Running for Home

Chapter Twenty-five – I'm a Lost Cause, Not a Hero

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I am simply borrowing the wonderful characters and settings for my own enjoyment and amusement, and not for any profit.

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Warren was waiting for me outside my apartment building in the morning, ready to walk to the bus stop. He nodded at me in lieu of an actual greeting as we headed off.

Although neither of us was a morning person (a nod was about as much as we could muster up, energy-wise before 9 am), I felt the need to break our unspoken agreement to not talk. He deserved a heads-up about what was probably going to be waiting for him at home that night.

"So I told Aunt Paige the truth about our non-date status for Homecoming," I said.

He managed a "Huh."

"And I know she's planning to tell your mom today. Thought you ought to know."

This time I got three whole words. "Already told her."

It would have been nice if he'd elaborated on that experience, but I wasn't going to hold my breath. I wondered if his explanation to his mom had been at all like my conversation with my Aunt Paige. Instead, I moved on to the actual problem. "Well, we might have a slight problem."

"How slight?"

Oooh, a question, an actual active attempt on his part to participate in our conversation. "Just, you know, a small issue. My aunt isn't all that convinced of our non-date status. It didn't seem to matter how I explained the Layla situation, she was determined to see it as you not having a date and me being your secret date or date-to-be, or I don't even know. She rather reminded me of a terrier with a sock. No use trying to get her to let go of her idea."

"I know what you mean," Warren said.

I waited for him to continue that thought (I just might get that elaboration I'd been wanting!), but he didn't say anything else. Which obviously, called for me to kind of prod him along. "Really?"

He nodded. "My mom wouldn't let go of the idea that it was a date for the two of us and Layla was just some kind of side thing."

"My aunt was the same way. Kept trying to convince me that Layla's part in the night was insignificant."

Warren had a wry half-smile on his face. "I'm not sure whether to be more concerned about her lack of distress over the idea that I would be dating two girls at once, or more freaked by how much interest she's showing in my love life."

Though his words made me want to do some kind of weird happy squiggle at the idea that I was part of this love life, I shoved down my urge to do the dance of joy, saving it for a later time. When I was alone. And could be a giddy school girl with no one else the wiser. Right now, I needed to ask him about the second part of the problem. "Did your mom mention the pictures?"

"You mean the ones she got developed with Paige yesterday? One of which she's ordered an 8x10 copy? Those pictures?"

I winced a little bit. "Those would be the ones. Aunt Paige hung up a 4x6 in the hallway last night after I went to bed."

We'd reached the bus stop, and now just had to wait for it to show. Warren reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and opened it before handing it to me. "Found my wallet on the kitchen counter this morning." I looked down, and there was a wallet size version of the picture currently hanging in the hallway. When I told him this, we both just kind of looked at each other, and neither of us could hide our grins.

"They're determined, you have to give them that," Warren conceded.

"Oh, it's going to get better. Aunt Paige is already planning to have someone cover her shift so she can take more photos of us on our first official date. I see more of those oh-look-Geneva's-here-and-gee-Warren-too moments ahead of us."

The bus pulled up and we stepped on, making our way to the back. Before the bus started moving and we entered our silent zone of motion sickness, Warren said, "As long as I get to pick the movie the next time we have an arranged date, I'm okay with that."

While I would have loved to psychoanalyze that statement, instead I focused on keeping my stomach in its place and out of my throat.

Once we were at school, Warren got off the bus first, but waited for me on the school's sidewalk. This definitely seemed like a positive step in our friendship, and I was loathe to ruin that by bringing up sore subjects, but I really did need to talk to someone about this, and as last night had shown, this wasn't something I was comfortable talking about with Aunt Paige.

