Secrets of a Sidekick

It was the last night of summer before Tommy was to begin his journey into middle school. He had just finished watching the new superhero blockbuster, Secrets of a Sidekick, and as he dozed off to sleep that night he became the sidekick in a world all his own.

“The movies are all wrong you know?” said a voice coming from behind Tommy, who was now sitting on a park bench reading Hero Origins, a comic he’d picked up. “Huh?”, Tommy questioned as he whipped around to see who was blurting out at his back. Towering above Tommy with bulging arms crossed, was a masked man dressed in white spandex from head to toe, accentuating every bit of his muscular mold. “Who are you?” Tommy managed to get out. Ignoring the question, this strong stranger proceeded to explain how spider bites could not transfer any sort of superhuman power, nor could a secret ooze, a particle accelerator explosion, or gamma radiation exposure. Oddly enough, Tommy was fine with skipping the pleasantries and launched himself into questioning the topic at hand. “Well then, how does it happen?”, he questioned with a shaky confidence. The white giant slowly leaned in closer toward Tommy’s left ear and in barely more than a whisper, simply stated, “training.”

It all happened so quickly, but somehow Tommy knew this was an invitation. Following quickly after the hero dressed in white, who had already begun bounding toward certain danger, Tommy struggled to keep up. The first few stops, however, were unimpressive. The man in white seemed nothing more than a bulked-up boy scout. A residential family working on uprooting an unwanted tree stump and an elderly man who had high centered his vehicle on a parking block were the beneficiaries of these feats of strength. Disappointed, Tommy began walking in the opposite direction of the big friendly giant, who was now walking into a warehouse following a forklift. At that very moment an earthshattering explosion shook the ground beneath him and knocked Tommy to his knees. He turned to see a cloud of dust and debris form out of the empty field in where the explosion had taken place.

In true super villain fashion, an eerie laugh bellowed through the dust storm as a masked man holding a megaphone emerged on a hoverboard rising above the authorities who were arriving on scene. The man referred to himself as, ‘The Detonator’ and he proceeded to announce his intention to destroy his nemesis, Snow White, an obvious attempt to mock and draw out the man in white. “Here we go”, Tommy thought to himself, “a real battle between a real hero and a real villain.” Several minutes went by with no sign of the hero and The Detonator’s patience was growing thin. Another announcement came from the megaphone, an ultimatum. “You have 60 seconds to show your face before I detonate the next blast,” and he motioned to a 20-story office building, directly across the street from a school that was in session. The seconds ticked by and panic set in, still no sign of the man in white. 60 seconds were up and the blast went off, as promised. The ground shook, the building began to tip while The Detonator fled in frustration.

Everyone watched in horror as neither the toppling building nor the school had time to evacuate. Then Tommy spotted the muscular hero from a distance. He was standing on top of the school, with his arms raised. He caught the entire building with extraordinary gentleness and eased the structure onto the ridges of the school’s rooftop. Immediately, he began helping the businessmen and women who were pressed up against the, now horizontal, glass windowpanes. Children and teachers began evacuating the school below and the safety of all those in danger was preserved. Tommy reunited with the hero, looking puzzled and asked, “why didn’t you just come out and fight The Detonator? You would have easily defeated him and kept him from detonating the second blast.” The response Tommy got back was not one that he expected as the hero said to him, “Your strength is best used to hold others up, not take people down.” Tommy stood silent in contemplation for a moment, and then spoke up excitedly, “I can’t wait to start my training!” The white giant slowly leaned in and simply stated, “Your training with me is complete,” and then he bounded away once more.

Tommy was left standing there, stunned and confused. “What training?”, he said out loud to no one. Slowly he turned around and began walking, he was several miles from home now and the sun was already beginning to set. Along the way he stopped and plopped down at the park bench where he had met the man in white. Tommy looked up at the clouds as they turned a pinkish orange, then his gaze fell to the horizon as the sun began its disappearing act. Before it vanished completely, Tommy noticed a flickering light, seemingly being emitted from the surface of the sun as it rested on the horizon. In the blink of an eye that same light was now encircling Tommy where he sat. Dusk had now fully set in, but this strange phenomenon lit up the park as bright as midday. Suddenly, the lights went out and a shadowy figure appeared about 50 feet in front of Tommy. “Did you do that?” Tommy asked. The a tall and slender man, dressed in orange spandex replied with, “follow me and find out.”

