At the Forefront
Chapter 04 [https://www.rellawings.com/superluminal/chapternum/chaphead_4.jpg]
“Auntie Goonie, Auntie Goonie!”
Having just arrived home from school, the seven-year-old Leo scampered straight to the kitchen, where he knew he would find his loving aunt cooking up yet another of her trademark vegetarian recipes for their dinner that night.
It was always a delight to try out whatever new meal Leo’s Goonie had whipped up any day. She said it was to test out menu items for her future business, but he didn’t care why, because the food was always yummy!
“Hey now, you know not to run around in the house.” Having found her where he’d expected to find her, Goonie chided Leo when he found her where she’d holed herself up for most of the last few weeks.
“Oh, yeah,” Leo blushed, looking away embarrassed, but not being too put out, he rushed on with a big grin to tell Goonie what happened, “So anyhow at school today, Sam, Dee and me were talking about which of us would make the best hero if we suddenly got powers! Sam was saying he’d make the best hero of all of us because of things like his dad being a police officer cuz he understands more about that part of it. But then I was like, that’s a terrible backstory for a hero, you know? But then, Sam was all like, well, ‘your backstory sucks too’. And then, Dee was like—”
Goonie had been paying half attention at the start of Leo’s usual babbling about whatever was discussed during the latest flame war, what the kids apparently called their discussions, as he and his nerdy friends had been having lunch today.
She was about to correct him, saying, ‘Sam, Dee and I’, but by then Leo had gotten to talking about Sam’s father and she was dumbstruck by the very word, ‘dad.’
A wave of realization and guilt washed over Goonie at the mention of that magic, taboo word.
Leo had been her charge for several years by this point. Neither Goonie nor Quinn had ever shied away from answering any of Leo’s questions, but there had never been many and they’d never really openly talked about what had happened to him or why.
While Goonie was recovering from her shock, Leo was still running at the mouth, “—and then, I was like, nuh-uh, that’s because—"
“Leo.” Goonie simply spoke his name, but the tone must have had something foreboding in it because Leo instantly stopped talking with saucer-like eyes. He didn’t know what it was about, but he was sure he’d heard that tone before. Not from his loving aunt Goonie, but somewhere else. Trying to remember scared him for a reason he didn’t understand. He could only stare at her, drawing back slightly as he shook.
Goonie looked down with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Leo. You did nothing wrong. Not at all. But we’ll have dinner once Quinn gets home and then we’ll need to talk as a family about something important that concerns you. I think it’s about time we talked about your mom and dad, about who they were.”
Dateline - February 2003 - San Isidro, California USA [https://www.rellawings.com/superluminal/datelines/san_isidro-february-2003.png]
Leo Walker was born the son of Albert William Walker, a serious and hardworking man and Yvette Ramses-Walker, a compassionate woman with dreams of becoming a doctor. Both sides of the family had been born and raised in the large and proud historic city of San Isidro, located to the north of San Francisco.
They married for love and were always a happy couple and seldom argued, thus from the outside, they seemed to have created a perfect household.
“Should we eat out again tonight?” Albert suggested, grinning at Yvette, who smiled warmly in return. He’d been ruminating about the subject of what would fill their stomachs that night and his eyes fell on his wife’s stomach, wonderingly. Even if it wasn’t too big yet, it had to be kinda uncomfortable to stand in front of a stove. “So let’s go. After all, you’re eating for two!” He hoisted his young wife into his arms, his grin broadening.
Spinning, he twirled a gleeful Yvette.
“Fufufufufu—” she giggled softly. “Careful, Al! I think Leo’s getting a little sick.”
“Leo?” Albert asked, as he set his glowing wife down on her feet.
Yvette’s smile deepened. “The ultrasound showed that our baby’s a boy!”
Albert blinked and his brow furrowed at the mention of her choice of names for their child before his consternation faded into laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner!? Oh my God! We’re having a bouncing baby boy!” he exclaimed.
“I’m sorry.” Yvette fidgeted and winked. “It was a surprise. I was going to fix my Chicken a la King for you, and I—”
“Don’t worry about it tonight! Oh, but—the temptation of your Chicken a la King—" he mulled over it. “But, hey, why Leo? Why not Albert Junior?”
“Eh—I love your name, but I’d already promised my grandfather that I’d name my first baby after him—our first child turned out to be a boy, so there you go. I-is it okay?” She looked up at her husband through lowered lashes.
“Awwwwwww.” Albert groaned and laughed. “You know I spent all night last night thinking about what we’d name our child. I was thinking about maybe Albert Junior like I said or Yvette, if it was a girl—" He scratched his head.
