By the time Emelia found me, the sun was just over my dad’s shoulder, meaning that today was feeling like it was going to be a lot warmer than usual, or otherwise known as a typical New Olympus summertime heatwave. Sweat sat gleaming on my brow and trickled down my back, slickening the gap between my skin and my suit. The wind so high up on this towering skyscraper I stood on was trying its best to wipe it all away, all whilst it pulled my hair over my shoulder. The sounds below me were melodic, a hum of cars and people and some party happening beneath me.
If I was any more vain, I would have put my fists on my hips and let the wind buffet my hair for a little longer as I looked over the city, but instead I sat down on the ledge, feet dangling a good seventy or so floors above the pavement. Young Rylee would have had a heart attack being up this high; so high up that the wind bit a little harder, snipped at your ears a little more painfully, but I had gotten over my fear of heights (because I was kinda forced to), and being all the way up here meant that I didn’t have to contend with whatever bullshit was waiting for me down there.
Not that I didn’t like the humans or what problems they had, like I said before. I loved them, but they wouldn’t miss me for just a few hours, at least until Lucas was free to talk or I gathered the energy I needed to walk over toward Ava and ask about her brilliant plan last night.
I leaned back on my palms and sighed, forcing myself to forget about everything for just a second. It had been a while since I last did… nothing, and I was kinda digging it. Maybe I’d cross state lines and see what was happening around the US soon, or pop over to Europe, but they didn’t like me much over there, judging by the social media rant threads they go on, so I’d stick to what I knew for now. Heck, the view wasn’t so bad up here. If I squinted I could probably see Olympus U’s stadium tucked away in the forestry on the outskirts of the city. I wondered if Bianca had already applied. Probably. She was psyched about the sports program—for a D Grade superhuman who was just on average a little bit better than a girl her age could physically be, it was heaven over there with its high tech facilities. It also didn’t hurt that her mom was the Dean as well.
And it could have been the same for me, too, but I wasn’t planning on joining. It was a school for kids whose parents didn’t want them joining the Olympiad during their recruitment drives. They learnt how to use their powers for ‘good,’ like welding or carpentry or running the hundred meters faster than most humans could blink, or whatever it is college kids learnt all day.
It just wasn’t my style, going to college.
Besides, I couldn’t double back now. Ronnie had made it very clear that she wanted me there right after high school ended, even if it was just to join their creative arts program. But if I had agreed to her that night, then I wouldn’t be sitting here on the edge of a skyscraper, would I?
It’s not like Olympus U pumps out superheroes anymore, anyway, I thought. Before the Olympiad, that’s all us superhumans had to aim for if we wanted to make it any further than the grimy rooftops of whatever city we came from. Now it was full of athletes and kids who’ve got powers so weird that I wouldn’t even bother trying to explain how they could ever help anyone.
The alternative was, of course, Olympus West, but if they took one look at my GPA they would probably be insulted that I thought I even had a chance in hell of wearing their uniform.
Plus, the last I heard, some of my favorite high school pains in the neck were going there come fall, so you’d expect to find me anywhere but those ivy covered white brick buildings.
The air crackled with a sudden burst of electrical charge, and Em appeared beside me, panting, a little sweaty, and wearing a costume I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was a one piece without any sleeves, skin-tight, purple, white and black. She held her side as she breathed hard, and I let her take a moment, because the last time I saw her in costume was when I watched the premier of her tv show at the start of this year. But the last time I saw her in full costume was back in high school, back before the Alps incident, and before being a superhero became confusing.
“I think you’re supposed to get here a lot faster than that,” I said. “Aren’t you, like, the fastest person on the planet or something? At least, that’s what everyone used to say in school.”
Emelia looked at me, deadpan, then said, “I haven’t…” She took a deeper breath, shut her eyes, then continued. “I haven’t run this hard in a while, alright? Give me a sec, Blondie.”
I hovered onto my feet and nudged her shoulder. “No special effects out here, Sparky.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I know what I heard, and I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say it.”
I stepped backward, closer to the air just beyond the ledge. “Sparky, or special effects?”
