"Shit!" Billy cried. His curse was quickly lost in a stream of watery coughs. His lungs burnt, grasping for oxygen.
Okay, so drowning was apparently one of his weaknesses.
"Holy shit!" Freddy was grinning from ear to ear. "Dude, you were under for over seven minutes!"
Billy rubbed at his eyes, wincing at the salty sting. "It felt like ten years! Don't even think of making me do that again."
Freddy threw back his head and whooped. His only witness was the thin sliver of moon overhead, which bounced and in out of clouds carried along by a northern wind. He looked ahead, taking in the ink black water that blended in so effortlessly with the sky that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
"Here," Freddy said, throwing his phone to Billy. With their adult hands, it now seemed small. He imagined that pressing his finger too hard against the screen would be enough to make it crack. "Record my time. I think I can beat you!"
Billy snorted. His costume was drenched, water dripping from his hair and chin. "Be my guest," he responded, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
Freddy got on his knees, moving one leg with his arms. Grabbing him by the back of his cape, Billy shoved his face into the water.
"I've got bad news." Freddy collapsed into Billy's bean bag chair, his crutches clattering as they hit the floor.
"What?" Billy's eyes widened.
"I found Rosa's gun, but it wasn't loaded. I spent almost thirty minutes digging through her drawers before Mary heard and came in to yell at me."
"The hell! Why did you do that?"
"Because bank robbers tend to carry ammunition with them!" Freddy threw his hands into the air.
"I already told you that you aren't going to shoot me."
"Are you sure your dad doesn't own a gun?"
Billy groaned. "What am I supposed to do, ask him?"
"That sounds like a pretty good idea to me!"
He put his face in his hands. "Freddy, why do you care so much about this?"
"Why don't you give a shit?" Freddy grabbed his crutches and stood. "I can't just sit on my butt waiting for the world to get better. There are people out there who need our help now!"
"But-"
"But what? I can't even think about school or my family anymore, knowing what I do. We have to do something!"
Billy could sit in his bedroom all day concocting worst case scenarios for all Freddy cared. It wasn't like Freddy needed his permission to start saving the world, even if Billy had given him his powers.
"It's not like I asked for the wizard to kidnap me and make me a superhero!"
"Oh, he did? I thought that bright red costume and electrokinesis of yours were just to impress girls with!"
He turned away from Billy, closing his eyes. His bedroom flashed before his mind. When Freddy opened his eyes again, he was staring at a familiar shelf covered in Wonder Woman action figures.
"Where are you going?" Darla called as he grabbed his coat from the front hook.
"For a walk!"
"Be safe!"
Outside, the air was wet and cold, the sky cloudy. The weatherman had warned of snow that still had yet to appear. His shoes crunched against yesterday's dirty slush.
A few other people were out, some walking their dogs, others heading for their car. No one met his gaze or returned his waves. All his life he'd been... Invisible wasn't quite the right word. It wasn't that people couldn't see him, but that they didn't want to.
When he got to the empty lot a block away, Freddy surveyed the graffiti and discarded cigarette butts surrounding him. While it was shady, no one dangerous came out here until night.
"Shazam."
Thaddeus' threw the stack of papers to the floor, watching them fan out across the wood. He'd been reading for almost three hours straight, until his eyes couldn't focus on the words any longer.
Nothing! Everything about the wizard's former champion was speculation. Past scholars and storytellers had certainly done their part to embellish Teth Adam's life, until one account scarcely resembled the next.
He lay his head against his desk. The wizard's last champion had vanished thousands of years earlier without a trace. Empires had risen and fallen since then, turning the hero into nothing more than a footnote in Middle Eastern history.
Why had the wizard chosen him? What had made the former slave turned revolutionary worthy of unspeakable power? He'd lived east of Babylon in the early Biblical era, speaking a language that even academics had largely let rot into history. How could he even begin to resemble a modern day champion?
If only the sins knew! Though they squabbled in his head, they offered him no hints. They just as easily could have passed the champion in the street and, like Thaddeus himself, been none the wiser.
He tore out of his study, hurrying for the bathroom. Splashing water on his face, he surveyed the bandages he'd put on that morning. Even beneath the thick white gauze, his eye glowed.
"Freddy!"
Freddy groaned, pulling his phone away from his face. He hadn't even been home a full five minutes before it started ringing. "What's so important, Billy?"
"Have you gotten my recent messages?"
"What messages?" he spat. "I thought you just accidentally texted me 'What's up?' twenty times!"
"You're all over the news!"
"I am?" He kicked off his shoes. "You know, I never can keep up with that stuff. World affairs are very depressing."
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Stuff that would be a lot easier with a partner!"
Lightning Lord. Temblor. Captain Marvel. Seism. The names changed but the facts didn't. So far, he had appeared in New Orleans to keep a bridge from collapsing, Louisville to stop a bank robbery, and Philadelphia to rescue workers from an office fire within the span of eight hours.
None of the national or local news agencies had gotten clear footage of him yet. Conspiracies were breeding faster than Clostridium perfringens in a petri dish. Some thought that he was an alien or Atlantean. Others theorized that he was a superpowered SVR RF, Mossad, or NKSOF agent.
Thaddeus smirked. What would those keyboard warriors think if they really knew the truth?
Find him.
The sins didn't need to tell him twice.
