"So, just to be clear. You're not about to brush me off with a 'go away sister. It's late.' nonsense. That window was not 'always open' and 'missing a screen' or something. And you're not about to tell me 'you just opened it very very quietly' either."
Kaykes' sat in Jimmy's office chair, one leg loosely crossed over the other, her eyes bright and a single slim finger leveled at his chest in judgement.
"I'm also not about to hear some inane story like some night time romance garbage. I think I'd know if my brother was talking to any girls anyway."
"... Now that's just insulting."
His sister snorted.
"I'll have you know I do have a date lined up!"
"Oh yea? With who?"
"Vicky M."
Kaykes choked. "You? Vicky M? Not in this life time. HA!"
Jimmy scowled and folded his arms. Then he decided, 'You know what? I don't actually have to deal with this!' He was bruised and sore. He felt like he'd been hit by a truck — something he actively saw his sister taking note of with a raised eyebrow — and he was tired. "Not tonig —"
"Ah ah!" His sister raised her finger again. "See point number one."
"... What are you even hoping to hear? Maybe I was jus—"
"See point number three."
Jimmy glared at her. "Nothing...weird" — 'what a pleasantly ambiguous word' — "happened with the —"
"Aaannd point number two."
Jimmy folded his arms. "Or what?" He ground out.
"Excuse me?" His sister squinted at him as if he'd hit one too many stairs on the way down from Buck's bedroom and it was showing. "Or I'll do the same thing sister's have done since the dawn of time.... Tell Mom."
"Don't. You. Dare."
"So. Spill." His sister's arms folded archly over her chest.
Pure truculence made him fold his arms even harder and scowl at his sister.
"Oh come on. We'll start with something easy. You've got powers now. Right?" Kaykes waggled her eyebrows. "Riiiight?"
Jimmy stared at her.
"What?"
"Aren't you supposed to be scared of me now."
"Please. You're still my brother. You're not going to turn into a murderous power-lunatic overnight. It's bound to take at least several iteration with the law before that happens. And I'll be sure to un-sister you long before then. So? What can you do? Is it something crazy like total matter annihilation? But also spicy like, 'only in the light of the moon', or some BS?"
"What? What kind of power only destroys by moonlight?"
"I dunno." His sister shrugged nonchalantly as if this actually was a topic of conversation that she regularly engaged in. She put her hands behind her head and leaned back. "But there are some weird ones. Back, like, two-ish years ago someone started this Rate-My-Power nonsense. For some reason its still going strong despite — or I should say — especially with all the bad press around Super's recently."
Jimmy was blinking. Hard. "Re—really?"
"Yeup. Funniest one I ever saw was this one guy who got super strong, super fast and with super reflexes under the influence of caffeine. I thought that one was a hoax, but then he posted video of him chugging an E-drink and then busting a cinder-block with his index finger. He was Australian, he did that super cool accent all super fast. He was... super funny too." Kaykes grinned toothily.
"Spiciest was this one guy who got specter-of-the night powers from sex. He posted videos too — but... ah." Kaykes coughed. "He might have just been doing that for cash.... Most normal was the dickhead girl in Germany who can make hard-light constructs with her brain. And they..." His sister shook her head with a twist on her lips. "Do whatever the hell she wants them to. Like shoot hard-light missiles and stuff. So, what are you, bro?"
"Uhhh.... I'm still having a hard time believing you spend so much time thinking about Supers. Do you have something to tell me?" He raised both eyebrows. Both because he couldn't do that thing his sister was doing with just the eyebrow singular. And he waited several beats because he was actually interested, and dare he say, slightly hopeful?
"Nope." She made the 'P' sound pop with her lips. "But you're deflecting." She cocked her eyebrow again. "Iiiis it spicy?"
Jimmy felt himself go pink. "No!"
"Ahah!"
Jimmy rolled his eyes. But part of him, he found was actually considering it.
So after a moment longer of struggling with himself. Of standing in his room covered in bruises, with pockets bulging with cards containing another person's room. With five dates in the bag with Vicky M. With his first fight... ever. With... 'Why not'? He thought.
And so he applied his hammer one more time, and —
His sister yelped as Jimmy's chair disappeared out from underneath her, and her butt thudded to the floor.
Then she broke into cackles. "Oh, yea. This is more like it!"
And she sprang onto his bed as Jimmy rematerialized it back beneath himself and sank into its cushioned coziness.