Emelia stepped onto the concrete lip, put her hand on my chest, and said, “You’re lucky you can fly, and just so your head doesn’t get too big, I’ll race you to the churro stand near the fountain on 12th Avenue. First one there gets free churros, courtesy of the loser, of course.”
I sucked air in between my teeth and patted my hips and thighs. “I forgot my wallet.”
“Then you better start flying, superhero.” And with that, she pushed me off the ledge.
Falling backwards, I watched as she grew smaller and smaller standing on the lip above me. My hair was flung around my face, the wind howling in my ears. I turned around, smiling a little because I knew she was giving me a head start, so I tucked my arms against my torso, pointing right down toward the growing pavement, and the people pointing with their fingers and cameras as I shot toward them. Flying was freeing, exhilarating, and I might not be the best at it, but come on, how could I stop myself from laughing a little as I carved my way through the air just above the Normals, skimming over the trees planted on either side of the street, pulling along leafs and loose newspapers along for the gusty ride. I spread my arms out, letting the wind carry me upward. I had no idea where 12th Avenue was, but I was following the money trail beneath me.
Expensive cars, luxurious storefronts, that’s what blurred past me as I swung around the side of a building, clipping the corner with my fingertips to shoot around it. At this kind of speed, everything counted, and at this kind of speed, Emelia was a brief scent of perfume, a flash of violet electricity, and a blown kiss that flashed past me in seconds. Playing up being exhausted, I thought, giving up on scouring the streets and shooting for the sky instead. Guess it pays to be an actress. I wasn’t a fan of losing, and especially not to the churro prices around these parts, so after I paused high in the air, breathing hard, cartwheeling freely to a stop, I found a route toward the shopping complex on 12th Avenue. About a dozen or so blocks away. Maybe more if I took my sweet time, and hell, I was a winner, Zeus’ daughter, and you know the rest of it—I’ll take the long route just to rub it in Em’s face. Faster than me? No chance. We weren’t in high school anymore, not at all.
Everything that came with high school was long gone, anyway. It was just us now.
Us and the wind, the sky and the sun, gold, violet, and free sugary churros.
I spun around in the air, turning my back to the dart of purple electricity rapidly making its way toward 12th Avenue, tucked my legs to my chest, and fell like a stone. My gut lurched, hitting my ribs like a sack of wet dough. I spread my arms and legs out, got hit by a heaving updraft of hot wind, and skimmed over gravel filled rooftops, antennas poking into the sky, and frightened a flock of pigeons off a gargoyle perched on the side of a looming skyscraper. I flew toward the beach and the sparkling waters beyond it, turning through the air to catch the sun sitting far on the horizon.
I paused for the briefest second. That half a second that Normals won’t ever get to feel. The sun tickled my cheeks, washed away the coldness of what I’d had to get down and dirty with last night, then I let myself fall toward the water beneath me, closer to the surfers gaping up at me, some with their fists raised and cheering, others just staring, but a few guys and girls caught my drift, saw the wave that was rising in the early morning tide. If I was going to be Olympia for a few hours, then I might as well enjoy myself before my life got serious again. Too much to do, too much to think of, but who cared right now because the surfers were on their boards as the wave came rolling toward them. I followed suit, darting underneath the waves’ crashing arch and just above their heads. I tasted the ocean and its current, the froth and its bitterness. I was skimming over it now, leaving the surfers behind as they called after me. My reflection smiled at me—me, this time, not Olympia or Rylee: me—as I flew underneath Athena Bridge and its rust-red colors.
I cut across the waters, doubling back around high up through the air, up and up, then I let myself fall freely, nothing stopping me as my hair was whipped into a frenzy and dad’s statue grew from just a speck to the towering behemoth of gold standing in the bay area. The houses here were expensive, the food luxurious, tantalizing to a nose that could smell almost every single spice being massaged into the meat getting prepared for the day. It was a tourist trap filled with stores brimming with counterfeit memorable, like the very rubble that Cleopatra picked herself up off when she was fighting Titan (each chunk for $5, but just for you, I’d do $3), or Blitz’s first ever pair of running shoes (which looked strangely familiar to the tattered Nike’s I saw in boxes at the back of those stores.) Hell, I even saw a few t-shirts with Olympia printed all over them in bold red and gold.
