First Mentor

CHAPTER ONE-2

“What you staring at?” said Nightbolt, glancing at me. “You look like you’ve never seen an old man before.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just … you’re a bit different from what I was expecting, that’s all.”

Nightbolt chuckled. “That’s what everyone says when they first see me, sonny. I’m not offended. All of the latest pictures of me available are from twenty, thirty years ago, back when I was much younger than I am now. I’ve changed quite a bit since then, but my memory is as sharp as ever.” Nightbolt tapped the side of his head. “Everything you need to know is still right here in the old noggin. Don’t you worry about that.”

I nodded, but deep down, I was skeptical that Nightbolt would be able to teach me anything. He looked so old and fragile that I was worried he might fall over and break his back if I tried to punch him in a training session. His old body might not be able to keep up with me, unless his ‘training’ involved something completely different from what I was expecting.

I looked over my shoulder. Through the back window, the town of Los Congrejos grew smaller and smaller, though due to how flat everything was, it would probably be a while before it vanished from sight.

I looked at Nightbolt again. “I was told you lived in Los Congrejos, yet we’re going away from it.”

Nightbolt shrugged. “I have all my mail delivered to the Los Congrejos post office, but in truth I live just outside the town. I prefer my privacy and the people here respect that, so I never have to worry about anyone intruding on my property, and low crime rates means the police never ask me to help. Can’t say that about people in most places. In most places, retired superheroes have a hard time maintaining their privacy, especially if they were really big before they retired.”

“What about the media?” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the noises the engine made. “Do they ever bother you?”

Nightbolt gave me a rather evil grin for a retired superhero. “Nope. They used to, but after I introduced them to Spike, they stopped coming.”

“Spike?” I said. “Who is that?”

“You’ll see,” Nightbolt replied. “Anyway, we should get to my house pretty soon. I’ve got a spare room all set up for you, so don’t worry about where you’ll be sleeping.”

“Great,” I said. “What kind of training are we going to do, anyway? Are we going to start today or tomorrow? Rubberman didn’t tell me much about what your training is like, but—”

Nightbolt waved off my questions. “Talk, talk, talk. I forgot how much you city folk talk. I’ll tell you more about my world famous training methods when we get there. It’s too complicated to explain here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m really eager to start my training and I’d like to have an idea of what we’re going to do so I can prepare for it.”

Nightbolt chuckled. “No one can prepare for my training, kid, but you remind me of Dennis, even though he was older than you when I trained him. Always asking questions, always eager to know everything. He could never relax.”

“Sounds like how he is now,” I said. “Even though he’s supposed to be resting, he’s still doing business even in his hospital room. I don’t think he even knows the meaning of the word ‘relaxed.’”

“Aye,” said Nightbolt. “But I suppose if he relaxed like a normal person, he wouldn’t be as successful as he is today, now would he?”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I said.

With that, we fell into silence. Nightbolt seemed perfectly at ease, turning his truck down a side road I hadn’t even noticed, which took us away from the main highway and out into the surrounding countryside. We passed an abandoned oil derrick, gradually making our way closer and closer to Nightbolt’s home, wherever it was. It seemed strange to me that I still couldn’t see his house, even though West Texas was a very flat, almost barren part of the state. Either Nightbolt’s house was far from the main highway or it was somehow hidden. Maybe he had put a large cloaking device on it, but given how poor Nightbolt appeared, that seemed unlikely.

After about half an hour of driving, I finally saw Nightbolt’s house. It was a tiny, one-story house, surrounded by a half-rusted iron fence. The house itself had a small stone chimney, its orange roof shingles extremely faded, probably due to being directly under the Texas sun for so long, and an old rocking chair on the front porch. The gate around the house was closed and locked, although the lock didn’t look particular strong even from a distance.

“Here we are,” said Nightbolt as he brought his truck to a stop before the front gate. “My humble little abode.”

I blinked. “Wow, uh, Nightbolt, it’s … nice.”

Nightbolt looked at me curiously. “A little disappointed? Were you expecting a super secret underground base or something? Dennis tells me he has a base like that. I suppose that going from a super secret underground base to a normal house in the middle of nowhere is somewhat of a downgrade.”

“It’s not bad,” I said. “It’s just … I don’t know, I expected something a bit fancier from one of the first superheroes, that’s all.”

Nightbolt scowled. “Not all of us retired rich, you know. Some of us retired with as little under our name as we had when we first started. And some of us were scammed out of our savings.”

Nightbolt sounded quite bitter when he said that, but before I could ask him to elaborate, a loud barking noise came from behind the house. Then the largest dog I’d ever seen in my life bounded from out behind the house and rushed toward the fence. He was huge, some kind of German shepherd mix I think, with chocolate and white fur and paws that looked as big as my fists. He wore a spiked black collar and was barking like crazy, each bark almost as loud as a shotgun blast.

“Spike!” Nightbolt shouted in a surprisingly loud voice. “Get away from the gate! It’s just me, you dumb animal. There’s no need to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

I would have made a quip about how Nightbolt’s house was the whole neighborhood, but the loudness of Spike’s barking made it impossible for me to hear myself, much less say anything. Still, Spike did shut up when Nightbolt shouted at him, but he didn’t move away from the gate. He just stood there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his large tail waving back and forth excitedly behind him.

“That’s Spike,” said Nightbolt, shaking his head. “He’s friendly, don’t worry. He just barks a lot, especially whenever I bring anyone new over. Anyway, let’s go inside. Follow me.”