"It was a contract." He started.
----------------------------------------
When Jimmy's alarm went off the next morning, he just lay there blinking up at the ceiling.
And then he grinned a bit.
His sister... was pretty cool he thought.
They'ed stayed up way too long talking, and they'd only stopped when their mother had barged in asking why they were both still up.
"I can't believe that half the stuff that happened last night actually happened." He told the sliver of golden sunlight painting a strip across his ceiling. And in the light of the rising sun, he really couldn't. Making a deal with the most beautiful girl in junior year. Break in to Buck-the-quarterbacks house. Getting beaten up by Buck-the-quarterback... Beating up Buck-the-quarterback. Sharing his power with his sister....
"Thaaat probably makes me the world's biggest id—"
Jimmy threw up a bit in his mouth.
'Aaaand, there is that Itch,' he thought. 'Coming in clutch.' Making sure he didn't break any STUPID — he thought that thought really hard — rules. "Kind of cute though, that you stop me from calling myself an idiot," He said to the Itch. 'Not that you make an ounce of sense'.
Kaykes was of the opinion that the Itch did in fact put him on the spicy spectrum.
"You've got deep, dark part of yourself which hungers, Jimmy." She'd said with a dramatic growl at the end. "Trust me. There's spice."
He'd thrown a pillow at her.
Jimmy smirked, remembering.
It had actually felt good to talk to someone about it. About all of it, though they hadn't actually gotten that far. Not when you took into account the three months he'd had his powers for and all the jobs and power testing that he'd done since then.
His sister had wanted to get right into that too, but he'd insisted that they wait for the weekend.
"It's not happening tonight, Kaykes. And we sure as hell aren't doing it with Mom home. Mom'ed flip. You heard her. She was all 'Supers aren't cool. They're going to tear apart the world'. And when Dad gets back... he might flip." Jimmy amended after a moment. "At any rate, they'd probably want me tell the cops."
"Why don't you?"
He'd... glossed over that. And distracted her by zapping her shoes off her feet. He didn't think that actually worked, but she'd dropped it. For now.
Though she did note "It's kind of strange, the deal with the cards. You don't even play!"
'It is kind of foolish'. He thought. Then he said it aloud. Huh.
Foolish — that's another one that works. Jimmy thought. "I am foolish!" Yup. Worked. "I am a fool!" Jimmy blinked. Annnnddddd that also worked. 'It's official folks! I'm a cosmos certified fool!' Or was it Itch certified? 'Whatever Itch, You do Stupid things for dates!'
The Itch gave a sort of rumble in the back of Jimmy's head. Sort of a... 'Speaking of Dates, Jimmy.'
Jimmy's eyes widened "Cra—!" He'd been so taken up with his sister last night that he'd forgotten....
He scrambled out of bed, and pawed through his jeans pockets until the correct card — The Guy's Phone for Illicit Dealings — turned up and he un-carded it hurriedly.
"Fudge. Fudge. Fudge...." It took thirty seconds for it to update fully — a process it always went through after a stint as a card — and then...
Text Message.
Text Message.
Text Message. Text Message. Text Message....
Jimmy scrolled down hurriedly. They were all from Vicky.
[10:05 PM (VM)] Hey Guy! Any updates?
[10:07 PM (VM)] Did you manage to get the "stuff" [smiley]?
[11:01 PM (VM)] I'm just letting you know that my friend just told me that the game was canceled. I don't know if that changes anything...
[11:01 PM (VM)] Apparently because of the Enderson thing.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
[11:02 PM (VM)] I swear I didn't know.
[11:02 PM (VM)] Were you able to get it anyway though?
There were no smileys after these ones.
[12:04 PM (VM)] Ok. It's 12 now. I'm freaking out here. can you let me know?
Jimmy scrolled to the bottom. The last one just said.
[01:00 AM (VM)] HEY! Guy!
She'd tried to call him too. If he'd kept this phone out, it would have been blowing up all night. It sounded like she'd been having a heart attack!
"Fudge!" He said one more time, and scripted out a quick text.
[6:14 AM (TG)] I got the drive. I'll pass it off later today.
The reply came so fast that Jimmy wondered if Vicky hadn't slept a wink and had instead been glued to her phone the entire time.
[6:14 AM (VM)] Oh thank fuck. What took you so long?