I took note of those two colors, the red and gold. Maybe for my next suit, or whenever I got the cash to find someone who could put something together for me without breaking the bank.
I had come to this part of the city for everything, the special kind energy that only New Olympus had when it was starting to wake up from its restless night, shaking off its dreamy haze, but most importantly, I was here to fly just over dad’s head, to trace my fingers across his rounded shoulders and see his tight-lipped smile shine over the people below him. I had never stood on this statue before, simply because it didn’t feel like it was something I should ever do in this lifetime.
But you should have seen the looks on the tourists’ faces at the base of the statue. Dozens of guys were doing his pose, arms either flexed or on their hips as laughing girlfriends took pictures of them, until they saw me flying overhead, and suddenly they were pointing and filming. It’ll give Paul and Lucy something to froth about, I thought, now heading toward the shopping complex, waving at the almost feral mob of little kids screaming my name. I didn’t know much about marketing, or making myself more appealing to these people. Humans had always confused me a little, but I knew they loved dad, and this was the one way I could get them to love me, too.
Dad used to do this a lot, actually—fly around the city, not exactly looking for a crime to handle, but just to… watch, to see and learn and listen to the humans. Gods, the amount of times my stomach had dropped in history class when I got an alert on my phone because someone on social media had posted a picture eating hotdogs with Zeus himself was uncountable. It almost hurt, I’ll admit, because all these random people throughout the city had more pictures with my own dad than I had in my entire home. But I understood it, because he was Zeus, simple as that.
He didn’t really need an explanation to do what he wanted to do, so neither did I.
And why bother with your power-less little kid when you could be saving the world?
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and continued through the sky, threading my way through the New Olympus megastructures towering over the streets. I ducked underneath snapping American flags, breezed past a couple drinking coffee as they sat down on a rattling air conditioning unit atop a roof. The city had a pulse to it, this beating heart I could feel flowing through my veins and arteries, something that quickened as I dipped a little lower, closer to the street, forgetting Emelia for a moment as I high fived a little girl who’d been shouting my name for the past two minutes. She squealed, a grin on her face, before her mom and dad quickly pulled her away and into a waiting car on the street. I smiled and forced myself to go faster, following Em’s trail through the city. I couldn’t fly as close to the street as I liked, because humans didn’t do so well against sudden gusts of wind. Really bad for their health when they get turned into paste.
Some fliers were a lot faster, cleaner, like bullets slicing through the wind. For whatever reason, when my eyes were golden and electricity was buzzing around my body, I would take at least several people along with me. I preferred run ups, just to get me going without hurting anybody by accident, but it made flying through the city slower and a hell of a lot more confusing.
And this time, when I followed her perfume’s sweet scent, I got lost at a buzzing junction of pedestrians and people, with billboards advertising so many products and movies and tv shows that the sudden surge of noise nearly made me dizzy. A whistle caught my attention, then someone yelled my name. I didn’t pay it any attention at first before I saw Emelia high up on the slanted roof tiles just above a billboard. I flew upward, landing beside her with a grunt of slight exhilaration. The space behind the billboard was a mess, with electrical cables, cigarette nubs, beer bottles and dead rodents littering the area, but nobody else was up here with us, and as the sun continued climbing higher into the sky, the heat was only going to get a lot worse. The shade was worth it.
“Tapped out?” I asked her. “Don’t worry, keeping up with me is impossible, anyway.”
Em rolled her eyes, then jumped down from the billboard and onto a thick rusted pipe. “You were taking your sweet time sightseeing, so I figured I shouldn’t embarrass you in front of all your fans. Besides, I’d already gotten to the churro stand two minutes after I passed you, Blondie.”
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I shrugged, sitting on the pipe, sweat dripping from my brow. “Isn’t it illegal for you to be doing this? Like, you know, running around in your old costume, using your powers in public.”
She started walking around the little area, the sound of beeping cars and people lost on us. “Yeah, it is, but from what I’ve learnt working with Americans, any publicity is good publicity.”
I snorted. “I’m sure the government’s gonna love hearing that defense in court.”