Last night, I'd thought up some possible conversation starters, topics that might gradually move into the issue of villains not being parents of the year, but now, in the light of day, actually walking towards the school building with Warren, those conversation starters seemed stupid and useless, and I decided to just jump into the topic. "Um, awkward question," I hedged, deciding to give him at least some kind of warning. "But I kind of need to talk to you, and I tried to talk to Aunt Paige, but it wasn't really something I could talk to her about, and I don't really have anyone else to talk to here, you know, besides Tara, but she wouldn't really understand, and this is not to say you're some kind of last resort as a person I would talk to, but it might not be the kind of thing you like to talk about, so you might not want to talk about it, which is why I was hesitant to ask you about it…" I closed my mouth to cut off the ramblings. What happened to my direct approach idea??

"Am I ever going to find out what 'it' is?" Warren asked, an amused half-grin on his face. I took that as a good sign, that the hellish bus ride hadn't put him in an immediate grumpy mood.

Right, deep breath, start over. "How much influence did you dad have over you when you were younger?"

All expression immediately dropped from his face. It was like looking at a school picture of Warren, rather than walking next to and talking with a real person. "What do you mean?" Wow, no emotion in his voice, either. For being a fire elemental, his voice had a rather icy edge.

"Okay, that might not have come out the way I meant it. What I'm really trying to ask, or to get around to, is whether or not you worry that you'll become a villain one day. You know, because he was."

I could see Warren trying to visibly relax, trying to release the instant tension that the topic of his father immediately created. His voice was a little less glacial when he replied, "Everyone's always seemed to assume that."

I shook my head. "I don't care what other people think. I'm wondering if, you know, you ever worry about it."

"Worry?"

I tried to clarify, since I really didn't see Warren as the type to fret over hypothetical futures. "The idea that we become our parents. Do you ever think that you might follow in your father's footsteps, become a villain one day?"

"My father may be a Villain, but if we're talking about becoming our parents, my mom's a Hero."

"You think you might be a Hero?" I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice, I really did, but apparently, I failed.

Warren slanted me a glance, and finally, a small, wry grin replaced the school-picture-emotionless Warren I had been talking to. "Is it really that hard to believe?"

"No! I mean, of course it isn't. Look at me – you've always been there for me, helping me out, trying to protect me, feeling guilty when you can't, even though it is so far from being your fault. But at the same time, you always seemed like the type who would roll your eyes at the stupidity of the damsel in distress in the dark alley and hope that the danger would teach her not to walk around in dark alleys and maybe call a cab next time. I know you're a hero. I guess I just never got the feeling that you wanted to be a Hero."

"I don't know if I want to be a Hero. I really don't do tights," he said, this time giving me a full out grin. "But I do know that I don't want to be a Villain."

"Do you think it's that easy? You don't want to be one, so you won't?" He really did make it sound simple. Like, nope, no desire to be a villain, so poof, no chance.

"I don't mean for it to sound easy. For some people, doing the right thing, being a good person, might be difficult. It's not always supposed to be easy. But I do mean that it's my choice. My decision. I control who I want to be, who I am. And I don't want to be my father."

I thought about this for a second. I knew I didn't want to be like my parents. I'd never wanted that, even when I was little. I'd always recognized that as one of those differences between me and Villain's Kids like Josh – I would have handled the whole hostage-in-the-basement scenario very differently. Maybe my parents had always seen that too, maybe that was why I had never had any kind of alone-with-a-hostage situations growing up. But what if, even after growing up wanting to be different, I ended up not being so different from my parents?

"What's going on?" Warren asked, looking at me like he was trying to figure out what I was thinking.

"Just thinking about what you said," I replied, shrugging. "When I was seven, Josh's dad, Leech, kidnapped me. Held me hostage in a basement. Josh came and talked to me one day. He had the key with him, but he wouldn't let me go. Back then, I thought that was weird. My parents had had hostages before, when I was little, and I used to daydream about freeing them. Even back then, I wanted to be a hero, not a villain. But then, the other day, I was talking with—someone, and I quoted my dad." I'd almost told him I'd been talking to Josh, but I didn't really want Warren thinking I was having any kind of conversations with Josh. It would lead to too many questions. "It was an automatic response, I didn't think about it before I said it. And when it comes to some kind of lame superpower, because let's face it, not to be mean or anything, but some of them are kind of lame, I can see villainous uses for them, but no way to use it heroically. It's like, I want to be a hero, but my brain doesn't think like a hero's brain. What if, no matter what I want, I can't overcome 14 years of influence from my parents?"