Jimmy felt heat creeping over his face.
[6:14 AM (VM)] To get back to me I mean. Sorry. That sounded worse than I meant it. I'm really thankful.
[6:14 AM (VM)] Sorry. I've just been freaking out here.
And the heat crept back down. A bit.
[6:14 AM (VM)] Sooo... You got it? How did it go? Is it the right one?!
The heat came back and Jimmy glared at the screen in his hand hard enough that he was certain Vicky may have felt the force of his glare through the text-being-written indicator. He deleted the message he was writing hurriedly. Then the next one....
And then his No Shit - taki alarm went off. Fudge! and Jimmy hammered out.
[6:16 AM (TG)] You tell me. It went.
Then he re-carded it and stumbled into sweats... and groaned as his entire body protested.
Yup. Today was definitely a sweats day.
----------------------------------------
He stumbled into the bathroom just as his sister stumbled out and they shared a — a look.
An — I-know-things-about-you look which had definitely not been there before last night.
The look slowly transformed as she looked at him.
His sister was short, with short, black, chin-length hair that his friend Nate, insisted came straight out of a manga, and today she was wearing jeans, a purple sweatshirt, and a dawning incredulous expression.
"What?" Jimmy insisted after it became ridiculous.
In response, Kaykes, raised her eyebrow — just the single one which Jimmy still thought was a super power all by itself — and beckoned him in to the bathroom.
"If Mom sees you," Kaykes hissed, "She's going to lose it!"
She shut the door behind him — Jimmy eyed her — but then he eyed himself twice as hard in the mirror and forgot about his sister.
'Oof.' He thought. 'That hurts just looking at it all' He flexed his side and watched in fascination as the red and blue patches down his side flexed and balled.
It — wasn't impressive or anything.
Vicky had unfortunately been right when she'd described him as a stick. It also meant that there hadn't been any padding when he'd hit every —
"It looks like you hit every stair on the way down." His sister commented wonderingly. "Maybe I can count them. One. Two..."
"Shut up!" Jimmy flexed again and watched the patches where Buck had punched him shift painfully. Ugh....
"Stop flexing!" His sister snarked. "You don't even have the abs for it. You're all, like, bone and... actually just bone. But dude." Kaykes eyed him through the mirror. "Your wearing long sleeves today. Its all down your arms too. And..." She peered hard at his neck. "Dude." She hissed again. "You've got to get better at this! Was he choking you?!"
'That — that he was' Jimmy fingered the light, but very iconic markings on his neck. "Ugh. I remember that...."
"Skip out of gym class today. And for god's sake wear a turtle-neck. No one's going to believe you got those marks the normal way."
Jimmy paused in tenderly poking at his neck. "And what, is the normal way?"
His little sister rolled her eyes. "I'll tell you when you're older."
"Mm-ok. Well, in the meantime..." He eyed her.
"What?"
"... Get out!" Jimmy pushed her out the door eliciting a squawk.
He sighed and went back to checking himself out in the mirror.
Angry blue and red splotches ran all the way down his front and over his left bicep too, along with areas of raised skin, where it'd been chaffed through his duster jacket. The coloration ran all the way around his ribs, and when he turned around and craned his neck, it extended passed where he could see out of the corner of his eye.
He sighed. His sister was right. He did have to get better at this.
He finished brushing his teeth just as his Your-really cutting-it-close alarm went off — 'Fudge' — and he scrambled out of the bathroom, checking both way's for his mother, before hightailing it to his bedroom for that turtleneck.
He went through his cards for the day. The Itch started to get antsy when he didn't have at least some on him at all times, and, Jimmy noticed, that he had started to agree.
Three Sticks of Bludgeoning — 'Sure, why not?' He thought.
Brick... for Brick Things. Of course, practically a staple of his armament these days. No more complicated reason why.
Extra pens, Closed Mirrored Doors, Mattress — Heavily Used, Random Cellphone 2, Random Cellphone 3... Random Cellphones 4 through eight he left behind — Rusted Bike Chain, and Rusted Bolt Cutter all made it into his pocket.
Shades... actually those were reporting themselves as Smudged Glasses of Lesser Clarity today for some reason. The names changed every once in a while.
Stun Stick of Power! He stared at that one for a moment too. Yup. That was an exclamation mark at the end. Then he stuffed it into his pocket as well with a grin. That was definitely coming with! Exclamation mark and all!
