BEEP!!BEEP!!!BEEP!!!!
The alarm wailed in the background of a small beaten down apartment with beer bottles that were littered all over the floor. The apartment was in poor condition the walls and ceiling were covered in dirt, grime and other unknowns. The refrigerator was the only thing that was in pristine condition with a beautiful sketch of a house that was laminated hung by a magnet to the door and a calendar checklist attached next to it.
SLAM!! A hand spewed out of the bed slamming the alarm turning it off. A soft moan could be heard underneath the covers as a man's head popped out, long dark hair covered his dark black eyes and olive toned skin. He awoke with sunken eyes and messy hair thin and draping across long enough to reach his neck. The man looked to be in his middle-aged years with a dark expression, he also had a pounding headache from the drinking he had done the day before. “I think I’m dead. I must be in hell with a headache like this.” He thought to himself. As he stood in a sweeping motion knocking bottles with his foot giving himself a nice place to plant his feet. He walked towards the refrigerator ripped the front page of the checklist revealing April 25, 2019 the first thing one the list.
Thursday was not the day to get drunk before you had your weekend coming right behind it. Luckily, he had never got caught being hungover for work so It shouldn’t be a problem.
“I need to A get some friends and B get a cleaning lady,” Juan thought to himself. Monday clean apartment, eat breakfast, then go to work. He read as the first thing on his checklist. Then he pulled out a large trash bag beginning to clean up his apartment for a good hour. By the time he was done it as if nothing had happened the day before. Looking at the walls and ceiling he prayed that his landlord would never set foot on this post-apocalyptic apartment. He continued doing one thing after another on the list until he was out the door on his way to work taking the list with him.
As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight Juan let out a his from his mouth imitating the burning skin of a vampire covering his eyes. Walking out into the great city of San Roberto who had the best dry heat that the great state of Texas could offer. God man it was only eight in the morning but it felt like a thousand degrees as his head pounded in time with the heat. Don’t ask me how that works it just did in this case.
Juan got in his 2003 honda civic and sighed when the A/C gave out halfway to work. Then he had the bright idea to open his window, it felt like a wall of heat slammed onto his face then closed it immediately. Getting out of his now hotbox of a car, he had the money to buy a new car but for some reason he couldn’t get rid of this piece of junk. I mean he had it since high school it was very sentimental, but it had held out for sixteen years now it was probably time to trade it in.
Juan found himself in the same daily routine as an accountant for Roy and Fern CPA’s and Advisors, just doing the daily numbers. The day flew by as he stared at a computer screen all day only having time to talk to his boss about this and that every so often. By the end of the day he sighed, he had a great job and he had been lucky to get it straight out of college. Now he didn’t know if this was for him.......
He walked out to get into his car and hotbox it back to his house when it wouldn’t start. Juan sighed heavily it seemed like he would have to buy a new car sooner than he thought. "Goodbye old friend." He said ad he looked at the time on his phone. Well it was only five thirty, and for the first time in weeks there had been no extra work dropped off on his table so he decided to take the train back home it wouldn’t be that long a commute and then search for a new car tomorrow. As he was to the train station, he was suddenly attacked a piece of paper flew into his face. Almost ripping it off he saw an advertisement:
WIN A CONTEST!!! BE THE BEST!!! GET TOGETHER AND MAKE THE GREATEST TEAM!!!
“Huh?” Juan thought to himself. A superhero contest they still do this? Superhero teams where a thing of the past, nowadays most superheroes where police cops or military. There were a few teams like Unity or Focus which were still big but most countries had banned formations of teams that were not government sanctioned. Juan skimmed through the paper, where it said passing the first test would give out a prize of three thousand dollars. The second test would give out a prize of ten thousand dollars and the final prize gave out a government team contract that fell under team Sky.
Team Sky!!! Juan reeled seeing the name of the team they were known to house the most powerful heroes in the country and could be debated to be the strongest in the world. He kept going through the flyer as it explained that there were multiple cities that had this contest going and that it would be this weekend. It would be tomorrow in the morning. Hmm Juan kina knew how these things usually went they would test your power and if they deemed you good enough you would pass to the next test. He had even heard of some people passing the test just for fun and skipping out on the second part when it got dangerous.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
He just needed to tell them his power and he would be tested to see his talent. His luck had always been his “power” he had played multiple phone games in his life and had never spent a cent on them. Every time he would pull for an item or hero his screen would glow with the apparently most rare color and give him the best heroes. he had found games easy as he always had the most powerful units so he got bored of them pretty quickly. Maybe his luck would carry over to the real world who knew.