We'd walked inside while we were talking, and had stopped just inside the doors, since this was where we had to go in separate directions. I had just finished this explanation, and was waiting for Warren to process and reply, when the bell rang. Lovely. Worst timing ever.

Warren held back whatever he might have said to my paranoid-I'm-gonna-be-a-villain rambling and instead asked, "Talk to you at lunch?"

I nodded. "Sure." Walking towards my locker, I did a mental fist pump. I was eating lunch with Warren. And it wasn't a hey-I'm-your-bodyguard lunch. It wasn't a saving-me-from-bullies lunch. Just an actual we're-friends-and-eating lunch. Maybe he'd have something to say about my fear of my parent's influence. Even if he didn't, I felt a little better just for having gotten it all out of my head for a moment. Getting some words of wisdom from Warren would be great, if he had them. If he didn't, it was still nice to have talked with him about these kinds of things.

I'm not sure what I'd expected to find changed at school on Monday, but I admit, I'd expected there would be some changes. I mean, sidekicks had saved the school. You'd think that would mean something to the administration, like maybe their hero-sidekick system was a little old-fashioned and outdated and in need of an upgrade to a more modern and p.c. deal. So yeah, I'd expected something to have changed on Monday.

Nothing had. Classes went on as normal, hero and sidekick. I heard a rumor later in the morning that the administration had tried to transfer Layla to hero classes, but she had refused to go, kind of like a one-person sit-in. Apparently, the administration had decided not to fight that battle and just left her in Sidekick class.

I passed Josh once in the hallway, between two of my morning classes. I saw him coming, and for an instant, contemplated turning the other way and not going to my locker at all, but I really did need a book in there for my next class, and I really did need to stop letting Josh dictate my actions. Especially since we'd come to a double-blackmail stand-off/agreement Friday night.

Josh grinned, clearly able to tell that I had contemplated turning tail and running. He gave me a half-second-eyebrow-raise smirk as we passed each other.

Oh yeah, this "deal" we had was going to end so well. I didn't even have to be psychic to realize that.

However, while nothing had changed in terms of the school's structure and divisive system, Sky High's social scene was undergoing some major upheavals, which became apparent in the cafeteria. There must be some kind of High School Bible that dictates that all social status promotions, demotions, and other changes must be established in the school lunchroom. Once Warren, Tara, and I were seated at the same lunch table we'd been at on Friday, I took a second to glace around the cafeteria to figure out what kind of changes had taken place over the weekend. Warren hadn't even quirked an eyebrow when Tara sat down with us. I figured that had to be the most shocking change (and I was about to realize just how wrong that belief was).

"Who's that guy with Josh?" I asked Warren and Tara, eyeing my evil nemesis and his new friend. I guess Josh did have to find new friends, now that all of his old friends were in the juvie version of Kryptonite Creek. Well, except Stitches and Gwen Grayson, seeing as how they were all old and stuff.

"They're like cockroaches. You get rid of one, ten more crawl out of the woodwork to take its place," Zack said, coming up behind Warren. My eyes might have bugged out a little as I realized he was coming over to sit at our table.

"That's Kody Turner, better known around here as Deception. Remember his little brother, Scott? He was in power placement with us," Layla said, sitting down next to Warren.

Will sat on the other side of her, and Zack on the other side of him. Ethan sat down across from Will and Magenta sat down next to me and continued where Layla had left off. "Total suck up. Morphed to look like Coach Boomer. Oh wait, you left before that happened."

I was shocked into silence at this new development; Tara's sitting at our table paled in shock-value-comparison with Stronghold sitting at our table. Great, being surrounded by Stronghold and the rest of the get-a-long gang…I've had this nightmare before.

Tara apparently could tell what I was thinking – she leaned around me to look at the new occupants of the table, looked at me, and pinched me. Guess I wasn't dreaming.