From the humming in the back of his head, the Itch approved.
Jimmy was left staring at the veritable mound of other cards left scattered on the floor, and the few, hanging in mid-air over his bed.
The pile, he hesitated to call it a horde had grown substantially since his powers had snuck up on him, and it had nearly doubled during his excursion last night.
The Itch was happy about it, at least. He felt it low-key purring every time he looked at them all, like a dragon stretched out and eyeing its pile of gold. But, really though....
"What am I gonna do with it all?"
The Itch didn't like that question.
Jimmy could physically feel it like a roll of unease which started in his throat and went all the way down through his stomach down to his toes, leaving them twitching as if he was getting ready for sudden flight.
"Of course, I'm gonna keep them." He hissed. And the Itch subsided again.
He sighed. And then his last alarm — the DUDE-GET-OUT! alarm — went off, and Jimmy snatched another handful of cards, banished the rest under his matress and catapulted downstairs.
"Gotta go Mom! Bye!" He called as dashed out the door.
"Take your sister!"
He didn't. But his sister caught up on her bike a minute later.
She eyed him sideways as they cycled.
"Don't think I've forgotten the deal." She said. "Your life in the shadows is over, brother. I want the rest of the story tonight!"
"What do you want to know? I already told you about my" — he switch 'powers' to "condition" at the last moment. Paranoia never hurt anyone. "Condition. I told you about the job.... What else do you want?"
"You've got hidden depths, bro. I've just poked at the surface last night. Still don't get why your doing these jobs in the first place, or how your condition" — Kaykes took both hands off her handle bars purely so she could effectively mime the air-quotes — "really works. Or why you're heading to school so early."
"If I can get to school early enough, I can get to Vicky's locker before too many people are around. I want to dust my hands of this contract asap and get my pay."
'And my pay'. A darker voice said inside him.
Something must have shown up on his face, because his sister gave him a long sidelong glance over her handle bars.
"Definitely spicy," she said after a moment of tangible judgement. "You know, Vicky M isn't really going to go on a date with you right? Much less five? She's cheer captain, smoking hot and so far out of your league that even if you weren't shady as fuck, she'd have to catch glimpses of you in the bullpen with a telescope. Girls like her don't go on dates with dorks like you. You know that, right?"
The Itch didn't know that.
And, it didn't like that one eensy weensy bit.
----------------------------------------
Nate greeted him with a painful slap on the shoulder and a "Hey dude!"
Jimmy grumbled and glared at him from where his head had been laying on his folded arms. Then he checked the clock, then the door.
"Hey!" he mumbled after a moment. And tried to dial up the intensity of his glare to discourage further talking. This was physics class, and Jimmy was determined not to speak a peep for the duration.
Nate was immune, and in fact his round, and red haired face was set in an excited grin. Making him doubly so.
"Didn't you hear? They caught the bastard?"
Jimmy blinked at that, aaaand doubled down on his silence."
"Amaterasu!" Nate crowed, throwing his backpack next to Jimmy and plopping down in the adjacent seat. "That's what their calling him. For — well, obvious reasons. And he is a dude, it turns out. And he went to school there. They were —"
"I hardly think the word caught is applicable here, Nick."
The voice was acerbic and held enough casual condescension that Jimmy felt a bit belittled by proximity.
Nate glared. "It's Nate. Or Nathan, you know."
The girl flicked her red curls dismissively and sat up, somehow, even straighter than she had been.
Patricia Collins, never slouched. Jimmy didn't even think he had ever even seen her hunch her shoulders in all the time she'd been in his grade and —
"This means she likes me. I'm telling you, she's my future wife!" Nate whispered in his ear.
"The feds tried to arrest the boy at his house," Patricia continued with even more derision in her voice. "Which went about as well as anyone could have imagined. So now there are two flaming craters in Enderson instead of one. More people are crisped. And we still don't even know why? Oh. And the day I marry you Ned is the day I've discarded the last eligible guy on planet earth. Like your silent boyfriend for instance."
Nate face reddened. But he grinned unabashedly through it all the same — which Jimmy thought was actually quite impressive.
"You'll see." Nate said. "I've got hidden charm. You wont be able to resist for much longer. Back me up here, Jim."
Jimmy shot him a wide eyed look and didn't say anything again, while Patricia made gagging motions with her throat.