She laughed a little. “I’m kidding. But I never stopped wearing this thing, you know. I kept it clean, kept the moths away from it because… Well, it fits, and sometimes I just like wearing it. I’m probably going to get in a hell of a lot of trouble, but I’m technically not doing any vigilante work, too.” Em walked to the edge of the building and jumped off the side. I followed, finding her on the rooftop of the building next to us. When I caught up, hovering, she said, “I had a meeting with Brett about it weeks ago, about bringing back this costume for the series finale of the show.”
I decided to walk alongside her, leaping the gap between buildings when she zapped over, following her footsteps as we gingerly walked along electrical lines thousands of feet above the busy roads below. “Series finale? I thought you guys just got renewed for another three seasons.”
Jump, walk, jog and jump again. “Well, we did,” she said as the buildings we leapt from got shorter and shorter, and the air a little huskier and heavier with smoke. “But that’s why Brett had to run for his meeting. The studio started getting involved with production and things got really messy between us three. Michael figures we should quit entirely; I guess he’s never really liked the spotlight. Finds it embarrassing that he’s running around small towns fighting crime when—”
“—his dad was a former Olympian,” I finished. “And my dad’s only prodigy.”
Emelia nodded. “Grant is… Grant. He’s shaking every hand that’s stuck out toward him. Tonto.” She tapped my shoulder and pointed at a faded billboard for some energy drink in Grant’s hand. Flaming Hot Energy, Just Like Me! “I think he really just doesn’t want to come back here.”
I had a feeling that was the case, and I was probably the biggest reason for that case, but I kept my lips sealed, my jaw clenched. My gut betrayed me, curling into a knot that weighed me down as I took Emelia’s hand and flew us over one of the smaller rivers reaching into the city, but more importantly, closer to Lower Olympus. We walked in silence for a moment, gravel crunching underneath our boots. I didn’t want to dwell on Grant, and seeing Emelia every so often was a punishment that I was getting used to, something I deserved because of what had happened years ago. And as for Michael… He’d never been my biggest fan, Rylee or otherwise. No game there.
I cleared my throat before my mind began drifting and my body tensed up. “So, you guys are thinking of breaking every teenager’s hearts right now and cutting the show just like that?”
“Oh, please,” she said, jumping onto and off old broken pipes. “The only people who really care about Atomville are the executives and whoever likes watching that kind of stuff.”
I smiled, nudging her arm. “Like all those people who ship you and Grant together?”
She made a face. “I learnt what that meant just last month, and no, chica. No way.”
“Oh, come on, Sparky,” I said, spreading my arms as we walked. “He’s been making puppy dog eyes at you ever since you joined in middle school, and I’ll admit, he’s kinda—”
“Make that ‘he’s flaming hot’ joke, Blondie, and I’m gonna punch you in the face.”
Well, whaddya expect me to say when he’s got the ability to control fire?
We stopped on the rooftops of a crumbling apartment complex, one that looked out toward the ocean. The bricks were dull red, dusted with ash from long dead fires and the same concrete powder that lined almost everything in Lower Olympus. Chimney smoke from archaic factories turned the sky slightly hazy and the streets even hazier. How quickly this city could go from power washed streets, music, children chasing each other around large open spaces as their parents watched on, smiling from fancy apartments to grit and grime and the lingering stench of sour decay was beyond me. We startled a commune of homeless people when we landed on the pavement, making their little feral dog lose its mind as it started barking and tugging on its metal collar.
Their reaction was tense, first, watching me with eyes too wide and too frightened for me to feel good about being recognized. One of the older men slid his hand underneath his coat, shielding the people behind him. I couldn’t feel that familiar buzz that resonated from other superhumans coming off him. Probably a side arm, maybe a piece of jagged metal. But he didn’t look like a killer, just a protector. Someone frightened that I was suddenly right there with him, willing to do anything to protect his little haggle of friends even if he knew he couldn’t do it.
That wasn’t the reaction that dad usually got. They clamored around him, pleading for anything, something, maybe for help, sometimes just to be with him for just a few minutes.
These guys, on the other hand, looked like they wanted to see my head on a spike.
“Come on,” Em said, taking me by the elbow. “Let’s go before we start something.”