“Neither of those are very creative, hon—” Yvette chuckled. “It’s touching that you’d name a daughter after me, but Albert, this is very important.”
He grimaced as he thought it over, but his expression quickly turned happy again. “Oh well, let’s think about it while we eat. I’m thinking about going to that steakhouse we love.” He pumped his fist and winked at his blushing wife, who tilted her head slightly.
“I think a salad would be best for us, but that does sound lovely. Let’s go!” Yvette clutched her husband’s arm as Albert escorted her outside.
“You’d know better than me, my future doctor wife.”
Dateline - August 2003 - San Isidro, California USA [https://www.rellawings.com/superluminal/datelines/san_isidro-august-2003.png]
Time passed, and Leo was born into the world.
Secretly, Albert hoped his son would be born with super powers. Miracle children were making the headlines every day, and Albert hoped that his kid would grace the front pages with them. He knew it was a little selfish, but he figured that since he himself was so normal, it’d be a great reflection on him if only he could bring a super into the world.
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But, contrary to Albert’s hopes, the only thing about his son that turned out to be noteworthy was saddening to him; how tiny his child was. It didn’t look like he would grow to be big like his father.
After recovering from the delivery, Yvette soon continued chasing her dream of becoming a doctor, but after more and more financial issues mounted, she found that there was a simple solution: to enter the workforce early. Depending on what she did, it might allow her to spend a bit more time with Leo than her lessons allowed. Because of that, she forwent earning her doctorate and put to use what she’d learned.
In the aftermath of her leaving college, Yvette transferred her medical knowledge to get herself work as a paramedic. Happily, she came to find that working on the street with a partner was more real and far more interesting than her previous dream once seemed. She had always wanted the glamor and mystique of being a doctor, and yet she could now see that there was something just as alluring and amazing about being a medic. Life was funny like that sometimes.
Having decided that she made the most difference right there, on site, she took to her career like a duck to water.
She discovered the best and worst of being a paramedic at the time in San Isidro. Some of the worst situations were when police, firefighters or paramedics abandoned injured people during or after supervillain attacks, all too common in those years, almost no matter what big city you lived in.
During the early years of the new millennium, for whatever reason, villains had been their most active since the Big Boom, back in the fifties. After this year-long confluence of events, the severity of villain-caused incidents, disasters reduced and for a time, there was peace in their bay area.
Yvette was a frontline field medic with a warrior’s spirit. Seeing all the misery and sorrow firsthand, she also witnessed amazing rescues carried out by heroes of all stripes. There were a few types of these, boiling down to the ones who wore costumes and men and women in uniforms.
The time she worked was what everyone worldwide would later term the tail-end of the Age of Miracles and the dawn of the New Normal.
The city of San Isidro was old and dirty, having had its fill of evil people but yet remained a place full of promise and wonder for those willing to grab the future with their own two hands.
Dateline - April 2008 - San Isidro, California USA [https://www.rellawings.com/superluminal/datelines/san_isidiro-april-2008.png]
Her ambulance’s sirens shrieked as Yvette drove herself and her partner, Jack, that fateful day to the scene of a notorious supervillain’s attack.
“Repeat! Warning! It’s Gravitas!” The dispatcher’s voice yelled through the comm system, “All units are to stay back! There’s nothing we can do until Vanguard takes him down!”
Yvette slammed her foot down on the brakes and pulled over, the sirens still wailing. Clenching her fists on the wheel, she furiously asked herself, Is this really all we’re worth? ‘It’s dangerous’!? Isn’t that what we’re here for?
She released her grip and slammed her fists on the steering wheel, causing the horn to go off.
Civilians were milling along the nearby sidewalks as loud noises from up ahead shook the air like thunder. Among the crowd, Yvette saw a mother struggling to carry her child to safety while tears streamed down her face. Their eyes met briefly and Yvette snarled when the mother meekly looked away. Yvette wondered how many children might be trapped here, smack dab in the epicenter of where the murderer, Gravitas, was destroying everything in his reach.
Yvette’s cursing under her breath was interrupted by a ripple that tore through the air, sending pavement and metal scraps flying in all directions along the street.
Having ducked just in time to avoid a chunk of cement the size of her head that came hurling through the windshield of her ambulance, Yvette was peppered by a shower of safety glass fragments.
After feeling nothing pelt her hands, clasped above her head, Yvette looked up and took in the mostly empty frame of her windshield.
Damn it! What happened?!
The chunk of cement had embedded itself in the metal separating the cab from the back. If she hadn’t moved in time, her brain matter would have come along for the ride. As Yvette’s mind was registering what had just happened, a knocking suddenly came at her side window. She turned to lock eyes with an African-American man with a desperate look in his eyes. He screamed out, “Maam, please… my wife!” He was practically hyperventilating.