"Who cares why Amaterasu burned down a school. How many good reasons could their be?" Billy Winters drawled from where he was sprawled over three seats in the front row. "My view? Fuck him! They should have sniped his ass from a mile away when they tracked him down."
"Pretty sure sniping asses is counter due process." Nate insisted. "You can't go sniping American citize —"
"Most American's can't level a school building!" Billy broke in. "My dad's a Sherif's dep. And he says we don't have anything like, like... what he can do. Stuff's like napalm. It's thousands of degrees hot and. It. Doesn't. Go. Out! Amaterasu can shoot the stuff from his damn hands. How the hell do normal cops bring him in the normal way?" Billy had risen a bit from his seat and he was spearing Nate with a glare.
"Well, what about Heroes, you know?" Nate looked around hopefully.
Mico Lin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Tom Biltmore and Sashaya Springrose looked at each other and Patricia cocked her head.
"Other Supers with abilities could step up and you know... Citizen arrest their asses."
"You. Are still on that fantasy shit." Billy stated with finality. "Thats literally never happened. Not even when Ice Age in the UK straight up tracked down a BBC news anchor and declared himself national enemy number one right before officially debuting his name! That would have been an excellent time for a Superhero to show up. Nada. What we've got instead are Super gangs. And Super Felons and Super massacres. And Super warlords if you're counting Sudan.... I can go on!" Billy sat back. "And even if a Superhero showed up. How'ed you even control them! Huh?"
"Well... uh." Nate searched around the faces as people started trickling in. "It's not like we've been giving Supers much reason to... step in. C'mon, Jimmy you were telling me this."
Jimmy shot Nate a panicked look and tried to sink lower in his seat.
It didn't work.
"Yea Jimmy, what were you saying?" Billy asked. His smirk was unfriendly.
Jimmy glared at Nate, which didn't work ostensibly because he'd been glaring at Nate since Nate had sat down, and glanced hard at the clock willing the minute hand to move. Five minutes until class started. Fudge!
"I — I didn't say anything." Jimmy muttered and eyed the door. 'Thank you Nate. Truly.'
"No. No, I want to hear this." Billy could be dogged. "Something about no reason for a good guy Super to step up?"
Jimmy sighed and eyed the door again. 'Just stay closed another minute...' He thought. 'I'll keep it short'. "Well, it's like you said," Jimmy responded grudgingly. "How are you going to control them if someone did show up? How does tha —"
And the door did open and Vicky walked in.
Her auburn hair was done up with clips pinning her bangs behind her ears and the rest flowed behind her as if there was a breeze which blew just for the effect. She wore a crop top and jean shorts which hugged her hips and there was a kick to her step that Jimmy hadn't noticed the other day.
Literally. She was wearing boots. The kind which Jimmy normally associated with cowboys, bandannas and double six-shooters on either hip. Her heels clicked appealingly as she stepped and there was a dazzling grin on her face which somehow managed to mix elation with a glimmer of curiosity at the edges of her lips.
And the effect her entrance had on Jimmy was immediate. And embarrassing.
His voice cracked, and he blushed from the tips of his ears to below his turtle neck.
"What are we talking about? Superheroes?" She asked brightly, looking around.
One of her friends who had walked in with her, nudged Vicky in the side smirking and tipped her head slightly in Jimmy direction.
Vicky's eyes flickered towards him for a moment and then immediately dismissed him. Jimmy died a second time.
And then Billy, who'd been watching all of this with great interest sat up and said. "Jimmy, was just about to regale us with why he thinks its ok for Supers to not step in to stop massacres. Tell us Jimmy!"
And then all eyes, including Vicky's and all five pairs from her posy who had followed her in landed on Jimmy and pinned him into his seat.
The only good part about what happened next, Jimmy thought as the bell rang, and Nate patted his shoulder consolingly, was that throughout the totality of the word vomit he had engaged in, at no time had his voice at all sounded like his own. 'Like The Guy's at the park.'
And Vicky? '... I never forget a voice.' Vicky? 'Faces whatever. But voices....'
Jimmy saw not even a millisecond of recognition in her eyes.
At least that went right, Jimmy thought darkly as he put his head back down. It was still burning.
And then, his — The Guy's Phone for Illicit Dealings which was notably not carded the way it was supposed to be vibrated against his leg.
It read simply.
[8:01 AM (VM)] Hey Guy! When are we having that date?