My eyebrows scrunched together as we crossed the street, passing a mural of flashy graffiti covering a brick wall. “They looked like I was gonna hurt them. Heck, they’re alive ‘cause of me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they’re just so grateful to be eating out of dumpsters because you killed some thug trying to rob someone,” Emelia muttered. “Being a superhero is more than just that.”
“You gave it up before you knew what it was all about,” I said, following her as we entered an alley between a restaurant being done out of someone’s home and a short apartment building.
Emelia shrugged as she pulled down a rusted ladder on the side of the building. I flew beside her as she climbed upward. “I didn’t give up anything, Ry. Being a superhero isn’t like I thought it would be when I was a kid, but I know enough that they don’t usually kill people.”
I groaned as she reached the top apartment, the only one with a lock on its window. The building must have been abandoned, judging by its silence. “Don’t start, we were having fun.”
She pushed open the window and ducked inside, gesturing for me to follow. We entered into a living room that was a lot cleaner than I had last seen it, and didn’t reek of mildew like what the apartments below us stank of. It clicked a few minutes ago where she had been taking me, and the nostalgia of being in this place nearly knocked me off my feet. The three of them… Four, I reminded myself, used to use this place as their little hideout back in high school. Punching bags hung from the ceiling in the corner of the room, and lumpy bean bags surrounded an ancient Playstation that was connected to a chunky old television. Posters hung limp off the walls, and a row of lockers stood near the tiny kitchen area, where Em had cracked open two cans of soda from a mini fridge still humming quietly. Huh, I thought. I figured they got rid of this place years ago.
But it felt lived in, with a singular mug and plate still wet in the sink, and one of the doors down the hallway left slightly open. I continued flying just millimeters off the wooden floor, taking in the newspapers stuck up on one wall, pictures of four very young teenagers in bright costumes saving their high school from some imminent threat of violence. My mouth went a little slack as I stopped in front of the wall, scanning the headlines and articles, the dozens of magazine pieces written about people I considered my friends. Grant was always in the middle of the group, this infectious smile shining, standing right alongside his icy, stone-faced brother. Em was by his side, looking a little starstruck, somehow stuck with a look of camera shyness in whatever situation.
Then there was the fourth member of their team, a girl with braids and an impish smile. A shine in her eyes as she threw a piece sign in nearly every single picture snapped of the team. Her costume had been gray and white and the accents gold. My mouth drew into a thin line the longer I stared at her, but Selina wouldn’t look anywhere else except directly at me. My skin itched and my gut turned, and I only noticed Emelia standing beside me when she offered me the can of soda.
“You kept these old things?” I whispered, trying and failing to break my staring.
Em nodded slowly, went to sip her soda but thought otherwise. She held it in between her hands, fingernails tapping against the metal. “I didn’t exactly have anywhere else to put them.”
I gingerly plucked one off the wall, smiling. “Dino-Man. Holy hell, I remember that.”
“How couldn’t you?” she asked quietly. “Mr. Roberts turned himself into a lizard and tried eating half the class alive. I always kinda hated the name that Grant gave the media, you know.”
“He never really was that great at naming things, was he?”
“The Fantastic Four was taken, which somehow turned out to be big news to him,” she said, shaking her head. “Selina was always a little better. She came up with Atomville before…”
I didn’t let the silence linger. “Do you miss it sometimes?” I asked. “Being a superhero?”
Emelia sighed through her teeth, turning her back to the wall and settling into the purple bean bag. “It’s not as easy as that. Sure, it was fun sneaking out of class, keeping the secrets, but it got old pretty quickly, and my mom kept herself up at night wondering what I was doing. She sacrificed a lot for me to go to that school, and there was her kid, trying to save the freaking city.”
“Well,” I said, “at least you got pretty close to saving the city a couple of times.”
She turned her soda, swishing it in her hand, her eyes distant as she stared down the empty, dimly lit hallway before she answered. “It only took my family getting kidnapped to wake me up.” This time, the silence remained, growing like some invisible cloud that pushed me a little further away from her, but I couldn’t go backward, because a wall of Selina’s piercing eyes would dig into my back the further I tried to go. “I miss it, yeah, but I don’t miss it. That lifestyle… it takes away a lot, and I guess you know that a lot more than most people. I just couldn’t keep giving it more.”