The night brought out the worst in the city and before the clock struck midnight the orange hero managed to subdue 12 separate criminal attempts, mostly burglaries. Tommy was thrilled to witness this hero facing real danger, however, he wasn’t able to learn as much as he would like. The moment danger presented itself, the orange flash would illuminate the area, and the bad guys would be contained in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t much different than watching sporadic fireworks on Independence Day, momentary brilliance followed by darkness with only the anticipation of the next night sky illumination keeping your interest. Before the criminal round up could reach a full baker’s dozen, Tommy and the man in orange came face to face with the second Big Bad of the day.

As the duo made their way to the next distress call, a mother who was awaiting a delayed ambulance for her baby boy who was having trouble breathing, they were stopped dead in their tracks and an eerily similar phenomenon took place. A brilliant light was encircling them, however, this one was a deep red and it formed a transparent domed forcefield above them. A female voice came from above, which drew their attention skyward. Floating in the sky on a hover board of her own, the man in orange recognized this villain as Mirage. Once a prodigy in the field of quantum physics, she used her scientific genius to invent these energy bubbles which would make a copy of the powers harnessed by those entrapped within them. The speedster knew that this red energy bubble lasted sixty seconds and was deadly to pass through while it copied the genetic code of the superhero. Once it turns green, a ten-minute period of superpower extraction begins. While not deadly, breaking the green barrier will result in total and permanent loss of superpowers. “Stay awhile,” cackled Mirage from above!

It makes sense why all the other heroes that came before him chose to do nothing; they merely gave Mirage a few minutes of their power yet preserved it for themselves for the rest of their lives. Tommy looked over at the man in orange and his stern composure had not changed. He slowly began to kneel, taking a runner’s pose. The deadly sixty seconds were up and the energy field around them turned from red to green, like an otherworldly stop light. The man in orange was off in a flash, literally. The green bubble burst instantaneously, leaving Mirage in complete shock and defeat as she had absorbed none of his speed. The green energy field had done exactly what Mirage had claimed, it had depleted the speedster’s power completely and permanently, however, the momentum he had generated prior to impact was enough to complete the final distress call and the ailing baby boy was transported to the hospital in time for treatment. The man in orange came jogging, at an average joe’s pace, back to the place where Tommy still stood. Mirage had fled and Tommy just had one question for the man in orange, “how did you make that decision so quickly?” The man in orange replied with, “Your speed in taking action will always be secondary to your speed in decision making, so decide who you are before the moment arrives”. Tommy nodded in understanding and said, “my training with you is over now, isn’t it?”. The slender orange hero gave Tommy the same nod back, then retreated into his slow jog until he was out of sight.

As Tommy walked back to the park bench where he’d met the two superheroes, he saw a man dressed in black spandex sitting in his spot with his head down. As Tommy got close enough to speak to the man, the shadowy figure arose and lifted his head, revealing his glowing eyes behind his mask and whispered, “You’re late.” Tommy started to hurriedly explain himself, fumbling over his words as he tried to describe the complexity of the energy fields he was entrapped in with the man in orange, but he was cut off by a crisp, “SHHH” as the man in black held a gloved index finger to his lips. Tommy tiptoed closer. The man with glowing eyes stood and began walking, without saying a word.

Tommy walked side by side with the man in black for a good half hour before mustering the courage to speak up. “What are you looking for?” he whispered, noticing that the man’s eyes had not stop tracking side to side since they’d began their stroll. “Everything,” he responded. Tommy started watching his eyes more closely and sure enough, they were bouncing to every object in sight. He was scanning buildings, houses, cars, trees, the sewers below and the sky above, with vision capable of seeing past the exterior. After a while longer, Tommy was getting genuinely bored and was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. Part of him couldn’t wait for the next villain to come strolling in, just to wake himself up. Tommy found his mind wandering as they made their way past the fire and police stations and the hospital and turned on Tower Road. The road was a steep incline from the base of the town where all the emergency response services were housed, all the way up to the top where the old water tower remained. The road itself was lined with wall-to-wall businesses and minimal intersection breaks, a chute from bottom to top.

When Tommy was just about to start sleepwalking, the man with the glowing eyes stopped suddenly. He walked over to a sewer grate and began peeling a thick substance from the surface which was clogging the holes to the sewer. Immediately a blast of air burst out, as if it had been holding a large belch with no escape. The man in black then picked up his pace, without saying a word. It wasn’t long before the duo stopped at another clogged sewer drain, then another, and another. They trekked all the way uphill, discovering more than 30 sewer openings that had been sealed. Tommy was seeing the clues adding up, someone intended to use the chute of a road to flood the emergency service stations. What Tommy didn’t understand was how they planned to do it, the water tower had been empty for decades, it was just a historical landmark. As the two made their way closer to the tower, they noticed mud starting to form on the soles of their shoes. As they grew closer still, they could hear dripping. The old, rusty, tower was leaking water, it had somehow been filled to the tower’s capacity, which is 500,000 gallons!

