1) The Corpse Ride.
People have been Triggering and getting superpowers ever since the planets aligned back in the eighties.
No one is exactly sure why.
To be fair, it wasn’t just humans, anything with a sufficiently advanced brain can Trigger, but animals tend to either be B or G class, Brutes and Geniuses, and even then fairly low ranked. When it comes to superpowers, it takes a human's imagination to get the weird ones.
Even with that, whale hunting isn’t a thing anymore, and all the tuna is dolphin free.
In any case, I’ve lived my whole life with super powered people all around me. I had even met and sometimes associated with a few of them with lower ranked power levels, the 1s, and a few 2s.
But for the big fights between the higher ranks, the Capes, I was at best mostly like everyone else. I had seen it on the news and occasionally the clean up of all the destruction left behind.
That changed the day a newly triggered Super that ended up being called Coaltrain went on a rampage against the E-normous corporate headquarters in retaliation for one of their subsidiaries lack of adherence to safety regulations which led to his triggering, and the deaths of several of his co-workers.
It was the day the young Superhero Shimmer, the famous daughter of two prominent Supers, died.
For about half a minute.
I was in the second ring, the band of curved city blocks which was what amounted to downtown for Concentric city. After getting hard copies of the paperwork for paying off the mortgage on the family homestead I was just heading out of the Sullivan building when Shimmer came flying backwards into Imhotep plaza. Smashing into the dais the statue of the ancient Egyptian architect that stood on the dais in middle of the fountain.
Even as she struggled to her feet, a figure trailing streamers of black smoke came down on her with both feet after leaping into the plaza, driving her deeper into the wreckage.
Then her attacker lifted a broken chunk of the concrete and slammed it down onto her. A section of rebar sticking out of it ended up going right through her chest. I could tell because when he lifted the chunk back up, her body came with it with the bloody bar coming right out of the center of her back.
Then he dropped her into the fountain with a splash.
She died right then.
I could tell. That was the basis of my own power. To sense the dead all around me.
“No…” She was seventeen. One of the first of the second generation of Supers who had inherited both of her parent's powers. A perky, good natured teenager who talked about wanting to help people when she had been interviewed. And now she was just another corpse, lying there underneath the water of the fountain. Her blood slowly spreading out in a cloud of red.
Her killer turned around to face off against the Rank 4 Alter T-Rex as the dinosaur shaped shifter hero arrived and roared at the smoking man. I could see the killer's white glowing eyes through the smoke that had built up around his body in the short time he had stood there. But I was still focused on the recently dead girl at his feet.
Maybe just recently dead enough.
I had never been able to pull this off the few times I had tried. Sitting a vigil by someone's bedside in the hospital meant that their bodies had been too worn by age or illness for this to work.
A nearby flowerbed gave me a spot to throw myself down out of view. To anyone looking on I was just another bystander looking for cover. Which I was, dying the first time had been enough for me.
It had hurt, a lot, but it had also been enough for me to Trigger.
I left my body behind and got inside of Shimmer's.
Yes. I got inside of a teenage girl’s body. Don’t make it weird.
I had the power to sense the dead, to send my consciousness inside of them, and the strength to make them get up and move around.
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And most importantly, to heal them enough that they didn’t fall apart on me once I got them moving.
In my own body, I had some of that strength and regeneration. A Brute 2 and Regenerator 2. I was registered as S2, with S for being a multi-powered Super as I had two of my powers documented. I didn't tell anyone that I was Weird 3 for having a power that didn’t really fit any of the other categories.
Which to be fair was pretty arbitrary, but most people fit one of the broad categories. Brutes, Minds, Geniuses, Formers, Alters. There was some talk of a Z for people with undead powers, but mainly as a joke, there weren't all that many of us.
Shimmer was a Force 4, Brute 3. Not quite up to her parent who were rated as 5s, but the people who were born with powers rather than being Triggered tended to get stronger with age. None of them were old enough to say for sure how strong they could get, only that they slowed down with age.
I had never taken over the body of another super. Normally I went up to a Brute 3 and Regenerator 3, in a dead person's body which is where my powers came into their full strength.
But in Shimmer's body.
Brute 5, to Coaltrain’s Brute 4.
The rating systems went with 2 being twice as strong as 1, and then each rank also being twice strong as the one below. Brute 4 was eight times as strong as a 1.
5 was sixteen. Which was a big step up from a Brute 4. As the smoking man found out when I reached out with Shimmer’s cold dead hand and wrapped her dainty little fingers around his ankle, or as least halfway around it. Then I had her squeeze.
Something solid inside of the killer’s leg gave way with a crack. Coaltrain let out a howl like a steam engine and tried to pull away from Shimmer’s corpse, only to end up pulling her out from underneath the chunk of concrete.
This also pulled the rebar from her corpse, but with her heart stopped not all that much blood was coming out and I focused the regeneration on sealing the hole. But now that she was free, I had her sit up from out of the water, then reach up to grab a hold of the front of Coaltrain's pants. Getting a good grip onto his belt let me start pulling Shimmer's corpse up the front of his body.
