Superhero Adventures, UK Style

A brief interlude.

With his head stuck deep in an old sci-fi novel he’d found in one of the maintenance rooms, Chris had been slowly walking from the Combat Simulator chamber towards the stairs to the upper floor of the basement when he literally ran into her.

He suddenly found himself at ground zero, looking at her obvious feminine charms. She was dressed in a dark blue, form-fitting body suit, wearing a blue/bronze coloured cloak with a hood that almost covered her – magnificent – long silky hair, and a wrap round skirt. He immediately looked down, embarrassed, and tried to stutter out a verbal apology even as he saw her shapely legs and lost all control of his capacity for speech. Something came out of his mouth; he desperately hoped it wasn’t his tongue, it definitely wasn’t any language known to man.

“Hi, are you okay?” Her capacity for speech seemed unaffected by the collision, and she placed her gloved hand on his arm as though to steady him. He tried to signal a ‘hi’ back with his other unoccupied hand but ended up with something half-way between an embarrassing finger flutter and a half-hearted peace sign.

He looked into her eyes – a floating holograph of a mask emphasised them – and he realised that the mask also highlighted the flawless skin around her lips rather than disguising it.

She smiled, “You must be Singularity. Akira said you were apprenticing with them. Hi, I’m Ser… ah, Seven. I’m also training with them for my HCP license. I’m sorry I haven’t met you before but I’m only able to come when school allows it. How are you settling in?”

Red faced, struggling to breathe, Chris tried to reply, and this time he managed it, though he was sure that it was not making a lot of sense to the girl, female, woman – she was definitely older than him but by how much?

Eventually he managed a “Hi, I’m Chris, or Singularity, yes, but you already know that. Aah, hi, nice to meet you. Do you come here often?”

What the..? She must think him braindead. He stammered a “sorry” and hoped the floor would open and swallow him.

Chris had never had much success with girls – in fact, if he was being honest, he’d no success at all, probably due to the fact he got tongue-tied in the presence of any girl he liked and he ‘knew’ he lacked the looks, the muscles, anything and everything, in fact, that they might want in a boyfriend. In his mind he had all the physical attributes of a ‘loser’ and was convinced he would die alone, and a virgin.

Instead of sneering as he anticipated (almost every pretty girl he’d ever met seemed to have mastered that trait where he was concerned), she smiled at him.

“What’s the book?” She reached out and touched his hand, turning the book over. “Ah, Grey Lensman by E. E. Doc Smith… Don’t think I’ve read that one. Yours?” He stumbled out a “found it!” even as he realised his face was hot and had turned red with embarrassment. He wanted to pull his hand away from hers but, paradoxically, really, really didn’t.

“Likely one of Adam’s he left behind. Never met the guy but seems he was always either fixing things or had his nose in a sci-fi novel. Left some good one’s behind stashed away in the hangar. I’ve read more than a few of his cast-offs while doing monitoring duty.”

“Ah, Adam is that, ah, another of the team I’ve yet to meet?” asked Chris.

“Not anymore, though if you run into the team’s sponsor, Beth, you might meet him then as he’s part of her team again. He apparently left when Annie and Sam left to start up their detective agency.” Beth? Sam? Annie? How many more people were there in this so-called secret base?

Seven laughed covering her mouth with her gloved hand, “Sorry, that was rude of me. Your face there, though, was a peach. I’m sure you’ll get to meet everyone in time. Look, I have a training session I need to get to. Was supposed to have been with Akira but he’s buggered off to Scotland probably chasing a haggis or Nessie or some such, so Mikey’s programmed a training session for me as a consolation prize and I’m already late. I meant to ask, what it is you do anyway, powers-wise that is?”

Chris relaxed, a little. “I, ah, can create and control micro-singularities, black-holes, and manipulate gravity. I’m, ah, not that great at manipulating it yet. I, ah, almost killed Jeeves and Mrs Wellingham the other day when I lost control. What about you?”

Good, ask about her. He’d read somewhere that was what you were supposed to do when meeting super-hot girls, “What’re your powers?”

She smiled, “I do magic.”

He frowned, “What? Like pull rabbits out of a top hat sort of thing?”

This time she laughed. Score! He smiled back as she lent in so he could smell her perfume, at least he assumed it was. She smelt of spring flowers and he struggled against the desire to close his eyes and lean in closer.

“No,” she said with a grin, “though maybe I should try that sometime. I’m a mage in training. Seventh generation sort of thing.”

She gestured, then reached towards a small pouch at her waist and began to pull out a large two-handed sword from it which she brandished in front of him even as a wind manifested from nowhere to blow his hair into his eyes. “I know it’s not a rabbit, it’s not even Excalibur, but… oh! Must go, hope to see you again, soon, yeah?”

She started to run, the sword dissipating into mist, then her feet left the ground as she began to literally fly. He turned and saw Mikey standing by the entrance to the Combat Simulator gesturing her. Standing beside her was one of the small droids using one of its several arms to mimic Mikey’s signal, while two of its other arms were on its hips as though indicating its exasperation at being kept waiting.

As Seven reached the door to the training chamber, she turned in mid-air and waved at him before vanishing inside and the door slammed shut.

Chris stared at the closed door for several seconds before turning and, with an unfamiliar goofy smile plastered on his face, he continued walking towards the stairwell and his English lesson with Mrs Wellingham in the lounge, the book in his hand forgotten for the moment.

Maybe, just maybe this might not be a bad place to be after all.

HCP – Hero Certification Programme

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