Chương 50: The Fallout

The first time Orion ever came up to me, he'd offered to help me with one of his crazy robot contraptions and I'd said no. I'd known him before only as a student walking around the halls, heard of his fame as king of the nerds and a technological genius, and some rumor about a pupil who'd lost their brother earlier in the school year. Then there were the meet ups in an unused room, where he'd shown me all of his impressive weapons and I tried to teach him the nuances of metaphor and allegory in humanity.

At first, it was just an agreement, paying my dues to get the tools I needed to help me fight in my secret double life. But after a while, I genuinely enjoyed the time we spent together, the conversations we had, and respected him as a person and as a friend. Here I'd been planning on continuing to meet up with him after I graduated because I thought I just couldn't do without the quirky geek that had been brought into my life. Little did I know, we'd already been hanging out after school together this whole time.

I just didn't realize it. But he had. And for some strange, psychotic reason, he hadn't found it important to tell me that little fact. Probably because it didn't involve wires, electrons, or human decency. My hands slapped down on the hard concrete of the rooftop, which only ended up hurting me and Rigel– NO– Orion's head flopped to the other side as he brought his gauntleted hands up over what looked like his ears covered by his helmet.

"Too loud!" he grumbled, still fuzzy headed from his head injury. I folded my arms in front of me. Clearly, I should not pester the invalid, but I settled for glaring at him instead. How could I not have realized it before? It seemed completely obvious now, and look, I may not be some quantum science whizkid like Orion here, but I have generally thought myself capable of putting two and two together.

All of the experiments, the gizmos, the evasiveness about The Alchemist, the shelves filled with junk – he may as well have had the words 'SECRETLY ORION' written on his big, shiny helmet! And for some reason that still would have been lost on me. Maybe instead of graduating at the end of sophomore year, I needed to be sent back to kindergarten to redo it all– Billy Madison style. Maybe Gran had just been threatening my teachers to pass me every year.

I'll finally leave high school at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. No doubt Meat Tower and I will wear our cap and gowns together. But my mind started playing back the times I'd gotten close to having a realization, the science gadgets and certain turns of phrases that made me pause and think, but right after it would become muddled. I'd feel so close to making some kind of connection, only to have the idea diffuse into tiny particles.

But then a memory came of him talking about charisma and how you could use points specifically to make people less able to figure out your secret identity. So that must have been it. He'd jacked that stat to the point where anyone who started to think there might be something connecting him to Rigel only ended up confused. Even a friend. He deliberately let his power mess with my brain day after day. But the point was he'd known about me, probably as soon as he came across me as Zero.

Certainly after he listened to my choked out voice, saw my covered up neck, heard about me making Brandon go numb with a crazy poke of my fingers. He'd sat across from me in our cozy little study lab, a sacred space as far as I was concerned, listening to me scramble to make excuses and lies to cover things up and the whole time he already knew. And he didn't tell me the truth about him, even after months of knowing. Even after planning to fight together to take down the Alchemist. Some friend I had.

Clearly, I wasn't trustworthy enough to share secrets. Orion's head shifted again, and I angled my neck to get a better view of the dent in it. No need to wonder about what was beneath his helmet anymore. There were several scrapes along the outside, and a crater-shaped dent in the middle about the size of my fist. But there was no blood darkening any of the area, nor did I see any dripping down his neck. Hopefully that meant he just had a concussion.

"Are you okay?" I grumbled. Just because I needed to check on whether he was alive or not didn't mean I wasn't still mad at him.

"Can you move?"

"Yes," he said and promptly turned his head to throw up. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. My, my, how the tables had turned. One benefit to having a long history of vomiting myself is that I've become pretty unfazed by it. Usually people have to look away, try to keep from smelling it, but I'd had to get over that long ago.

"How's your head?" He flopped back onto the rooftop.

"Hurts."

"Yeah, I expected that. I think you have a concussion. Should I take you to a hospital or do you have some pre-made Tinker medicine for just such a situation like this?" His mouth opened, lying slack for a bit.

"Why didn't I plan that before– that's a great idea! You're brilliant. Really, really smart. Have I ever told you that before?" Oh man, he sounded just like Gran when she had a fever and got a little liberal with the expired Nyquil.

"It's been implied. Can you sit up?" I reached my hand around to his shoulder to help lift him. He groaned as his torso went up, knees pulling in, as he put his hands up to cradle his head.

