiding behind your fancy gloves."

I notice one of the bars is slightly out of place, knowing I could blow it out with ease. "Yeah, why don't you get to the point, Mr. Touchy-Feely?"

"If you want your gloves back, they're with me on the top floor, as is your utility belt." Haphephobia explains. "But I think you'll find getting up here...tricky at best. See, this whole building is booby trapped. Not only that, I found a few...well, they'll be joining you in this experiment. Oh, and to make things interesting, they're all armed. Rather heavily at times."

My eyes widen and my blood runs cold. It's only now that I get what he wants from me. There are heavily armed guards between me and him, I have no tools, and my gloves are removed. This leaves me, as I'm sure was his thinking in planning out this scenario, one way to get past the guards.

The foolish men he's gotten to do this job for him...He wants me to kill them all...
Superhero Tales: [link]
Previous Story: [link]
Next Story: [link]

So that's Chapter 5. And yeah, THAT's the secret: Two of the League went rogue, the rest of the league went to bring them in, and in the ensuing fight, one League member went nuts with a gun and killed someone. But that's not the whole story, as we'll get into why Geoffrey left the league later. For now, you can expect next issue to be a severe mental and physical challenge as GD tries to find a way to escape without resorting to murdering the guards.

Also, expect short bios for the characters that appeared in the flashback soon.
© 2012 - 2024 Jyger85
Comments2
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NHarmonik's avatar
Thanks for including me...sort of.

Some unique and cool powers here yet isn't the concept of putting a superhero through a psychological and moral challenge a bit old?