Nightbolt hopped out of his truck faster than I expected a man his age to move. By the time I climbed out of my side of the truck, he was already at the gate, shooing away Spike, who retreated toward a small building which looked like his doghouse, though it was the biggest doghouse I’d ever seen. I shook my head and followed Nightbolt through the gate. Spike didn’t move from his doghouse even when I entered, nor did he growl, but he did watch me carefully with his big eyes. I couldn’t help but feel nervous about the huge dog. I’d had a bad experience with a big dog when I was a kid, so I still felt wary around them even when they acted perfectly friendly.

That’s why I could finally relax when Nightbolt and I entered his house. The interior of the house was slightly nicer than the exterior, but I immediately noticed a thin layer of dust on the shoe rack near the front door, a shoe rack which had only a couple of old, dusty pairs of shoes and some cracked rubber boots.

“Welcome to my home,” said Nightbolt, spreading his arms to indicate the house. “What do you think?”

I stopped and looked at the house’s interior.

The front door was directly connected to the main living room. It wasn’t much of a living room, either. An old flat-screen TV stood against one wall, with two large, though clearly aging, red recliners and one wooden chair set around it. To my left was an entryway into a very small kitchen with an old-fashioned refrigerator and sink, with no dishwasher from what I could see, though there was a drying rack on the counter. A short hallway to my right was lined with three doors, which I guessed were Nightbolt’s room, my room, and the bathroom, though I didn’t know which was which.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Very small, but small is okay.”

“Small is good,” Nightbolt said. “Not quite as big as my old base, but let me tell you, after spending thirty years working in big places, a small place is a nice change of pace. It’s easier to take care of, at any rate.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, what are we going to do?”

“Eat,” said Nightbolt, clapping his hands together eagerly. “I’ll get some beans and hot dogs cooked up. Meanwhile, you can go unpack in your room now if you want.” He pointed down the short hallway. “Second door to the left. It’s unlocked, so don’t worry about needing a key. Also, the bathroom is the door to its right, so if you need to go, you know where it is.”

Once again, I nodded and made my way toward the hallway. I was pretty tired after such a long day and wondered if I could catch a quick nap before dinner. Nightbolt would understand if I needed to rest up a little bit after the long trip here. At least, I hoped he would; he seemed like a pretty reasonable guy, all things considered.

Unfortunately, I was so distracted by my own thoughts that I didn’t notice the small desk piled high with documents and envelopes near the entrance to the hallway until I bumped into it accidentally and sent a good portion of the envelopes and documents falling to the floor. I immediately dropped my suitcase and began scooping up the papers, trying to put them all back on the desk as quickly as I could.

“Beams, what was that sound I heard?” Nightbolt shouted from the kitchen. “It sounded like you knocked something over.”

“It’s nothing,” I shouted back. “Just knocked over some of your bills. Nothing’s broken, don’t worry.”

As I said that, I picked up the envelopes two or three at a time, trying my best to gather them all up as quickly as possible. I cursed myself for my clumsiness. First day here and I had already made a mess. Granted, it wasn’t a very bad mess, but it probably didn’t make me look very good in Nightbolt’s eyes nonetheless.

But as I gathered the envelopes in my arms, one of the envelopes on the floor caught my eye. It had Nightbolt’s real name (Joshua Owens, apparently) and his address in the middle, but in the top left corner, where the sender’s address went, was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; that is to say, the address of the White House. Even stranger, it had a curious name listed under it: Cameron Marcos, Director of the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs.

Extraterrestrial affairs? What did that mean? Was this some kind of joke letter? It had to be. Someone wrote a prank letter to Nightbolt, who for some reason hadn’t thrown it out. Yet why would it have the White House’s address on it if it was a prank? And why did it look so official? I remembered my dad getting a letter from the White House once, as a response to a letter he wrote to the President. The official letter had given a pretty generic response to Dad’s, but I remembered the envelope very well, which resembled this one almost exactly.

Before I could puzzle this further, the envelope was snatched out of my hand. Startled, I looked up and saw Nightbolt standing over me. He was scowling again, just like before, only now I was sure that he was going to beat me up for looking at his mail.

“Oh, Nightbolt,” I said, standing upright, even though there were still a lot of letters on the floor. “I didn’t hear you come up. I was just picking up your letters and got lost in thought when I was thinking, um, about my upcoming training with you.”

“Lost in thought,” Nightbolt repeated in a voice that told me he didn’t believe a word I said. “Yes, Dennis told me you had a tendency to do that sometimes. Probably not helped by the long drive here, which can do a number on even a young person’s attention span.”

As he spoke, he put the White House envelope into the back pocket of his coveralls. I had a strong desire to take it and read what the letter said, but I didn’t even try to reach for it. I was under the impression that Nightbolt would break my arm if I tried to take that letter in particular from him.

“Since you are clearly very tired from the trip here, I think you should go to your room and rest until lunch is ready,” said Nightbolt. “Don’t worry about the letters. I’ll pick them all up myself. You just get some sleep.”

I nodded and, after depositing the envelopes in my arms back onto the desk, picked up my suitcase and walked past Nightbolt to the door to my room. I opened it and entered quickly, but before I closed the door behind me, I looked over my shoulder one last time to see Nightbolt—his back to me—reading the White House letter, the envelope in his right hand, the letter in his left. I wondered what it said and why Nightbolt didn’t want me to read it. It had to be very important, especially if it was from the White House, though that didn’t help me understand why anyone in the government would send an old retired superhero like Nightbolt a letter.

But maybe it wasn’t any of my business. I came here to train, not poke into Nightbolt’s private business. I closed the door to my room behind me, plunging me into darkness, but that still didn’t stop me from wondering if there was more going on here than I originally thought. If so, I was probably going to figure out one way or another over these next four weeks.