Juan took a couple of steps and found himself inside of a costume store then looked down at the flyer, noting the costume required. Then decided to go for it, just as he was about to step into the shop a man almost knocked him down on his way out. He was six-foot four dark skin and was pure muscle he was grumbling to himself, something about legacies or something.
Juan walked in to see a chubby faced man examining a costume he was holding in his hands stuck it with a price tag and placed it into a box. Juan thought he saw a hint of puprple when he placed the tag on the costume. Juan looked over the variety of costumes and certain materials they were made from. There was even a superhero section in the store that had outrageous pricing for some of their costumes in the thousands. He knew they were specially made a heavy amount of damage and to keep on going even the least expensive costume was around four thousand dollars. I guess things are pretty inexpensive for some people once they get their costumes. He had heard the most expensive one had sold for over four million dollars and had held up for a couple of years before it was finally destroyed in an epic battle. Costumes like this were made from gadgeteers which had the power to reshape matter into different items. The stronger they were the more the power could bend the laws of physics. Some of the items they made didn’t make sense scientifically and well it pissed off engineers and scientists who tried to make sense of them.
Then he saw a young man put a suit on the costume display in the super hero section it was made for a large frame it said intuitive gadgeteer suit and he managed to catch the price fifteen dollars what the hell? He waited for the young man to leave and checked it once again.
Intuitive gadgeteer suit:
Protection – heavy
Incorporated A.I.
Integrated Weapon system
One size fits all
Color change scheme
What was going on this suit seemed to be incredible, was it defective? He really didn’t care he picked it up and took it to the counter taking the small tag that said all the incredible things the suit did. To his luck he found another teen working the counter this time it was a pretty girl with dark jet-black hair who was on her phone and didn’t even look at the suit as she scanned it and he payed for it. Juan flew out of the store ready hoping onto the next train home to try out his new suit
---------
Jake the store owner was ecstatic when managed to literally steal the suit from under that dumb powered. To think that he would have seen incredible work in his life it had to be one of the best crafted costumes that he had ever seen come into his store and he had only payed five hundred dollars for it. To think that he could sell it for at least fifteen thousand dollars once he got people to come in and bid for it. Jake got on the phone to make some calls people would be looking for something like this tomorrow for the auditions. He had to call in the other shops to thank and split the money they would make they had taken another sucker in for a ride.
--------
Tray jumped into the beat old Chevy handing over the five hundred bucks he had just received for the costume his sister had spent weeks making. She looked at him with her dark brown eyes and sighed, “I guess my abilities aren’t as good as I thought they would be I’m sorry to let you down again.”
Tray felt a stab of pain when he heard that from his sister. “It’s alright sis one day we will be able to make to the top. I’m insanely powerful you know.” He said flexing his muscles, with very little confidence. It had been three years since he had begun his debut as a hero and it was getting expensive to go to these events. He had never been the worst and had slowly climbed his way to second place for the last three events he had gone to. Then he had found out a hard truth. If you weren’t a legacy you wouldn’t make it to first unless you were upset the legacy by a large margin. So, he needed a suit and he spent all his winnings preparing himself for this event his power Kinetic manipulation was extremely rare so it took all the money he won to develop it. His sister Daria was a powered like himself a gadgeteer but she had never been powerful. She had spent weeks making him that costume, but to anyone in town when he tried to sell it no one would offer more than five hundred dollars. They needed the money to get back home, there were not only one but two legacies in this next competition and one of them was the grandson of sky himself.
“You are going to have to get another gadgeteer to help you out. I wish I could help you out more but I’m no good little brother. You saw that I couldn't even sell a suit that i worked on for a month for more than five hundred dollars” Dana looked solemn then started out the car heading back home to New Sensia.
Tray looked at his sister and made a decision once he got back to New Sensia he would join the Police to help both his nephew and sister out. Then he looked out of his window to see the stadium where the challange would take place tomorrow.
-------
Juan took out the costume trying it on hopefully the one size fits all function would work. Then he found a small disc that had a paper attached to it that said "Temple". He moved the disc towards his temple on the side of his head then felt a sharp pain that knocked him out.