Sheriff Barker was a crack shot. Considering the short distance between him and Max, he should have plugged the seventeen-year-old right between the eyes.

Fortunately, Max was no longer where Barker had fired at.

His heart pounding, Max materialized from the shadow of another tombstone, this one about thirty feet behind the sheriff. He would have teleported all the way home if he could have. Unfortunately, his shadow hopping range was limited.

Fortune had left a thick tree branch on the ground right in front of Max. Finally, a stroke of luck on this disaster of a night.

Max picked the branch up as he slowly and stealthily rose. He intended to rush the sheriff from behind and club him into submission.

An unseen twig snapped like a firecracker under Max’s foot. The sheriff spun toward him, his pistol glinting in the moonlight.

Crap! Max thought again. He dropped his makeshift club like a hot potato.

The pistol roared again. A bullet ricocheted off a tombstone with a sharp crack, chipping it.

Panicked as a buck in the crosshairs of hunters, Max rapidly shadow hopped once . . .

Twice . . .

Three times.

When he finally stopped, he was crouched behind the thick trunk of a pine tree, a long stone’s throw away from the sheriff. Max was at the edge of the woods ringing the cemetery, his hiding spot concealed by the tree trunk, surrounding shrubbery, and the moonlight-obscuring canopy of the above foliage.

Max panted like an overheated locomotive. He tried to force himself to quiet down before the sheriff heard his ragged gasps and plunged into the woods after him. Max’s heart had been pounding hard before, but now it felt like it would punch right out of his chest and hammer into the tree. The sheriff had gotten off his last shot before Max shadow hopped away. A couple of inches to the right, and the bullet that had struck the tombstone would have hit Max instead. He had never been shot at before tonight, and wasn’t a fan of the experience. Winston Churchill had said there was nothing quite so exhilarating as being shot at and missed. Max decided Churchill must’ve been drunk.

Max wasn’t exhilarated. He was terrified.

Peeking through the shrubs, Max saw the sheriff turning in a slow circle, gun at the ready, looking for Max.

“Goddamned unholy freak!” Barker was bellowing into the darkness surrounding him. Between his balding head, big belly, and the otherworldly cast the moonlight gave him, Barker looked like a mutant monster on the warpath—half man, half hog, all rage. “Yellow-bellied coward! Come out and face me like a man!”

No thanks, Max thought. He had the element of surprise on his side before, and yet still couldn’t overpower the sheriff. He had no illusions about his ability to take the big man down now that he was ready for Max.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Max had been a fool to think he could take on the sheriff all by himself. The sheriff was well-known to be as tough as he was corrupt. Max’s Unreal powers were still relatively new, and he had no fight experience other than random schoolyard scraps years ago. If only he were a superhero academy graduate. If he were, he’d be trained to fight and know how to most effectively use his powers. If he were a Hero academy graduate, he had no doubt dealing with the sheriff would be a snap.

But he wasn’t a Hero academy graduate. And it looked like he never would be. Over the past few weeks, responses from every academy he had applied to had trickled in. Goliath Academy, Forge Institute, Arcana University, Odyssey College, Nova Academy, Paragon Proving Grounds . . . all had said no. The rejection letter from The Crucible—his dream school—had been particularly cutting: “Frankly, Mr. Blackwood, you do not appear to be timber from which certified Heroes are hewn.”

The fact he had to look up what hewn meant made Max fear that The Crucible was right.

Being rejected by every Hero academy he had applied to had spurred Max into taking the sheriff on, to prove to himself the academies had been wrong to reject him, and to try to end the sheriff’s reign of terror.

It was an open secret in and around Rebel County that the sheriff was a creep and crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. But Barker’s many crimes were either ignored or swept under the rug by his kin and cronies. His brother was the county administrator, his aunt the local judge, his cousin ran the local paper, and he had lifelong friends sprinkled throughout the state legislature. Barker ran the county like it was his personal kingdom and harem. Anyone who stood up to him was harassed, beaten, framed for crimes they didn’t commit, or run out of the county. Or even killed. Not that anyone had stood up to him in a while—folks who hadn’t had their gumption beaten out of them by Barker or his thug deputies had fled Rebel County years before.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Max wished he had his half-brother’s rifle. With the ranting and raving sheriff spotlighted by the moon the way he was, he would have been an easy target. Every boy around here learned to shoot when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and Max was no different. With Ben’s gun, Max could have taken Barker down just as easily as he had that buck last year.

But Max hadn’t brought Ben’s gun. He had planned to scare the sheriff straight, not kill him. But with the sheriff on the warpath and Max’s insides quivering, he wished he had the comforting presence of the rifle.

