Powers

CHAPTER ONE-1

CHAPTER ONE

Wiping the sweat off her forehead, Blizzard remembered why she had been so eager to leave Arizona nearly a year ago now, when she had been offered a spot on the Young Neos by Mecha Knight. Even with the air conditioner in the car on full blast, Blizzard felt too hot. She took a swig from her large thermos of ice water, which helped cool her down a little, but not nearly as much as it should have. Even her body’s naturally generated ice energy did little to make her feel as cold as she should have. Thinking about it, she was quite surprised that she had not melted at some point since she and the others had arrived in Phoenix a couple of hours ago.

Thankfully, we’re almost to our destination, Blizzard thought, glancing out the window at the tall buildings they passed. I hope.

“Blizzard?” said Bolt, her boyfriend, who was sitting in the driver’s seat where he drove the car. She looked at him; he had taken his eyes off the road briefly to look at her. “Are you okay? You look hot. And not in the good way, either.”

Bolt’s hands were firmly on the steering wheel, a concerned look on his face. He was not in his usual superhero costume; instead, he wore a red t-shirt and black jeans, along with a thick set of sunglasses to protect his eyes from the sun’s glare. Indeed, he looked like a normal teenager, with the only indication that he was a superhero being the smart watch on his right wrist, which contained his super suit.

Blizzard wasn’t wearing her costume, either. She instead wore a blue and white blouse with dark blue jeans, although like Bolt, she had a suit-up watch on her wrist just in case. And frankly, Blizzard was thankful to be in normal clothes for once; while her superhero costume was designed to regulate her body temperature in a reasonable way, she thought it might be too warm for Arizona’s heat. It made her wonder how other superheroes operated in Arizona; she supposed they survived the same way that anyone living in Arizona did.

Shaking her head, Blizzard smiled and said, “I’m fine, Bolt. Just a little hot is all.”

Suddenly, the head of a teenage boy of about sixteen, with a thick mop of brown hair, leaned forward, a mischievous grin on his face. “Are you sure you aren’t going to, like, melt or something? Because I brought along a towel to mop you up with if that happens.”

“Shut up, Stinger,” said Bolt, before Blizzard could respond. “Or I’ll swat you like an insect.”

Stinger—another one of Blizzard’s teammates in the Young Neos—pulled back, sitting upright in the back seat, though his grin didn’t fade. Like Bolt and Blizzard, he was not wearing his super suit; instead, he wore a gray t-shirt and cargo shorts, his wings somehow hidden inside his shirt. “Hey, just joking around. No need to get so upset.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, Bolt,” said Blizzard, though she couldn’t help but smile at how he had defended her. “There’s a reason I haven’t been back to Arizona for a while. I haven’t been able to handle extreme heat since I gained my powers.”

Bolt huffed. “Okay, but I just don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, that’s all.”

“What about the rest of us?” said Stinger.

“You guys can take care of yourselves,” said Bolt, without looking over his shoulder. “You’re fine.”

Stinger rolled his eyes, while Blizzard looked over her shoulder at the rest of the team sitting in the back seats of the suburban they had rented for this trip. Stinger sat in the first row of seats next to a blonde teenage girl known as Talon, who, even in her simple yellow dress and her long hair, somehow managed to look more fabulous than the rest of the team put together. In the next row of seats, a young man who looked almost exactly like Bolt, except with blue eyes, sat next to a girl with brown braided hair, his eyes stuck to the windows while the girl anxiously glanced at him every now and then like she was worried that he might snap and attack her. They were White Lightning and Treehugger, who Blizzard felt a little bad about seating together knowing Treehugger’s fear of White, but White had behaved pretty well through the plane ride from New York to Arizona and so far seemed to be handling Arizona pretty well, even excited about it, probably because White had never visited Arizona before.

But it took Blizzard a moment to find the last member of the team. For a moment, she almost thought that they must have forgotten Shell at the airport because she didn’t see him at first, at least until he sat upright on his seat in the back row of the car. Shell was the shortest and quietest member of the team, which sometimes made it hard to see him when he was sitting down. Like White, he was staring out the windows, but he seemed less interested in the city of Phoenix and more like he was distracted by something. His frown even made him look depressed.

Blizzard turned to look back at the road, but she couldn’t help but think about Shell. He was usually the quietest and most introverted member of the team, but it seemed like in recent months he had become moodier and more introverted than ever. She wasn’t sure if he was depressed, necessarily, but he never seemed quite as involved in the team as everyone else was. Blizzard had brought up these concerns with Bolt a lot, but he always brushed her concerns off as if they were irrelevant because of Shell’s normal introverted nature. That didn’t stop her from worrying about Shell, though, mostly because she was a worrier by nature.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Talon suddenly said, “How much longer until we reach your parents’ place, Blizzard?”

“Not much longer now,” said Bolt, answering for her. “According to the GPS, we should be at their house in five minutes.”

“Is it a big house?” said White, his head appearing between Stinger and Talon’s headrests, an eager grin on his face.

“Yeah, it’s kind of big,” said Blizzard. “My parents are pretty wealthy, so they’re able to afford a large house.”

“How did your parents become so wealthy?” said Stinger. “Did they start a big business or something?”