Tommy and the perceptive hero frantically began searching for some sort of clue that would help to diffuse any threat to the tower. It was still dark, but it was nearing daybreak, which they feared would be the targeted time of the attack. The man in black stood for several moments, scanning the surrounding area. He spotted something nearby that had been covered up with a pile of brush and he began sprinting towards it. Tommy caught up with him just as he was uncovering the hidden objects. “Those are the hoverboards of The Detonator and Mirage", Tommy shouted. The man in black now began scanning the tower up and down and soon noticed an object fastened to the belly of the tank. He began climbing up the shiny chrome service pipe, which appeared to have been recently installed to fill the rusty old tower from a nearby reservoir. Once he reached the object, it was obvious it was a time bomb with 30 minutes remaining. This certainly meant that the villains would return soon to check the device and escape on their hoverboards. The hero had to stop the bomb from going off or it would become a river of destruction.

What happened next was a bit anti-climactic to say the least. Using his visual abilities, the hero in black scanned the device and then casually clipped a blue wire that was exposed. The ticking stopped at once. He then climbed his way over to the control panel for the service pipe and casually reversed the pump to begin distributing water out of the tower and back to the reservoir from which it came. Climbing down, he turned his focus to the hoverboards, clipping and re-wiring several of the many-colored wires within the boards. The man in black then typed several commands on the keypads and walked away. Tommy followed along and then asked a final question. “Aren’t you going to wait for the bad guys to return so you can take care of them as well?” The man in black responded with, “Your ability to see what’s going on behind the scenes can often diffuse the threat and sometimes even change its course.” As the pair walked back down the hill toward the bottom, Tommy heard a faint hollering which cast his gaze skyward. There, floating high above them, were The Detonator and Mirage, wrestling against their hoverboards as if there were a magnetic hold on their metal boots. The evil duo was, unwillingly, headed straight for the police station.

Tommy walked side by side with the man in black, the sun was coming up and daylight was spreading across the city, they stopped when they reached the park bench once again. “Your training is complete”. Tommy looked around and saw the man in orange, winded and leaning up against a tree. In the other direction was the man in white, looking a bit frail and weak, resting on a grassy hillside. Tommy looked back at the man with glowing eyes as they dimmed to a dark pupil. The heroes all gathered, giving Tommy a final nod and then they turned in unison and walked toward the sunrise, vanishing out of sight.

Tommy awoke the next morning feeling renewed and energized. School began that week and upon his arrival a student that Tommy had never seen before emerged at the top of the hallway stairwell. Tommy thought to approach him and introduce himself, but just then the new kid stepped on his own shoelace, beginning a tumble downward. It was not a graceful fall in the least, it was an awkward belly flop onto the steps below, followed by a sideways roll, and still unable to gather his footing mid-tumble, another face forward flop. Classmates stood silent for only a moment, mouths agape. The scrawny new kid quickly rose to his feet, face beet red, turning to collect his things when a foot from another student caught his leg and the poor boy flew face first into the floor again. The culprit, a defiant boy named David, erupted in laughter after intentionally tripping the new student. This additional misfortune led to the hysterical outbreak of laughter among the student body. This all had happened in a matter of moments, and Tommy immediately felt anger and a desire for justice for this helpless new student.

A clenched fist naturally began to form as he pondered whether he really knew how to use it. Stone faced, Tommy marched directly toward David who was now standing over the boy, taunting him. David turned just enough to notice Tommy coming up behind him and spun around with his hand in the air as if expecting a high five. Tommy’s fist had formed into a solid rock. Tommy experienced something during the brief moment while locking eyes with David that unleashed a superhuman ability, Tommy could see right through him, understanding what was really going on behind the scenes. From the little he’d observed David in the past, Tommy knew he had a terrible home life and had witnessed his dad verbally abusing him. Upon this realization, even with his right elbow already cocked back for a swing, another ability emerged as Tommy’s mind moved faster than his fist, knowing who he was he drew his loaded right arm down to his side and continued walking directly past David and his hand began to thaw. Approaching the embarrassed boy, who was still on the ground, and extending out his hand, Tommy unlocked his third ability, using his strength, he helped the boy to his feet. “What’s your name,” asked Tommy. The boy looked at him and weakly stated, “Thanks, I’m Peter.”