Not only did he not have a gun, he didn’t even have the pepper spray he’d used on the sheriff. He must’ve dropped it in the car before shadow hopping. The garrote was also in the car. The only weapon remaining in Max’s makeshift utility belt was barely a weapon at all—the Swiss Army knife his father had gifted him on his thirteenth birthday. Max clearly had some screws loose for being dumb enough to come out here to brace the sheriff; maybe he should use the knife’s screwdriver to screw his sanity back into place.

Max released the shrub he was peering through and leaned back, about to let a shadow swallow him. He’d shadow hop his way back home while Barker screamed and cursed himself hoarse. Giving Barker laryngitis hadn’t been tonight’s objective, but it would have to do.

Max hesitated as he was about to dive back into the shadow realm.

Would Knight Templar run from an enemy? Would Brainstorm? Assegai, Mime, or Magnificent Man? Would any of the certified Heroes Max admired cut and run? Even if they were outmatched by an opponent?

No! Max decided. Especially if them running would put an innocent person at risk. The sheriff would assume Millie knew the masked man who had attacked him; he would think Millie had put the masked man up to the assault. If Max ran away, he had no doubt the first thing the sheriff would do would be to go find Millie. He was both drunk and mad. A bad combination. He’d hurt her. Maybe kill her. It was bad enough he’d been blackmailing her for weeks, threatening to tell her probation officer the sheriff had caught her smoking weed. Millie was looking at serious prison time for an earlier marijuana distribution conviction if her probation got violated. Barker would keep his mouth shut about Millie’s weed smoking, he had told her, if Millie opened hers. Millie had tearfully confessed her late-night trysts with the married sheriff to her fellow waitress during a smoke break in the alley behind the bar where they worked. Unbeknownst to them, Max had been crouched in a bin, dumpster-diving for items he could jury-rig into superhero equipment, able to hear every word Millie said. Including the fact Barker got off on hurting her during their encounters. Max barely knew Millie—she was five years older and ran in different circles than he—but she was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve Barker’s abuse. No one did.

Barker’s voice continued to fill the night air like the braying of a rabid dog.

If Barker couldn’t find the man who had attacked him, Max was certain Barker would take his anger and frustration out on Millie. But if Max confronted the sheriff again and was beaten to a pulp or killed by the lawman, maybe that would satisfy Barker’s bloodlust and take the heat off of Millie.

Max peered through the bushes again at Barker, feeling his resolve harden with each passing second. Anger ignited in his belly like gasoline catching fire.

If he ran away from some redneck sheriff armed with only a stupid gun, how would he ever be able to handle Villains with laser vision, super strength, the ability to manipulate probability, or any of the other countless Unreal abilities? Max fleeing would prove The Crucible, Goliath Academy, and the others right—that he didn’t have what it took to be a Hero.

Besides, if he confronted the sheriff again, beat him into submission, and scared him into leaving Millie alone and changing his ways, maybe the academies would reconsider his application. Sure, Max using his powers despite not being a certified Hero was a violation of the Unreal Accords, but the academies had a history of overlooking such violations when an uncertified Unreal demonstrated the potential to be a great Hero. Knight Templar hadn’t been a certified Hero when he saved Paris from a rogue AI-controlled robot army, but him illegally using his powers hadn’t stopped The Crucible from admitting and training him. Knight Templar was now the academy’s most famous alumnus, and he featured prominently on the school’s website and promotional material.

Max shifted in the darkness, steeling himself for the fight.

Despite his internal pep talk, he knew it more likely that the sheriff would subdue him than vice versa. And the sheriff wouldn’t stop at subduing Max—Barker would kill him. Max attacking him again was tantamount to suicide by cop.

Max realized he didn’t care. The alternative was worse: Tucking his tail between his legs and returning to the crappy trailer he shared with his drug-addled half-brother. Not getting into superhero school. Having to get annual Agent X injections to suppress his Unreal powers since he was not a certified Hero.

Max’s powers weren’t much compared to Heroes like Knight Templar or Magnificent Man. But they had given him the first taste of power he’d had in his entire life. The first taste of being special. He wasn’t willing to give them up. He had no interest in living his entire life as a nobody from a nothing town. Some fates were worse than death.

Besides, with his Dad dead, Max didn’t have anyone to live for. Or who’d miss him when he was gone. He didn’t know where his mother was as she abandoned both him and his Dad shortly after giving birth. Ben couldn’t stand him, and the feeling was mutual. The half-brothers only lived together because neither could afford a place on his own.

Here goes nothing, Max thought grimly. If the sheriff killed him, he hoped the lawman made it quick.

He was about to hop out of the shadows and back into the fire when a hand slid from behind him.

It covered his nose and mouth in a vise-like grip, cutting off Max’s air supply.