6) Revenge of the Crows
The crows woke me up the next afternoon. I had never hopped from corpse to corpse like that before, so after feeding the animals and playing with dogs a bit after my alarm woke me up that morning, I had gone back to bed for a while.
Outside I could hear a car door slam shut and a voice call out. “Jesus Christ. None of you could have been hatched the last time I was out here. Cut it out.”
The crow meanwhile just kept screaming "Bad Blue.” and “Big blue bastard” at the guy.
Blue? Oh. Shimmer’s dad. Light Knight.
I rolled out of bed and looked out the window to see the older man and his taller, larger wife standing outside next to a very expensive looking SUV. The guy was shaking his fist at the birds crapping on the translucent shield over his car, but by the looks of it, they had hit the vehicle several times before he got the shield up. His wife meanwhile was openly laughing at him. “I told you not to mess with the birds, but noooo, we were never going to have a reason to come out here again.”
They looked… really normal in regular clothes. Like a healthy middle aged couple with the younger wife being a bit of a gym rat.
And their extremely embarrassed looking daughter crawling out of the back seat looked like a normal, if pretty, teenage girl.
I got dressed and headed downstairs. I guess there had never been much point in using the burner phone to try to hide my identity from someone with two of the most powerful and politically connected people in the city.
Not to mention them both being Rank 5 supers.
Walking out on my porch I waved my hands over my head and yelled at the crows. “Settle down and you get hot dogs.” All the crows immediately roosted on the fences, trees, and rooftops and began grooming themselves as if they hadn't been all set to murder someone. They were all still fairly up close to three people standing outside with a few of them still giving Light Knight death glares, but at least they had stopped their aerial bombardment.
Bravada walked up to the stairs with several greasy bags from someplace called Mexarcana and a tinfold covered tray in her hands. “I wanted to meet you as you are the only member of my daughter’s team we hadn’t watched grow up and I killed you last night. So I brought food.” She raised her collection of steaming takeout for emphasis.
I came down the steps to take the tray or at least some of the bags. “Not a problem Mrs Knight. I didn’t feel a thing and you were only the second person that got me with friendly fire yesterday. Please come in.”
Her husband came in right behind her, trailing along behind him a teen with the hood up on her dark blue hoodie. Looking around he seemed a bit surprised. “We’re been here before to drop off and check in on some super animals in the past. I would have expected it to have changed a bit more since your Grandparents moved out?”
His daughter sighed. At first, I thought about pushing back about how he knew all about me being some sort of power play, but the guy just seemed to be making small talk that somehow zeroed in on something that embarrassed his daughter. You know, like a dad.
I set the food out on the kitchen table and peeled off the foil to reveal an entire tray of crisp little tacos. They smelled great. “Is that what the crows remember you from? They seem to have some kind of inherited memory thing going on so it may not matter how long ago it happened.”
Shimmer’s mom gave her husband a wry look as he froze up for a moment. “I covered their treats up with a shield to play with them. Only for a little bit, once they got upset enough to start squawking I always uncovered the food. How was I supposed to know a bunch of birds were going to hold a grudge for generations.” He looked from me to his wife, and then his daughter for support. He didn’t get any.
I dug out a pack of defrosted knock off brand hot dogs from the fridge and sliced them open before handing them to him. “Pinch it off in little pieces and set it out along the railing on the porch. They still won’t be happy with you, but with the bribe, they'll hold off on targeting you for the rest of the day.”
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As the champion of Concentric City headed out to feed crows, I pulled out a few chairs. "Please sit." Then I started to get out some plates and silverware. As I was filling up a pitcher with some ice water and some lemon slices. Shimmer finally spoke up. “I thought you said you were thirty seven?” She sounded a bit shocked.
I turned around and gave her a half a grin. “Regen 2 remember. I should look and feel half my age until I die way past a hundred or so. You should end up looking pretty young for a long time yourself as a high rated Bruiser, just look at your mom.”
That got me a guarded smile of approval from Bravada and an “Ugh.” of disgust from the teen.
Brutes usually had enhanced strength and durability, which sometimes meant a resistance to damage that included a resistance to aging to some degree. Bravada looked like a twenty something woman who dressed older, but could still pass for the same age as when she had triggered. At a rank of 5, she might look like that, well, for the rest of her life however long that lasted.
Then the normal aging gray haired dad came back in and the luncheon slash interrogation began.