"Does it feel like the world is spinning or still?" He burped.

"Like I'm a newborn neutron star." Dizziness couldn't put a damper on his science references, apparently.

"We need to get you to a hospital."

"No." His voice sounded like he was drunk.

"No hospitals. I have points in Con, I'll be fine." He flopped back onto the ground, then groaned.

"I just need a little time." He didn't seem to realize his slip from before– that he had used my real name. Hardly surprising considering how out of it he was. I myself didn't know what to think or say about it –well, I had plenty of not nice things to say– so I would just keep my mouth shut for right now. There was a yell from below, so I glanced over the side of the roof. Being so high up, my brain couldn't make sense of what it was seeing at first.

But then my hands clutched at the concrete edges they held onto and I swallowed to stifle a gasp. A dozen Chem Heads stood below looking just like the gorilla from Mr. Cheng's shop– big bulging muscles, purple skin, and covered in thick body hair. The only difference was the size. These ones looked much bigger. Each of them had to be well over seven feet tall if they stood upright. I touched the side of my visor and zoomed in. A monster of a man stood against them.

Nowhere near as big as the mutants but still tall and hefty, with dull gritty skin made of granite instead of flesh. He was built like a tank and could probably lift one. The remains of a ripped vest clung to his chest while his thick rock thighs strained against a pair of shorts. A mutant leapt through the air at him from behind, but he twisted his earthen body around and slammed his palm into his chest, sending him flying.

The gorilla crashed into the mall we had just abandoned and went straight through the wall like it was made out of building blocks. A normal human would be turned into paste from that impact, but monkey man just got up again. My head swiveled back to my invalid patient.

"We need to go," I whispered.

"There are Chem Heads down below us. Multiple ones. They're in a battle with some other guy, but we don't want them noticing us. You're in no condition to fight right now." Liar Liar Pants On Fire shook his head, which was a mistake. He moaned as he turned to his side.

"I can go, just give me a few minutes. If I try to move now, I'll barf again." He was probably right. If we tried to move now he would probably trip or something and then they'd really notice us. We should just stay put, to be safe. I looked down again. Hopefully he would be okay.

"Who are they fighting?" Orion asked in a choked voice that sounded like he was trying to keep from upchucking right now.

"Some giant guy that looks like Mount Rushmore came to life. I don't recognize him as a super or villain."

"That's Pebble, he's a henchman for the White Dragons. You would think he would choose a name that's more intimidating like Rock Slide or something."

"Not every super needs to pick a name that sounds like they're overcompensating."

"Orrrr…maybe it's to trick people into thinking he's weak." He said this with all the confidence of a druggie who'd had a mindblowing epiphany.

"He looks strong enough to me. He's tossing those mutants around like children."

"Yeah, that guy is a monster." His voice had a certain childish glee in it that came through even with his voice synthesizer.

"Hope he tears them apart." I was not used to hearing such violence from Orion –or Rigel, for that matter and I glanced at him lying inert on the ground, but then a yell from below jerked my head back to the scene. Pebble stomped the ground sending out a shock wave that even I felt from ten stories up.

"Bù yào liǎ! You break the peace of the table with violence!" The mutants prowled around the rock man like wolves, completely unfazed after watching their comrade get tossed through a wall. Finally, they began charging from all sides. Pebble sent one tumbling down the street with a palm strike to the chest, but the rest piled on top of him. He twisted and thrashed, sending two flying off him, but a third wrapped himself around his legs and sent poor Pebbles tumbling.

The seven that were left rained blows down with huge meaty fists and one seemed to be trying to bite through the hard, rocky shell. A moving truck at the end of the street opened up and twelve men with guns and wearing the lizard-themed mask of the White Dragons poured out. They lined up in the street and opened fire into the pile of freaks mauling their friend. The bullets broke skin, but it only seemed to make them more angry.

Five of the beasts broke away from the dog pile and turned toward the gunmen who had interrupted them. They roared in a voice that belonged to an animal, not a man, and charged. Their loping gate was a mad dash towards the gunmen, leaping over cars that had been abandoned. It looked like without heroes on scene to fawn over, the general populace had decided to run before we had made it out of the mall. Police sirens wailed in the distance but they didn't seem to be getting any closer.

The late night street was deserted besides mutants, dragons, and two teenage vigilantes.