Because if you keep giving it, it’ll just keep taking, I thought. I drank the cold soda, drying my throat. In this business, you had to give your everything, but that was easier said than done.
“Do you…” I sighed, leaving my soda on the table and sitting down on Grant’s red bean bag beside her. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if we were just normal?”
Emelia shook her head. “My life’s been crazy since the day mom pushed me out. Normal to me is all of this.” She waved her hand around the room, at the old and empty costume racks, at me. “Normal is waking up in the morning and knowing your siblings are safe because you didn’t just piss off a couple dozen supervillains living right down the hallway from your entire family.”
Besides the expensive clothes and perfumes and the flawlessness of her silky movements, it was difficult to remember that she was born and raised in the lower east end. No matter how much makeup the painted on her face, no matter the editing and the lighting they used to make her a lot more appealing, shinier, more tantalizing to whatever investor wanted her, a superhuman who used to save the city between lunch period and her next class, the smog and the dirt and the grit that came with living her still lingered in her. That wouldn’t change, I doubt it would ever change.
I wondered if a part of her felt guilty for giving up being a superhero. I got that she wanted her family out of danger, and sure, making sure they lived a lot better now with a guaranteed paycheck must’ve felt like winning the lottery, but her siblings still knew her as Elektra. A superhero. Not just on tv, but in real life, fighting crime and taking names and doing the right thing even if life hadn’t dealt her any kind of cards at all to play with. But I guessed that it wasn’t my decision to make, so I leaned back further in the bean bag, looking her over and into her eyes.
They were the same eyes that saved me before I got my powers. The same eyes that sparkled when she found out my secret. Still Emelia, just a little older, but the light dimmer.
Maybe I could have done something to help her somehow (not ‘cause I cared, but because that’s just what superheroes like me did), but I figured that me being a superhero was some kind of release for her. Some way of still living this lifestyle without giving up everything all over again.
Emelia looked at me, nose wrinkling. “What’s got you looking at me like that?”
I pointed over her shoulder at a newspaper clipping on the wall. “‘New Kid On The Block’,” I read. “My first ever headline. They all thought I was lying about being Zeus’ daughter.”
“I sometimes don’t believe it myself,” she said, laughing a little. “I kept it just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Em stood up, stretching her arms over her head. “If you ever wanted to join the team.”
“What?” I said, watching as she walked down the hallway. “I thought Michael said—”
“He got out-voted three to one,” she called from her bedroom. She returned with a towel around her neck and out of her gear, soaps in hand. “Selina was going to ask, but… Well, yeah.”
But a few things happened, and I guess life got a little too busy to ask questions like that.
“Anyway,” she said, kicking my foot. “Enough reminiscing. I’ll be done in a flash, then I’ll be waiting for you to buy me my churros. There’s a spare change of clothes in Selina’s room.”
I shook my head slowly, the thought of even stepping foot in that room painful as I tugged at the fraying ends of where my costume stopped around the base of my fingers. Old, tired. Burnt and torn. Needed a new suit soon. “I’ll be fine. Besides, who wouldn’t give me, of all people, free churros?”
She snorted and headed to the bathroom. “‘Right, I forgot, because you’re—”
“The greatest superhero ever,” I muttered to the silence as she shut the door. A gust of wind lifted a clipping off the wall, but before it could touch the floor, I had it in the palm of my hand.
I didn’t have the gut to look at her anymore, and I didn’t have the right to be here. I could leave, yes, and a part of me probably felt like I should, but I wasn’t a coward anymore, so I gently pulled down my newspaper clipping and used the fresher tape on it to keep Selina’s mugshot up instead. She was smiling in that, too, even if she had a black eye and a missing canine. I couldn’t help but smile a little as I stepped away from her, feeling her breezy warmth in that carefree, untethered face she made as the cops tried arresting her. Freaking human feelings. I pushed a hand through my hair and left the wall of newspaper clippings, because who liked the news, anyway?
All it really was, was a reminder that I wasn’t the best to ever do it. Not even close.
Hell, there was a locked bedroom door down the hallway that was evidence enough.