“My dad was an executive at a huge oil company a while back,” said Blizzard. “He wasn’t one of the founders, but he was brought into the company pretty early and reaped huge profits when the shale boom started in North Dakota. He invested the money in a lot of different companies and now we’re pretty well off.”

“So none of your parents are superhumans, then?” said Bolt, glancing at Blizzard.

Blizzard shook her head. “Nope. I’m the only superhuman in my family. Took my family by surprise when I first manifested my powers.”

“How is that possible?” said Stinger. “I thought that superhuman powers are genetic. How can a normal human give birth to a superhuman?”

“Maybe you have a superhuman somewhere in your family tree, Blizzard,” Talon suggested. “I’ve heard of the neogene skipping generations before.”

Blizzard shrugged. “I have no idea. All I know is that Arizona has the lowest superhuman populations in the US, so that makes me even more unusual.”

“Are there any famous superheroes from Arizona, besides yourself?” said Bolt with a frown. “Any NHA or INJ members you can think of?”

“Only one I can think of is that weird Radicles guy, though he doesn’t belong to any superhero organization that I know of,” said Stinger. He chuckled. “Not that he’s an entirely great representative of Arizona’s superhumans, I’m sure.”

Blizzard scowled. “Don’t bring up that i***t. I wish the media wouldn’t talk about him whenever they talk about Arizona superheroes. He makes the rest of us look bad.”

“Who is Radicles?” said Bolt as their car turned down a street. “Never heard of him.”

“Oh, he’s hilarious,” said Stinger. “He likes to run around without a shirt on beating up drug dealers. Always takes the time to deliver some really cheesy message about not doing drugs just in case kids are watching and talks like a surfer dude. There’s this really funny meme about him that I’ll have to show you about sometime.”

Blizzard folded her arms in front of her chest. “Every time I tell someone I’m from Arizona, the first thing they ask me about is that guy. I don’t know why everyone thinks I know him just because we are both from the same state.”

“Also, he thinks that the NHA and INJ are being controlled by the government,” said Stinger. “Says that the first invasion was just a false flag event to make humanity ignore the ‘true’ threat of government-controlled superhero organizations. He even has a regular podcast where he rants about the various conspiracies of the day, among other things.”

“Okay, that is pretty crazy,” said Bolt as their car came to a stop before a stop light. “And kind of hilarious. I’ll have to listen to his podcast later.”

“You should listen to the one where he has a ‘Pokacu specialist’ on who explained how President Plutarch is actually a Pokacu in disguise,” said Stinger. He suddenly looked over his shoulder to the back of the car and said, “Remember that one, Shell? It was hilarious, wasn’t it?”

Shell glanced at Stinger before returning his attention to the window. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Blizzard frowned. She found Shell’s monotone response rather weird, but she decided not to think about it. She didn’t want to think about Radicles anyway; he was such an embarrassment to superheroes and to Arizona that she generally preferred to pretend that he didn’t exist.

Instead, Blizzard turned her attention to the road just as the stop light turned green and the car started moving again. She was thinking about her parents. This was going to be the first time that Blizzard had visited her parents since joining the Young Neos nearly a year ago now; this was also going to be the first time she introduced Bolt and her friends to them. Initially, Blizzard had just wanted to visit her parents with Bolt alone so he would get to meet them, but Bolt had decided to make the trip to Arizona a team vacation and brought everyone else along as well. Mecha Knight, the team’s supervisor in the NHA, had approved of their vacation and so they were now going to spend a week in Arizona.

And, while Blizzard didn’t complain about it, she had to admit that she didn’t like that Bolt had decided to turn this into a team vacation. She had fantasized about spending a week in Arizona alone with Bolt; she thought it would be very romantic, especially since she and Bolt didn’t get to spend nearly as much time alone as she’d like. The presence of the other Young Neos ruined those fantasies for her, but she supposed there was nothing she could do about it right now. She hoped that she and Bolt could still get some alone time just the same; maybe she could get the others to go sightseeing around Phoenix while she and Bolt spent some time alone in the hotel. It was nice to fantasize about, anyway.

Just hope that my sister will be polite to them, at least, Blizzard thought, though Rebecca should be in school right now, so hopefully she won’t be around to give me any trouble.

It was about a minute later that Bolt pulled up in front of a gated house. A huge, thick iron fence surrounded a large two-story house, while a swimming pool full of clear, cool water stood in the front yard. A large white SUV was parked in front of the garage, while tall palm trees stood around the pool, providing some shade from the Arizona sun, though not too much.

When they stopped in front of the gates, Bolt lowered the window and pressed the button of a speaker in front of the gates. As soon as he pressed the button, a gravelly voice blared from the speaker, saying, “Who is there?”

“Uh—” said Bolt, but Blizzard leaned across his lap and said, “Hi, Ralph! It’s Emily. I’m here with my friends to visit my parents!”

“Emily!” came the voice from the speaker, now sounding far more delighted than before. “Oh, it is so wonderful to hear your chipper voice again! Yes, your father did tell me to expect you today, so let me just open the gates for your vehicle. Please wait a moment.”

The speaker clicked off, prompting Bolt to ask Blizzard, “Who is Ralph?”

“My family’s butler,” Blizzard replied. “He’s worked for us for five years. He’s a great guy. I’m sure you guys will love him when you meet him.”