No, I didn't want to register my power due to a fear of getting kidnapped and forced to resurrect old rich people whose flunkies would kill me when their boss just died again from being that old.
No, I only had access to their daughter's mind when she was thinking at me near a corpse, and while I was in the corpse she was aware of. And anyway I didn't get her thoughts, only any emotions she was directing toward me or feeling really strongly. At least going from past experiences, we hadn't tried to push the limits of it.
I had in fact lost track of her mind once I switched to a corpse out of her sight.
Yes, I did feel awkward working with a bunch of people that much younger than me, but since I had looked like I was about twenty something since I was twenty it was something that I was used to by now.
At least I didn’t have to worry about someone twenty years younger than me hitting on me since I was always in a corpse around them.
That last one made Shimmer, or Emma since she was in normal clothes, roll her eyes and pull her hood up again.
"And it's better than when I try to hang out in public with the friends who I grew up with who do look their age. Also, all my romantic relationships tend to last only a few years at most. Women get weird when they age and I don’t.”
That line brought the awkward questions to an end, as Bravada gave her husband a fond look. “It’s not just women who can get weird about it.”
Then It was me spilling all the dirt on the kids. “Let me tell you about when they made me take over a dead duck…”
After a few more stories and Shimmer’s mom eating most of the food she had brought, I offered to show the two of them around the place, but Mr. Knight, who I had to tell, “No sir, I won’t call you Stu.” excused himself and his wife since they had a charity event that night.
His daughter did accept the offer, “I’ll fly home dad, I want to talk to Mort when he can’t jump out of a dead body to escape the conversation.”
Shimmer’s dad seemed a bit reluctant to leave his only daughter behind with some guy nearly his own age, but his wife grabbed one of his arms and dragged him over to their speckled white vehicle.
The teen superhero shook off her awkwardness. "I'm sorry about my parents, they are so used to getting their way they wouldn't listen to me when I told them you valued your privacy.” She clenched her fists. “They just act like other people’s wishes don't apply to them and told me to get in the car, then acted offended when I tried to tell them they were overstepping.”
Then she stopped as she realized we had walked into the barn. “You have a horse.”
For a moment she looked like a girl half her age as her face lit up before she realized it herself and tried to get all serious, which is hard when a huge horse is trying to chew on the hood on your head. "Hey! Mort, make him stop. Ugh, it's all wet now. Do I have horse spit in my hair? Stop laughing."
I wrestled Chester away from her. "Do you want to take him out for a ride? He's gotten fat since I don't take him out nearly as much as I should."
Her eyes lighted up again before she shook her head. “Maybe another time, we need to figure some things out. Like can you feel my emotions when you’re in your body?”
She stared at me intently. I shrugged. “Yes, but they're a lot more muted this way.”
Shimmer looked a little upset about that but moved on. “Are you sure you want to still use Mort as your super name? It's not your real name is it?"
I shook my head. “Nope, you can call me Scott if you’d like. Just don’t call me Corpse King.”
She blushed a bit. "I was just throwing that out to get people to make better suggestions. But..." She shrugged. "Mort is just so… basic. It would be a lot easier for people to trust you and not kick you out of their bodies if you could introduce yourself to them with a name they knew and trusted.”
Opening my mouth to object, I hesitated. "Okay, you have a point there. But nothing with the word corpse or dead in for a name if you want me to have one that people will trust."
I started to think, and an idea popped into my head. “Fable creates illusionary people based on myths, right? Orpheus went down to hell to bring his wife back to earth to live again. We can use that name and just tell people it's one of Fable's people. She's a 5 and a 5s powers get can do a lot of crazy things.”
She tilted her head as she thought that one over before she shook her head. "It sounds good. But I don't do lies. We can use the name, but we won't tell anyone you are one of Fable's summons. And if anyone asks, we don't lie. We will just decline to talk about it."
Someday I would ask her about the “Don’t do lies” thing, but then I had to get to work.
Telling her this, she looked thoughtful, “Okay I’ll get out of your hair, but I’m going to leave you a new phone that uses a secure messenger program and opens a line to the team's communications."
Then she gave me a wave, surrounded herself with a shimmering box of force, and then flew off in it. The box even had a seat in it.
She had the foresight to keep it low to the ground and head off in the direction of the national park land so none of the neighbors would see flying people coming from my home.
I appreciated that at least someone in their family had a sense of discretion.