Immediately, I began looking for an escape route, trying to think up some excuse. Tara, again with the knowing what I was thinking, put her elbow on my arm and rested her chin in her hand, nodding at something Ethan was saying.

"If you leave now, it's going to look suspicious," Tara whispered without moving her mouth. I was impressed with her effort.

"Warren does it all the time," I countered, trying not to move my mouth and failing miserably. If we were trying to hide the fact that we were having a private conversation at a crowded lunch table, I was sabotaging the mission.

"One, Warren's sitting here now, being all social. Two, Warren could get away with that before, everyone knew he hated Stronghold and why. You pull a Warren, and you're gonna have people wondering why." Again, I couldn't even tell she was talking. She appeared completely enthralled by what the get-a-long gang was discussing.

Actually, once I'd stopped trying to escape and stopped talking to Tara, I realized they were discussing the senior heroes, which I did want to hear about.

"Who's the blonde girl? Why does she look kind of snarly?" I asked. They might have only been freshmen, but the Super community was fairly small, so one of them was bound to know.

"That's Cougar. She's a feral." Yup, could always count on Encyclopedia Ethan to know everything.

"What's a feral?" I asked, slightly confused.

"A feral is a Super with animal DNA. Cougar, obviously, is part cat. Think Sabretooth from the first X-Men movie. Only with better grooming," Encyclopedia Ethan informed me.

"Wait, they didn't teach freshmen Intro to Ferals at your old school?" Warren teased. I rolled my eyes at him.

"What school did you go to before transferring to Sky High?" Will asked politely.

Oh bother. There weren't that many Super Schools out there, and at that moment, my mind completely blanked on any other school I could offer. Which left the truth. Greeeeeeat. "Powers High School."

"Oh hey, Principal Powers' brother-in-law started that one, right? Is that how you got your scholarship?" Zack asked. The others kind of stared at him. Sure, everyone knew I was a scholarship student, but nobody actually brought it up in conversation.

Layla jumped in, trying to bypass the awkward moment. "That's in L.A., right? My cousins go to school out there. That's who my mom stayed with when she went to fight Dynamite and Heartthrob."

I was saved from having to form any kind of an answer when my water went down the wrong pipe and I was suddenly coughing up a lung. Layla had bypassed awkward, alright, and jumped right to Worst Possible Comment Ever.

Tara quickly spoke up, trying to turn the conversation back to its original topic. "The red head is Kelly. She was a nationally ranked gymnast before she got her powers. If she went to a normal school, she'd probably be on the gymnastics team or the cheerleading squad, but she can't do that here."

"Why not?" I asked, trying to follow Tara's conversation switch from PHS back to the Senior heroes.

"National School Sports Association rules. Any kind of superpower that could illegally aid you in a competition disqualifies you from sports. That's why Sky High doesn't have any actual sports teams. Just inner-school teams," Ethan said.

I nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. So what's her power?"

"Telekinesis. Developed during the Junior Nationals competition. She moved the balance beam to keep from falling off. It was on ESPN and everything. She's going to have a hard time with the secret identity issue," Layla said.

Inwardly, I cringed. I could identify with that. Outwardly, I couldn't let that understanding show, seeing as how I was still in secret-identity mode myself. I met Warren's eyes and could tell that he knew what I was thinking. Turning to Tara, I asked after the last unknown Senior hero sitting with Josh, "And the girl with the long black hair?"

"Lani. She's an electric. See the gloves? She can't touch other people without pretty much electrocuting them. I heard it was really bad when she first started here; she still doesn't have touch-control, but after four years of power development, she can now throw electric bolts when she's not wearing the gloves. Like Zeus. Not somebody you want to go up against in a game of Save the Citizen," Tara warned.

"Huh. Weird how I've never noticed them before," I commented.