Switching all her other thoughts off, Yvette nodded, taking a deep breath as she opened the door. “Take me to her. What’s the situation?”
“A chunk of metal flew into her just now! She’s bleeding so much!” He took Yvette’s hands and hauled her up the sidewalk behind her ambulance. “Hurry, please!”
Yvette nodded with a serious expression as she ran along as far as the rear of her ambulance. She pulled her hand free and said, “Wait a minute, my partner's in the back here. Together, we’ll get her loaded up faster.” She looked around and saw that the crowd had all gone prone on the sooty and cold pavement.
SHIT! Why’s that murderer even in San Isidro?!
She reached the rear doors of her ambulance, and when she threw them open, her jaw dropped. The chunk of pavement that had gone through the windshield was now protruding through the wall, opposite which a wet sheen of blood covered the side facing her.
“Jack! OH GOD!” She climbed into the back and checked his pulse.
“OH SHIT!” the husband screamed at the mess that clearly used to be a man as he peered inside. “Maam, please! My wife is dying!” Yvette stared at him for a split second, nodding as she took a labored breath.
“Alright, we’ll stabilize her.” Jack was dead, and she couldn’t control that. What she had control over was choosing to do her job. She leapt from the back after grabbing a kit. She’d get the gurney just as soon as she’d confirmed the woman’s condition.
“Thank you!” Filled with relief and desperation, the husband ran ahead. Yvette slung her kit over her shoulder. Following without taking time to look back, she sprinted to catch up. They didn’t have far to go. A few people groaned as she passed, but they seemed mostly well enough to move.
Backup needs to get here soon—this is a bit much—
When they reached the man’s wife, Yvette crouched and began checking the woman’s breathing and pulse. It was bad. The shrapnel had driven its way through her back. Putting her head to the wife’s chest to listen to the noises inside her body as she drew pained breaths, Yvette winced. “A lung collapsed—and she’s—"
Another explosion, with its accompanying shock wave, shook the air nearby. She turned to see something large next to her ambulance. One edge of the boxy vehicle’s roof had caved in, but overall, it seemed functional, giving Yvette hope it could still run.
Not long after, a man floated downwards from the sky, his cape swirling in the wind.
“Gravitas! Enough of this wanton destruction!” the flying man growled. It was Vanguard himself! Below the superhero, standing by her ambulance, stood an incredibly massive man wearing thick armor, looking like a pile of metal. He stomped towards Vanguard and somewhat away from Yvette’s ambulance. Meanwhile, Vanguard slowly floated down to the pavement to meet the supervillain.
Yvette cursed under her breath. One of these super battles right next to me, of all things—Her eyes turned to the injured wife again, determined to do her part. I have to get her stabilized quickly.
She couldn’t keep her eyes from flicking back to her ambulance again, but there wasn’t much chance she could reclaim and use it right under the nose of a psychotic supervillain. She looked instead at the husband. “Help me lift her. We have to get her away from here, stat.”
With the wife’s collapsed lung taken into consideration, things looked bad enough.
Staring at the super-powered people facing off practically beside them, the husband stood in shock, having forgotten his wife’s condition.
Moving quickly, Yvette grabbed the man’s collar to shake him, snarling quietly in his face, “Damn you! MOVE! Your wife’s life is on the line! Her life’s more important than their fight. Move it!” She lifted one of his wife’s arms over her shoulder and looked meaningfully at him.
Gravitas scoffed and his voice grew louder as he started to monolog, “Hah! There’s nothing a poser like you can do to stop me, Vanguard. You never had the power to deal with me. Where’s the rest of your little league?” At the end, the villain was roaring, chewing off his words. Meanwhile, the husband paled and winced as he did his best to focus on his wife by lifting her free arm over his shoulders.
They ran together, quickly as they could from the fight that was just about to begin between the two titans.
“How many more lives will you take, Gravitas?” That signaled the end of their standoff. Soon after they stopped speaking, there was yet another booming noise and more shock waves that ripped through the air, knocking the fleeing three to the cracked pavement.
It sounded like a colossal punch had just landed, but whose punch was it?
Don’t get distracted, Yvette—move!
Another loud, eardrum shattering explosion went off behind the three. Yvette’s ears squealed as she fought to rise, deafened by the loud noises so close by, but catching some flashing lights in the corner of her eye, she turned her head just in time to see her ambulance rushing through the air towards her—
scenebreak [https://www.rellawings.com/superluminal/scenebreak/wingsbreak.png]