In trying to get away from her, all he accomplished was to fall over backwards with a yell and Shimmer’s body sprawled over his legs. “No, you’re dead!”
As I had Shimmer pull herself up his body, I locked eyes with him and let the water flow out of her lungs enough to gurgle out, “Brains…”
Those freaky white eyes went wide, and a voice called out hesitantly “...Emma?”
Looking to the side I saw the skinny redhead T-Rex in his human form standing by the fountain with a horrified look.
At the same time, I felt a heartbeat and a murky stirring in my thoughts as someone occupying the same brain as me began to wake up.
Oh good, it worked.
As long as the brain isn’t too far gone, I can regenerate a recently dead person enough to get them back to life. The only problem was keeping them from kicking me out before they regenerated enough to stay alive.
Which is how I failed the first two times I tried this.
Waking up in the middle of a fight with someone else in your head doesn't normally put people in the right kind of mood to listen to explanations.
Shimmer’s hands under my control yanked the smoking man up to his knees before beginning to smash his face into the edge of the fountain repeatedly as the cement cracked and crumbled underneath his face. Meanwhile, inside Shimmer's mind, I noticed a sense of alarm.
With my inside voice I tried to keep her from giving me the boot, [ Calm down girl, I can only heal you while I’m inside you and you still got a hole in your heart right now. Just take it easy and let me stay in the driver's seat. ]
At first, she seemed confused, but it rapidly turned to concern. [ What...? Inside? ]
[ Not in a weird way. I just had to take control of your body to share my regeneration power with you. But I have to stay in control for it to keep working. I can only help you if you can trust me. ]
There was a sense of razor sharp assessment before she got all bossy. [ First, stop trying to kill this guy. Second, reassure T-Rex that I’m going to be okay. And that it’s someone else speaking. I don’t lie and neither will you while you’re… with me. ]
I had Shimmer’s hands lift the smoking man's head up to check on him. He looked like he would be down for a while. Then I had her stand up and pull the guy out of the fountain enough to drape him over the outer rim to get his face well out of the water. "All good T-Rex. Once I've finished healing Shimmer up so her heart can beat on its own, I'll be out of her. Oh, and she’s good with it, just a little freaked out.”
The slim boy looked bemused. “OK, who am I talking to then?”
Hmmm… I had thought of a lot of superhero names back when I was a kid. But Corpse Commando had been the best of them and I had outgrew that a bit. “Mort, just call me Mort. Shimmer is going to be pretty hungry after her body gets healed up, and it’s harder to do if I keep moving her around. So I’m going to go sit her down for a while. Take care of this guy, okay?”
He gave me a narrow eyed look. “You stay where I can see you. I don’t want you doing going anywhere and doing anything with her body while…”
I threw up Shimmer’s hands in protest while feeling the girl's embarrassment. “No, no, nothing like that. Don’t make this awkward for both of us.”
I circled around about a quarter of the fountain and sat down on the edge when Shimmer started talking to me. [ It’s really difficult just letting someone else move me around, not that I want to complain, but is this going to take much longer? And can you please not sit like that. ]
I straightened up from my half slumped over in a legs spread wide position and crossed them at the knees. [ Sorry, I got kicked out immediately the few times I tried to pull this off before. But you were knocked out and then died so we had a chance to talk before you woke up enough to freak out. ]
She started to freak out. [ I was dead! ] But oddly enough I still didn’t get the boot.
[ Yeah. And you are healed up enough to stay that way, but if you can stand having me here for a bit longer you won’t have to spend a week in bed recovering. ]
The panicked feeling faded away, mostly. [ ...I’m alright for now. But how come I’ve never heard of you? I mean, thanks for saving my life. But couldn’t you have been helping a lot of other people too? ]
I shrugged her shoulders and lifted one of her hands to hold back the first few people who had come out of hiding to try to talk to her. “Give us a moment folks, she is still recovering.”
[ To answer your question, no. Most people die for a reason and they're too far gone to stay alive after I leave even if I’m right there when they die. You’re young and healthy. If the rebar hadn't got your heart you could have not only survived that, but you may have even kept fighting. And now I think you’re all fixed up. So, bye. ]
For a moment I felt lost before I settled back down in my own body lying on the cold cement behind the flowerbed which had been shaded from the sun all morning. Then I got up and looked at the damage to the fountain and noticed the young woman in her green and brown skin tight super suit with a tattered oversized matching hoodie over it touching the front of her chest with a look of wonder on her face.
Which turned serious as she intently began to look around the plaza. I ducked down and hid behind the crowd of fans who took her looking around as a signal to converge on her. I still had things to do that day and getting involved with an actual costumed hero was the last thing I needed in my life.
That night I found out that odd things happen when two Supers’ powers interact together and that I was now involved with a costumed hero.