Tara shrugged. "They're not really like Gwen and Penny and Lash and Speed. I mean, yeah, I guess they all hung out together, the senior heroes, but I think that may have been about all they had in common. With Gwen the student body president and Penny, Lash, and Speed being such obvious bullies, it was sometimes hard to remember that the others were even there. Cougar can be a pain, but for the most part, she doesn't go around harassing people like Speed and Lash did. And yeah, Kelly looks like one of those mean cheerleader bitch types they always type-cast on TV, but she's not that bad. Certainly not as bad as Penny. Lani's always kept to herself; probably has something to do with the fact that she could fry all your insides with an accidental touch. And Kody? Well, he's actually kind of nice. I got partnered with him once during Save the Citizen, and he didn't even get mad or anything about my sidekick power and that we were pretty much guaranteed to get our butts kicked."

"So this isn't going to turn into Rise of the Evil Senior Heroes, Part II?" I asked.

"Not likely," Tara assured me, nodding.

At this point, Ethan rejoined the conversation and it became a debate between him and Tara over the accuracy of the term "evil hero."

Having finished my lunch, I figured I'd let enough time pass that it was now socially appropriate to leave the lunch table without having it look like I'd left because of Stronghold's get-along-gang. Warren joined me in packing up his lunch. I looked at Tara, wondering is she was going to leave too, but she waved me off and continued her argument with Ethan.

"Tyler, come with me," Warren said as we were leaving the cafeteria and I was about to head to back to sophomore sidekick class.

"Um, okay," I agreed. He'd already started walking down the hall, so I hurried to get back into stride with him. "What's up?"

"I need something from my locker."

I tried to figure out how I tied into that, but failed to see the connection. However, my curiosity was getting the better of me, so I continued to follow Warren to his locker.

He twirled the combination and hit the locker to get it open. I always wondered if that worked in real life, or just on TV. I'd tried it once back in L.A., but had hurt my hand and my locker hadn't budged.

Pulling out a book, he handed it to me. I looked at the cover. The word Runaways was at the top and there was a drawing of six kids on the cover. "It's a comic book," I said. Okay, I sounded like an idiot, but I was really failing to see what this was all about.

"Actually, it's a graphic novel. Read it. I think you'll like the storyline."

"Uh huh," I said, somewhat disbelieving. I'd never read comic books before. My parents had banned them from our house, since they tended to detail heroic efforts and villainize the…well, the villains.

He continued to explain, "It's about six kids who discover their parents are supervillains."

Okay, so this is where the connection to me came in. At least now I understood.

"Ignore the fact that it's a comic book if that's what it takes. Instead, read the story."

"And this will help me with my hero-villain identity crisis?" I asked.

"No," he said, shrugging. "I just thought you'd like it."

"Oh," I replied, a little deflated. Even though I felt better just for having talked about my questions, I guess I'd still kind of been waiting for Warren's words of wisdom on the subject.

"Tyler, you don't have a hero-villain identity crisis."

"Um, were you not part of the conversation we had earlier? 'Cause I could have sworn we talked about this just this morning."

"You don't have a crisis." When I gave Warren a dubious look, he continued, "You said you would think about trying to free your parents' hostages back when you were seven. You wanted to be a hero, even way back then. And today, your instinct or automatic response might be more aligned to your parent's way of thinking, but that doesn't mean it's right, and even more importantly, it doesn't mean that you think it's right. The good thing is that you recognize this as being a problem. If you didn't recognize your parent's influence, then that influence would be dangerous. But you see it, you know it's there, and you work past it. Influence doesn't matter as much as you think it does, Tyler. It's about a choice. And you've made yours. Don't let yourself doubt that."

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Author's note: Whoo hoo! Finally, an update! I love Christmas vacation (does Numfar's Dance of Joy). Chapter title song lyrics are from Me Against the World by Simple Plan. Thanks to everyone who's stayed with the story through the long in-between-chapters waits, and those who reviewed the last chapter: Lt. Commander Richie, Waive, CMHValex, Tinuel, Readerfreak10, Nelle07, Kalacyn, xoon, Chia89, pinga, Luthien, lovestoread, Angelnanoo, CarlyJo, Phaedra, Nival Vixen, bookworm2011, sirenmergirl, MehGen, caleb'slover, jordy.girl, and Fun-SizedWitch.